On November 21th, The Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim Caucus of the California Faculty Association, a union organized to platform pro-Palestinian voices, hosted a webinar titled “On Weaponizing antisemitism.”
Rather than attempting to protect all students, the goal of the event was clearly to accuse pro-Israel and Jewish advocacy organizations of dishonestly using the widely embraced IHRA’s definition of antisemitism to silence Pro-Palestinian voices. They defended their claim by highlighting an observed rise in U.S. Islamophobia since the October 7th massacre. The panelist also ignored the major surge in antisemitic incidents in the US since Hamas’ massacre. Throughout the event, they refused to even condemn Hamas’ heinous attacks. They even went as far as denying the Jewish connection to the land of Israel, while expressing antisemitic conspiracies about Jewish power in America.
The moderator, Associate Professor Sang Hea Kil of San Jose State University’s justice studies department, held Israel entirely responsible for the current situation in the Gaza Strip, stating that “the Israeli regime is capitalizing on the October 7th military incursion to create another ‘Nakba’, by forcing 1.1 million Gazans to forcibly leave their land, while simultaneously bombing them and preventing their escape to safe passage.” However, this cannot be farther from the truth. Israel ordered the evacuation of the civilian population of Gaza City, in accordance with the rules of law. Furthermore, it was Hamas who had been preventing the civilian population from evacuating towards the designated safe zones. Even after the civilians have successfully evacuated, this didn’t stop Hamas from using these safe zones to attack Israeli civilians.
Ironically in her anti-Zionist diatribe, she highlighted the importance of the anthropological relationship between people and their land, narrow-mindedly comparing the Palestinians to the Native American tribes who lived near her college. For seemingly arbitrary reasons, she denied all evidence proving analogous connections Jews have to Israel. The contiguous Jewish presence in the disputed territories have existed long before the Islamic conquests that brought Arab culture and society to the region.
Later, in an attempt to frame the ongoing war in Gaza, she mentioned “the bombing of hospitals, schools, and UN shelters” as an example of the ongoing “Israeli aggression,” and is in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions. She completely ignored the exception outlined in the same document allowing the targeting of such buildings if they are being used militarily, which is exactly what Hamas has been doing for decades.
The UC Berkeley Professor of Philosophy and Gender studies, Judith Butler, argued that although antisemitism exists and needs to be combated, “we must [fight antisemitism] in an international framework that allows all of the forms of hatred to be understood in relationship to each other”. In other words, to properly address any form of hate crimes, it must take into consideration all forms of hate. An example given is how the recent marches against antisemitism in France are counterproductive, as they only address antisemitism. She considered the march counterproductive, as it didn’t address any form of hate, such as Islamophobia. This formula conveniently shields violent Arab anti-Zionism from rebuke, which clearly encompasses her actual motives here.
What she’s saying is that antisemitism can’t be legitimately addressed if the act of doing so can arguably be seen as a form of Islamophobia. Since she sweepingly declares that all accusations of Palestinian antisemitism contribute to anti-Palestinian prejudice, (which apparently is a subset of Islamophobia), such accusations are by definition illegitimate. This is how she justifies her rejection of the IHRA definition of antisemitism because of her false belief that grants immunity to Israel.
Hypocritically, while criticizing protests against antisemitism for not including islamophobia, she ignores the severe degrees of antisemitism in the Islamic or Palestinian societies, especially the extreme levels of support the Palestinians had for the October 7th massacre or the rampant antisemitism ingrained in Pro-Palestinian activism. This means they cannot be combated together, as doing so would actively promote and not combat antisemitism. So it seems to Butler, antisemitism cannot be addressed without including language about anti-Arab bigotry, but all Palestinian activists get a pass for their antisemitism.
Are these professors equating all Muslims with antisemitic jihadi terrorism? Do they really believe that Hamas’ genocidal goals are either inline or encapsulate Pro-Palestinian political agendas?
Not only are the opinions espoused by the webinar morally bankrupt and devoid of reality, but through their attempt to convince the public that Palestinians are justified when murdering Israelis, they also set the conditions to justify the murder of all Jews.
This article was originally published in the Algemeiner.