Anti-Semitic riot at San Francisco State University

Melissa Radler 
May 16, 2002 
Jerusalem Post

After being surrounded by a mob of students shouting, 
"Hitler didn't finish the job," and "Get out or we'll 
kill you," pro-Israel students at San Francisco State 
University are finally finding an ally against hate. 

The university president is so fed-up with the hate-filled 
atmosphere on the Bay Area campus that he has asked the 
local district attorney's office to help bring pro-Palestinian
hate-mongers to justice. 

The May 7 incident received widespread press attention after 
an e-mail was circulated by Prof. Laurie Zoloth, director 
of the Jewish studies program at SFSU, describing the 
virulence of the anti-Semitic rhetoric and the campus's 
seeming inability to halt such occurrences. 

More than 100 anti-Semitic incidents, including graffiti, 
vandalism, hate speech, and violence have occurred on 
US campuses since January, according to the Anti-Defamation 
League. 

Zoloth, who attended the campus Hillel's Peace in the 
Middle East Rally along with several hundred students, 
faculty, and members of the community, described how 
Palestinian supporters descended on a group of 50 students 
who stayed behind to clean up and conduct a prayer 
service, after singing Hebrew songs and hearing speeches
in support of Israel. 

"They screamed at us to 'go back to Russia' and they 
screamed that they would kill us all, and other terrible 
things," she wrote in the May 8 e-mail. 

"As the counter-demonstrators poured into the plaza, 
screaming at the Jews to 'Get out or we'll kill you' 
and 'Hitler didn't finish the job,' I turned to the 
police and to every administrator I could find and 
asked them to remove the counter-demonstrators from 
the plaza, to maintain the separation of 100 feet 
that we had been promised. The police told me that 
they had been told not to arrest anyone, and that if 
they did, 'it would start a riot.' I told them that 
it already was a riot." 

After approaching Dean of Students Penny Saffold, who 
called the San Francisco Police, pro-Israel demonstrators 
were marched to the campus Hillel House under police 
protection and a guard was posted at the door. 

Zoloth also described what life is like for Jewish 
students and faculty at SFSU, noting her despair at 
the emergence of posters around campus equating Zionism 
with racism and Jews with Nazis, and pictures of cans 
of soup labeled "Canned Palestinian Children Meat, 
slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American 
license." 

"This is not civic discourse, this is not free speech, 
and this is the Weimar Republic with brown shirts it 
cannot control," she wrote. 

After staying silent for nearly a week, university 
president Robert Corrigan posted a statement condemning 
the incident on SFSU's Web site on Monday. But in a 
move that Jeffrey Ross, ADL director of campus/higher 
education affairs, praised as a positive departure from 
many campuses' public silence on anti-Semitic incidents, 
Corrigan noted a request to the office of District Attorney 
Terence Hallinan to assign a member of its hate crimes 
unit to work with SFSU and consider bringing legal action 
against certain students. 

"Despite the claims of some, this is not an anti-Semitic 
campus. But as history shows us, silence and passivity 
can at times of crisis be very little different from 
complicity," Corrigan said in the statement. 

In the Bay area, where anti-Israel protests have been 
the norm on campus for decades, Ross credited the 
University of California, Berkeley, as being the first 
school in the area to take legal action against 
pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Last month, 79 protesters 
were arrested after taking over a building on campus, 
and Students for Justice in Palestine was suspended 
from operating on campus for a month. 

"In both cases, you've got administrators who are trying 
to do the right thing in very difficult circumstances. 
We're pleased that they're working beyond the rhetorical 
to law enforcement, when law-enforcement is appropriate," 
Ross said. 

But it remains unclear whether those who have been 
terrorized will be placated by Corrigan's vow to crack 
down on anti-Semitic demonstrators after nearly two years 
of virulent anti-Israel demonstrations. As Zoloth noted 
in her e-mail, the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and 
anti-American atmosphere that has pervaded campus 
extends far beyond the scope of one protest that spun 
out of control. 

"After nearly seven years as director of Jewish studies, 
and after nearly two decades of life here as a student, 
faculty member, and wife of the Hillel rabbi, after years 
of patient work and difficult civic discourse, I am 
saddened to see SFSU return to its notoriety as a place 
that teaches anti-Semitism, hatred for America, and 
hatred, above all else, for the Jewish State of Israel, 
a state that I cherish," she wrote.