Columbia University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter has been accused for creating an anti-Semitic poster promoting “Israel Apartheid Week.”
The SJP chapter called it a “false accusation.”
“This kind of repugnant caricature of Jews is a sore reminder of blatant anti-Semitism from the dark ages of medieval Europe when anti-Semitic propaganda depicted Jews as satanic consorts and an incarnation of absolute evil,” posted Columbia Students Supporting Israel on Facebook. “Physically, Jews were portrayed as menacing, hirsute, with boils, warts and other deformities, sometimes with horns, cloven hoofs and tails. It is extremely painful to see that the same rhetoric is being used on the campus of an Ivy League university in the United States.”
SSI sent an official complaint to Columbia officials against SJP for displaying “blatantly distasteful and anti-Semitic imagery.”
Columbia SJP further defended the depiction.
“Real anti-Semitism is a serious problem in this country, and we should spend our time addressing that instead,” they told Fox News. “It’s harder to combat anti-Semitism if we falsely conflate criticism of Israel—a state that has policies that impact real people’s lives—with an entire people. Supporting Palestinian rights, and the rights of all people, goes hand-in-hand with fighting anti-Semitism.”
In addition to SJP, “Israel Apartheid Week” at Columbia is being sponsored by Jewish Voice for Peace.
Last week, Hamid Dabashi, an Iranian-studies professor at Columbia, compared Israel to the Islamic State.
“What’s the difference between ISIS and ISRAEL? ISIS murderous thugs conquered parts of Syria and declared a “caliphate,” no decent human being on planet earth recognized their armed robbery or their “caliphate”—their ISRAELI counterparts meanwhile conquered parts of Syria and declared it part of their Zionist settler colony—no decent human being on planet earth recognizes their armed robbery,” he posted on Facebook.
“The only difference: ISIS does not have a platoon of clean shaven and well coiffured columnists at the New York Times propagating the cause of the terrorist outfit as the Zionists columnists do on a regular basis. … All of Syria belong to all Syrian people—not an inch of it either to ISIS or to ISRAEL.”
