Wednesday, December 13, 2023
Liz Magill, with her smug smile and inability to denounce calls
for the genocide of the Jewish people, disgraced herself and UPenn. No one
wonders why she resigned. The question is why Julie Platt, chair of the Jewish
Federations of North America’s board of trustees, saw fit to defend Magill,
when all the other Jewish leaders were vocal in their demands that Magill step
down. A second question we might ask is why Platt, who also serves as vice
chair of UPenn’s board of trustees, is now overseeing the search for Magill’s
replacement.
That’s right—Platt, after defending Magill—is in charge of finding a new Magill, likely every bit as antisemitic as the one who stepped down in disgrace. How do we know? Because Platt’s defense of Magill predates the events of October 7th, says Alana Goodman, writing for the Washington Free Beacon on December 8 (emphasis added):
Platt’s defense of Magill predates the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks. She stood by the UPenn president when the school played host to the "Palestine Writes" conference in September, an event that featured anti-Semitic speakers. This included Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters, who has "dressed in a Nazi-like uniform" and "desecrated the memory of Holocaust victim Anne Frank," according to a letter sent to the school by the Jewish Federation’s Philadelphia chapter.
In October, when Apollo CEO Marc Rowan called on Magill to resign from the UPenn board after Magill declined to condemn Hamas terrorism, Platt publicly backed the UPenn president, saying she had "full confidence in the leadership of President Liz Magill and Chair Scott Bok."
"The university has publicly committed to unprecedented steps to further combat antisemitism on its campus, reaffirmed deep support for our Jewish community, and condemned the devastating and barbaric attacks on Israel by Hamas," said Platt in a statement to the New York Post.
But Platt has been noticeably silent after Magill’s shocking congressional testimony this week, during which she and other Ivy League presidents said calls for Jewish genocide were permitted on campuses. Platt, a former banker, is also co-chair of UPenn Hillel's National Board of Governors and sits on the board of overseers for the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, according to her biography on the Penn Alumni website.
Three days later, Goodman offered her readers a shocking update—the fox, in the form of Julie Platt, was now guarding the hen house (emphasis added):
Julie Platt, a prominent Jewish leader who repeatedly defended Magill as anti-Semitism surged on campus, will serve as interim chair of the Board of Trustees during the search for a new president. Platt, who was previously vice chair, will replace the board's outgoing leader, Scott Bok, who resigned alongside Magill on Saturday.
"As current Vice Chair, Julie was the clear choice, and we are grateful to her for agreeing to serve in this capacity during this time of transition," the board said in a statement on Sunday.
Critics told the Washington Free Beacon last week that Platt—who is also chair of the Jewish Federations of North America's board of trustees—leveraged her Jewish community leadership role to protect Magill's position at the university for months.
Platt defended Liz Magill as UPenn hosted an anti-Israel conference with antisemite Roger Waters, and after October 7th, when Magill refused to condemn Hamas terrorism. But in her official JFNA statement on her appointment as interim chair, Platt wants you to know that all this time, she was “working hard from the inside” to address the rising antisemitism on the UPenn campus—in the form of defending Magill’s indefensible defense of Jew-hatred, of course (emphasis added):
As Vice Chair of the university’s board these past several months, I have worked hard from the inside to address the rising issues of antisemitism on campus. Unfortunately, we have not made all the progress that we should have and intend to accomplish. In my view, given the opportunity to choose between right and wrong, the three university presidents testifying in the United States House of Representatives failed. The leadership change at the university was therefore necessary and appropriate. I will continue as a board member of the university to use my knowledge and experience of Jewish life in North America and at Penn to accelerate this critical work.
Platt is clever, if somewhat devious, when she tells us that she has “worked hard from the inside” to address antisemitism. If the work she did was from “inside,” we didn’t see it, so we don’t know what she did, or how much effort she expended on fighting antisemitism, sight unseen. The ruse almost works, except that the whole world has been watching, or at least the Algemeiner, which documented the number of times Magill gave free rein to antisemitism, as Platt continued to defend her:
Magill had several previous opportunities throughout her tenure to denounce hateful, even conspiratorial, rhetoric directed at both Israel and the Jewish community. However, Magill repeatedly declined to respond to the mounting incidents of antisemitism, especially anti-Zionism, on campus, according to an analysis by [the Algemeiner] of public statements she had issued since July 2022, when she assumed the presidency at Penn.
“Israel is a settler colonial state that uses apartheid to further its ethnic cleansing agenda,” said an essay by Penn Against the Occupation (POA) that was included in the 2022-2023 edition of the Penn Disorientation Guide, a symposium of essays published annually by upperclassmen. It was issued just weeks after Magill started on the job.
“It is time to end the way our school helps to perpetrate human rights violations in the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) and organize around divesting from Israel,” the essay continued. “Here’s what you should know about divestment, a popular movement to fight for equality for Palestinians.”
POA went on to charge the university with numerous offenses: Penn “normalizes ties with the occupation” by hosting the Perspectives Fellowship, a program the school’s Hillel chapter founded to educate students about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by taking them on a trip to Israel, as well as Gaza and the West Bank. Penn’s support of Birthright, which sends Jewish students to Israel, “turns a blind eye to the crimes of the Israeli occupation.” Both programs, POA said, “frame the Zionist colonial entity in a positive light.”
Later that semester, after campus police arrested radical student environmentalists for staging an unauthorized protest on school grounds, POA said in an Instagram post that “arresting peaceful protesters is a staple of policing in both the United States and in Israeli-Occupied Palestine.” The group drew a link between the world’s continued dependence on fossil fuels to Israel, saying, “We urge Penn not only to divest from all fossil fuel companies but divest from companies that profit from Israeli apartheid, many of which are one in the same … policies of forced displacement, from Palestine to the UC townhomes in Philadelphia, are all modern-day practices of settler colonialism.”
Neither Magill nor the university responded to the apparent accusation that the Jewish state, conspiring with the US, has caused climate change and colonized both Americans and Palestinians.
The next month, on Nov. 6, POA held a screening of Gaza Fights for Freedom “with snacks provided” in Penn’s Van Pelt Library. The film rationalizes the terrorist acts committed during the Palestinian intifadas against Israel and features a clip of an interview with Hamas co-founder Mahmoud Al-Zahar, who can be heard saying, “We run effective self-defense by all means including using guns.”
The film was directed by Abby Martin, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and a former host on the Russian-funded media network RT America. Martin, who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, reposted on social media posts that celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
It doesn't seem like Platt was working hard from inside, if at all. Why did Platt, an important Jewish leader, stand by, as
Magill proved, without a doubt, over and over again, that she is an Israel-hating antisemite? Even now, Magill affirms her anti-Jewish creds, most recently during
the infamous hearing that led to her resignation. There, Rep. Virginia Foxx
(R-NC) asked all three Ivy League university presidents, including Magill, a
loaded (and exquisitely worded) question:
Do you believe that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish nation?
Just as the three women answered in chorus on “conduct,” “context,” and parroted the words “pervasive and severe,” here too, the women echoed one another in both what they said—Israel can exist—and what they didn’t say, “but not as a Jewish nation”:
Virginia Foxx: Do you believe that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish nation?
Claudine Gay: I agree that the State of Israel has a right to exist.
Virginia Foxx: Ms. Magill, same question.
Liz Magill: I agree, Chairwoman Foxx. (nodding) The State of Israel has a right to exist.
Virginia Foxx: Dr. Kornbluth?
Sally Kornbluth: Absolutely. Israel has the right to exist.
With their collective response to that one question, Magill
and her friends made clear their unified belief that Jews do not have the
right to self-determination in Israel. And still, Platt stayed dumb (emphasis
added):
Why did Platt, a highly-placed Jewish leader, stick to a university president who wouldn’t condemn Hamas terror or calls for genocide? Are they friends? It seems unlikely, as the two women are almost a decade apart in age.In October, when Apollo CEO Marc Rowan called on Magill to resign from the UPenn board after Magill declined to condemn Hamas terrorism, Platt publicly backed the UPenn president, saying she had "full confidence in the leadership of President Liz Magill and Chair Scott Bok."
"The university has publicly committed to unprecedented steps to further combat antisemitism on its campus, reaffirmed deep support for our Jewish community, and condemned the devastating and barbaric attacks on Israel by Hamas," said Platt in a statement to the New York Post.
But Platt has been noticeably silent after Magill’s shocking congressional testimony this week, during which she and other Ivy League presidents said calls for Jewish genocide were permitted on campuses. Platt, a former banker, is also co-chair of UPenn Hillel's National Board of Governors and sits on the board of overseers for the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies, according to her biography on the Penn Alumni website.
What then? Did Platt aim by design to rise up the UPenn chain of command to the level of interim chair, and perhaps, beyond? Put her own guy in? Who knows? She’s not talking, and neither is the CEO of the Jewish Federation:
Platt didn’t respond when the Free Beacon asked her on [December 6] to comment on Magill’s testimony. Eric Fingerhut, the CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, also didn’t respond to a request for comment about Platt’s defense of Magill.
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