To be honest l never really wanted to write this diary. I was hoping that someone else would have posted something, expecially after l had the story appear on my Facebook page. But sadly, no. It looks like either the major media outlets didn't want to know or were too reluctant to report on a something that only Raw Story saw fit to report on that l could find with a simple google search.
When l first saw the headline "Jewish Kids don KKK masks and blackface for mock lynching at Purim celebration" the reaction l had of "are you fucking kidding me?!?!?" was the only one you could have as a decent human being. Reading more of the story it seemed that the Jewish paper Ha'aretz had a frankly mind boggling quote from the school's principal that she saw no reason to reprimand the students:
“The costume was designed to create interesting and important discussions,” Jerusalem Online quoted her as saying. “This act essentially created a platform where discussion can exist."
Indicating that she would be permissive about even the most offensive costumes, Even Tov added: "There would be no difference if it was a Nazi costume.”
One of the students from the high achieving class of the affluent school (Affluenza striking again) claimed that the costumes were part of a protest against the treatment of African asylum seekers and it was done on a humorous way in the form of social protest. So to sum it up, as part of a national holiday to celebrate the Jews deliverance from persecution, a group of students decided that re-enacting one of the worst aspects of the racist part of US history was the way to go? The roses in that part of town must grow very well due to the large amount of bullshit in the area.
I kept an eye on this story (in between arguments over the FIFA arrests and the actions of Sepp Blatter with my brother, my friends and anyone who loves the beautiful game) and was surprised how little reaction this had provoked in the US. In fact, apart from the Raw Story article l couldn't find any of the major news article had mentioned it, which frankly is disgusting. If a group of kids in America had decided to celebrate a public holiday by dressing up as Nazis and mockingly throwing classmates dressed in striped pajamas with yellow stars on them into ovens you can be sure that Bill Nye, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, and Stephen Hawking combined wouldn't be able to work out the equation to determine the rapidly increasing levels of outrage, and that would just be on Fox!!!!! It wouldn't be hard to figure out that a massive shitstorm of tsunami proportions would have formed that would have been led by AIPAC, the lawmakers the fund, the "religious" rapture ready christianists, the RWNJ's at large and of course the obese, racist, mysogenistic, half deaf, thrice divorced, sex-holidaying, convicted drug addict slobbering into his microphone to his rapidly diminishing radio audience who would find some way to link this directly/indirectly to the current president or just any liberal they see in their eye-line.
Why would a story like this in a country who you send $8.5 million a day of your money not garner more interest? It can't be because there would be cries of anti-Semitism surely? This is a case of crass stupidity (and remember, some of those were calling this a social protest) which should have been confronted, not ignored. Wouldn't that have been a more powerful lesson for those involved? It's 2am here in the UK so I'm off to bed. I'm sure that there are more media savvy people on Kos than me who can figure that out.