I used to live at 17 Eagle Row, then Zeta Beta Tau (ZBT) fraternity house, from 2007 to 2008. As much as being a place where ZBT would throw parties, it was also a place where my friends and I lived, studied and once even shared a family Thanksgiving dinner. It was our home, for better or for worse.
I was also at Emory in the midst of controversy. At the time, former President Jimmy Carter had just penned Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, and our community had been in uproar as a result, with some Jewish people labeling him and those who defended him as anti-Semitic. I recall being a frequent contributor to the pages of The Emory Wheel as a Jewish student who defended those who had dared question Israeli policy. Although I had disagreed with their conclusions, I’d welcomed the dialogue on an important topic in the spirit of discourse at Emory University.
Much has changed since I graduated from Emory. Today, 17 Eagle Row is inhabited by the members of Alpha Epsilon Pi, a different, historically Jewish fraternity. And this past weekend, on Yom Kippur, its face was defamed by swastikas.
While I dare not guess who would commit such a vile act, ironically on the day where Jews around the world atone for their transgressions, its occurrence flies in the face of everything I remember Emory for. Where people would once discuss their differences, now there is vandalism. We used to celebrate other cultures and religions, but now we look to erect insurmountable barriers of hatred.
When I first stepped foot on Emory’s campus in 2005, I knew I would attend because it felt like home. This past weekend, that home was attacked in the most vile of fashions. While it is likely that nearly everyone who reads this message did not, and would not, commit such acts of terrorism, this should serve as a wake up call to all of us. We must not only have dialogue, we must also take action. The acts of a few reflect poorly on us all. Emory University is better than this.
– Steve Golden graduated from Emory University in 2009. He now lives in New York City, pursuing his LL.M.
The Emory Wheel was founded in 1919 and is currently the only independent, student-run newspaper of Emory University. The Wheel publishes weekly on Wednesdays during the academic year, except during University holidays and scheduled publication intermissions.
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I agree that this was a despicable act and the perpetrators must be brought to justice. It may have even been an act of terrorism, depending on how you define the word. But it was terrorism only in terms of shocking and offending people. Thankfully, no one was physically hurt or killed. I can not say the same about the acts of terrorism that Jimmy Carter has condoned over the years. Jimmy Carter does not believe that Hamas, a virulently anti-Semitic organization that has carried out several suicide bombings against unarmed civilians, is a terrorist organization. While the swastika is clearly a symbol of a hateful murderous regime, so is the banner of Hamas. Nazism was the biggest threat to the Jewish people in the past, but by far the biggest threat now comes from radical Islamist organizations and states like Iran.
I agree with your statement “We must not only have dialogue, we must also take action” but I don’t know if I agree on where we should concentrate our efforts. Anti-semitic attitudes in the US are at an all time low. Yet they are rising in the rest of the world in large part because of people like Jimmy Carter have been successful at legitimizing terror against Israel, while demonizing Israel when it acts to defend itself from such terrorism. Some people like the author of this article, may say that we have to differentiate between those who are anti-zionist and those who are anti-semitic. But this terrorism isn’t only limited to Israel. Synagogues and Jewish Institutions all over Europe were attacked during the most recent war between Israel and Gaza. On the one hand radical Islamists claim that they just want Jewish people to leave Israel and “go back” to Europe, and yet they terrorize the Jews who never left Europe in the first place. Earlier this month, the so-called New Horizon Conference took place in Tehran. This a conference where radical Islamists came together with anti-zionists of the far-right neo-Nazi persuasion to have a dialogue. This in a country where the former president denied the Holocaust and threatened to wipe Israel off the map. Yet the news media chooses to focus more on the swastikas painted on a frat house by vandals, than the greatest threat to the Jewish people since… the actual Nazis.
Steve my friend, you are misguided. Just like Hassan Rouhani, the current president of Iran, Jimmy Carter and the people who share his views are nothing but wolves in sheep’s clothing. Jimmy Carter may not have painted those swastikas on the AEPi house but he has harmed and offended the Jewish people more than those vandals could in their wildest dreams. He chose the word “Apartheid” for the title of his book, not because it was relevant to the contents of his book. He chose it to get maximum publicity for his ideas, which is probably the same reason those vandals chose to paint swastikas on the AEPi house after Yom Kippur. A while back, Jimmy Carter told the press that he thought a number of tea party supporters were motivated by racism against the first and only black president; By those standards I think that Jimmy Carter could well be motivated by anti-semitism in his vicious singling out the one and only Jewish State for condemnation.