“Jews could not be merely a religion in the language of the day if they were going to make claims for a nation state. . . . Jewish scholars turned to race science in order to produce their own understanding of what they referred to as the Jewish Question. . . . That version of racial thought, of Jewish self-racialization . . . was one powerful strand of Zionist thinking.”
The below piece was written by Mara Schiffren for Campus Watch and describes a recent panel academic attack against Israel at Columbia University. (Ho hum) It is notable not for being a dime-a-dozen academic attack on Israel, but for the fact that it linked the Palestinian cause and US issues like Ferguson, Missouri, and- featured a Columbia professor making a number of anti-Jewish claims that can only be described as repugnant.
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/15506
Where did this professor get her talking points from the writing of Julius Streicher in Der Stuermer? This is Peoples’ Exhibit A showing that the campaign against Israel is, indeed, motivated by rank anti-Jew hatred.
I am also somewhat familiar with one of the panelists, Robin Kelley of UCLA. Though Israel and the Middle East is not his academic expertise, he is a regular activist on behalf of the Palestinians. I caught his act a couple of years ago at UC Irvine when he showed up on a panel with UCI professor of cartoons, Sohail Daulatzai, a character who writes and speaks extensively on anti-Israel and anti-US themes. (I am not talking behind his back. I have told him what I think about his writing to his face. See above link)
Here is one jewel that Kelley told his audience:
“Activists in the streets of Ferguson, in New York City, in L.A. . . . drew connections between Israeli racialized violence in the name of security and the U.S. . . . It wasn’t simply Ferguson to Gaza; it was also drawing connections to drone strikes abroad, and the killing of black men and women and transgendered people at the hands of police.”
Transgendered people now, huh?
