ASPC states that the zine found its way onto their 5C club fair table by mistake.
Students accuse ASPC of spreading “anti-Jewish propaganda” on the Walker Beach art wall
Last Wednesday, the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) club table distributed copies of a zine titled “Mask Up” alongside masks and other materials regarding COVID. The zine’s initial pages provide information on the COVID virus and protective measures, such as testing and effective personal protective equipment.
Front cover of the “Mask Up” zine
After the initial pages, the booklet forwards the arguement that the “amerikkkan-israeli empire” weaponizes the COVID virus as a tool of eugenics-based genocide in the first section, “Pandemics are a Tool of the Colonizer.”
ASPC table with “Mask Up” zines (credit: Claremont Haverim)
Claremont Haverim claimed that the zine’s content was expressly antisemitic and pro-Hamas. The organization pointed to statements such as, “BY BOMB OR BY PATHOGEN, THESE ATTACKS ON PALESTINIAN LIFE ARE MAN-MADE, INTENTIONAL POLICY CHOICES, ONES INTENDED TO CONSOLIDATE WEALTH FOR THE MIS-RULERS OF THE WORLD,” as examples of historic antisemitic beliefs that Jewish populations control disease and wealth.
Haverim also pointed to statements in the zine that “the ongoing Operation Al-Aqsa Flood is a direct attempt to release the thousands of Palestinians held in Israeli jails” and that Hamas is a “national liberal group” as evidence of explicit support for a terrorist movement since Operation Al-Aqsa is Hamas’s codename for the October 7th attacks. The zine also cited a statement by the Palestinian Youth Movement and Writers Against the War on Gaza categorizing The New York Times as Israeli “state-run media” that spread “unevidenced claims of ‘mass rape’ by Palestinian resistance on October 7th.”
Illustration from “Mask Up” featuring an armed individual masking a child
On Tuesday September 10 Avis Hinkson, the vice president of student affairs and dean of students, and Y. Melanie Wu, vice president of academic affairs and dean of the college, announced that the college officially launched an investigation into the incident.
ASPC issued a community update on the matter in an email later the same day: “During the course of the club fair, 3-5 copies of a zine that we did not print, the “Mask Up” zine, were mixed up with our own materials. We did not realize and were not notified of this until after the club fair, and we did not produce the zine.”
Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Pomona Divest from Apartheid (PDfA) responded to Pomona’s investigation in an Instagram post on Thursday, September 12. SJP and PDfA called the investigation into the zine’s content and ASPC’s distribution of the material a conflation of antisemitism with anti-zionism.
On Monday, September 10, students took to the Walker Beach art wall to levy accusations against SJP and ASPC of distributing “anti-Jewish Propaganda.” By Wednesday, another group of students painted a new message: “Anti-Zionism is not anti-Jewish propaganda. Free Palestine. Intifada. We are not afraid. Disclose. Divest.”
Students respond to accusations of antisemitism on the Walker Beach art wall
No organization or individuals have publicly affiliated themselves with the zine or claimed responsibility for its distribution. In a comment to The Student Life, Kenneth Wolf, chair of the faculty of Pomona, expressed concerns with a lack of intellectual accountability at the Claremont Colleges: “If you don’t stand up for what you believe in and let people know that you believe in it, everything is muddled from the very beginning, as far as I’m concerned. If something is done anonymously it’s always problematic.”
The matter will continue to unfold over the next few weeks as the investigation develops alongside U.S. Department of Education investigations into alleged discrimination against Palestinian and Jewish Pomona students.
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