Source: Legal Insurrection
By Bryan Jacoutot
This blog has often highlighted the pervasive anti-Israel sentiments present in the higher education system of this country.
Last month, Cornell Professor of Physics, Yuval Grossman, wrote a guest post here regarding a pro-Palestinian Cornell student group attempting to orchestrate a boycott against a Technion-Cornell collaborative project. Technion is the oldest and most prestigious technical university in Israel, and Professor Grossman rightly called the effort to boycott the project an “attempt to make Israel illegitimate.”
Not to be limited to the traditionally liberal institutions of the Ivy League, the higher education “anti-Israel syndrome” extends south to a university located in northwest Atlanta. The Kennesaw State University Sentinel recently ran an article entitled, “Israel, a beacon of humanity or propaganda?” The question was obviously rhetorical.
The article took aim at an event known as “Israel Fest,” an effort by Jewish student organizations to educate and promote awareness of Israel on campus. The article derided the event as “a bold exercise in whitewashing Israel of its horrendous human rights record.” Additionally, the article called the event a “farce,” attempting “to persuade [students] of Israel’s benevolent role in the international community.”
Beyond recognizing the blatant and one sided anti-Israel nature of the article as a whole, it is yet another poignant example of the poor state of academia today. The modern trend of higher education institutions attempting to delegitimize Israel is palpable, and stretches beyond Ivy League universities like Harvard and Cornell, into what many would consider the heart of conservative territory.
Not all is lost however. The President of Hillel, one of the Jewish student organizations that sponsors “Israel Fest,” responded to the article with a piece of her own which ran in the “Letters to the Editor” section of the Kennesaw State University Sentinel. Additionally, the comments section of the original article was almost uniformly in disagreement with the author.
However, it begs the question, why was this article even published? It seems as though, even in the collegiate media, it is the extremist few forcing their opinions on the largely silent majority. From the spires of the Ivy League to the dixie land universities, it continues to be our job to push back against false narratives attempting override fact, with one-sided and unsubstantiated opinion.
We should remember that when we’re talking about a “horrendous human rights record,” this is what the world considers “peace” for Israel:
