Student Leader in California Blasted for ‘Blatantly Antisemitic’ Remarks, Holocaust Denial
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by Eliezer Sherman
Sacramento region community college student trustee Cameron Weaver’s recent comments questioning the number of Jewish Holocaust victims are “blatantly antisemitic” and constitute “clear Holocaust denial,” said one of the heads of a nonprofit organization committed to combating antisemitism at institutions of higher learning in the U.S. on Wednesday.
“Weaver’s comments are a clear form of Holocaust denial,” said AMCHA Initiative co-founder Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, a University of California, Santa Cruz lecturer. “They are not only ‘troubling, misguided and abhorrent,’ as Los Rios Community College President Johnson has called them; they are blatantly antisemitic and should be identified as such by college administrators.”
Weaver raised eyebrows following a September 18 interview with the Current, the student newspaper of the American River College, a community college near Sacramento.
“Now I’m definitely not gonna go out and venture and say anything like, ‘Oh, the Holocaust didn’t happen.’ There are tons of people that make that argument. And from a really non-biased perspective, I completely disagree, but I also completely agree. What I mean when I say both is I don’t know the answer,” Weaver told the paper, according to the Sacramento Bee, which reported the incident on Tuesday.
The student representative, who receives an $8,500 annual stipend for his role, also alleged that a share of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust were actually killed in prior acts of religious persecution, according to the Bee.
Los Rios Community College board president Dustin Johnson distanced the school from the remarks, saying they flew in the face of historical accuracy.
Weaver, meanwhile, apologized for the “tumult” caused by the interview, saying the story did not “accurately reflect my views.” Weaver did not, however, take back his claims.
