Antisemitism is out of control in academia.
Last I checked, supporting the mass murder of Jews counts as, well, hate — under pretty much any definition and pretty much anywhere — except, apparently, here.
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This is a guest essay written by Andrew Pessin, a professor at Connecticut College and author of the book, “Anti-Zionism on Campus.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
There is hate afoot, among us on this campus, and nobody is speaking.
We say we are anti-racist, yet this hate is racism. We say we believe in inclusion, yet this hate is explicitly exclusive. We say we are an educational institution, yet this hate is indoctrinating propaganda that would make Goebbels proud.
And nobody says a word.
Connecticut College’s “Hate Series” continued this past week with its twelfth lecture, its thirteenth coming up next week. That’s thirteen lectures all saying pretty much the same thing, over and over: Israel bad, Israel very bad, Israel evil, Israel racist, Israel genocide, etc., with the occasional “Jewish supremacy” thrown in in case anyone misses the connection between hating Israel and hating Jews.
For surely if Israeli evil is perpetrated in the name of “Jewish supremacy,” then any Jews who support Israel in any measure are themselves also Jewish supremacists.
My goodness, that slick move is right out of the famous antisemitic forgery, “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the same antisemitic forgery that Hitler used to justify the Holocaust, that Hamas literally quotes to justify its own decades-long genocidal jihad campaign against not “Israelis” but the Jews — except that it’s happening right here on our campus, repeated again and again over thirteen lectures, and nobody says a word.
Just walk on by, nothing to see here folks while the Jews are repeatedly dehumanized, in the way the Nazis did to prepare the ground for their genocide.
One surely must wonder why this conflict merits so much sustained, single-minded — dare we say obsessive — attention. There are over 100 active military conflicts in the world right now, many of them orders of magnitude larger in terms of land mass involved, civilian casualties, human rights violations, and overall suffering. We’re talking about:
Hundreds of thousands and millions dead, displaced, actively actually dying of starvation in Syria, Sudan, Yemen, the Congo, and Burkina Faso
120,000 Armenians forcibly cleansed from Azerbaijan
500,000 Afghanis forcibly expelled from Pakistan
The three-year Russia-Ukraine war which alone has claimed over one million casualties with many millions displaced
The ongoing Islamist campaign against Christians in Africa with its many thousands murdered, beheaded, raped, and literally enslaved
In November Turkish bombing cut off electricity and water to a million Kurds.
Our campus, in response to these enormous global catastrophes? Crickets.
Apparently there’s neither need nor frankly time for Connecticut College students to learn about any of that because we must be inundated with thirteen speakers all portraying the tiny sliver of a Jewish state — itself the victim of a mass jihadist genocidal terrorist massacre, then having been attacked by over 31,000 missiles in an area just larger than Connecticut, from seven different active war fronts — as the epitome of all evil, as bad, very bad, racist, genocide, Jewish supremacy, etc.
And its (mostly Jewish) civilians as deserving of being slaughtered, and all the more so for defending themselves in a conflict featuring a mere fraction of those other casualties.
There ought to be a word for when people obsess like this about the Jews, not to mention apply malicious double standards to them. That word would probably also work for when people respond to a genocidal jihad campaign to mass slaughter Jews by condemning the Jews for defending themselves, thereby supporting the genocidal jihad campaign itself. Last I checked, supporting the mass murder of Jews counts as, well, hate, under pretty much any definition and pretty much anywhere, except, apparently, here.
All that would be concerning even if these lectures were disseminating the truth about Israel, but among the series’ most notable features is its collective affront to academic standards.
Orwellianly calling itself an “educational” series — normally an extended, entirely one-sided presentation of a very complicated multifaceted matter would better be described as “propaganda” and “indoctrination” — the talks have been filled with so much misinformation, misrepresentations, half-truths and distortions, omissions of essential context and facts — and, frankly, outright lies — that it’s downright embarrassing they are permitted to occur at (much less have been actively supported by) an accredited institution of “higher education.”
The most recent lecture, the twelfth, was perhaps the most offensive of them all, with its three-front assault on Israel, the Jewish People, and the truth. Jeremy Bentham’s “nonsense on stilts” would be an appropriate description of Professor Raz Segal’s talk, were it not simply too glib to describe the blood libel of “Israeli genocide,” which is not merely defamatorily false but in fact dangerous, dehumanizing, and incentivizing of hatred and violence toward Jews everywhere.
If this is a “genocide,” it’s the first genocide in history where the people allegedly being genocided have had it within their power, from the very first day, to stop the genocide but chose not to, for sixteen months and counting, instead preferring to continue waging war. If this is a “genocide,” it’s the first genocide in history where even the “victims” themselves declare that their population increased during the “genocide.”
It’s also the first genocide in history where the “victims” themselves call it a “victory,” and where well-fed, cleanly dressed gunmen celebrate their “victory” by emerging weekly from brand new fully fueled expensive vehicles, in front of enormous banners produced by expensive professional equipment, in front of an audience full of well-fed people holding plump babies and the latest iPhones filming everything, and parade out by gunpoint emaciated prisoners whose families they slaughtered and whom they have been torturing for 16 months, and the coffins of babies they have murdered, and proclaim that they (the gunmen) are the “victims” and the emaciated prisoners and dead babies in coffins are the “perpetrators.”
And it’s the first “genocide” in history where the “victims” boast of the mass slaughter they perpetrated to start the war and repeatedly promise to do it again and again as soon as they are able.
And that’s just from the perspective of these so-called “victims.”
Yet one more piece of evidence of the utter corruption of the United Nations is that when its “Special Advisor on the Prevention of Genocide” (whom one expects to have some expertise on the subject) recently issued a guidance paper emphasizing the importance of “adhering to the correct usage of the term,” and then determined that Israel’s actions in Gaza did not constitute genocide given the actual meaning of the term, she was fired.1
Suffice to say that the actual civilian to militant casualty ratio will likely turn out to be perhaps the lowest in all modern urban warfare, and this despite the unprecedentedly difficult conditions that include the extensive use of human shields by Hamas and its militarization of literally the entire Gaza Strip, thus indicating Israel’s devoted efforts to target combatants.
The one redeeming feature of Segal’s talk was that delicious moment in which he entirely destroyed his own argument without realizing it. He quoted the figure that Israel had cumulatively dropped 87,000 tons of explosives on Gaza to date, the equivalent, he said, of “three atomic bombs.”
His intention was to convey that Israel is bad, very bad, unrestrained, bombing everything in sight, thus genocidal, but the natural response to such astounding data would surely be to ask, “Three atomic bombs in that small area? But then why isn’t absolutely everyone in Gaza dead and every single building levelled?” In fact, why are relatively so few dead, even if one accepts Hamas’ generally unreliable casualty figures?
The answer is as obvious as it is fatal to Segal’s entire argument: It’s because Israel is doing its best to target carefully. Which is the exact opposite of genocide.
“Boom!” one would say, if the issue wasn’t so deadly serious.
Similarly, that bombing figure comes out to 1.8 tons of explosives for every alleged fatality, which, if Israel intended to kill as many people as possible, is a stunningly inefficient, incompetent use of explosives.2
Then in a manner that would be whimsical if it also weren’t so deadly serious, he goes on to calculate how many people would likely be killed in Gaza had Israel dropped 87,000 tons — not of bombs, but of bricks, and did so indiscriminately in the urban areas where most of the explosives were dropped.
Using data about population density, the weight and speed of bricks dropped from airplanes, and the probabilities of such bricks causing fatal injuries, he concludes that about 225,000 people would likely die in such manner, nearly five times the official Gaza numbers for the same mass of high explosives.
So, how could Israel drop so much explosive material and kill so few people? If Israel is targeting civilians (as the haters allege, and a genocide allegation requires) then it is failing beyond miserably. And even if Israel is only bombing indiscriminately (as the haters also allege, and a genocide allegation would alternatively require) then it has managed to kill far fewer people than indiscriminately dropping bricks would have done, at much less of the cost.
It’s all really that stupid.
What kind of scholar accuses Israel of bombing civilian targets while conveniently omitting the fact that those targets in fact had been militarized? Not an honest one.
Last I checked, aiming to produce “accurate conceptions” of things would be an important part of the mission of any “educational series” sponsored by an “educational institution” such as our own. “Israel’s Attack on Gaza” isn’t even trying to be that — and nobody says a word, when the very integrity of this institution is itself under assault.
The “genocide” allegation isn’t merely false, defamatory, and antisemitic. It is deliberately designed to delegitimize Jewish self-defense, to ensure that when an actually genocidal movement attacks the Jews, the Jews are not permitted to respond, not permitted to remove the genocidal threat literally from their midst, not permitted to rescue their hostages, all actions that literally every other country in the world would undertake in the same situation.
It’s a neat trick: Attack a Jew, then condemn him as the aggressor when he responds.
Again, it is right out of the Nazi-Hamas playbook of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” That an “educational” series at an accredited college openly contributes to and amplifies such a campaign is shocking — and nobody here says a word.
Make no mistake. Even if these lectures were honest, fair, and disseminating only truths, their obsessive incentivization of Jew-hate should be unacceptable on this campus. This campus would never stand for a thirteen-lecture series carefully and truthfully documenting (for example) the long history of Islamist terrorism and violence.
How would the Muslim members of our community feel knowing the community around them was being inundated with one-sided information about homicidal jihadism across the globe, about the Islamist slaughter of Christians in Africa, about the violence being promoted in mosques even in the United States as we speak?
In fact it probably would not even stand for a single lecture fitting those descriptions. Nor would this campus stand for the same attacking any other identity group on this campus.
And that is the case even if the lectures were honest and truthful! Imagine now they are filled with misrepresentations, distortions, omissions, and lies, all to the same hate-incentivizing end.
Yet that is where we are, with a full thirteen-lecture series (and counting!) against the Jews. At least one faculty member (I hear) even offered their students extra credit to attend the recent lecture, despite it having nothing to do with their course, apparently going that extra mile to get as many students here to hate the Jews as possible.
This should not be acceptable.
It certainly is not advisable. With the current U.S. government crackdown on campus antisemitism, do we want to draw that kind of attention to this campus? Isn’t it only a matter of time before someone files a legal complaint against this place? Maybe someone will forward this essay to the government?
I occasionally get calls from concerned parents of prospective (and current) students, Jewish and non-Jewish alike, who have heard worrisome things about the climate here. I heard from several families who refused to apply here this year because of the antisemitic “Jewish supremacy” letter so many faculty members shamefully signed in the Spring. Given the financial crisis we keep hearing about, is it possibly in the interest of this college to allow, much less support, a hate series like this that doesn’t merely potentially but actually drives away prospective students?
Some 90 members of this community signed that vile letter in the Spring. On the plus side, many people did not sign that letter. But you are all so silent on these issues. It seems to have fallen to me alone to call this out.
You may not care much about the Jews, but if you care about fighting hate, if you care about our alleged values of fighting racism and promoting inclusion, if you care about academic integrity, and if you care about the spiritual and financial well-being — and thus long-term existence — of this institution, it is time for you to speak up.
“The U.N’s Anti-Israel ‘Genocide’ Purge.” Wall Street Journal.
“How many people would have died if Israel dropped bricks randomly on Gaza cities?” Elder of Ziyon.
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This is the kind of thing that President Trump needs to know about and he needs to do whatever is necessary to defund this university. This is an unAmerican and this is hate speech. It must be stopped.
Well done, but very concerning. Just one comment on this: ". . . to ensure that when an actually genocidal movement attacks the Jews, the Jews are not permitted to respond, not permitted to remove the genocidal threat literally from their midst, not permitted to rescue their hostages,..." We can only be restrained by our own thoughts. We do not need anyone's permission to fight back.