(JEWISH GROUP) Root Out Insidious Hate

[Behind the Aegis]

THIS IS THE JEWISH GROUP! RESPECT!

They were both blood red. One was a little smeared; the other had cleaner lines. These were the second and third swastikas found on campus this semester, and this is the second time I have had to start an article for The Hoya by describing swastikas on campus. Hate at Georgetown is not a subject I wish to return to, but I must. These swastikas, and the selective outrage they have triggered, reveal uncomfortable truths about our community. We condemn anti-Semitism only when it is both flagrant and right-wing. Most of the time however, we ignore it. By ignoring it, we perpetuate it.

Within a week of the beginning of classes, a swastika was found scratched into the wall of a Village C West elevator. The next day, two more were daubed in red paint in an LXR Hall elevator. These are the latest incidents in a pattern of anti-Semitic graffiti at Georgetown, which last semester saw swastikas scratched into elevators and “kill Jews” written in a bathroom stall across from Makóm, the Jewish gathering space. Last spring, numerous fliers for the Georgetown Israel Alliance, a group of which I am the vice president, were defaced and torn down. More incidents go unreported, as when someone drew a swastika on my whiteboard just an hour after I hung it on my freshman dorm door last year. Of course, only a tiny fraction of students is responsible for these hate crimes, and Georgetown as a whole is an accepting and pluralistic community. So why not just ignore these graffiti as a nuisance?

I wish I could dismiss it all, but I simply cannot. I have toured Auschwitz with a childhood survivor of Josef Mengele’s experiments. I have seen mass graves in the forests of Belarus with Fr. Patrick Desbois, who has identified thousands of such grave sites across Eastern Europe. My great-grandparents survived the extermination of Hungarian Jewry — much of their family did not. “Kill Jews” is never an empty threat. A swastika at my school is someone telling me that I do not belong at Georgetown and that I perhaps do not belong among the living. One swastika whispers that to me — three shout it.

I was heartened to see dozens of non-Jewish students, in addition to senior administrators, at Friday night Shabbat services the week the swastikas were found. Both the Georgetown University College Democrats and College Republicans denounced the graffiti; the Georgetown University Student Association did too, and scheduled a speech and expression forum for Tuesday, Sept. 26. These are all positive steps, but deeper problems remain unaddressed.

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How familiar! "They worship at the bank!" "Of course, what do you expect from Senator (((Jew))) (D-Tel-Aviv)!" "Where is the condemnation from (((so and so)))?!"

[EllieBC]

1. "Rich and bratty"?

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say she probably went to a high school where most of the kids were rich and bratty. I did. And I was raised in a blue collar centrist/Modern Orthodox family that lived just within the lines of a wealthy school district. I took a lot of heat for not being able to afford all the priciest things, but that heat came from the "Rich and bratty" non-Jews. My fellow MoT who were wealthy attended the same shul and were everything from poor to middle class to wealthy and just didn't care about that.