As I sit to write this Wespeak, it pains me to think that I would add to the never-ending Wespeaks about Alison Weir’s talks; however, I could not let Friday’s Wespeak by Amos Elberg ’97 conclude this drawn-out dialogue.
I have been at Wesleyan for almost three semesters, and from my time here I can see one thing pretty clearly: we love to talk. We also love to talk about how other people talk. And from the numerous Wespeaks over the past month about Alison Weir’s talk, I now see that we love to talk about how other people talk about how other people talk.
The danger with this of course is that each time we do this, we seem to distance ourselves from the actual point. From the actual people that she was speaking about, and the violence, pain, and humiliation that they live with everyday. Because it is a lot easier to talk about discourse. As a Palestinian-Lebanese, I found this true of my experience at Wesleyan: while people have no trouble talking over political ideologies with me about the Middle East conflict, very few people have even asked me if my family was hurt after the bombing of Lebanon this summer. It’s just easier to talk about other things, I guess.
Elberg’s Wespeak on Friday seems to highlight these problems. He undoubtedly did not attend Weir’s talk, and based his Wespeak off of her response to other Wespeaks. His Wespeak served NO PUPROSE other than to dehumanize and vilify Palestinians. Connecting Palestinians with Nazism, referring to them dancing in the streets after September 11th, and writing that being pro-Palestinian is a “bigoted cause” has nothing to do with any of the dialogue that has been going on about her talk, and is just simply inflammatory discourse.
I am writing this Wespeak not to Amos, because I doubt he will read it, but to the Argus as well as the larger Wesleyan Community. The amount of anti-Arab sentiment that has been written in the Argus is extremely disturbing to me, a Palestinian, the ONLY Palestinian who attends Wesleyan. (The only that I know of, at least—if there are any others, I would love to meet you!) The Argus is NOT the appropriate place to vent your internal racism against Arabs, and the Argus staff should not let people use it for such a purpose.
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