Israel-Basher Picked to Speak on Israel and Zionism

A prominent institute for the study of antisemitism has once again chosen a professor who is hostile to Israel and Zionists to deliver a lecture about Israel and Zionists.

The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, based at the University of London, has announced a December 3 online program about “Aliya, Antisemitism, and U.S. Zionism in the World,” featuring Doug Rossinow, a professor in Minnesota who has been harshly attacking Israel for more than twenty years.

In July 2002, Palestinian Arab terrorists massacred nine Israeli civilians on a bus near the town of Immanuel. Days later, Rossinow and fellow-extremists signed a large advertisement in the New York Times declaring that “both the Israeli and Palestinian peoples have suffered great wrongs at the hands of the other.”

Rossinow and his friends demanded in their advertisement that Israel return to the indefensible, nine-miles-wide pre-1967 lines, and they called for the mass “evacuation” (expulsion) of all Jews from the areas beyond those lines—meaning Judea, Samaria, the Old City of Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights.

Rossinow’s group also urged the U.S. government to use “our massive economic and military support” as “leverage” to force Israel to agree to those demands. They even asserted that “foreign troops may well be required to enforce [the terms], and they must be prepared to accept casualties.” Demanding that American and other soldiers give their lives in order to force Israel to its knees is a remarkable position to take, to put it mildly.

Over the years, Rossinow has participated in a number of public attacks on Israel.

In 2014, when Israel struck back at Hamas terrorists in Gaza, Rossinow joined an open letter denouncing Israel for “the ongoing carnage in Gaza” and “killing and wounding so many Palestinian children.” Rossinow and company also called for halting U.S. military aid to Israel.

In 2016, Rossinow signed a petition to the American Historical Association, falsely accusing Israel of “impeding instruction at Palestinian institutions of higher learning.” (They were referring to the fact that Israel has security checkpoints through which potential suicide bombers have to pass on their way to campus. So inconvenient!)

Rossinow seems to have some kind of obsession with AIPAC, which is noteworthy since his talk for the Birkbeck Institute on December 3 will be dealing with American Zionists.

In two articles that he authored in 2018, Rossinow denigrated the “swaggering” AIPAC, declaring it was “born of violence and conflict” and “born in awful knowledge.” He wrote that AIPAC was “formed to spin positive PR after Israeli atrocities” and “to deny, obscure, or downplay the piercing impact” of Israeli actions. And he added this vicious comment: “Violence by the Israeli state against Palestinians…lies like a hard stone gnarled in the roots of the Israel lobby.”

Rossinow’s upcoming talk isn’t the first time that the Birkbeck Institute has turned to a harsh critic of Israel to lecture about Israel. Last June, it organized a seminar by Harvard professor Derek Penslar, who has publicly accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” and “Jewish supremacism.” Penslar was the person Birkbeck decided would be most qualified to lecture on Israel’s 1948 War of Independence.

The Birkbeck Institute’s mission statement says that its work “contributes to public debate on antisemitism” and provides “expertise and advice to a wide range of institutions.”

I don’t see how hosting Israel-bashers constitutes a contribution to meaningful public discussion of antisemitism. And I can’t imagine how what Rossinow has to say can be regarded as “expertise” on the subject of Israel or Zionism. Having a radical opinion, and expressing it in extreme language again and again, does not make one an “expert.”

Whenever anybody criticizes Israel-bashing academics, inevitably he or she is accused of “censorship.” So let me be very clear: I am not proposing that Doug Rossinow or other attackers of Israel be censored. I am saying that institutions which sponsor such individuals to speak about Israel or Zionism should be honest about whom they are inviting. It’s the old principle of truth in advertising.

The leaders of the Birkbeck Institute should not pretend that someone who regularly denounces Israel, such as Rossinow, is an objective scholar who can speak about Israel or Zionism in a non-partisan way. Rossinow’s record shows that he is an extreme partisan, with deeply-held views that are consistently unfriendly toward Israel.