And Yet, Here We Are

I read an Instagram post this week that said something like, “If you ever wondered how you would have responded to Nazi propaganda during World War Two, now is your chance to find out.” This past week, we have seen and experienced firsthand what it looks like for masses of people to fall into this trap of false narratives produced by the terrorist organization Hamas. President Biden himself said he had, quote, “no confidence” in the information coming from the Gazan health ministry, knowing Hamas controls it.

Here at UCSB and at schools across the country, massive groups of students, university professors, and faculty marched through campuses chanting slogans that included “charging” both Israel and UC with genocide, calling Israel a terrorist state, justifying Hamas's inhumane attack on Israeli citizens calling it resistance, and repeating Hamas charter slogans that call for removing Israel and its people from the map. 

On Wednesday evening, several UCSB Jewish students gathered to speak during open forum at the student senate meeting. They testified about antisemitic incidents they have experienced in the classroom and while walking or biking to class. One student who refused to get off her bike to move aside for the mass of anti-Israel marchers was verbally accosted by a student participating in the march. Several students have shared with our staff that they are simply not going to certain classes anymore because the rhetoric their professors are spewing makes them unsure if they are safe to be openly Jewish in those spaces. 

Unfair does not even begin to describe what you all are being forced to deal with right now. As Jewish college students, you should not have to spend your days speaking out and filing complaints about the antisemitic incidents you are facing and witnessing. You should not be stuck worrying if somebody will rip down the photos you hung of innocent hostages. And you should absolutely not be forced to consider if telling your professor you are Jewish will affect your standing in their class. 

And yet… here we are.

• Exactly five years after the shooting at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life synagogue, the most brutal attack on American Jews in US History. 

• And three weeks after Hamas’s attack on Israel, the most brutal attack on Jews since the Holocaust. 

ADL reports have shown a consistent increase in antisemitism over the past five years, with a 388% spike in the past three weeks.

Your anger, your fear, and your sadness are all legitimate. 

You deserve better. 

We all deserve better. 

The truth is there are innocent Israeli and Palestinian lives being taken in this war against Hamas. This war is not about Israel vs Palestine. It is not “just another conflict” in this seemingly endless conflict. 

What happened on October 7th was a premeditated attack on civilians. We must not allow the misinformation and propaganda in the media and the rising antisemitism around us to distract us from the reality of the gruesome attack by Hamas that has rippled suffering throughout Israeli and Palestinian society and Muslim and Jewish communities worldwide. 

Now more than ever in our lifetime, we must stand together as a community. Not only to combat bigotry and hate but to support each other day in and day out, working to create a sukat shlomecha, a holy shelter of peace, over all of us and all the world.