(Photo of the mock Apartheid Wall at Brower Commons, for a BAKA event during Palestine Awareness Week earlier this semester.)

Today I’ve seen a number of statuses pop up on Facebook regarding Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s official Memorial Day. The wording of a lot of these status confused me, and left me wondering: why do we celebrate holidays in which we thank people for dying, rather than mourning their loss? Yom Hazikaron is a day that, like patriotic holidays in the US, teach us to honor martyrdom and war–it upholds those killed in brutal, senseless wars as heroes, and turns those victims into national blood sacrifices. Today I commemorate the loss of Israelis and Palestinians alike–but I will not post a Facebook status or blog thanking soldiers for dying in defense of a Jewish homeland, nor will I pretend those lives are any more important than Palestinian lives.

If Jewish tradition mandates an obligation to save and preserve life, there is no true Jewish state as long as Palestine is occupied.

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First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.

Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.

Today is Yom Hashoah, and I have been reminded throughout the day to remember the Six Million Jews murdered during the Holocaust. But when we say “never forget” and use the figure “6 million,” we are forgetting. When we say “never again” and intend it to be applicable to Jews only, we let it happen again… in Rwanda, in Bosnia, in Sudan, in Palestine…

So today, I am not only remembering the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. I’m remembering the 12 million who lost their lives, and those who continue to suffer around the world as we forget, and rationalize, and ignore. And that is why I will not say “never again.” Not because I don’t care, not because I’m anti-Semitic, not because I’m racist, but because it is happening again… and we’re forgetting, and forgetting, and forgetting.

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fuckyeahmarxismleninism:

Palestine solidarity in West Belfast

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Today I saw a student on College Ave. holding this sign that simply says “I’m sorry.” I was heading to work on another campus, but I had some time to quickly ask him what exactly he was sorry for. He explained that he was apologizing for the general hypocrisy of the Church and for those Christians who make it their business to tell others that our existence is wrong–that our homosexuality offends them, that our faith or lack thereof will damn us to hell, and that we have no place in the world.

So, to those students who spent today holding up these signs on College Avenue: I’m sorry, too. I’m sorry that when we, as queer and progressive students, lash out at Brother Greg and others, we often forget that they hurt the kind-hearted Christians out there as much as they hurt us. I’m sorry that when students bring ex-gay ministers and other such hateful events to campus, it alienates you–queers, allies, and progressives of the Christian faith–more than anyone. And I’m sorry that we all feel the need to apologize for things we shouldn’t accept fault for.

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- When swastikas were spray painted on my local synagogue.

- When the Westboro Baptist Church protested Rutgers Hillel.

- When Sarah Palin misuses the term “blood libel.”

- When young children like the girls from Prussian Blue are brainwashed and encouraged to sing Nazi songs. 

- When white nationalists attempt to rewrite history and pretend the Holocaust never happened.

Things that are the opposite of anti-Semitic:

- When BAKA, a progressive student organization that opposes all forms of social injustice, holds an event titled “Never Again for Anyone.” Among the speakers: two Holocaust survivors.

- Progressive Jews and gentiles who attended this event and respectfully supported these pro-Jewish, anti-Zionist speakers.

Things that just make no fucking sense:

- Hillel protesting said event, leaving a Holocaust refugee completely shaken.

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I understand the opposition to exposing rape victims in the media — what’s happened to these two women perfectly illustrates why that is a horrendous idea — but people laughing at her for calling for structural change? For actually taking into consideration the context of this case? She’s right. Getting lost in the details of one individual case doesn’t really help solve the larger problem. Yelling at Michael Moore on Twitter for basically recognizing this case as a political witch-hunt does nothing to change the way with rape cases are carried out in general. That’s why you don’t see a Twitter campaign calling for more large-scale reform, and that’s why you don’t see people calling for an alleged rapist’s exile/death/etc. when it comes to most other cases — because when the media has no such investment in a rape case, it gets swept under the rug. That’s why Naomi Wolf is right when she calls this attention a slap in the face for most victims: the ones who haven’t been discouraged from reporting their rapes are instead demonized for doing so, and after victims have been put on trial and expected to defend themselves for having been attacked, rarely is a conviction even made. So where’s the Twitter campaign for those victims?

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I will never forget a visit I made to Ilana, an old friend who had become an Orthodox Jew in Jerusalem. When I saw her again, she had abandoned her jeans and T-shirts for long skirts and a head scarf. I could not get over it. Ilana has waist-length, wild and curly golden-blonde hair. “Can’t I even see your hair?” I asked, trying to find my old friend in there. “No,” she demurred quietly. “Only my husband,” she said with a calm sexual confidence, “ever gets to see my hair.”

When she showed me her little house in a settlement on a hill, and I saw the bedroom, draped in Middle Eastern embroideries, that she shares only with her husband—the kids are not allowed—the sexual intensity in the air was archaic, overwhelming. It was private. It was a feeling of erotic intensity deeper than any I have ever picked up between secular couples in the liberated West. And I thought: Our husbands see naked women all day—in Times Square if not on the Net. Her husband never even sees another woman’s hair.

She must feel, I thought, so hot.

From The Porn Myth

Why is it that any time someone wants to offer a “new” and “progressive” take on clothing customs—particularly the idea of veiling—it all relates back to sex? Instead of arguing that the veil is oppressive to women, we’re supposed to buy the idea that it’s liberating because it allows women to feel sexy? I say both camps of thought are a load of crap. Whether a woman veils or not she is doing so in order to please men or to be sexy. Whether a woman veils or not she is being sexually oppressed. Whether a woman veils or not it has nothing to do with her own beliefs, but instead with how the men in her culture might react to it. Here’s a ~radical~ idea: maybe we should learn to see women as people who are perfectly capable of making decisions regarding their dress without first considering whether the menz will approve.

A related post, from Facebook:

A non-Muslim guy asked a Muslim: Why do your girls cover up their body and hair? The Muslim guy smiled and took two sweets, he opened the first one and kept the other one closed. He threw them both on the dusty floor and asked the non-Muslim: If I asked you to take one of the sweets, which one you would choose? The non-Muslim replied: The covered one. Then the Muslim said that’s how we treat and see our women…

I recently saw this pop up in my news feed when a FB friend (see the kickass blog she writes for here) sparked an interesting discussion about the trend on her wall. As she pointed out, both of these popular takes on veiling are problematic in that one is rooted in the Islamophobic idea that all Muslim women are oppressed, while the other is an example of misogyny within the Muslim community. Those same ideas are at work in the article posted above, though it’s about a Jewish woman rather than a Muslim woman. Somehow the author seems to privilege these beliefs over the Western norm, arguing that porn has ruined men’s appreciation of the “real thing”—but I won’t even get into just how fucked up that point is. I’ll just leave it at this: she’s completely ignoring an entire culture of sexism toward women and hatred of our bodies that extends beyond porn and the way women in our society choose to dress. Also, I don’t know who the hell she interviewed, but some of us watch porn and have sex and make out with women because we enjoy it, not because we want to be “cool girls.”

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As I’m sure many of you know, some students were upset about the rally. These students were also largely misinformed about the purpose of the rally, the events surrounding Tyler’s death, and the history of queer students’ battle for safety and recognition at Rutgers. It’s no coincidence that Tyler is the second queer student at Rutgers to take his own life in the past year or that this particular incident occurred after a horrible violation of his privacy.

For those arguing that this “isn’t what Tyler would want,” you’re probably right. He wouldn’t have wanted a group of students rallying around his death because I’m fairly certain, based on his own online postings as well as basic common sense, that he never wanted his privacy and safety so violated in the first place. Unfortunately, because that’s what happened, a public response is necessary. And when this happens in the context of a university whose housing department continues to refuse LGBTQ students the safe spaces we deserve, even after the suicide last year, it becomes even more important.

At the rally, I heard a number of disturbing comments, largely coming from students who showed up to defend the actions of Tyler’s roommate, arguing that he advertised this private encounter out of “concern” for Tyler. Some were upset at the idea of using Tyler’s death as political leverage, claiming that “no one would care if this were a straight student” (because we all know how biased the world is against heterosexual people, right?), while others simply laughed at the protest and made derogatory comments about a friend of mine (“ew, he said he was transgender, does that mean he was born a woman?”) as well as other students at the event.

The fact that these students are comfortable enough in their own privilege to make such blatantly homophobic and transphobic comments at a rally organized by queer and allied students perfectly illustrates the kind of environment we are dealing with. This type of ignorance is not limited to the students I interacted with, either. Months ago, the head of housing at Rutgers told me that because safe spaces imply that other areas of campus are not safe, she will never agree to the idea of safe space residence halls. Of course, by default, no place is a safe space–but even in the wake of this tragedy, many students and administrators prefer to remain ignorant to the pressures facing LGBTQ students and the fact that homophobia and harassment were indeed at the root of Tyler’s death. It’s just unfortunate that our school is so willing to neglect our need for real safety in order to protect the illusion of safety they so pride themselves on.

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Between weekly sales, manager specials, discounts for buying in bulk, and coupons that come out with each purchase using a store card, it’s actually a lot easier to save money by shopping at Stop & Shop, which is geared more towards its white, largely Jewish population, and therefore cleaner, healthier, and more vegetarian and Kosher-friendly than C-Town. However, it’s not always possible for New Brunswick families to shop there, either because they don’t have the transportation to get there or can’t afford to buy in bulk, regardless of the money it will save them in the long run.

As the Racialicious article I posted before mentions, Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation elaborates on the harmful effects of labor that particularly affects people of color, but makes no mention of race in relation to food justice... or the fact that most proponents of the food reform movement are wealthy white men.

(Be sure to visit Jennifer’s blog for more great posts about food and chai and other lovely things!)

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