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May 16, 2002

Dear Friends:

ANTI-SEMITISM has now reared its ugly head in San
Francisco. Please pray against this terrible spirit
that is attacking innocent Jewish men, women, and
children throughout the world.

It seems that we are moving back into a time before
World War II, when all the world turned its back on
God's people and 6 million died in Hitler's gas
chambers.

ANTI-SEMITISM IN PARIS, SAN FRANCISCO AND ELSEWHERE
More anti-Semitism in a Paris suburb: A group of North
African youths violently assaulted five young Jews
last night, and several of the latter suffered broken
jaws. A local police officer reported that the
attackers numbered 20 people.

San Francisco, as well, was the scene of an
anti-Semitic near-riot last Thursday. Laurie Zoloth,
Director of the Jewish Studies Program at San
Francisco State University, says she witnessed a "hate
mob" and a "large, angry crowd of Palestinians and
their supporters" that surrounded a group of 50 Jews
and "screamed at us to 'go back to Russia' and... that
they would kill us all, and other terrible things..."
Her account continues:

"[The] threatening crowd shoved the Hillel students
against the wall of the plaza... As the counter-
demonstrators poured into the plaza, screaming
at the Jews to 'Get out or we will kill you' and
'Hitler did not finish the job,'

I turned to the police and to every administrator I
could find... [The police finally arrived and] could
do nothing more than surround the Jewish students and
community members who were now trapped in a corner
of the plaza, grouped under the flags of Israel, while
an angry, out of control mob, literally chanting for
our deaths, surrounded us... We had to be marched back
to the Hillel House under armed San Francisco police
guard, and we had to have a police guard remain
outside Hillel."

Ms. Zoloth further writes about a permanent atmosphere
of anti-Semitism on the SFSU campus:

"I cannot fully express what it feels like to have to
walk across campus daily, past maps of the Middle East
that do not include Israel, past posters of cans of
soup with labels on them of drops of blood and dead
babies, labeled 'canned Palestinian children meat,
slaughtered according to Jewish rites under American
license,' past poster after poster calling out
'Zionism = racism,' and 'Jews = Nazis.'

This is not civic discourse, this is not free speech,
and this is the Weimar Republic with brown shirts
it cannot control. This is the casual introduction of
the medieval blood libel and virulent hatred smeared
around our campus in a manner so ordinary that
it hardly excites concern - except if you are a Jew,
and you understand that hateful words have always led
to hateful deeds."

While on the topic of anti-Semitism at California
universities, the Wall St. Journal recently featured
an article discussing a course offered at University
of California-Berkeley. The course description for
English R1A, "The Politics and Poetics of Palestinian
Resistance" (4 credits), reads as follows:

"The brutal Israeli military occupation of Palestine,
[ongoing] since 1948, has systematically displaced,
killed, and maimed millions of Palestinian people. And
yet, from under the brutal weight of the occupation,
Palestinians have produced their own culture and
poetry of resistance. This class will examine the
history of the [resistance] and the way that it is
narrated by Palestinians in order to produce an
understanding of the Intifada... This class takes as
its starting point the right of Palestinians to fight
for their own self-determination.

Conservative thinkers are encouraged to seek other
[classes]."

God bless you,

Voicefromzion