Columbia Unmoored: Academics Appropriate the Holocaust to Bash Israel

Two recent anti-Israel events at Columbia University’s Middle East Institute demonstrate how far academics are willing to go to promote anti-Semitism under the guise of anti-Zionism. One involved a panel of professors equating the Holocaust with the “Nakba” (Arabic for “catastrophe,” or Israel’s founding), while the other featured Rutgers University professor and “organ harvesting” blood libeler Jasbir Puar. Karys Rhea’s report for Campus Watch appears at the Tower.

Preaching to a like-minded audience of around eighty, the speakers took pains to shield themselves from charges of antisemitism or moral relativism: “We are not claiming that they are equally equivalent events,” declared Hebrew University Professor Amos Goldberg.

This strategic disclaimer was repeated several times throughout the discussion, even as panelists consistently portrayed the two disparate events as morally equivalent.

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Cinnamon Stillwell analyzes Middle East studies academia in West Coast colleges and universities for Campus Watch. A San Francisco Bay Area native and graduate of San Francisco State University, she is a columnist, blogger, and social media analyst. Ms. Stillwell, a former contributing political columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, has written on a wide variety of topics, including the political atmosphere in American higher education, and has appeared as a guest on television and talk radio.
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