Campus Diaries

OSEH SHALOM, FROM BERLIN
By Danielle Posen

On a cold Monday evening in early February, I stood on the Unter den Linden, Berlin’s grandest boulevard, waiting for a bus that never arrived. In its place came a group of several hundred protesters, demonstrating against the coming war against Iraq. Carrying banners and bullhorns, they walked to the Brandenburg Gate, where almost 13 years ago the Berlin Wall came crashing down.

At the front of the group was a young German woman, encouraging the protesters—mostly students—to sing with her. “Sing in any language you want,” she said. The opening bars of her song played on a loudspeaker. “Oseh Shalom,” I heard her begin, the first three notes ascending in pitch, and the sound was both comforting and jarring. A song from Hebrew liturgy, Oseh Shalom calls for peace in Israel, and—in the version I learned as a child—peace for the world. As I listened to the melody, I felt distinctly far from home.

At the focal point of almost all discussions in Berlin is the coming war against Iraq. Those discussions are colored by a catastrophic history of war in this city and a profound aversion to the kind of suffering that war produces. Anti-war protests have taken place regularly on Monday evenings since early last fall, and the extent of German opposition to military action against Iraq became clear when Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s anti-war platform brought his Social Democrats a narrow victory in last September’s elections.

Since then, the German government has maintained a staunch anti-war position, and the anti-war movement has become more than popular—it is a given. In the collective memory of my German contemporaries, there is a widespread conviction that war is inherently unjust, most of all because the legacy of World War II and the Holocaust is so deeply felt. To me, protesting the war in Iraq is an issue of protecting our future, but in Germany, it’s also a question of understanding the past.

Opposed to the war against Iraq, and with several versions of Oseh Shalom in my repertoire, I should have been able to join the protesters on that February night. For a moment, I thought about stepping off the curb and starting to march, grateful that the anti-war movement I support was finally, literally, in front of me. And then, just behind the leaders in the group of several hundred, I saw a sign that said, “Däubler-Gmelin was right.” Herta Däubler-Gmelin is a parliamentary representative who once served in Schröder’s cabinet. She was asked to resign last October after she accused President Bush of using a “beloved method” of Hitler’s—international aggression to divert attention from domestic problems. Though she was attempting to speak out against US military action in Iraq, her comment suggested a far reaching comparison between Hitler and Bush that I thought was wrong.

Overwhelmed, I stood on the corner. How could the same people who made the decision to sing “Oseh Shalom” march alongside a sign that trivializes Hitler’s actions? And how could the president of the United States (a nation that I will quietly admit I love) have so quickly achieved the same status as that demon of history. There are no clear answers. The politics of protest can encourage this sort of messiness. Though these questions made me uneasy, they’re part of being both Jewish and American in today’s Germany.

I cannot seem to rid myself of the weight those adjectives carry, particularly because one marks me as the victim and the other as the aggressor. The Holocaust continues to cast a shadow over Jewish life in Germany; while the war on Iraq casts a shadow over Americans abroad. The rule here is: What is Jewish should be handled with care; what is American should be opposed, struck down, protested. Or so it seems when I lapse into thinking of myself as a composite of adjectives, rather than simply as an individual. It happens when I listen to the radio or read the newspaper, or when I pass the building where there are small, golden cobblestones to mark the homes of people who were deported to Auschwitz, and above them, on the wall, a graffito that says, “Eat more Americans.”

But not me, because I’m against the war.

Being against the war in this city is easy. Understanding the contradictions of my position in the anti-war movement here is not. I had wanted to show resistance to a destructive US-led attack on Iraq, and to the arrogant US attitude behind it. But to protest the war while in Berlin, I worried that I would have to protest not just the US government’s actions but the whole idea of the United States. And while I supported the German government’s anti-war stance intellectually, I worried that by marching in Germany I would align myself too closely with a nation whose Nazi history I abhor.

In early February, as the news about US plans for an attack on Iraq intensified, I wished I could be in New York, where I could raise my voice against the war on my own turf, and not feel isolated. But as February 15 approached, Berlin was practically wallpapered with posters publicizing a new, bigger, anti-war march that was part of a worldwide day of protests. My Inbox filled with news of demonstrations across the globe and my sense of isolation began to melt away. I felt like part of something, and I realized that if I was going to yell, I was going to do it in German.

More than 500,000 protestors marched in Berlin on February 15, and I was one of them. We started on Alexanderplatz, where socialist architecture is topped with neon signs, walked down the elegant Unter den Linden and into the Tiergarten, Berlin’s huge public park. I marched with socialists. With anarchists. With the Turkish Marxist party, the Green party, the feminists. Kurdish human-rights activists. Evangelical church groups. People on stilts, people eating bratwurst, people pushing strollers. It was a powerful and disorienting mix of different groups and messages, but I felt at home in the midst of it. I heard a shout: “One million in Rome. One million in London. Five hundred thousand in New York City!” Someone selling newspapers to the crowd stopped me and asked, “Where are you from?” I hesitated, and then said, “I’m American.” He looked shocked. Then he smiled and said, “Klasse.” Cool.

WHEN “ANTI-WAR” TURNS VIOLENT
By Hannah Wortzman

On Wednesday, March 5, I was attacked and confined to the ninth floor of the Ross Building at York University.

That morning, “anti-war” protesters blocked off all traffic going into the university. While my friend Miriam waited in her car to get through the school entrance, some of the protesters knocked on her window and began harassing her. They knew her from her pro-Israel campus activism. They called her a “terrorist,” shouting that she was part of the “dirty IDF” and that Israel is a “dirty little country.”

When I saw how disturbed Miriam was in class that morning I suggested that she go to see the president of York University, Lorna Marsden. I have had a number of conversations with her regarding anti-Semitic sentiments on campus and I felt that Miriam should also share her story.

Miriam went to the president’s office, but the secretary told her the president was not there. She asked Miriam to relay her story to her so that she could pass it on to Marsden. After hearing the story, the secretary suggested to Miriam that perhaps her Star of David earrings were causing the problem.

When I saw Miriam in the next class she asked me to come with her afterwards to speak with the president. As we made our way up in the elevator we heard yelling from the president’s floor. The doors opened and about 200 protestor
s started back at us, now completely silent. Then they began to encircle us and shout that this was their “occupation.” They knew who we were.

I told the protestors that we only wanted to go to the president’s office. This sparked a barrage of insults such as “murderer” and “terrorist.” We were pushed and shoved and one protestor pinned me up against the wall with his hands. I screamed for Miriam who was now a few feet away, completely surrounded by protesters. As I tried to get over to the “down” button to open the elevator doors, a protester blocked my way with his arm. “Press the button,” I shouted, only to hear several of them cry, “You’re not going anywhere.”

The protesters began to take pictures of us. Miriam always carries her own camera in her bag, having been assaulted at York before. She began to take pictures too. This only made the protestors angrier. At least four of them seized her from every side, attempting to take the camera away.

I pulled out my cell-phone, dialed 911, and cried to the dispatcher, “Please help us. We are being held hostage on the ninth floor of Ross at York University.”

Suddenly, the elevator doors opened. I tried to grab Miriam but the protesters wouldn’t let me get to her. They were holding her and pushing me away. At last, a man began making his way over to us, shouting at the protesters to let us go. I thought he was the one good soul in the crowd, only to find out later he was a plain-clothes security guard. Still shouting at the protestors, he attempted to make way for us. But he also yelled at us that we shouldn’t be there, and screamed for Miriam to stop taking pictures.

The protesters followed us into the elevator, trying to pull us back and grab the camera from Miriam. The security guard came into the elevator and tried to pull them away. Finally, the doors closed.

When we reached the main floor, we found police around a boy wearing a kippah, who had been attacked by the protesters as they made their way to the president’s office. Then the protesters swarmed down from the ninth floor. Some stopped and eyed us menacingly. Miriam led an officer to one of the girls who beat her. Protesters were arrested and taken away. Their demonstration for “peace” had turned out to be anything but peaceful.

WAR! WHAT ARE WE FOR?
By Tali Griffel

Shai took off his coat, shook the snow from his hair, pulled up a stool and asked, “War, are you for or against it?”

His words were jarring, out of place in my comfortable Jerusalem apartment where my friends—Hebrew University students, aspiring writers, young journalists, artists—had gathered to warm themselves with hot onion soup. Some gave answers: “For it,” “Against it,” “Both.” But most simply pleaded to talk about something else.

Our apathy is rooted in an overwhelming sense of futility. The recession, the latest political scandals, and the struggle to maintain a normal life in spite of the intifada have exhausted our energies. Any apparent indifference toward an impending war does not stem from ignorance; it is an attempt to avoid even more stress and frustration.

On Hebrew University’s campus, the personal trumps the political. Many students have to earn a living while going to school, and have little spare time. In the past two years, the only protest I witnessed came in response to a tuition hike. “I don’t have time to think about the war,” says Udi Barkan, a geography student. “I still have exams.”

Beneath the quiet facade, the majority of Jewish students on campus support the war. Many take it as a given that America will be victorious and that Israel will ultimately benefit from Saddam’s overthrow. Yossi Zinger, head of the Peace Now student group, assures me there are students opposed to an attack on Iraq. But the anti-war faction at Hebrew University has not taken a public stance. The campus has no organized anti-war group, no rallies or demonstrations.

In Israeli minds, the war on Iraq is inevitable. It is only a matter of time until sirens begin to wail and America starts dropping bombs on Baghdad. Missiles will fly through the air a thousand miles away. We see the clash between the United States and Iraq as a battle of wills between two stubborn men to which we will be only spectators.

What we can do is prepare for war. The effects of chemical agents and the probability of biological weapons landing on Tel Aviv are discussed casually here: “Do you have a mask?” “Did you change its filter?” The better-safe-than-dead group has put canned foods in bomb shelters and bought bundles of house-sealing tape and nylon. The war-is-for-suckers group takes a cynical view of government-recommended safety measures and scoffs at the gas mask. The third group—confused, unsure of what to believe, and increasingly scared—has the most members, of which I am one.

I still get up every morning and go about my day, but I feel as if I’m waiting for something terrible to happen. Am I for this war? In theory, yes—I don’t want Iraq to have weapons of mass destruction. In practice though, this war, which appears motivated by economics and archaic codes of honor, seems unjustifiable. An attack on Iraq is liable to have explosive consequences in the Middle East. And with Bin Laden still running around Pakistan, Bush’s priorities seem out of order. Above all, I just want to finish my school year in peace.

ANTI-WAR, NOT ANTI-ISRAEL
By Julie Weitz

Driving to the Campus Anti-War Network (CAN) conference in Chicago, my friend and I traded disturbing stories about the anti-war protests we had attended. During one Madison rally, the anti-war slogans I had been chanting with the rest of the crowd suddenly turned into anti-Israel slogans. My friend recalled a protest in Washington D.C., where she saw posters of Israeli flags in which the Star of David had been replaced by a swastika.

I went to the conference to provide a Jewish voice in the student anti-war movement. I wanted to be sure that the same anti-Zionist rhetoric would not infiltrate CAN. To a room of 300 students from campuses across the country, we proposed that CAN bar from its demonstrations any speakers who call for Israel’s destruction. We argued that such rhetoric might alienate a large constituency of Jewish students who oppose the war in Iraq. While a few of the attendees recognized our position, I felt as if a great number of them refused to even listen.

In a subsequent small group discussion that focused on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, students made angry remarks about Israel being an “imperial oppressor” and a “racist state.” My friend and I explained that we were uncomfortable with rhetoric that equates Sharon to Hitler, or the Magan David with a swastika. The majority of students responded to our concerns with even stronger anti-Zionist slogans. One student even suggested we should embrace superior aspects of Jewish tradition and abandon Zionism.

Many of the conference participants were wearing Palestinian kaffiyahs to express their solidarity with Palestinian nationalism. At our table, we sold pins with the Israeli and Palestinian flags displayed side by side over the words “peace, justice, liberty.” One student told my friend she would have bought a pin, if not for the Israeli flag.

Two activists from the International Socialist Organization began a conversation with me about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I tried to listen to their point of view and I asked questions to better understand their vision of a just peace, but I was cut off and attacked. When I saw my friend soon afterwards I broke down crying. Here I was—the activist who thought she could handle debate—sobbing in my friend’s arms.
Clearly, the campus anti-war movement does not recognize Jewish cultural, religious, and spiritual ties to the land of Israel. I avidly call for an end to the occupation, the dismantling of the settlements and the establishment of a viable Palestinian state. However, I refuse to tolerate positions that are so virulently anti-Zionist.