UPDATE: Roger Waters was reportedly banned from entering the University of Pennsylvania campus in response to his antisemitism and was forced to make a virtual appearance.
Despite what the name suggests, the upcoming “Palestine Writes Literature Festival” at the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) appears to have less to do with books and more to do with hating Jews, judging by its list of guest speakers.
Among those invited to address attendees are Roger Waters, the Pink Floyd musician who doesn’t think it’s antisemitic to don a Nazi-style uniform while goose-stepping on stage, and Palestinian activist Noura Erakat, who has compared Zionism to Nazism and thinks Israel shouldn’t exist.
While fired CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill will also be in attendance and he has actually authored several books, we do not expect many nuggets of wisdom from a man who suggested in his 2021 tome, ‘Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics’ that Jews, Muslims and Christians had coexisted in harmony for centuries in the Middle East before the State of Israel ruined everything.
Apparently, Lamont Hill’s education about the Middle East didn’t extend to learning about things like “The Farhud,” which was the unprovoked massacre of Jewish men, women and children in Iraq in 1941, or the “Jizya,” otherwise known as a special tax that was historically levied on Christians and Jews living in Muslim-majority countries.
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As if inviting a who’s who of antisemites wasn’t bad enough, the UPenn Palestinian festival seems also to have been designed to coincide with the Jewish High Holiday period, with the event announced on Rosh Hashanah and scheduled to take place on Judaism’s holiest day Yom Kippur — a fact that was criticized by Jewish leaders who noted that such timing reduces the likelihood of Jewish students protesting against it.
ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt described the decision to host the event as “mind-boggling” at a time when antisemitism has reached an “indisputably historic level.” US House Representative Josh Gottheimer, a New Jersey Democrat and UPenn alum, sent a letter to the college condemning the event in which he warned that “if the university’s goal is to promote mutual understanding and bring students together, it will fail so long as antisemites and anti-Israel advocates are given a platform to spew hatred.”
This letter by @PalestineWrites needs to be seen to be believed https://t.co/1fgVOvjrHT
— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) September 19, 2023
However, UPenn’s Palestinian literature fair appears to be just the latest in anti-Israel events on US college campuses that have been suspiciously timetabled to clash with Jewish holy days.
Harvard University, for example, plays host to something called “Israel Apartheid Week” — an annual antisemitism extravaganza in which participants have previously celebrated Palestinian terrorists and includes the installation of an “apartheid wall” featuring anti-Israel propaganda.
Last year, the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee decided the hate fest should take place from April 18 to 22, with the apartheid wall installation going up on Sunday, April 17. Remember what started on April 15 and finished a week later on the 23rd? Passover.
Campus anti-Israel group Students for Justice in Palestine at UC Riverside also thought nothing of planning its own apartheid wall for May 24 this year — coincidentally, just hours before the start of Shavuot. The wall featured charming imagery such as a solemn-looking Leila Khaled, the PFLP terrorist plane hijacker, clutching an automatic weapon.
Other colleges that have held anti-Israel events during Jewish holidays include Benedictine University, Boston University, Florida International University, Rutgers University and UC-Berkeley.
Nearly 10 years ago, the Doctoral Students Council (DSC) at CUNY, the New York institution whose law school has invited antisemites to address its graduating class for the last two years, backed out of holding a vote on whether to endorse the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement on the Jewish Sabbath following an outcry that it would exclude many Jewish students from casting their ballot.
We doubt if CUNY or any other institution would show the same consideration today.
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Image creit: Joe Piette via Flickr
