UPDATE
The Irish Times has gone even further with its sympathy for Salaita, with an article on comments he made at the conference on academic freedom and boycotting Israel. He stated that criticizing Israel amounts to a “lifetime punishment” in the US, and that he did not regret his tweets that cost him a job.
This time the writer, Ronan McGreevy does mention one of the particularly nasty ones, reporting:
He also tweeted after three Israeli teenagers went missing: “You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the f***ing West Bank settlers would go missing”.
But readers would have no idea that the teenagers had actually been kidnapped and murdered by Hamas members – not even when McGreevy mentions them again, in the last paragraph:
Dr Salaita defended the tweet he sent about the missing Israeli teenagers who were later found dead. He said when he wrote about wishing the settlers would go missing, he was not advocating their kidnapping or murder. Instead, he was advocating that the settlers leave Palestinian lands.
They were not just mysteriously found dead. McGreevy is so fixated with presenting Salaita’s defense, he can’t even report what happened, except for Salaita’s own vague and meaningless reference.
Salaita said:
As long as Israel continues to take Palestinian land and continues its systematic programme of ethnic cleansing, I will not compromise in my critique of the state of Israel. When Israel goes on a killing spree as it did in 2014, we condemn it and that’s what I did in the summer of 2014.
So he lies about Israel taking Palestinian land, lies about ethnic cleansing, and lies about the Gaza conflict being a one-sided “killing spree” by Israel. Exactly how can lies about Israel that demonize the Jewish state, delegitimize its right to exist, and deny both its history and right to self defense, constitute mere critique and condemnation? This is the exact hate-fueled propaganda and incitement that Palestinians are fed by their media and leaders, that leads directly to bloodshed and terrorism.
And yet the Irish Times is portraying Salaita as a victim.
The Irish Times appears to have forgotten that its role is to report the news. Instead it opts to twist the facts to fit its own agenda, promote a conference on boycotting Israel, and play advocate for its keynote speaker. The paper reports:
An academic who had an offer of a post withdrawn after a series of tweets protesting at the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2014 is to speak at a conference in Trinity College Dublin next week.
By describing the 2014 Gaza war as an “Israeli invasion,” the Irish Times is already taking sides, as well as demonstrating sympathy for the academic, a Palestinian-American, who it clearly sees as unfairly punished for protesting against Israel’s inhumane “invasion.”
The article continues:
Prof Steven Salaita was due to take up a position as an associate professor in the University of Illinois’s American Indian Studies Programme in August 2014.
The offer was withdrawn following a review of tweets sent by Prof Salaita which included “If you’re defending #Israel right now you’re an awful human being” and “If Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised?”
It followed the Israeli invasion of Gaza in July 2014 known as Operation Protective Edge which had the stated mission of preventing rockets being launched into Israel. The UNHCR estimates that more than 2,200 Palestinians were killed, including 1,462 civilians, during seven weeks of conflict.
Well, who wouldn’t sympathize with Salaita after reading that?
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The Irish Times conveniently leaves out facts that don’t quite fit its narrative here. Salaita’s job offer was rescinded because the University of Illinois’s trustees, faculty members, students and donors contended that his tweets were anti-Semitic, hate-filled messages that would promote a climate of intimidation for student supporters of Israel.
Regarding Operation Protective Edge, the article omits the events that preceded the war: Hamas members’ brutal kidnap and murder of three Israeli teenage boys on their way home from school, that left the country reeling. The Irish Times may have ignored it, but Salaita didn’t at the time, with an unspeakably vile and callous tweet:
You may be too refined to say it, but I'm not: I wish all the fucking West Bank settlers would go missing.
— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) June 20, 2014
The article references Palestinian casualty figures but leaves out all of the relevant context. Hamas fired thousands of rockets into Israel, built attack tunnels under the Gaza border to infiltrate into Israel, and use Palestinians as human shields, hoping their deaths would put international pressure on Israel to stop trying to defend itself.
The Irish Times deems all of this irrelevant and adopts the same narrative as Salaita, suggesting Israel’s attacks on Hamas targets are unfounded, and perhaps even a pretext for wanting to murder innocent Palestinians.
Other tweets by Salaita at the time both downplayed and justified anti-Semitism when directed at the Jewish state, it’s right to self-defense, and existence – referring to Israel as a “colonial power.”
This is not a conflict between #Israel and "Hamas."
It's a struggle by an Indigenous people against a colonial power.#Gaza #FreePalestine
— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) July 17, 2014
The logic of "antisemitism" deployed by Zionists, if applied in principle, would make pretty much everybody not a sociopath "antisemitic."
— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) July 17, 2014
Zionists: transforming "antisemitism" from something horrible into something honorable since 1948.#Gaza #FreePalestine
— Steven Salaita (@stevesalaita) July 20, 2014
So naturally, Salaita is the perfect choice to be keynote speaker at the “Freedom of Speech and Higher Education: the Case of the Academic Boycott of Israel conference,” which bizarrely claims to also be about academic freedom. Presumably about freedom for academics who’ve posted anti-Semitic tweets, but not for academics from the Jewish state.
And it’s only natural that the Irish Times would promote a conference singling out the Jewish state for boycotts – after all it previously published what was essentially a guide on how people can boycott Israeli goods. The Irish Times would better serve and inform its readers though by reporting the truth to them, instead of feeding them agenda-driven narratives.
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