In academia, Islamic antisemitism has at this point become so much a part of the atmosphere that these institutions can’t possibly be self-critical enough to realize what they’re aiding and abetting. To do so would go against their core principles.
“UMich hosts anti-Israel activists two days after synagogue massacre,” by Autumn Price, Campus Reform, October 31, 2018:
The University of Michigan hosted a town hall comprised entirely of anti-Israel speakers on Monday, just two days after the Pittsburgh synagogue massacre left 11 people dead, the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history.
UMich billed the event as a “teach-in town hall” explaining “what is BDS? And why does it matter?” The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement calls for an end to international support of Israel’s “oppression of Palestinians.”
“It was wildly inappropriate to hold a BDS event mere days after such a vile anti-Semitic attack…the university should apologize for this event.”
“What is fair and just, in light of our diverse histories: members of the U-M community recall boycotts of Jewish businesses in Nazi Europe, America’s history of civil rights boycotts, and boycotts in response to Palestinian displacement under Israeli Occupation?” the event description asks.
The town hall event announcement listed several prominent celebrities, including the singer Lorde, who canceled their events in protest of Israel.
UMich’s Arab and Muslim American Studies department, Department of Women Studies, Conflict and Peace Initiative; Colonialism, Race, and Sexualities Initiative; Department of American Culture, and the Middle Eastern Law Students Association (MELSA) were among the entities that funded the event.
Anti-Israel activists Susan Abulhawa, Tom Pessah, and Huwaida Arraf spoke at the event.
Abulhawa, a novelist, tweeted in 2013, “How many times must we become refugees? Why? So every American and European Jew can have dual citizenship?”
Pessah is a former board member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UC Berkeley, according to CanaryMission.org. As a student, he authored a BDS resolution encouraging the UC Board of Regents to end its association with any “American companies materially and militarily supporting the Israeli government’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.”
Pessah has also praised a hunger strike led by Marwan Barghouti. The Palestinian Authority and Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, groups which Barghouti has led and founded, respectively, have conducted terrorist attacks on Israeli citizens.
Arraf, meanwhile, is a co-founder of International Solidarity Movement (ISM), which aims to resist “the long-entrenched and systematic oppression and dispossession of the Palestinian population, using non-violent, direct-action methods and principles.”
The ISM has been accused of providing material support to terrorists. Arraf, himself, once co-authored a piece claiming that “the Palestinian resistance must take on a variety of characteristics — both nonviolent and violent.”
UMich’s Monday event came two days after a gunman opened fire at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing 11 people. The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish organization that fights anti-semitism, says the attack: “is the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States.”…