by Jim Brown
Supporters of Israel are urging Georgetown University to condemn anti-Semitic remarks made overseas by a Georgetown professor, and on campus by a guest lecturer.
During a recent lecture at a university in Lebanon, Georgetown professor emeritus of Arab culture Hisham Sharabi told students and faculty: “Jews are getting ready to take control of us, and the Americans have entered the region to possess the oil resources and redraw the geopolitical map of the Arab world.”
Jason Isaacson of the American Jewish Committee (AJC) says such an incendiary remark needs to be challenged.
“Spreading this kind of message around the Arab world just deepens the antagonism toward the United States, toward America's friends in the region, toward Western values and Western culture, and toward the Jewish people and the State of Israel in a way that is highly irresponsible,” Isaacson says.
“The university really has an obligation to respond in a forceful way if people on its staff [or associated with the university] are going to be saying things like this.”
In addition, at an event late last month on the Georgetown campus, author Norman Finkelstein equated Hitler’s policy toward the Jews during World War II with Israel’s opinion of the Palestinians. Isaacson says a school like Georgetown that stands for freedom of expression and inquiry needs to challenge such propaganda.
“[The school's] efforts to appear balanced and academically honest and responsible in the academic community are undermined when it allows itself to be used as a springboard for hate,” he says.
The AJC has sent a letter to Georgetown’s president, asking him to respond to the anti-Semitic remarks.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
