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Monday, March 15, 2004

This may be old news, but it's the first I'd heard about it, just now reading in the dead tree Jewish Advocate, (no web-link available):

Thank you for the invitation to help you mark the Holocaust Memorial Day. On behalf of the [Oxford University] Russian Society, I regret to decline it. I am sure you will understand that, as some members of the Russian Society have strong anti-Semitic views, it will be inappropriate for our society as a body to promote or participate in organizing this memorial day.

That's the email reply one of the organizers of the Oxford University Jewish Society's Holocaust Memorial Day commemoration (January 27) got back from the Oxford Russian Society.

As I said, no link to the Advocate article, but here's an article about the incident in the Oxford Student.

There's a sort of strange legalistic twist to the story as to whether the guy who sent the email had the proper authority to do it, and, according to Josh Bellin, writing in The Advocate, the President of the Russian Society sent a "long letter of apology to the members of the Jewish Society," but that all seems somewhat beside the point.

I mean, some presumably intelligent Oxford student figures it's perfectly fine to send out a note saying, "Yeah, we'd come, but a lot of the guys don't like Jews, as I'm sure you can understand." Astounding. Honestly, if I received such an email I'd probably just sit at my computer staring at the screen with a blown gasket in my head.

Bellin concludes his article thus:

It takes unfortunate events such as this e-mail to remind is that not far beneath the facade of an academic community that prides itself on its diversity, can lurk a discernable anti-Semitic sentiment about which every Jew, irrespective of his her political oreientation, should be deeply concerned.

To which I would add, What the hell is going on out there?

1 Comment

The young do have a talent for naivity, don't they?

I'm all for MTV pushing young adults to vote, for the more they push the fewer young adults will vote. A natural contrarian reaction in the young.

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