[ Decades of slowly working their way into institutions with anti Israel ideas, BDS, anti Israel professors, leaders.......and the result is, of course, anti Israel demonstrations everywhere. Holocaust denial, Israel's right to exist denial, the UN taken over by anti Israel governments.......what else can we expect but the demonstrations and show of support for those who want to destroy Israel ? What else?
They wish to decolonize, they should start with the UK, Tibet, North Cyprus and others. ]
A large group of Israeli and allied academics, primarily sociologists, has struck back with a blistering rebuke after about 1,700 of their peers in the field of sociology signed an open letter accusing Israel of “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” while appearing to rationalize Hamas’ invasion of the Jewish state earlier this month.
“We are deeply troubled by the blatant lack of any recognition of the heinous massacre carried out by Hamas in the south of Israel on October 7th,”
said the response from “the Israeli sociological community along with concerned sociologists” and other academics from across the world. “The letter is shocking for its moral blindness and lack of concern for empirical facts, contexts, and sociological perspective.”
The response, which said that “we too support Palestinian liberation,” continued: “While the October 7th events do not justify hurting uninvolved civilians in Gaza, the omission of any substantive acknowledgement and condemnation of Hamas’ acts dehumanizes the victims and adds to the deep sadness, trauma, and despair we are experiencing.”
On Oct. 7, the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which controls Gaza, invaded neighboring Israel and massacred over 1,400 people, mostly civilians, injured thousands more, and kidnapped over 200 hostages. The brutality of Hamas’ violence has shocked the world as new details have emerged of rape, torture, beheading, and the mutilation of bodies.
The statement from Israeli sociologists came out this week and has been signed by about 200 people. It aimed at adding nuance to and refuting ideas espoused in another open letter, titled “
Sociologists in Solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian People,” which was issued last week but went viral on social media on Monday. Signed by students and professors from some of the world’s most prestigious universities, it referred to the state of Israel as “the Israeli regime” and said its response to Hamas’ terrorist attack was tantamount to genocide.
“We cannot sit back and witness the continuation of this genocidal war,” the letter stated. “We demand that our governments push for an immediate ceasefire. This stance follows in the tradition of the civil rights movement, anti-war, and anti-apartheid protests of decades past. Aligning ourselves with these freedom struggles, we call on all of our colleagues to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and against settler colonialism, imperialism, and genocide.”
The letter repeatedly accused Israel of genocide and seemingly sought to rationalize Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault as a response to Israeli actions: “As educators, it is our duty to stand by the principles of critical inquiry and learning, to hold the university as a space for conversation that foregrounds historical truths, and that contextualizes this past week’s violence in the context of 75 years of settler colonial occupation and European empire.”
The Israeli-led response letter faulted some of Israel’s policies but argued brutal violence against innocents should be condemned. “We urge you to join us in digging deeper into our sociological toolkit to engage in studies that offer a more nuanced understanding of the conflict in the Middle East,” the statement added.
Sociologists aren’t the only academics to express apparent support for Hamas and attack Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7 massacre.
Cornell University history professor Russell Rickford, for example,
said last week that he was “exhilarated” by the violence and later defended his comments by arguing “the fundamentalism of Hamas mirrors that of Israeli leadership.” He eventually apologized amid widespread backlash and is now
taking a leave of absence for the semester.
Another professor, self-described “radically optimistic transsexual climate scientist” Mika Tosca of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
said on social media: “Israelis are pigs … may they all rot in hell.” Tosca apologized one day later. “I wrote some things on my Instagram story that I unequivocally reject and do not stand behind,” she said. “To the many Israeli and Jewish people [whom] I hurt with my words: I am truly sorry.”
Columbia University professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history Joseph Massad said in an
op-ed published in
Electronic Intifada that Hamas’ invasion was “awesome” and went on to describe the terrorists who para-glided into a music festival in Israel to murder and rape the young people there as “the air force of the Palestinian resistance.”
Many student groups have declared “solidarity with Gaza” as well, defending Hamas and faulting Israel following the terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion. At Harvard University, for example, 31 student groups issued a
statement blaming Israel for the attack and accusing the Jewish state of operating an “open air prison” in Gaza, despite that military having withdrawn from the territory in 2005.
Asaf Romirowsky, a Middle East expert and the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told
The Algemeiner that the statements issued by anti-Zionist college students are “morally obscene.”
“Cheering mass murder in the name of de-colonialism should be the final red line exemplified by the latest student groups who ‘hold the Israeli regime responsible for all unfolding violence,'” said Romirowsky. “Endorsing horrific mass murder is reprehensible on every level, and if we do not isolate these actions and comments, Islamic antisemitic terrorism in the academy will proliferate and rot our institutions of higher education.”
A large group of Israeli and allied academics, primarily sociologists, has struck back with a blistering rebuke after about 1,700 of their peers in the field of sociology signed an open letter accusing Israel of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" while appearing to rationalize Hamas' invasion of...
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