To the editor: I certainly don’t agree with most of President Trump’s executive orders, but the one on antisemitism on college campuses is spot-on. People do have a right to protest legally, and few are casting all protesters as antisemitic. But the protests were frequently illegal and antisemitic.
Op-ed article writers David N. Myers and Salam Al-Marayati downplay the amount of antisemitism expressed. Protests that supported Hamas began just after the group killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took many hostages on Oct. 7, 2023, before any Israeli military action.
Jewish students reported being threatened for just being Jewish, let alone for supporting Israel. Protesters demanded to know if they were Zionists. They were denied free access to their campuses.
The authors say that “this script has been tried before,” in reference to the University of California loyalty oath of 1949. The script that has been tried before, the one that concerns me, is called the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were killed.
More concerning is the authors’ downplaying of the “river to the sea” slogan. This literally means a total wiping out of a country and the Jews who inhabit it. This is the definition of genocide, yet the authors would have you believe it is just a chant.
Stuart Rubenstein, San Diego
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To the editor: I remember being inspired by the young nonviolent protesters against the Vietnam War. They served bravely as a necessary check on unbridled governmental power.
Imagine living in a society where people witness unrelenting killing, the displacement of millions of people and the destruction of schools, hospitals and libraries, and they are not moved to object. I fear that we now live in that society.
Healthy protest is an essential feature of any true democracy. Myers and Al-Marayati eloquently describe the fear during the Red Scare that is again rearing its ugly head. The inability to differentiate between healthy protest and true antisemitism “fails a basic test of discernment.” As our access to information is jeopardized while our education system is under attack, critical thinking is no longer an aspiration.
The horrors of Oct. 7 are still raw and ever present, especially as we witness some of the hostages return to Israel. But until we truly understand that the fate of the Israelis and the Palestinians are inextricably linked, we will not see a solution that all people deserve.
Annette Gottlieb, Los Angeles
