American Historical Association Members Condemn Israel for ‘Scholasticide’

In 1927, the French writer Julien Benda published a once-famous book, Le trahison des clercs, or “The Betrayal of the Intellectuals,” about the failure of France’ s intellectual class to uphold the values of the Enlightenment. Another betrayal by intellectuals has just been exhibited on this side of the Atlantic by members of the American Historical Association (AHA). More on this unhappy episode, as yet incomplete, can be found here: “America’s historians commit ‘historicide’ – opinion,” by Gil Troy, Jerusalem Post, January 15, 2025:

The American Historical Association (AHA), “the largest membership association of historians in the world” with 10,500 members, is close to betraying its core function and many of its members.

Participants at its annual meeting voted 428 to 88 to condemn Israel for committing “scholasticide,” a made-up word describing Israel’s supposedly “intentional effort to comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system.” The resolution lacks the words “October,” “7,” and “Hamas,” while somehow overlooking the terrorists who hide in Gaza’s educational institutions.

Of its 10,500 members of the AHA, only 516 members — about 5% — bothered to vote at all, but of those who did, 80% voted in favor of the resolution that condemns Israel for attempting to “comprehensively destroy the Palestinian education system.” There was no mention in the resolution of what brought about the IDF attacks in Gaza in the first place — no mention that 6,000 members of Hamas, along with hundreds of ordinary Gazans who wanted to join in the homicidal fun — had smashed into Israel on October 7, 2023, and proceeded to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israelis, and take another 251 back to Gaza. Apparently what Hamas did to start the war doesn’t matter in the eyes of those determined to blacken the image of the Jewish state; they want us to believe that; it’s the beastly Israelis, apparently determined to prevent little Palestinian children from being educated, who alone deserve the AHA’s condemnation.

The AHA’s council can block the resolution – unless a full membership vote ratifies it. If they succeed, the academic intifadists pushing this sloppy, ahistorical, resolution will have committed “historicide,” my term for trying to kill a people’s history – or so distorting history as to kill the truth….

The resolution uses historical sorcery – where you start the story shapes your conclusion. Had the resolution started with Hamas’s anti-Zionist, Jew-hating, genocidal charter, October 7, Hamas’s undemocratic takeover of Gaza, or its decision to use Gaza as a launching pad to try killing Jews, it could have generated a pro-Israel or balanced statement. (And, predictably, last year’s meeting ignored Hamas’s massacre just weeks earlier.)

Instead, the resolution begins: “Whereas the US government has underwritten the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) campaign in Gaza with over $12.5 billion in military aid between October 2023 and June 2024” – ignoring why America armed Israel. It adds: “Whereas that campaign, beyond causing massive death and injury to Palestinian civilians and the collapse of basic life structures, has effectively obliterated Gaza’s education system….” By forgetting that historians’ favorite “text” is context, the Big Lie emerges: while causing “massive death and injury,” Big Bad Israel targets “Gaza’s education system,” too….

The AHA resolution ignores the reason for the large increase in American military aid to Israel that began in October 2023 and has continued since then. In October 2023, both Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon had attacked Israeli civilian targets, and the Jewish state has been at war with them, to defend its people, ever since. The two terror groups were soon followed by the Houthis in Yemen, who over the past 15 months have attacked both Israeli cities, and international shipping, with ballistic and cruise missiles and drones.

Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis — proxies of Iran — started all three of the wars Israel has recently been compelled to fight in the region. The AHA resolution not only fails to mention Hamas, but also Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. As for the claim that Israel has deliberately been destroying the Palestinian educational system, it is nonsense. In Judea and Samaria (a/k/a the West Bank), there have been attacks not on schools, but on school buildings that have been taken over by Hamas, where it hides both its fighters and its weapons, and positions its command-and-control centers. A school building put to such use is no longer a school, and need not receive the protections that would ordinarily be afforded it. The real “scholasticide” in Gaza is the result of Hamas’ decision to take over school buildings, just as it has done with other civilian structures, including hospitals, mosques, apartment buildings, and offices.

After detailing the destruction evil Israel wrought, the resolution adds a final distortion: “The IDF’s repeated violent displacements of Gaza’s people… will extinguish the future study of Palestinian history.” This accusation exposes these fanatics as being terrible forecasters, not just dogmatic academics and sloppy analysts. As Israel-bashing and Palestine-worship became popular extracurricular activities on campus, interest in classes about Palestinian history has spiked. Columbia University, in all its wisdom, is allowing an outspoken Palestinian anti-Zionist to teach a course on Zionism – another assault on scholarly norms the AHA overlooks.

The IDF makes tremendous efforts to save the lives of civilians in Gaza by dropping millions of leaflets, sending millions of text messages, and making millions of robocalls, all in order to warn those civilians away from areas about to be targeted. In what conceivable way does that effort to warn civilians “extinguish the future study of Palestinian history”? The AHA resolution does not explain. And anecdotally, I can testify that the war in Gaza has led to a noticeable upsurge in academic positions for those whose subject is “Palestinian history.” It’s the latest campus fad.

The obsession with Israel that led a handful of pro-Hamas activists in the AHA to orchestrate the passage of this resolution denouncing Israel for a so-called “scholasticide” — the destruction of Gaza’s “educational system” — is based on a refusal to recognize the difference between a functioning school and a school building that is no longer a school, but rather, a terrorist outpost. This failure is deeply disturbing. There are saner heads at the AHA. Only 428 of its 10,500 members voted for this intolerable resolution. But that was enough, as only a total of 516 members bothered to vote at all.. Those who oppose the resolution on the AHA’s governing council should now block the resolution. The supporters of it could then organize a referendum on the resolution, in which all 10,500 members could take part. The outcome of that vote will tell us just how far the mental and moral decay has spread among our professional historians.