There’s no doubt that the past two years have been filled with moments of tragedy, mourning, and looking inward to the community for the Jewish people. Despite the trials and tribulations that the Jewish people have faced since October 7 2023, the deadliest day for the Jewish community since the Holocaust, it has also brought communities together in an indestructible way. Though this can never bring back the lives that were lost, it can bring some peace to the living.
However, when groups like SJP and Hamas sympathizing individuals choose the same moments that Jews are mourning to hold vigils for the terrorists who carried out the October 7 massacre, they are not simply expressing a different opinion. These actions are not meant for healing or to honor anyone; rather, they perpetuate a pattern of disrespect and antisemitism that has persisted since the massacre.
Choosing to hold these events directly beside us on our day of mourning suggests an intentional effort to remind the Jewish community of their presence on campus and their continued disregard for Jewish students at UCSB. Time and again, they demonstrate a lack of respect by picking our most vulnerable moments to glorify the murderers, terrorists, and perpetrators responsible for taking so many of our loved ones from us on that deadly day.
They celebrate their so-called martyrs with signs plastered with antisemitic slogans and symbols that call for our deaths. For example, there were multiple signs being held at their martyrs’ vigil that read “from the river to the sea” or “Globalize the Intifada,” both slogans that call for the extermination of the Jewish people while presented as the defense of Palestinian human rights. This has given the rest of the world the impression of moral equivalency between grieving families and those who carried out the Hamas-led massacre.
While there are people who claim that there is no antisemitic intent behind these events, only antizionist – a “natural response to oppression,” – this is simply not the case. Celebrating terrorists who murdered innocent people on the anniversary of their death is blatant antisemitism and using Holocaust inversion as a way to make their points is equally damning. The countless posters captured in the news, overtly drawing comparisons between Israelis and Nazis shows this to be true.
The University of California Santa Barbara experienced this in spades on the two-year anniversary of October 7.
Jewish groups on campus, including Hillel, Chabad, SSI, Mishelanu, and more, spent weeks tirelessly preparing for the last two anniversaries to give the community a beautiful vigil to mourn, come together, and remember their loved ones. Speeches were written to honor specific stories of those who had passed, songs were rehearsed, and poems were recited.
Despite the beauty and solace that this event brought, students couldn’t ignore the distracting shouts through megaphones coming from close by.
The SJP, Students in Justice for Palestine, chose the exact same time and almost the same location for their own “martyrs vigil.” They could’ve done this at any time, in any location, but they specifically chose one that would directly disrupt our event. This was clearly a reminder to the Jewish community that our grief will never be respected.
In discussions of antisemitism, the impact of a remark sometimes matters more than the speaker’s intent. There could quite possibly be well-meaning activists who feel passionate about showing support for Gazans who just survived a brutal war, but using their voices to intimidate or attempt to erase Zionist mourners is wrong.
It’s not up to anyone but the Jewish community to define what antisemitism is, and attempting to do so is in itself antisemitic. The common response to this has been to tokenize the small number of antizionist Jewish people who sympathise with Hamas. Like any community, extremists exist and should not be held as representative of the people.
Jewish students do not deserve to hear the names of their family murders while reciting speeches about those we’ve lost. They do not deserve to see signs calling for their community’s death. We deserve to be safe and respected in all community spaces just as any other group.
SJP can mourn their “resistance fighters,” but they shouldn’t be allowed to bully pro-Israel Jews in the process. Antisemitism will never decrease as long as Jews are the only ones who can recognize it.
This article was originally published in Noozhawk.
