Academics Attend to Their Jew Diligence Timothy Cootes
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/the-universities/2024/03/academics-attend-to-their-jew-diligence/
Monash University lecturer Elliot Dolan-Evans, I’m pleased to report, is likely to have fewer enrolees in his courses next semester. The Herald Sun has highlighted the young academic’s recent social media activity, which, I suspect, is not part of any extracurricular load. On October 7, Dolan-Evans was joining in the general online giddiness regarding the success of Hamas’ pogrom, a revelation which has made Jewish students at Monash feel uncomfortable on campus, to put it mildly. The long-term reputational damage — fingers crossed — has now been done, and if Elliot Dolan-Evans has difficulty finding future students, we can certainly count that as a win.
Though I’m always pleased to see a public campaign of ridicule against our nation’s academics, fairness obliges me to note that Dolan-Evans’ social media transgressions are a bit tame, at least when set against those of some of his colleagues and co-thinkers. Sydney University professor of politics John Keane, for example, isn’t a mere liker of pro-terror posts; no, he takes the initiative and creates some of his own. On October 7, as the carnage got underway, Keane took to X to share an image of the green flags of Hamas. To be fair, he later attempted to clarify this post —which some might have found untimely — by haughtily denying he was a supporter of the terrorist organisation. He defended himself, for some reason, by writing that the flag was only used by Hamas’ military wing, and then he started banging on about its “sacred viridescence”, “polysemic” meanings, and some other academic wankery.
Keane’s University of Sydney colleague, linguistics lecturer Nick Riemer, on the other hand, is refreshingly forthright about his anti-Israel mania. “Resistance is the right of occupied people,” he declared, as the body count was rising at the Nova festival. “Unconditional solidarity with Gazans.” A little later, socialist student group Solidarity decided to bring at least the spirit of October 7 to the Sydney campus. The radicals began advertising an event called ‘Palestine: The Case for a Global Intifada’, with accompanying posters of Hamas bulldozers ripping through border fences. When the university cancelled the get-together on the reasonable assumption that it appeared to be terror-sympathetic, Riemer had one of his noisiest tantrums yet. Unembarrassed, he even openly published his letter to the vice-chancellor, where he whinged about this apparent affront to academic freedom.
Fahad Ali is another University of Sydney academic who lets his emotions get the better of him. Ali is a sessional lecturer whose Palestine Action Group has been the organising force behind the protests that befoul Sydney’s streets every week. At the notorious rally of October 9, when the euphoria associated with Hamas’ massacre was very much in the air, Ali whipped up the crowd by boasting of his own non-existent sympathy towards the murdered Israelis, in case anyone was wondering: “I’m not going to stand before you and shed tears over the settlers, the terrified settlers.” As if this wasn’t contemptible enough, Ali also seemed to look forward to the prospect of more bloodshed, so long as it’s in the service of the anti-Zionist struggle. “Colonialism,” he added, “will only be overcome with greater violence.”
I’d like to pick on Ali a bit more if I may, as he is a serial pest when it comes to these matters.
Quadrant readers may recall that he was one of the principal agitators trying to cancel Decadence, an Israel-sponsored performance at the Sydney Festival in 2022. Ali whined via the ABC and elsewhere that the event — which featured an Israeli choreographer’s dance routine — ought to be shut down immediately, as he thought it “created an unsafe environment for Palestinian artists taking part in the festival and audiences more broadly.” Fahad Ali seems to find Jewish dancers terrifying and dangerous, but swoons at the mere mention of anti-colonial violence against the Zionist enemy. After his loathsome speech, let us recall, Ali and his mob continued to the Opera House, where, in politer moments, the crowd chanted variations of “Where’s the Jews?” and “F*** the Jews.” I wonder, then, how far his concern for general safety really extends.
Another academic who makes Elliot Dolan-Evans seem comparatively well behaved is Randa Abdel-Fattah, a Future Fellow at Macquarie University. Dr Abdel-Fattah is arguably best known for her inability to reach the end of a sentence without some imprecation against the Zionists and settler-colonialism. Hamas, though, shouldn’t be considered a terrorist organisation at all, according to Abdel-Fattah, an alleged expert in Arab and Muslim social movements.
This probably explains the motivations behind her latest academic project — atrocity denial. The New York Times, the United Nations as well as Israel’s own investigators have presented a great deal of evidence against the Hamas psychopaths who raped and sexually assaulted Israeli women on October 7. This includes, let’s not forget, the testimony of the first responders who looked upon the victims’ bloodied and broken pelvises. Abdel-Fattah, our academic expert, still remains unconvinced, and she fulminates against these claims on social media and in her scholarship, where she dismisses all the evidence as — go on, have a guess — Zionist propaganda, of course.
Trust me, I could mention a few more professors in the habit of cheering on or excusing terroristic violence, but it might be easier just to add to this rogues’ gallery the 700 or so signatories to the Academics for Palestine letter published in Overland. This risible statement of solidarity begins with — come on, what else? — a lengthy acknowledgment of country, with all the usual blather about the unceded land and whatnot. Yet it doesn’t bother to acknowledge the Israeli victims or say a bad word about Hamas or call for the release of the hostages. It’s almost as if those things aren’t important at all to the highly educated idiots at our institutions of learning. On the day after Hamas is destroyed, when the war is over, it’s slightly cheering to think of how sooky all these people will be. Who knows? They may even find new ways to beclown themselves.
In the meantime, though, it would be nice to see a few more journalistic outlets taking on the academic class. Keane, Riemer, Ali et al are some preliminary sources to start with, but the reading list is really getting quite lengthy. Elliot Dolan-Evans, as I hope to have shown, doesn’t deserve to remain in ignominy all by himself.
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