Putting up a wall
(In response to Joseph Schmidt’s April 7 article, “Replica wall on Tempe campus illustrates turmoil in West Bank.”)
The vain histrionics pulled by Students for Justice and Peace in Palestine yesterday at their Hayden Lawn publicity stunt were, to quote the article, “sad.” Instead of presenting an accurate and fair representation of the political climate in Israel, SJP embarrassed itself with its one-dimensional and biased farce of a protest.
What ASU students were subjected to was an anti-Jewish production, myopic in scope and execution, whose only goal was to deceive the less informed and offend the sensibilities of those who desire a constructive path to Middle East peace. Everything on the wall reeked of anti-Israel propaganda, go-to buzzwords like apartheid and oppression and a selective sense of history.
Instead of providing coherent evidence, the great, learned members of SJP donned Jewish religious attire (yarmulke, tallit, etc.) and pulled mock detentions. Any credibility that SJP had hoped to elicit went down the proverbial cracks and perhaps only deepened tensions between the Jewish and Islamic community on campus.
Where is the sense of justice when one group begins to mock others’ inherent religious being? Apparently, SJP feels it is perfectly appropriate to demonize Jews while being oblivious to the offensive nature of their inglorious protest. The juvenile display shown by this group is absolutely repulsive. The only wall that needs tearing down is the ignorance in their minds and hearts.
AJ Frost
Undergraduate
