There has been more hair-raising antisemitism on an American campus, this time at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), and it originates not with the students, but with the faculty from departments that owe their very existence to the DEI madness. These are the Department of Latina/Latino Studies, the Department of Asian American Studies, and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies. The faculty members in those three departments posted a letter online deploring Israel’s attempts to defend itself against Hamas, accusing the tiny Jewish state of “genocide and occupation of Palestine.” But the administration, apparently realizing that there would be pushback, given the new willingness of Jews, Israelis, and others who support the fight against the Hamas murderers, to fight back against this antisemitic nonsense on campuses, took down the post. They could see what happened to President Liz Magill of the University of Pennsylvania and President Claudine Gay of Harvard, after their unsatisfactory responses — “it all depends on the context” — to a question about whether accusing Israel of genocide violated the codes of conduct at their institutions. They both lost their jobs, in large part, because they proved incapable of agreeing with Congresswoman Elise Stefanik that antisemitic bullying and harassment of Jews on campus violated their schools’ codes of conduct.
More on the antisemitic letter, posted by the Latina/Latino Studies Department at the University of Illinois, accusing Israel of “genocide,” and its subsequent disappearance, can be found here: “University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Academic Department Deletes Letter to Students Accusing Israel of ‘Genocide,’” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, January 5, 2024:
We are committed to critical if sometimes difficult conversations about the historical context of Israel’s ongoing genocide and occupation of Palestine,” said the letter, posted on Dec. 18 and cosigned by the Department of Asian American Studies and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies.
How easily they toss off that claim of Israeli “genocide.” Do these clowns really believe this? Do they know that in 1967, when Israel took possession of Gaza, its Arab population was 410,000, and in 2005, when every last Israeli had been pulled out of the Strip, that population had grown more than threefold, to 1.3 million? Do they know that when Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank) came into Israel’s possession after the Six-Day War, the Arab population was 600,000 and today is three million, a fivefold increase? Genocide? What genocide?
And during this war in Gaza, the only genocidal impulse has been that displayed by Hamas operatives on October 7. That is when they butchered babies, burned children alive, gang-raped, tortured, and murdered girls, sliced the breasts from women and threw them about for fun, gouged out the eyes and cut off the genitalia of men, murdered children in front of their parents, and parents in front of their children. Has the IDF ever done anything remotely like this, either during the three major wars it was forced to fight to ensure the survival of the state, in 1948, 1967, and 1973, or during its half-dozen campaigns against terrorists to stop their killing Israeli civilians? We all know the answer to that. In the current Gaza War, the IDF has made tremendous efforts to warn civilians away from targeted areas to safer spaces. Just before beginning its campaign in northern Gaza, the IDF dropped 1.5 million leaflets, warning Palestinians to leave the north and to head south, beyond the Wadi Gaza. Later, when the IDF turned most of its attention to southern Gaza, it both dropped leaflets and emailed messages, containing maps of southern Gaza, showing exactly which areas the IDF was not going to attack, so that it would be safe to remain in, or move to, them. And the same warnings were given to Palestinians by the IDF, telling them to leave buildings — schools, apartment buildings, mosques — that were about to be targeted, through messaging, telephoning, and the “knock-on-the-roof” technique.
“We affirm the value of Palestinian life, and we know a free Palestine is only possible through queer, racial, gender, reproductive, and environmental justice. We offer our classrooms as a space for you to take refuge and find the strength to change the world together,” it continued, while suggesting that Israel’s existence fosters anti-Black racism.
You “affirm the value of Palestinian life.” And what about Israeli life? What’s keeping you faculty members at the UIUC from affirming “the value of Palestinian and Israeli life”? And why do you feel the need to “affirm the value of Palestinian life”? Are you implying that the IDF does not value it, when the IDF makes such tremendous efforts to preserve the lives of Palestinian civilians, while Hamas tries to increase the numbers of dead Palestinians?
Bexarkat says
Hispanics historically have had an increasingly negativity toward Jews specifically. Jews were frequently blamed for everything from the original sin of Deicide to the Gulf Wars of the 20th century. This letter is simply a byproduct of their growing antisemitism and has much less to do with their perceived “genocide and occupation.”
Keith O says
Well, lets look at the high levels of pointlessness in the departments involved. Hmmm, can anyone else see a pattern forming here?
Maybe the best thing the university can do is to delete not just the anti-Semitic drivel but the departments and so called professors who get paid for warping the brains of the youth.