Yesterday, the world commemorated the death of 10 million and more innocent lives lost in the Holocaust.
That morning, I was on my way to class and I couldn’t believe my eyes.
In the middle of Bruin Plaza, a huge wall loomed before me, plastered with anti-Israel propaganda. A day of commemoration turned into a day of confrontation.
I overheard conversations equating the current conflict with the genocidal atrocities of World War II, where people were systematically murdered purely because of their cultural background or sexual orientation.
This wall made the ridiculous claim that Israel is similarly engaging in ethnic cleansing.
On this day of memorial, Israelis and Jews all over the world, cry out, “˜Never again!’
It is illogical and offensive to claim that Israel is trying to ethnically cleanse the very people with whom they have been trying to negotiate for decades, and it is especially tasteless to make such claims on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
It is ironic that on this wall were several “children’s poems” resurrecting the blood libel that was rampant in Europe on the eve of the Holocaust, claiming that Jews use Palestinian blood in their bread.
UCLA students should recognize the blatant anti-Semitism embodied by such claims.
The wall was also covered with numbers ““ numbers of victims of violence on both sides and monetary aid given to both groups.
The problem with statistics, as any student studying them knows, is that you can make numbers say whatever you want, whether or not they are true.
Uninformed passersby were being presented with incomplete information and antagonizing opinions that the organizers had disguised as facts.
The organizers of this event should have been sensitive to the gravity of this particular day, and they should have recognized that blatant antagonism is not the way to start meaningful dialogue.
Miri Kornfeld is a first-year biology student and a member of Bruins for Israel.