Photo from Wikimedia Common. The Pomona College senior class president reportedly shared a social media post on her Instagram story accusing Zionists of being racists.
The Claremont Independent, a student-run newspaper at the Claremont Consortium of Colleges, reported that the class president shared the post over the weekend. The post contained a tweet that read, “6 million people died in the Holocaust, we still commemorate it to this day. 18.4 MILLION people are dying in Yemen RIGHT NOW. That’s 3 [H]olocausts at once. Saudi [Arabia] is responsible. SILENCE IS COMPLIANCE!!!!”
Below the tweet are the words: “[O]nce again, zionist-Israel-birthright-vacation-stuck-on-comparing-holocaust-to-racism-WW2-worshipping bitches, this should be right up ur alley. Oh wait u hate brown ppl.”
The upper-right hand corner of the Instagram story features the senior class president writing that the post “put into words all I’ve been thinking!”
The Claremont Progressive Israel Alliance Facebook group started a petition calling on the senior class president to apologize or step down from her position.
“Her endorsement of the comments, as evident through her subsequent reposting and her writing, ‘[this] put into words all I’ve been thinking!’ directly isolates and targets the Jewish students she’s supposed to fairly represent,” the petition states. “This is an egregious affront, made even worse by her status as an elected member of student government.”
The petition also urged the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) and the Pomona College administration to address the matter. “We hope that you will recommit to supporting Jewish students and call out this behavior as it is: anti-Semitic,” the petition concludes.
Jewish groups condemned the post.
“Why would an elected leader go so far out of their way to spread hate against the Jewish community, especially at a time like this?” StandWithUs co-founder and CEO Roz Rothstein said in a statement to the Journal. “We stand with Pomona students who are mobilizing to hold the class president accountable for anti-Semitism.”
B’nai Brith International also denounced the senior class president’s sharing of the post in a tweet.
“We are outraged that the @pomonacollege senior class president accused ‘Zionist-Israel-birthright-vacation-stuck-on-comparing-Holocaust-to-racism-WW2-worship[pers]’ of being indifferent to the plight of the Yemenis,” the Jewish group tweeted. “No one with these vile views should represent Jewish students.”
We are outraged that the @pomonacollege senior class president accused “Zionist-Israel-birthright-vacation-stuck-on-comparing-Holocaust-to-racism-WW2-worship[pers]” of being indifferent to the plight of the Yemenis. No one with these vile views should represent Jewish students.
— B'nai B'rith Intl. (@BnaiBrith) June 22, 2020
San Francisco Voice for Israel co-founder Mike Harris also tweeted, “Anti-Semitism is the hatred that doesn’t get you canceled on campus.”
https://twitter.com/DrMikeH49/status/1274909603319304193?s=20
The ASPC and Pomona College did not respond to the Journal’s requests for comment.
The controversy surrounding the Pomona senior class president comes after Florida State University (FSU) student senate president Ahamad Daraldik has come under fire for past social media posts stating “#f—Israel” and “stupid Jew.” A vote of no confidence against Daraldik failed on June 17. StandWithUs sent a letter to FSU on June 19 urging the university to take action against Daraldik.
UPDATE: A spokesperson for Pomona College said in a statement to the Journal, “We condemn anti-Semitism in all its forms, and we seek to foster an atmosphere of respect for all members of our community. In this case, the student government representative has apologized and reached out to support cross-cultural dialogue, which we encourage.”
Her apology, which states that she was trying to raise the awareness to the situation in Yemen and didn’t see the comments accusing Zionists of being racists, can be read here and here.
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