RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.newenglishreview.org/georgetown-teams-with-islamist-magazine-to-whitewash-hamas-deride-israeli-deaths/

Israel’s current military campaign to destroy Hamas in the Gaza Strip exhibits “blood lust,” stated Mouin Rabbani, coeditor of the Arab Studies Institute’s (ASI) Islamist webzine Jadaliyya, during a recent Georgetown University presentation. Sponsored by Georgetown’s Saudi-established Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding (ACMCU), “Israel-Gaza War: A Conversation with Mouin Rabbani” presented Rabbani’s Gaza ravings as fact.

As was visible in the event video, Rabbani addressed an audience in the conference room of Georgetown’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS), another event sponsor with faculty that share his anti-Israel views. ACMCU’s new director, Rabbani’s fellow Israel-conspiracy-monger Nader Hashemi, moderated. The Qatari-affiliated Democracy in the Arab World Now (DAWN) think tank, where Hashemi is listed as an expert, also sponsored Rabbani’s talk.

Rabbani described as pure revenge killings Israel’s rooting out of Hamas jihadists from their urban, largely underground hideouts following Hamas’s October 7 atrocities in Israel. “Israeli public opinion was so outraged” that “Israeli leadership is kind of trying to make good on this by ensuring that many more Palestinians are killed than Israelis were killed on October 7,” he stated. “Flattening entire neighborhoods” is not “in any way significantly degrading actual military capabilities,” he added, as if Israel could avoid harming civilians whom Hamas deliberately exploits as human shields. Israel, he said, is committing “systematic war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

Palestinians suffering under Israel’s self-defense actions, not the Jewish and other Israeli citizens butchered by Hamas’s October 7 onslaught, were to Rabbani as the real victims. He bemoaned the “demonization and delegitimization and dehumanization and outright repression of pro-Palestinian sentiment.” He complained of “selective outrage” when comparing Palestinian civilian deaths in combat, which Israel strives hard to avoid, with the Israelis mercilessly targeted by Hamas terror.

“When Palestinians are killed, we take an analytical approach; when Israelis are killed, the criteria is morality,” Rabbani stated. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby “broke down on TV like a baby” after having examined images of Hamas’s ravaged victims, Rabbani callously noted, “a blubbering baby, for God’s sake.” Yet when Kirby later answered questions about civilian casualties from Israeli military operations, “all of a sudden he’s a tough guy, war is hell, civilians die, get over it. Ok, are you Jekyll or Hyde?” Rabbani sneered.

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One need look no further than my hometown of Chappaqua, New York and its public school district (CCSD) to better understand why there has been a spike of antisemitism on our college campuses and in communities across the country following Hamas’s October 7 terrorist attack against Israel.  As CCSD’s Superintendent of Schools, Christine Ackerman has made clear, when it comes to teaching Middle East history and confronting the unprecedented spike of antisemitism, CCSD is a “safe space” for antisemitism, moral equivalence, and fact free history. 

Recently, 450 residents of Chappaqua whose children either attend or have attended the town’s public schools, sent a letter to the CCSD asking it to address the alarming rise of antisemitic incidents in the Chappaqua schools and the scourge of anti-Jewish hatred in the community in the wake of “the horrific massacre in Israel on October 7” (attached, although the names of the signatories are redacted for confidentiality).  In response, CCSD put together a Webinar it claimed was designed to address the parents’ concerns. 

Following the Webinar, Ackerman sent a letter to the CCSD community “to share the feedback…that we’ve received from the recent Middle East webinar and BOE meeting public comment period, along with our proposed plan to address the concerns and questions raised by parents.” (The full text of Ackerman’s letter follows this essay below).  The letter reads like a dystopian litany of Orwellian Newspeak. 

It is difficult to know if Ackerman is obtuse, ignorant, or malevolent.  Whichever it is, she must resign or be fired immediately.  She is not qualified to have any role in educating our children and her salary is waste of my tax dollars. 

Not once does she mention the word “antisemitism” or the date October 7 in text of her letter.  It is not until she itemizes the “Middle East Webinar & Community Feedback” that the word  “antisemitism” is mentioned.  By relegating “antisemitism” to the feedback and not raising it as a concern in the body of her letter, she makes clear that the rise in antisemitism is a concern she does not share.  For her, this is merely an exercise in quieting some unhappy taxpayers. 

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/more_antisemitism_from_columbia_u.html

Columbia University Apartheid Divest has issued a statement that reads:

“Columbia University Apartheid Divest is a coalition of student organizations that see Palestine as the vanguard for our collective liberation.” Good, please have your female and LGBT members go over to Gaza and see just how “liberated” they are in that environment.
“Israel is bombing hospitals, schools, and homes while cutting off food, water, medicine, and electricity to the more than two million Palestinians in Gaza, half of whom are children.” Hospitals, schools, and homes lose their protected status under the Geneva and Hague Conventions when used for military purposes. This means that Apartheid Divest is intentionally trying to obfuscate Hamas’ war crimes.
“We have previously refused to focus on concerns pertaining to free speech, academic freedom, and student safety on campus, as they distract from Israel’s actively committing genocide and ethnic cleansing.” This is an application of Joseph Goebbels’ advice to accuse the other side of that which your own side is guilty, as the only genocide was the one attempted by Hamas on October 7.

Here is the list of student organizations that signed this material. Although the names of the student officers are not available, those of the faculty advisors are. If those advisors are not comfortable with the content of this letter, they are free to distance themselves from the organizations in question.