A letter to Romy Ronen, a Columbia student who shed tears for Israel
Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer
Arutz Sheva 7
Mon Dec 09 2019
Dear Ms. Ronen,
I just read your account in Arutz Sheva/ Israel National News of the recent Columbia College Student Council vote to endorse BDS. As a regular op-ed contributor to Arutz Sheva and as a Columbia alumnus, I write you in this same public forum.
I graduated from Columbia in the mid-1970s. I was openly an Orthodox Jew, wore a yarmulka on my head, and I expressed conservative political views on that uniformly leftist campus. I marched for Soviet Jews and for Israel. My professors included some who hated Israel. I was assigned a dorm roommate one year who turned out to be an antisemite. I knew all the Jewish leftists and other leftists on campus who hated Israel because, like ants on a summer sidewalk where no one has cleaned off melted ice cream, they were teeming all over the place.
Ms. Ronen, I never cried. I never teared up. Rather, for the sake of Zion, I simply would not hold my peace nor be silent. Student-organized hate for Israel never caused me to have a panic attack. You mention all those kinds of reactions by Israel supporters on the night of the vote. Not in my day....
