Letter to the Editor: We Can’t Whitewash SJP Violence
April 12, 2021
There’s a violent history that follows Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
The Jewish community is all too familiar with the 250+ chapter organization: Nazi posters, cartoons of hook-nosed Jewish caricatures, defenses of swastika memes, harassment of Holocaust survivors. The Fordham SJP chapter has shared conspiracist doctored images of organ-harvesting (blood libel conspiracy), videos with cartoons of Orthodox Jewish men taping the world’s “mouth” closed using yellow tape labeled “anti-Semitism” (representing ”false” accusations and world control), and a speaker who said (in the Ram Café Atrium), “The Jews…the Zionists are using you as the token brown guy.”
Fordham SJP driving force and co-founder Gunar Olsen also promotes conspiracy theories, with posts that “leftists should take a break from the feminist culture wars,” frequent dismissals of Black Lives Matter as a “bulwark to the neoliberal project” and tool of the ruling class and a tweeted podcast of anti-masker, anti-vaxxer Trumpian conspiracist Mark Crispin Miller. He also retweeted Glenn Greenwald’s defense of Parler and Max Blumenthal’s assertions that anti-Semitism is “manufactured” with apologies “compelled” by the Israel lobby.
Fordham’s status as a private institution hasn’t been legally contested. Only Instagram meme account LC Sinners questioned this in posts critiquing the SJP and Austin Tong controversies. Treating all federally funded organizations as if they’re governmental bodies would require a massive legislative overhaul.
However, I’m troubled by the Observer article’s characterization of SJP as “non-discriminatory” based on “a wide array” of popular support. It lists numbers of followers and “hundreds of likes,” unsurprising data at a predominantly white Christian university. Many historical atrocities had white and Christian populist support.
The aforementioned political cartoon on Fordham SJP’s Facebook page came from a Holocaust denial competition. It also appeared on David Duke’s social media. SJP did inspire immense “fear and condemnation” within the Jewish community. Vetoing an organization like SJP is much like the removal of Robert Moses statues, the introduction of gender-neutral housing and bathrooms, and the investigation into Jaworski: a hopeful consequence of marginalized students finally getting heard.
For a quick demonstration of SJP violence, please view the Benedictine SJP controversy with Harold Kasimov (the gaslighting toward him can be triggering). We can’t commit to social justice and then whitewash populist violence toward the Jewish community. Let’s cherish Jewish students instead of playing political football with their lives.
-Brandon Satz-Jacobowitz, FCLC ’19
Reply • Apr 13, 2021 at 6:20 pm
Ah but that’s the thing. Most Jewish Fordham students haven’t been to Israel/Palestine.
The point is about who we endorse to fight for justice. A student body that boldly opposes Chick-Fil-A based on comments from its CEO shouldn’t endorse a nationwide organization known for propagating anti-Jewish oppressions. Shouldn’t give them a place on campus. Even if the reputation is overblown and it’s only 20% of campuses where Jewish students feel unsafe, that should still be enough to question starting a chapter on campus.
Instead we end up with students giving Fox News-style rants about sinister ‘threats to free speech.’
Jewish students at Fordham feel unsafe with an SJP on campus. Students I know. Some of them have spoken up. Most of them don’t. If you attend Fordham, there’s a good chance you know them too. If not, that’s ok. It shouldn’t change how we perceive problematic content. And we can’t let the small number of Jewish students make them completely invisible.
I don’t want Fordham students’ first sight of Jewish culture to be a 1930’s cartoon of a hook-nosed money launderer. I don’t want graffiti on JSO posters. Fordham has an antisemitism problem. We’re conditioned to seeing swastikas here every year. Few students even think about the impact of Charlottesville (“Jews will not replace us”), the capitol riot (“Camp Auschwitz”), or the Pittsburgh shooting, let alone little things like lack of kosher food on campus or the absence of a Jewish prayer space. It doesn’t get talked about.
Unsurprisingly, the students who were always there for us were students of color.
A single SJP chapter certainly won’t change the face of the crisis. And we can’t make accountability depend on which marginalized communities are victims. We can’t hypocritically put one particular minority through hell even if we agree with the politics of the perpetrator. We on the left have to be selective in our representatives. Otherwise, we’re not fighting for social justice. And we’re not led by empathy.
Rob Roy • Apr 13, 2021 at 1:14 pm
“Let’s cherish Jewish students instead of playing political football with their lives.”
Let’s cherish Palestinians instead of committing genocide on them in Palestine/Israel.
Skip • Apr 13, 2021 at 12:10 pm
Why are you attributing quotes from articles Olsen has reposted to him?