University Administrators and Calls for "Intifada"

Michael L.

Some Jewish leaders in the San Francisco Bay Area, with a tad of my encouragement, were (or are) considering meeting with San Francisco State University President Les Wong to discuss our community's concerns over hostility toward Jews and the Jewish State at that university.

SFSU has been among the most anti-Semitic universities in the United States for many years, but I am sure that the administration does not much appreciate me pointing out the obvious.

But there is simply no getting around the fact that when students gather on the Malcolm X Student Plaza and cry out "Intifada! Intifada! Long live the Intifada!" that they are calling for the murder of Jewish people.

President Wong seems to be OK with this.

In fact, just last year he praised the General Union of Palestine Students as representing what the university is all about.

Now, I presume that SFSU has no particular desire to drive away Jews.

On the contrary, I am certain that they see their political mission as representing the very highest moral ideals as derived from the political Enlightenment of the 17th century, through American Abolitionism, 19th century Progressivism, the New Deal, the Civil Rights Movement, the Anti-War Movement, GBLT Rights, Environmentalism, and so forth.

What I fail to understand is how calling for the murder of the Jews of the Middle East, if not Jews, more generally, fits into the larger pattern of an ongoing western desire for social justice?

The only way that it makes sense for the president of a significant American university to pat Arab kids - who want to see dead Jews - on the head is if he agrees that those Jews have it coming.

It would be something akin to President Wong telling the world that the Ku Klux Klan represents the very best of SFSU when they call for the lynching of Black people.

It's a disgrace.

The only explanation that makes sense is that the SFSU administration honestly does believe that ramming people at bus stops in Jerusalem, or chasing old Jewish ladies down the streets in Haifa with hand-axes, is a matter of righteous resistance.

I do not know if the people who I have been in contact with, each of whom represent an aspect of Bay Area Jewish leadership, will move forward to let Wong know that there is nothing progressive about the call for the murder of Jews, but I am beginning to have my doubts.

They will either dump the idea or go forward with me or without me.

I do not care if they go forward without me, so long as they go forward.

They may very well decide to go forward without me because I did, in fact, refer to SFSU as among the most racist universities in the country because - ya know - it is among the most racist universities in the country.

We shall see, but I am counting on nothing.