American Association of University Professors Calls On Israel to Leave Hamas Standing

Of course, that’s not how the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) endorsement of the coalition labor unions calling for a “ceasefire in Gaza” was worded. But this is what the effect of a “ceasefire in Gaza” would be. What this means, if understood correctly, is that the fighting would stop, and the IDF would withdraw from the Strip, before it had completed its task of dismantling Hamas. That would be widely seen as a victory for Hamas: it leaders would boast of how they were “still standing” despite the IDF’s months-long campaign against it.

More on this AAUP resolution can be found here: “‘Unconscionable’: Major Academic Association Endorses Call for Ceasefire in Gaza,” by Dion J. Pierre, Algemeiner, February 14, 2024:

The American Association of University Professors (AAUP), an academic professional organization, endorsed a labor union coalition’s call for a ceasefire in Gaza on Wednesday, according to Inside Higher Ed.

“We express our solidarity with all workers and our common desire for peace in Palestine and Israel, and we call on President Joe Biden and Congress to push for an immediate ceasefire and end to the siege in Gaza,” says the statement AAUP endorsed. “We cannot bomb our way to peace. We also condemn any hate crimes against Muslims, Jews, or anyone else.”

An “immediate ceasefire” means Hamas will be left badly bruised but not “destroyed” as a fighting force and threat to Israel. That will be interpreted by Arabs and Muslims, and many others, as a “victory” for Hamas. As for the call to “end the siege in Gaza,” the AAUP is apparently unaware that there is no longer any “siege in Gaza”; the Gazans are now the favored recipient of humanitarian aid, though there are many other peoples in Africa and Asia at least as needy; that aid is brought daily by hundreds of trucks full of humanitarian aid — food, medicine, and fuel — that enter Gaza at the Rafah Crossing on the border with Egypt every day. The real culprit in the misallocation of that aid is Hamas itself; its operatives steal much of the aid meant for all Gazans, and distribute it to their own members.

Despite pressing for a ceasefire in Israel’s war with Hamas — a measure which pro-Israel activists have criticized for its potential to forestall eradicating Hamas from the Palestinian territory — the statement also called for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza. It also urged that “water, fuel, and food” be transported to Gaza without restrictions.

There was no need for the AAUP statement to call for “water, fuel and food” to be transported to Gaza; supplies of all three have been entering Gaza for months. This quite unnecessary and indeed, insulting, call is akin to that by Biden, warning the IDF to take all possible measures to protect civilians when it enters Rafah. But that’s exactly what the IDF has been doing all along, with its multifarious methods of warning civilians away from places about to be targeted.

“Both Hamas and Israel must adhere to standards of international law and Geneva Convention rules of warfare concerning the welfare and security of civilians,” it continued. “The cycle of violence must stop so that negotiations for an enduring peace proceed.”

The IDF adheres scrupulously to international law in its attempts to minimize civilian casualties, even to the extent of providing warnings of impending attacks that are heard, and acted on, by Hamas operatives as well. No other army in the world expends as much effort to save the lives of civilians, even if it means letting enemy soldiers to escape. The result is that the ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths in Gaza is 4:3, an unheard-of ratio never obtained by any army in modern history. The UN, for example, has said that in all the wars since World War II, the civilian-to-combatant ratio of deaths is 9:1; the Americans in Afghanistan managed to lower that ratio to 4:1 and in Iraq to 3:1. But these are still far above what the IDF has managed to achieve in Gaza — an achievement that not a single major media outlet has reported on.

Founded in 1915 by John Dewey and Arthur Oncken Lovejoy, the American Association of University Professors comprises over 370,000 members from higher education institutions across the US. Once regarded as a bulwark against attempts to politicize higher education, it has in recent years been disparaged — by nonprofits such as the National Association of Scholars (NAS), for example — for allegedly becoming a shamelessly partisan advocacy group for the far-left.

John Dewey and Arthur Lovejoy wanted to prevent the politicization of higher education. But in recent decades the AAUP has done just the opposite, staking out positions on domestic politics that have nothing to do with their task as teachers and researchers. Now the AAUP has gone further, taking sides in a foreign conflict, and thereby ignoring its historic reason for being which was to keep political positions out of the country’s campuses.

Following Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, two-and-a-half weeks passed before the AAUP commented on the ensuing conflict between Israel and Hamas, and when it did, the group said nothing about the terrorist group’s atrocities, instead discussing the importance of academic freedom. At the time, dozens of professors were denounced for cheering Hamas’ violence and encouraging extreme anti-Zionist demonstrations in which masses of students and faculty called for the elimination of the Jewish state “from the river to the sea,” which is widely considered genocidal….

It took the AAUP two and a half weeks to comment on the Israel-Hamas War, and it said nothing about the atrocities committed by Hamas operatives on October 7. Not a word. But it did come out for “academic freedom,” prompted by worries that many professors who celebrated Hamas’ atrocities, and encouraged students on their campuses to protest against the “colonial-settler-apartheid-genocidal state” of Israel, might be punished for such acts. The AAUP saw nothing wrong with its members praising those who on October 7 beheaded babies, burned children alive, raped, tortured, and mutilated young girls, sliced off the breasts of women gouged out the eyes and cut off the genitalia of men, murdered parents in front of their children and children in front of their parents. It wanted to be sure that universities did not punish faculty members who praised those atrocities. A nauseating stance, and one that overlooks the fact that private universities have every right to regulate, or ban, offensive speech on their campuses as they see fit.

The AAUP is now a far left group, full of anti-Israel animus and, in light of its rejection of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, at best indifferent to, and at most supportive of, the antisemitism now found on campuses across this benighted land, in demonstrations and in protest marches, where chants of “from the river to the sea/Palestine shall be free” and “Stop the genocide!” are heard, in the shouting down and shutting up of Israeli and Jewish speakers, in the attempt to physically intimidate Jewish students.

The AAUP should return to its proper role, as a protector of professors’ rights and wellbeing, and not take an institutional position on political matters. Shoemakers, stick to your last!