This summer, while working for a startup in Tel Aviv, I took a weekend to travel to Jerusalem and visit the Holocaust memorial. There, I walked by black and white photos of charred synagogues, Jewish-owned storefronts with shattered windows and signs calling for boycotts of Jewish businesses.
I found it oddly reminiscent of earlier that day, when I was reading news headlines about people hurling Molotov cocktails at synagogues in Paris and burning Israeli flags while confidently roaring “death to the Jews!”
This past week, anti-Semitism hit closer to home when a Jewish fraternity house at Emory University in Atlanta was vandalized with swastikas. This act was not only offensive, naive and spiteful, but extremely terrifying. It seems that as much as we try to teach each generation to “never forget” the Holocaust, there are those who blatantly undermine the bitter history behind a swastika and its meaning to six million Jews, as well as millions of homosexuals, Africans, people with disabilities, Christian activists and Gypsies.
There is absolutely no excuse for anti-Semitism in the present day, yet it continues under the misguided veil of anti-Israel sentiment. Whoever draws an analogy of the political situation in Israel to Nazi Germany is shamefully ignorant. It’s OK to be critical of Israeli political policy — in fact, Israel encourages open discussion and moral debate. It’s OK to criticize Israel just as one would criticize other nations for their faults. It is when one deliberately singles out and criticizes the Jewish nation or the Jewish people that they embody anti-Semitism.
Why does the United Nations constantly condemn Israel for perceived human rights abuses when flagrant abuses on significantly larger scales go without mention in countries like Cuba, Sudan, China and Iran? This is anti-Semitism.
Why is it that it’s now the 21st century and yet, an Emory Jewish fraternity house is vandalized with a swastika, the preeminent symbol of hatred and bigotry? This is anti-Semitism.
Why is it that if you walk through the 13th Street tunnel on the UF campus, you see graffiti of anti-Israel slogans paired with swastikas? This is anti-Semitism.
Anti-Semitism takes many forms, and it is shameful that many facets of the prejudice — whose long history dates back to significant events like the first Crusade in 1096, the Jewish expulsion from England in 1290, the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, the Holocaust in Europe and the riots in Paris — continue to this day. This should no longer be a part of our daily lives; we must maintain the promise to “never forget” and relegate hatred to history books and black and white photos.
Arielle Davis is a UF business senior.
[A version of this story ran on page 7 on 10/14/2014]
