Unfortunately this is not an isolated incident, and I feel that continuing to blame this on politics is an attempt to excuse or explain horrible behavior and prejudices when it really doesn’t. The fact is that Anti-Semitism is occurring far too often at UC campuses, to the point where Jewish students are feeling marginalized and afraid. In some communities, saying it’s “Anti-Israel” instead of Anti-Jewish makes this kind of behavior “ok” when much of this has little to do with Israel in the first place.
Explaining is not the same as excusing. Racism is inexcusable, but is not (usually) unexplainable, and understanding how it gets incited, promoted, or maintained helps one who wants to combat it.
Many of my Facebook friends are comparing the OU and UCLA cases, and saying they are very disappointed in UCLA for not doing enough about this case and disciplining the students – and saying the inaction is due to anti-semitism.
The African -American students at OU were not at all surprised by the incident. The common reaction was that this goes on all the time and that what differentiated it this time was its capture on video.
Similarly, Jewish students on UC campuses have experienced increasingly vocal instances of anti-Semitism. Some of it is cloaked in charges of anti-Israel activity but swastikas on Jewish fraternities and calls for sending Zionist pigs to the gas chamber cannot be explained away as a political difference of opinion.
The difference in the reactions of the leadership at the two campuses is quite glaring.
Excellent point. This cannot be explained away, just as the racism that happened at OU can’t be explained away. And I find it incredibly sad that our own state schools seem to be on the forefront of many of this issues, and that the administration doesn’t seem to be taking it as seriously as I’d like.
Example: guy at a UC campus held up an ISIS flag and nothing happened, then held up an Israeli flag and was verbally assaulted and called names.
But the kicker is today the same UCLA student council voted 12-0 to approve a resolution condemning anti-semitism. This article from the Daily Bruin also reveals the other student who voted against the Jewish student is Manjot Singh - which is the same name as a Bollywood actor. That’s a Sikh name, meaning we had 2 Muslims, a Swiss and a Sikh voting against a Jew. The comments some of them make in the Daily Bruin article indicate they still don’t get it. My take is that this group had no choice but to vote unanimously for this resolution or look like the fools they actually are. Remember, the 2 Muslim students are active in Muslim groups on campus and somehow that doesn’t make them biased. Here is part of the article:
"The undergraduate student government unanimously passed “A Resolution Condemning Anti-Semitism” at its Tuesday meeting after more than 100 students made public comments in support of the measure.
The resolution, drafted by members of Hillel at UCLA and Undergraduate Students Association Council President Avinoam Baral, condemns recent incidents of anti-Semitism and events some say were discriminatory, including vandalism at UC Davis where swastikas were painted on the door of a Jewish fraternity and the recent questioning of a Jewish student by UCLA undergraduate student government councilmembers.
The resolution also calls upon USAC to fight anti-Semitism in the future and for councilmembers to attend diversity training to learn about the history of anti-Semitism and how it manifests.
Almost all of the public commenters spoke in support of the resolution. A few students voiced concerns that the resolution didn’t do enough to protect speech that criticized the government of Israel.
“USAC’s language was inappropriate,” said Jaimeson Cortez, a third-year political science student and a member of multiple USAC offices, during public comments. “Political affiliation should be called into question – but never ethnicity or religion.”
Jewish student leaders asked USAC Transfer Representative Negeen Sadeghi-Movahed and general representatives Sofia Moreno Haq, Fabienne Roth and Manjot Singh to co-sponsor the resolution in response to concerns they raised at the council’s Feb. 10 meeting where Rachel Beyda, a second-year economics student, was appointed to serve on the Judicial Board.
Roth, Sadeghi-Movahed, Singh and Haq initially voted against Beyda’s appointment after some councilmembers asked her how she would remain neutral given her affiliation with the Jewish community on campus. After an administrative representative raised concerns of discrimination, the council unanimously approved Beyda’s appointment."
Why is it offensively racist for those two students to assume that Beyda’s activity in Jewish organizations means that she cannot be unbiased, but it is not so for you to assume the same thing about them with respect to their activity in Muslim organizations?
Has the religion or lack thereof of Roth been disclosed? Also, since justice prevailed, I’m not sure if one can argue anything more than attempted discrimination. Also OU is unbelievable racism, UCLA is more ???. I’m not sure what, but it’s far less severe than the OU incident. Finally, if the Arab presence has become the dominant force on the UCLA compass then Jewish students need to reexamine their commitment to volunteerism.
@SamRam, are you actually saying that a strong Muslim presence on a campus somehow means it’s ok to attack students of other faiths unless those students “step up their volunteerism?”
Nor do I think people here are trying to rank which incident was worse. Only you are doing that. Bad is bad. The OU video turned my stomach. But at least there the leadership of the school condemned it forcefully and immediately.
Why do you keep going back to Fabienne Roth’s religion? She isn’t Jewish. Why does that matter so much to you? She is a Swiss international student.
@ucbalumnus we are not vetting these folks for student council. If we did ask them about their faith and its impact on their ability to be unbiased we would be wrong.
ubcalumnus, work on reading comprehension. From the context, the wording and my other posts on this subject, it should be clear I was referring to the idiocy of them being in the same kind of group as the Jewish student but voting against her. That they can’t see they do exactly what she does is the very point of their racism, that they as Muslims don’t think being in a Muslim student group is “biasing” but a Jewish student in the same kind of group is “biasing”. Seriously. You took the time to quote me but not to read my posts and then accused me of racism.
As to SamRam, I’m guessing this is a student because the comment is immature. And finding out that Roth is Swiss would require about 2 seconds of effort to check and I think “student” when I see assertions with no effort attached.
“Has the religion or lack thereof of Roth been disclosed?”
SamRam, I already pointed out to you the first time you raised this that Fabienne Roth is a Swiss Gentile woman. Why do you keep bringing it up?
@3G3C - Of course not and the save the debate 101 tactics for someone else. @Donna L please cite your source. BTW, gentile is not a religion, it only means that one is not Jewish.
“@3G3C - Of course not and the save the debate 101 tactics for someone else”
But what did you mean by, “Finally, if the Arab presence has become the dominant force on the UCLA compass then Jewish students need to reexamine their commitment to volunteerism”. What are you even talking about? Are you saying that if there are too many Arabs on campus in volunteer positions, then the Jewish students better step it up to counter them?
I suspect that Jewish students would not think that the reason to volunteer for certain student positions would be in order to counter the Arab presence, but perhaps if they are getting attacked and marginalized, maybe they will start looking at it that way. Sad that one would have to do that at a college campus.
@3g3c . Simply put, its not about Arab or Jew, its about volunteerism. Those who volunteer deserve the benefit and burden of service.
Here’s a link to a video of Rachel’s election meeting. I think there’s a bit of back office politics, but on viewing the video, it’s a pretty tame affair and democracy certainly did prevail. Good Luck to Rachel.
Sam, first of all, are you trying to address my question, or 3g3c’s questions, that you already dismissed? And you are being purposefully vague by not addressing the questions directly?
You don’t think I know what Gentile means? Seriously? It’s a polite term for exactly what I meant to convey: that she isn’t Jewish; she’s Swiss-German. (There are less polite terms which I could have used instead!) And no, I don’t know whether she’s Catholic or Protestant; what does it matter?
How do I know she isn’t Jewish? Because Fabienne Roth is not a Jewish name in Switzerland (or Germany); it’s a common Swiss/German name. In fact, if you look on an online Swiss directory, you’ll find plenty of Fabienne Roths. I just pulled my 1941 Berlin telephone directory off my bookshelf; there were 173 people listed named Roth, not a single one of whom was Jewish. (There were only a handful of Jews still listed in the Berlin directory by 1941, including my mother’s father, and all of them were listed with the compulsory middle names Israel or Sara. None of the Roths were so named.)
More importantly, I know because Ms. Roth is the very person who addressed Ms. Beyda with the “given that you are Jewish, etc.” question about Ms. Beyda’s potentially being too biased for a position that Ms. Roth holds herself – a question which would have made no sense if Ms. Roth were were also Jewish. Nor would it have made sense for her to sign a statement apologizing to “the Jewish community,” as a group of people separate from herself, if she were Jewish. And because there may not be such a thing as looking Jewish, but there is such a thing as looking like it’s almost impossible that you could be Jewish. (See the photos at http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/budget-standoff-leaves-uc-applications-limbo-29332264 and http://dailybruin.com/2014/12/11/usac-councilmembers-response-to-campaign-funding-conflict-of-interest/.) She’s about as Aryan-looking as anyone could possibly be! Is it impossible that someone who looks like that could be Jewish? No. But along with her being Swiss (a country with a tiny Jewish population), and her own words, it’s another thing that makes the obvious even more obvious to me.
Finally, I find it hard to believe that any Jewish person could have been ignorant enough to ask such questions; even the people defending her are doing so on the basis that she is “a Swiss student who speaks English as a second language and may not have understood the implications of her question.” (See http://www.canyon-news.com/jewish-ucla-student-at-heart-of-anti-semitism-debate/17865.)
And I’ll turn the question around: what possible reason do you have for asking the question in the first place? What is your basis for thinking a Swiss-German woman with a non-Jewish name from a country with a grand total of 17,000 Jews, representing 0.2% of the population (source: Wikipedia), who addresses Jews and the Jewish community as “other” – and who, by the way, deleted both her twitter and instagram accounts to prevent people from trying to research whether she had made anti-Semitic comments in the past – might be Jewish? Is it your erroneous belief that German-sounding name = Jewish? In any event, the burden of proof is on you. If you can’t meet it, please stop bringing it up. You remind me of all the people who immediately leaped to the false conclusion that George Zimmerman (or at least his father) were Jewish.
Perhaps because, in this case, there initially existed at least a thin veneer of plausible deniability. The “expressed” concern over Ms. Beyda’s religious identity and involvement in Jewish organizations was supposedly entirely predicated upon fear that that involvement might potentially prejudice her vote on the board. Breathtakingly insulting, that. Especially when coming from Muslim students whose own religious and organizational affiliations apparently raised absolutely no such concerns. Fortunately in this case, the fault in their reasoning was confronted during the very meeting the decision was made, and ultimately, she was not denied a seat. Within an hour, the vote was unanimously in her favor. What would have been outrageously egregious, would have been if such prejudice had been allowed to stand, and Beyda been denied a seat on the board based on that prejudice.
In the OU case, the video left no room whatsoever for deniability, plausible or otherwise. The repeated use of the “N” word, as well as the line “you can hang him from a tree”, left no wiggle room for debate as to exactly what this was. Fortunately, the whole incident was treated with the gravity it deserved, and so neatly wrapped up, that apparently, not so much as a thread on CC was assigned to its discussion. I wonder what would have happened, though, had the SAE video depicted someone confronting the boys on the bus, along with an immediate shamed-faced admission of wrong-doing on their part. Perhaps then the video could be called “a teachable moment”, and other than a few minutes of national buzz, those young men and the SAE Fraternity at OU would be back to business as usual.
@Donna , I think the issue of Roth’s religion is important to determine motivation. The motivation of the Arab students is well defined, but Roth is a wild card. Why did she align with the Muslims? I don’t know, maybe her religion might give a clue. Hence my query. Btw, Jews do have blonde hair? Also in 1941 Germany, don’t you think it might be beneficial not to advertise the Jewish Religion? (A 1941 German phone book is probably not the best reference material)
Roth is a pretty well known Jewish name in New Jersey.
Anyone think it is ironic, that Jews & Arabs are genetically, identical?
SamRam, you have no idea what you’re talking about. I know you’re just a college freshman, but please. I can assure you that the Nazis kept excellent track of the Jews still living in Berlin, and I can assure you that every single one of them was required to use that mandatory middle name in all contexts. Not to mention the Yellow Star, etc. And nobody could be listed in the phone book without proving their racial purity; if anyone was in hiding, the last thing they would have done is call attention to themselves by trying to get a phone listing! Don’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs. My mother was a Holocaust survivor, and I’ve been studying Jewish history from that period for more than 30 years. I’m not going to debate you about it.
And SamRam, of course there are blond Jews; I explained that above. But you have yet to answer my question: where’s your evidence? What makes you think Roth is Jewish? There are lots of reasons why a young Western European non-Jewish woman might be ignorant about Jews, sympathize with “the Palestinians,” and assume that every Jew is “biased” towards “the Zionists.”
Emeraldkity4, I already answered that question, I think: in NYC and NJ, Roth is often a Jewish name. In Germany and Austria – and in parts of the U.S. Midwest with large populations of German descent – not so much. Just like Stein and Schwarz and Rose and Weiss and a thousand other names that people in New York and New Jersey think of as Jewish names.
By the way, most Arabs and most Jews are not genetically identical, although the Arabic and Hebrew languages are, of course, closely related. Not everyone in Arabic-speaking countries (e.g., in North Africa) is descended from the Arab conquerors of the 600’s and 700’s, who came from what’s now Saudi Arabia; most are descended from the indigenous populations that already lived there. And both Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jews, for the most part, are about 40% European genetically – in the latter case, probably mostly Italian. (After all, a lot of Jewish emigrants from the Middle East a couple of thousand years ago, who lived elsewhere in the Roman Empire, were men who married local women, and the Jewish populations of both early medieval France and early medieval Germany probably migrated there from Italy.)