O Brother, Where Art Thou?

A bizarre man came by Wednesday afternoon as I was tabling for Tikvah: Students for Israel. He wore BluBlockers manufactured during Kurt Cobain’s lifetime, a purple bucket hat, and black trousers with the fly proudly agape. He said he was born in Ethiopia, had immigrated to Berkeley in 1968, had joined the Black Panthers shortly upon his arrival, and had used and enjoyed great quantities of psychedelics in his lifetime; I believed him on all counts. He seated himself at the table and proceeded to talk continuously for around 25 minutes, telling me that “Israel” meant “god” in Ethiopia, and that members of the group should have faith that everything was going to be all right and work to make peace with the people in Students for Justice in Palestine. It was weird deriving nuggets of wisdom from the chain of blather, yet he noted that Israelis and Palestinians were brothers – a point which, I replied, people too often overlook. It made me reflect, though, on the last contact I had with SJP as a group.

Several Wednesdays ago, I was with a two or three other friends of Tikvah at the table, situated at the edge of Sproul Plaza, near the ramp that leads to Lower Sproul. While we were talking, the guys tabling for SJP began packing up and loaded everything onto their cart. As they reached the top of the ramp, all the stuff fell off the cart, and I (followed shortly by my friends) ran over to help them pick the table and chairs up. I certainly didn’t expect any thanks, but what I got instead was the coldest stare I’d received since I told my o-chem lab professor that I hoped I wouldn’t have to do lab on my broken foot.

In my eye, a rather half-assed stab at détente.

I’m certainly not tempted to jump to conclusions: I wouldn’t assume that that seething animosity is representative of the group as a whole, or necessarily, even of the individuals from whose eyes the thunderbolts of unrepentant frost emanated. Yet I’m inclined to point out from this particular incident that when I stood up to help them out, I didn’t do so in spite of their political stances: I did so without any concern for their politics, because that’s what I do for other people. I also wouldn’t feel compelled to draw attention to this in even so meaningless an arena as this blog, if it hadn’t been part of an unbroken chain of hostility I’ve encountered from members of SJP – on some occasions, even outside of moments of participation in the pro-Israel debate.

The Almighty and my parents have already teamed to provide me with the only two brothers I’ll ever really need. So if members of Students for Justice in Palestine decide to settle for treating my friends and I with the same basic decency I hope I treat them, I’ll be as satisfied as I will surprised.

Day 101

To begin, a concise statement of my stance on domestic politics. I wouldn’t align myself with either of the major American political parties (nor, for that matter, with any of their wacky little sidekicks); however, I believe the Democratic one to be by far the worse of the two. Its espousal of traditional liberal values is, in my eye, undermined by the amorality, incompetence, hypocrisy, and duplicity it employs in pursuing its goals – which is a shame, given that many of those goals (e.g., equality) are ones I agree with wholeheartedly. I didn’t support Barack Obama in this past election because I considered him an inexperienced politician who might potentially become a tool of the party I believe to be far more dangerous than its counterpart.

Perhaps surprisingly, despite the fact that the candidate I would have chosen was not elected, I support President Obama, feeling as I do that Americans are best served to place faith in the man selected their Commander in Chief. Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t feel at all compelled to write about him here. However, the Berkeley deification I’ve described in the past has continued, and especially amidst all the hoopla surrounding H’s 100th day in office, locals have felt compelled to pontificate on conditions in the Obama Era.

This last phrase is what brings me here: I consider it faulty and irritating for a number of reasons. First is my belief (I refrain from using “the fact” because this is only exceedingly-likely conjecture) that the phrase would be used regardless of which Democrat had ascended to office back in January. This is to say, had the primaries and national election worked out that way, the Berkeley streets would be drowning in conversations about the “Clinton Era,” the “Edwards Era,” or even (try not to laugh) the “Kucinich Era” – anything, so long as it meant no Republicans past the White House lawns.

Second, tenure. H’s 100 days in office place him roughly halfway between the nation’s two shortest terms of office, which lasted 31 and 199 days, respectively. Though perhaps history will eventually vindicate them, as it stands today, one doesn’t frequently hear about the Garfield Era, much less the W.H. Harrison Era.

Finally, and most importantly, lack of change. Regardless of how much that term gets thrown around these days, any close examination of affairs will reveal that very little is different today than it was when Bush Light left office. Racism and partisanship still exist – the former, I fear, probably more so now that a black man holds our country’s most visible position. Public schools are still the punchline of thousands of jokes told in European lower learning institutions every day, and we’re still engaged militarily in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Finally, as far as the raging fiscal storm for which H was supposed to be our proverbial high pressure front, the fact that every commercial on television begins with the phrase “In times like these” belies the lack of improvement.

When I posed this last point to an Obamanaut I was having a conversation with a few days ago, she responded with, “Well, you can’t expect miracles.” Oddly enough, she made my point for me: no, you can’t. So far, other than the Obamas getting an unbelievable dog (see right), the tenure of the 44th President has been about as eventful as those of the aforementioned 9th and 20th ones, and does not merit being deemed an “Era.” Not even in Berkeley.

Eleh Ezkarah, V'nafshi Alai Eshpecha

The title of this entry comes from the selection of the Yom Kippur service that commemorates the brutal murders of ten Sages at the hands of the Romans, destroyed for their devotion to their faith. It translates to "These things I remember, and my soul cries out on them." I chose it because it manages to convey that which I cannot put into words - any kind of statement about the Holocaust seems inadequate. However, given how disgustingly lightly the term is thrown around in Berkeley, I feel obliged to say something.

I’m not going to explain the reasons why the deaths of innocent standers-by in Gaza is not comparable to the Holocaust, much less why even the most negligent of beef slaughterhouses or the most wanton destruction of the Amazon rainforest aren’t either. Anyone demanding that sort of argument won’t derive anything from my writings in this blog, anyway. I will simply say that the sentiment behind “Never Forget” is violated when one uses the Holocaust for comparative purposes. Far more repugnant than the idea that those 6 million+ cold-blooded executions in Europe are comparable to anything else is the way such a comparison degrades the memory of the dead – who had in life already been more thoroughly stripped of their purportedly inalienable right to humanity and dignity than any human beings in our species’ long, torturous history.

As much as it is our eternal duty to “Never Forget,” it is our obligation to safeguard the memories we fight to keep alive from those who would willfully defile them.

In loving memory of the 6 million+ martyrs who lost their lives at the hands of the most evil empire I pray the world ever knows.

Electioneering

[An opening disclaimer: the following politically-oriented views are strictly those of their author, and their expression is, both technically and in spirit, completely unaffiliated with any organization, on campus or otherwise. Another disclaimer: the author’s offer of advice regarding this week’s election does not entail his condoning the existence of the ASUC Senate; to the contrary, the author would like here to express his hope that the institution will one day be dismantled, and to emphasize that the following piece is written merely in the hopes of making the best of an unfavorable situation.]

In perusing the voter’s guide for this week’s ASUC elections and reflecting upon my experiences with various candidates I met this week, I was surprised to find a good number who I wouldn’t be loathe to have responsible for doling out our university’s finances. I wish today to make concise arguments for the two candidates I most avidly support: Will Smelko and Matthew White.

I first met Senator Smelko when I attended a number of Senate meetings in the wake of the Eshleman Hall “fight” last Nov 13. He immediately struck me as a man far too good to be working in such a poorly-run, obscenely self-important environment – which is why I wasn’t surprised to discover he had a solid working relationship with Senator John Moghtader. I soon found him – along with Senators Moghtader, Meghana Dhar, and Tommy Owens – to be one of the few ASUC officials I liked, and one of the four I would admit to trusting. In him, I believe voters have not only an intelligent, good-hearted man for whatever reason willing to give yet more of his time in their service, but also an opportunity to elect the first capable ASUC President since my arrival in Berkeley in Fall 2006. Indeed, I believe he would be the only one in this span to have sought the presidency to affect positive change in the student government, rather than to expand his profile or pad his resume. He stands in particularly sharp contrast with CalSERVE candidate Oscar Mairena, who has with every speech and action I have witnessed presented himself to me as a grandstanding tool of Herculean proportions, and actually somehow managed, by dint of the personality he displays in the line of his Senatorial duties, to make me dislike him personally. Independently and by comparison, then, I believe Senator Smelko to be the only reasonable choice for ASUC President – this immediately dismissing Defend Affirmative Action Party candidate Ronald Cruz and with all due deference to SQUELCH! candidate Andy “Vote for Me and Get Laid” Morris.

Though I am personal friends with Matthew White, my endorsement of him is not drawn from my enjoyment of his company, or even from some of our shared political views, but strictly from my faith in his capacity as an elected official. Speaking from a deep bank of personal experience, Matt is an intelligent, ethical man with an unusually wide network of connections that keeps him adrift of developments in Berkeley circles far beyond his own. He has a strong sense of morals, derived both from the sharply-defined laws of kind and proper behavior he follows as an observant Jew, and from his own unrelenting conscience. He is a loving person who makes friends in a manner genuinely blind to race, religion, gender, or sexual preference. He has been intimately involved with a number of campus-tied organizations, and will thus serve in Berkeley’s best interest – as he himself has too much invested emotionally to see conditions decline any further. He will stand above the pettiness of ASUC party politics not because he’s running as an independent, but because he has seen firsthand, as an associate and friend of Senator Moghtader’s, the waste and divisiveness they always cause. He will vote with his mind and his conscience – both of which I guarantee make him more genuinely interested in “preserving diversity” than any of the narrow-minded, self-serving candidates running for CalSERVE or the Defend Affirmative Action Party. In sum, I would trust Matt with my life – so it should go without saying that I’d trust him with an active hand in the future of the ASUC.

I would encourage readers to read through the growing archive of MirvChron posts, which I hope illustrate the reasons I believe the CalSERVE party has shown itself to be a petty assemblage of incompetent, self-serving men and women who do not deserve access to the obscenely large ASUC slush fund. I would also mention briefly that I met, talked to, was impressed by, and throw my support behind the following candidates: Rick “Rollin’” Chen (#64), Serge Sarkissian (#111), J.P. Shami (#113), and Parth Bhatt (#117).

ASUC voting runs from April 7-9; polls can be accessed here. Thank you.

A Moment of Darkness for Our Collective Dignity

This evening I find myself annoyed by a Berkeley-like phenomenon that extended the world over. Purportedly, over a billion people took place in “Earth Hour” this evening, dimming their lights as part of “a global event designed to highlight the threat from climate change” (see here). World-famous landmarks and ordinary homes alike reduced their artificial luminescence in an apparently united “up yours” to global warming.

Now, I happen to believe that climate change is a serious issue: that even though I think Al Gore’s sheep-like followers – who really have transformed greenness into nothing less than a cult – have exaggerated humankind’s malicious, apocalyptic contribution to the situation, I believe that the world’s getting warmer (and yes, it has been) is a genuine problem. My problem lies with this self-satisfied “display of solidarity” against our inanimate foe, the greenhouse gases. The demonstrators as a whole have the right idea, but as usual, they think that by inconveniencing themselves ever-so-slightly for a brief period, that they’ve done their part to solve the issue.

In the end, one desk lamp isn’t melting the polar ice caps; neither, for that matter, are a billion. The problem is 4-person families that own 3 cars and drive them to work, 15 blocks from their homes, because they don’t want to walk, bike, or (heaven forfend) take the bus. The problem is idiots that own and use private jets because they don’t find flying first class sufficiently dignified. The problem is jackasses that buy pickup trucks when they work at Kinko’s/FedEx. So when people around the world turn off some of the lights in their homes for an hour and then look down on someone else for not doing the same, they’re not really as close to being a part of the solution as they probably assume.

I don’t mean to disparage the sentiment, and I’m sure there were millions upon millions of well-meaning people who took part in the gesture because it was just that – an excellent gesture. And yet, I bet “Earth Hour” was a big hit in Berkeley, where it would give so many smug morons yet another unearned chance to feel proud of themselves. I’m very glad I wasn’t there. The complacent attitude that would lead these people to go to the limited trouble of flipping a few switches is the same that has seen so many people complain about the Piedmont Penetrator’s existence, while not actually doing anything to help local women by seeing to his capture and extended imprisonment.

Maybe it’s just hot air causing global warming, after all.

Back... and to the Left.

I once took a walk along the pier at the Berkeley Marina. The sea was choppy, the clouds lying ominously above me, and out along the horizon, the vague silhouette of a freighter could be seen against the crimson flare of the setting sun. Amidst it all, there was a seagull sitting on the right hand railing of the dock, eyeing me suspiciously. As I approached, he took off and flew further down the same railing, towards the heart of the bay. We exchanged this little back-and-forth the whole way down: every time I moved too close for comfort, he would fly further down the dock. We got near the end – by which time, mind you, I felt really bad for pushing the little idiot as far as he’d gone – and he ran out of dock to which he could flee. Not wanting to force him to think of an alternate course of action, I turned around and walked home.

I couldn’t help but think back on this when it was revealed in the Daily Cal last week (see the article here) that Senator John Moghtader, after much deliberation with his lawyer, was prepared to release a video taken on the balcony at Eshleman Hall on November 13 – one which purportedly negates the testimonies presented by first-hand “witnesses” Husam Zakharia and Dina Omar, among others. I liken those who falsified the evidence to the seagull, and myself (arrogantly enough) to the truth: you can try to run away from it, but if all works as it should, sooner or later, you’ll run out of dock.

The long-term repercussions of this new development are difficult to make out, particularly as very few have had access to the video itself. Still, its very existence certainly raises concerns about the recall, which was primarily based on the assumption that Moghtader had engaged in conduct unbefitting his role as an ASUC Senator by joining in the fight, as outlined in Dina Omar’s editorial. In recent days, the argument has been made that the results of the recall are not invalidated by the new tape, since Moghtader acted against student interest by withholding said evidence from the voting body. I, however, would answer that it would not have made any difference: if the actions of the District Attorney of Alameda County weren’t sufficient to convince students to vote on the recall, the outcome would seem to have been predetermined.

Don’t be fooled: this video is not important because it can undo the results of an unjust election. It presumably won’t do that, and even if it does, it’s pretty meaningless, because (a) the term is largely expired, (b) this year’s Senate can’t get anything done, and (c) the ASUC Senate is a worthless organization to begin with, as I’ve been writing all year. No, the video is important only because it will, based on what’s been revealed so far, prove that the dubious claims presented since November were, indeed, wholly falsified.

Ideally, it would be nice to see those whose dishonest claims saw the election presented to the disinterested populace in the first place face some personal repercussions, though presumably such will not be the case. Realistically, there are two things that should come out of this affair. First, it should lead to a serious reconsideration of the recall procedure on all fronts. The administration should recognize that the cost of a recall election is virtually unjustifiable, and that it needs to pressure the ASUC to amend its constitution accordingly. Student government should recognize that the proceedings have been far more divisive than the events that triggered them in the first place, and that the process was both far too easy to begin (those shady 1000 online signatures) and far too easy to finish (with just less than 2700 people deciding to remove the 7th highest vote getter). Finally, the students themselves should recognize that it’s apparently easy to waste a boatload of money to divest yourself of political enemies provided one is willing to intentionally distort the truth. Assuming another recall takes place before too long – which I’ve got to say, given how easy it is, it clearly ought to – students would be well-served to bear in mind the likelihood that testimony they’re presented with from anyone with something to gain from lying cannot necessarily be trusted.

Second, and even more important, students should recognize that the repercussions of this extend far beyond those who provided the fraudulent testimonies: those implicated in the email leak were as responsible for the spread of any lies as the students who provided them. I by no means intend to imply that the CalSERVE party is inherently ideologically opposed to Moghtader and all he stands for, but I posit that it can’t be a coincidence that the emails were all written by members of that group. It should also be noted that in the email written by CalSERVE Senator Kifah Shah, she did not express hope that Student Action Senators could be convinced of the legitimacy of their claims, but rather merely that they would “think of [Moghtader] as dispensible.” For a party that prides itself on “transparency,” CalSERVE’s practice feels uncomfortably more like a return to the rampant corruption of the United States’ Harding days. What’s emerged since November has been a political slate that has worked as a unit to overturn the democratic process they so insist they love in a transparent (oh, the devastating irony) attempt to remove the fly from their proverbial ointment. I refuse to waste money on a recall to remove the guilty parties from office. However, I sincerely hope that this political impropriety has not been lost on voters, and that when the April elections come up, they give a good, long thought as to whose interests CalSERVE really promises to defend – and to how much value transparency really has when you’re frightened by what you see inside.

I saw that same seagull again the last time I walked to the pier; once more, he took off down the dock. Remember, some people never learn.

Speed Kills

This is one I was going to let go, because I was willing to categorize it as a brainless mistake by an often well-meaning institution that a number of my friends actually care about. However, an email I got yesterday attempting to downplay and defend said mistake made me realize, upon reflection, that it was even worse than I’d thought.

In anticipation of Valentine’s Day, Berkeley Hillel ran a “speed friending” event (think speed dating, but with less appeal to college students), and put out ads featuring the image seen right. Now, it’s easy enough to see how this could have been intended to mean something other than “we’re scared of traditional Judaism as an institution,” even if it doesn’t. And so, even as the barbs were flying around here, in the form of machine gun exchanges over Facebook and the Jerusalem Post’s website, I refused to join in, for the reasons listed above.

The email I received was penned by a guy I respect, and yet the sentiment scared me. He called it “an example of a collegiate attempt at humor that fell flat, and exploded it into something it wasn't, suggesting it was an attack on Orthodoxy.” He went on to say that the outrage this piece of work prompted was just an attempt by people who don’t like “Hillel's big tent approach to Israel issues and attitudes” to discredit the institution any way they know how.

It rather sickens me that people are trying to play something like this off as some local political spat. Even assuming the best, is it any more comforting to think that it didn’t occur to the author that this could be offensive than it is to think that they were straight-up admitting they were scared of observant Judaism? This could only happen for one reason: whoever wrote this for Hillel didn’t have any Orthodox people to pop up in their mind and make them think twice. Speaking as someone who doesn’t give a crap about Hillel’s “big tent,” I can say that since my arrival in 2006, Hillel has steadily pushed observant Jews out – myself included. Not by putting on speed friending events to celebrate holidays named after saints, either: by refusing to take the minor steps to move their kitchen past dubious kashrut; by doing nothing for Passover, the hardest of Jewish holidays for college students to observe; by serving gummy snacks with gelatin in them on Purim; by sticking the Orthodox minyan in a side room because the yoga minyan needed the space more. The list goes on.

This ad was not wrong because it was a poorly-executed attempt at a joke that shouldn’t have been considered funny to start with; it was wrong because it’s representative of a situation that has progressed to the point where it doesn’t occur to anyone that there are Orthodox Jewish students even tangentially tied to Hillel who might take offense. And to reiterate, regardless of intent, this ad was EXTREMELY offensive, as are all attempts to justify it with anything other than “it won’t happen again.”

Here’s a picture of what I left Hillel for: Doesn’t scare me. And I’ve never looked back.