I'd like to talk about something I don't talk about very often. I live in America for the same reason most Jews live in America: at some point (often, many points) in the past, our families were forced to flee their homes for being guilty of the terrible crime of being Jewish. Both sides of my family were forced to leave their homes, whether it was Europe or the Middle East. While many people have ancestors that came to America in search of a better life, mine came because it was the only place they might be safe. It's times like these, when symbols like these are used, when jokes are made, when comments are blurted out, that it comes to the surface. It becomes clear that the vast majority of you simply do not understand. For you, a swastika might make you react like, "Oh my god! What the hell, who would do this?? That's terrible!" And for me, it makes me want to grab something to defend myself, call 9-1-1, and put my back to a wall. For you, this is a symbol of hatred, of an evil madman from the 1940s. This is the symbol of the Nazis, the hated army from those documentaries you watched throughout school. You watched them march and salute, and you may have cried or closed your eyes during those gruesome concentration camp scenes. And for me, it means death. Literally, someone wants me dead, wishes I were dead, thinks the world would be a better place if I and all my people weren't in it. You closed your eyes when you saw the bodies, nothing but bones tightly wrapped in skin, thrown into mass graves or turned into smoke belching out of the crematoriums, but I kept mine open. I watched my people slowly disappear from the face of the earth. And we would have disappeared, and the people who use these symbols would have been happier for it. For those of you who don't know her, Sara was a fellow student when I went to Rutgers University. She's tiny and adorable and I remember her always smiling. The fact that this was done to her just absolutely blows my mind. The entire thing just doesn't make sense to me. Rutgers, the most diverse campus in the country, and this is what happens on campus? And this is how it's handled? The Rutgers Hillel may be forced to change it's slogan, because right now it reads "Rutgers: A great place to be Jewish!" To this day, my people are persecuted. There are no more Jews in Syria, where my mother's family is from. Yemen, a country whose Jewish community was one of the oldest in the world are being officially forced out. Every single day, I read about anti-semitic crimes, Jews beiing stabbed, and worse. The world will barely even tolerate a Jewish state. At this time, it's hard to ever believe that the world will change its attitude towards us. We have always been hated, and it seems we always will be. The world will go on believing that it would be better off without those Jews. But there are some of us, Jews and not, who fight back against the hate. Even knowing we may never win, we will always fight.
