Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner
A recent incident at the home of Berkeley University’s dean Erwin Chemerinsky went viral and set Internet on fire. It was a gathering with law students, one of which decided to use the event as an opportunity for something between a protest and a tantrum. After greeting the group in Arabic, things quickly got out of hand as she started a speech about Ramadan and proceeded to talk about Palestine. Both the professor and his wife Catherine asked her to leave, but she wasn’t gonna cave in so easily and stood there as if she was glued to the ground. Catherine tried to take her microphone and escort her off the premises when things got ugly.
If you go through the flurry of reactions without having seen the video, you might get the impression that the hijab-wearing student Malak Afaneh was held at gunpoint. It couldn’t be further from the true. The hostess did grab her arm but it was far from the alleged boob-grabing. Using those few still working brain cells, the activist left in the end. Others cheered as if they were a part of it too. Which I’m inclined to believe. This is another example of activism missing the mark due to its aggressive methods. Let me assure you, I’m not the only one who’s short on tolerance for dimwits like this. Unsurprisingly, she later publicly lamented the traumatic experience.
Malah Afaneh was wearing a hijab and keffiyeh scarf, a Palestinian symbol. She kept insisting on the First Amendment and the right to freely speak her mind. Chemerinsky fortunately doesn’t strike me as someone who’d exercise his Second Amendment rights when faced with a trespasser. In traditional Muslim households, you take off your shoes before coming in. It’s called respect, which she neglected to give to her hosts. In the tradition she claims to observe, guests aren’t even allowed to see the women living there. Instead of gratitude for freedoms and opportunities she wouldn’t have in the Middle East, she decided to fart on their hospitality and play the partybreaker. No wonder some people are hostile to Muslim immigrants since this reiterates all the bad prejudices about them and their religion.
I don’t care what your beliefs are, leave them at the door together with your shoes before teaching me a lesson. You can have a glass of wine but you can’t smoke inside. If you’re nice, I’ll even let you do your Friday prayers in one of the rooms. It happened one time, when an observing Muslim and a close friend dropped by to watch movies with a mutual acquaintance from America. While the foreigner was indulging in a rant about Donald Trump’s insufferable politics, my friend asked me if I’d mind he do his praying there so I furnished him with a towel to put on the floor of a room. For one night, my place was a combination of a mosque and a Democrat election rally.
My friend, on the other hand, is the embodiment of a positive stereotype. He’s polite, smart, without any need to preach or convert you into agreeing with whatever he believes in. Just as it should be: a good, humble person instead of an irritating preacher. It’s unsurprising that the couple which hosted the students is now under fire from the pro-Palestinian public with hate speech so colorful you could mistake it for the MAGA morons. A degree at a prestigious university like Berkeley is something unattainable for many in modern day America, due to student debts looming over your future and an uncertain career prospect in a time of crisis like this.
You can learn all sorts of important life lessons in the marble halls of Ivy League. The dinner party at Berkeley shows what they don’t teach. It’s the fact that freedom of speech and freedom of expression aren’t synonymous. You’re free to have an opinion or advocate for issues. But when you impose it on someone else without permission or turn your movement into a cult, the gloves come off. That’s when people like the garden party protester start screaming. Because the University did support Chemerinsky in a public statement. Afaneh may have succeded in disturbing him, but for once, the institution decided to be the adult in the room. For now, at least.
I don’t know where you stand on the Palestine and Israel issue, dear reader. Guess what? I don’t give a damn. We are full of volatile emotions and there’s a social media war going on every time a drone flies over Gaza or Odessa. It’s a form of what I call parasocial PTSD. The harsh truth is that both are far away from Europe and the USA. Thousands of armchair opinion makers will have an opinion you absolutely need to share, like and subscribe to. But you’re the lucky one: the Berkeley partybreakers didn’t show up at your own lunch. Yes, there’s a tragedy going on which no one should deny. Innocent people are dying in a conflict that will take many years to mend.
What’s more, our oceans are flooded with plastic that will take even longer to disintegrate. There’s a whole lot of waste we’re not properly dealing with, and one of those is our mind. We waste it on arguments over things we don’t really care for in all honesty. Because there are essentially two kinds of people: those who earn their living from having a public opinion and those earning their daily bread from not having one. Which doesn’t prevent them from acting like they’re the Anderson Cooper of Tiktok. Those of you who are sick of this should share, like and subscribe to my own equivalent of it, called FuckOff. Designed for uncontaminated minds and the fight for free bleep. We don’t compromise anything, apart from your principles.
Now there’s a new political bagel on a plate that’s already full: Iran attacked Israel. Can’t we ever catch a break? It’s almost a relief to not be in the news nowadays. Erwin Chermerinsky and his wife didn’t give up on entertaining at home, it seems. New dinners like this are planned. Well, not exactly like this one. There will be security to prevent this from happening again. While I do applaud the enthusiasm, I don’t understand it. My grandfather had a saying “when the cat is away, mice come to stay”. In this particular situation, the cat is there but the mice are refusing to leave. Students like his make it difficult to tell the mice from the rats. Of which there are many.
It seems you have to tiptoe around the feelings of your students as if they’re the ones in charge. If Berkeley were a country, it would be a democratorship. The petri dish of a system that’s been taking hold of the public discourse for some time now and shows no signs of slowing down. It’s a revolution eating its own. Those like Malah Afaneh are digging the grave of an idea that should be about finding solutions. They’re antagonizing even those who might be tempted to support them. There will always be misery somewhere but there isn’t enough rent-free space in my head for all of it. I’m sure she’ll find plenty of other shoulders to cry on. You think I’m a cold-hearted cynic? I suggest you contact me on FuckOff.
