A university in Spain canceled a course that would have examined comparisons between the Auschwitz concentration camp and the Gaza Strip after facing backlash from a local pro-Israel group.
The University of Santiago de Compostela’s philosophy faculty organized the course titled “Auschwitz/Gaza: A testing ground for comparative literature,” according to Action and Communication on the Middle East (ACOM), a Spanish organization that promotes relations between Israel and Spain.
“They did not choose any other place or event, but precisely the location where more than a million people were murdered, with the intention of criminalizing, dehumanizing and questioning the legitimacy of Israel, looking to extend a similarity between the Jewish state and Nazi Germany, a behavior defined as anti-Semitic in the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism officially adopted by Spain,” said ACOM.
“We celebrate that the university has rectified—eliminating from its academic offer a course designed only from the utmost clumsiness, fierce sectarianism and a shameless sense of impunity—a true enormity that trivializes the Holocaust, even awarding academic credits for it,” said the organization.