Yesterday
we posted examples of the racist and other posters placed around the Oberlin campus last February as part of
The Great Oberlin College Racism Hoax of 2013. There are many more in the Oberlin police department document production we did not post.
On no campus in the United States or elsewhere would the racist posters using the "N" word and so on be acceptable public discourse (even if it is an interesting free speech legal issue).
But what about the anti-Israel poster?
Unfortunately, such discourse on campuses and elsewhere is par for the course in the
anti-Israel movement. The attempt to single out Israel alone for boycott, and the false equation of Israel
with Apartheid, fascism and Nazism, is part of the dialogue and accepted.
Oberlin is one of only a handful of higher education campuses where the
student government has endorsed the anti-Israel BDS movement and boycott.
https://twitter.com/SJPNational/status/331473633899864064
In fact, Oberlin has one of the
most active anti-Israel movements which spreads historically inaccurate falsehoods about the "
occupation" and Israeli "
Apartheid" policies:
I have to wonder, if only the anti-Israel posters were put up around Oberlin not accompanied by attacks on blacks, Muslims and gays, would anyone have noticed or cared? Would the campus have erupted in protest?
Somehow I doubt it.
The specific flag used on the Oberlin poster is akin to a stock image in anti-Israel protests, this one in
San Francisco:
