Rutgers Law School published a paper filled with false anti-Israel talking points ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Wednesday, January 01, 2025

Rutgers Law School published a paper filled with false anti-Israel talking points

In November 2023, the Rutgers Law School Center for Security, Race and Rights published a paper that is embarrassingly bad scholarship.

Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine–Israel Discourse is a collection of anti-Israel talking points. It starts off by admitting it is using a doubly false definition of Islamophobia for the purposes of the paper:

Islamophobia, as the term is being used here, refers to what Professor Sahar Aziz calls “an exaggerated fear of, and hostility to Islam and Muslims by the state and the public as a result of imputed inferior biological and cultural traits based on religious identity that produce systemic bias, discrimination, and marginalization, and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life.”

Although anti-Arab racism is separate from Islamophobia, the two forms of bias often overlap. A sizable minority of Arabs (including Palestinians) are not Muslim, but often experience Islamophobia because Americans incorrectly assume all Arabs are Muslim. The considerable overlap between these two prejudices in the West, and especially in the United States, should be noted while acknowledging the two are not identical. For the sake of brevity and clarity, this report uses Islamophobia broadly to describe both anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism.

Who is Professor Sahar Aziz who claims that critics of Islam consider Muslims to be biologically inferior? Why, she is one of the authors of the paper! The paper is built around a definition that was literally made up by one of the authors. And that is then extended to claim that the fictional "anti-Palestinian racism" is by definition "Islamophobic." Which means that any criticism of any Palestinian, including their overwhelming support for terrorism, is presumed to be racist.

In fact, both Aziz and co-author Mitchell Plitnick quote themselves extensively in this paper which cherry picks quotes and makes assertions that are absurd. One example is the claim that a newspaper headline “Omar, ‘squad,’ launch another anti-Israel strike” is Islamophobic. It claims without proof that debate about American support for Israel is restricted. It also implies that historic US support for Israel is based partially on Islamophobia.

Aziz is the Executive Director of the same Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights that published it. Which means that this paper went through no serious review. The Rutgers name implies that it is an academic paper that has serious research behind it, but the paper itself does not say whether the authors have any conflict of interest (e.g., anti-Israel activism) and does not consider any other viewpoints. There is an obvious conflict of interest in publishing a paper under the Rutgers name when it was written by the same person that is needed to approve its publication.

One of the key claims in the paper is that US Muslims are unfairly tarnished with the presumption that they are antisemitic. To examine this assertion we would have to both see if Muslims are indeed routinely assumed to be antisemitic, and whether a majority of them are in fact antisemitic.

For the first point, it is easy to find examples both where Muslims are presumed antisemitic and that they are not. This paper only shows one side of the story. There is an undeniable problem with Muslim antisemitism in America, Europe and the Middle East and an argument can be made that the media deliberately downplays it - for example, rarely pointing out the percentage of plots to attack Jews in America done by Muslims or polls that show that Muslim nations are consistently and overwhelmingly antisemitic.

There are surprisingly few surveys about this topic of American Muslim attitudes towards Jews. One 2022 article, using a methodology I disagree with, finds that American Muslims don't have a significantly different attitude towards Jews than non-Muslims.

But a more recent Heritage Foundation survey found that American Muslims are far more likely to believe the antisemitic trope that Jews have too much control over the US government.

That is a strong indicator that a majority of US Muslims hold antisemitic attitudes, and far more accurate than asking direct questions like "do you look at Jews favorably?" where respondents will tend not to want to make themselves look bigoted.

One other question that has been asked of US Muslims was whether they felt that the October 7 massacres were justified.

Right after 10/7, 57.5% of US Muslims felt that Hamas was at least partially justified in the attack.

Whether American Muslims are presumed to be antisemitic is not clear, but when a majority believe antisemitic tropes and can justify an attack on mostly Jews in their homes and during a concert, way out of proportion to most Americans, then it is not Islamophobic to point that out.