"Palestine Studies" instructor sought at @Hunter_College. I think I am the best candidate. ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Monday, February 24, 2025

"Palestine Studies" instructor sought at @Hunter_College. I think I am the best candidate.

Here is part of an advertised faculty position at Hunter College:

As part of a Palestine Studies cluster hire, Hunter College is honored to announce its search for an open rank tenure-line professor in one of the social sciences who would join one or more of the departments of Anthropology, History, Sociology, Political Science, or Women’s and Gender Studies. This position is one of two positions in Palestine studies. The other search, in the humanities, can be found here (ADD).

We seek a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender and sexuality. We are open to diverse theoretical and methodological approaches. We seek candidates interested in public-facing work and who exhibit a commitment to being part of the life of the college, a diverse and exciting undergraduate minority serving institution.

I think I am the perfect candidate. I have written extensively on the topic for over twenty years; I've authored books, articles and given lectures and podcasts on these topics. My ideas have been taught at Ivy League universities and quoted in numerous scholarly works.

Since they are seeking diverse theoretical and methodological approaches, they might find my ideas on their specific topics mentioned a bit revolutionary, but certainly well founded and with lots of factual support:

- Palestinian nationalism is a relatively new phenomenon, about a century old, created purely as a reaction and counter to modern Zionism. This remains the case today as Palestinian leaders have shown far less interest in creating a state than in destroying the Jewish state.

- The concept of settler-colonialism does not apply to Jews in Israel, who have had a deep psychological and spiritual connection to the land of Israel for millennia. Part of this connection is no doubt due to their being attacked as outsiders no matter how long they lived in their host countries. The irony of Jews now being considered white Europeans after centuries of European antisemitism and marginalization, including racial antisemitism, is just one of the topics that deserve more coverage in academia.

- Genocide requires intent. There is no intent by the State of Israel to destroy the Palestinian people, and every single attempt to fabricate such intent by ignoring counterevidence or taking quotes out of context is pure antisemitism, specifically the disgusting need by so many to accuse Jews of being as bad or worse than the Nazis.

- There are real issues with human rights of Palestinians. They must be balanced with the human rights of Israeli citizens. As with every nation on Earth, the rights of citizens are prioritized over the rights of those who are dedicated to destroying their nation.

- There is no apartheid in Israel against its Arab citizens by any definition of apartheid, and the concept of apartheid does not apply to non-citizens, by definition.

- Palestinians by and large migrated from their homes in 1948 without being forced out. Most simply fled a war zone. The only reason they have not been integrated into the lands they moved to like all other refugees is because of deep Arab antisemitism and shame at having lost a war to the despised, weak Jews. It would be a wonderful academic exercise to compare, say, Egyptian or Jordanian attitudes towards refugees from Syria, Iraq and Sudan with those who are considered Palestinian. For some reason, I haven't found any such study.

- Blaming Israel for climate change is absurd on the face of it to anyone who has the ability to look at a world map and try to find the several pixels that represent Israel.

After I wrote this I decided to actually count the pixels in the first world map I searched for. Out of the 739,000 pixels in that map, no more than 25 are Israel, maybe 2 are Gaza. The word "Israel" takes up about five times the area of Israel itself.

Most of the professors in the fields mentioned are innumerate, so I already have a huge advantage over most social sciences academics.

- Gaza's infrastructure has indeed been devastated. This is entirely due to Hamas using all of Gaza's infrastructure for military purposes, which makes them valid military targets according to international law.

- I have done serious analysis of accusations of health issues against Israel in The Lancet. They have all been shown to be baseless. I am willing to bet that my knowledge of no more than arithmetic and how to use spreadsheets goes way beyond any other candidate Hunter is considering.

- I have no idea what race has to do with the Israel-Arab conflict. I would suggest that to try to shoehorn Israeli Jews as "white" and Arabs as "people of color" into other constructs is itself racist and antisemitic.

- I have no idea what gender has to do with the conflict. I would suggest that any claim that Israel specifically attacks Palestinian women is antisemitic.

- There is plenty to speak about on sexuality in the region - Palestinian laws specifically against women and gays, for example. I am as qualified as any to discuss it. It is hardly my area of expertise but since it is a topic that is all but ignored by mainstream academia I am pretty much as much of an expert as anyone else being considered for the position. Of course, if the only discussion of sexuality is meant to be twisted against the most liberal state in the region, then I would again suggest that the discussion is inherently antisemitic.

I think Hunter will find my qualifications to be superior to every other candidate, except that I do not have a PhD. I cannot imagine getting one would be difficult given the poor quality of the papers I have read in these fields over the past decade. In general, I would claim that my extensive knowledge gathered in other fields like the sciences, data analysis, international law, Judaism and history, as can be seen in my 40,000 plus articles in this website, would bring a novel and invigorating perspective in a field that badly needs alternative points of view.

As far as Hunter’s prestige being enhanced by my presence on campus, I have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

To make things interesting, I would be happy to challenge any of Hunter's existing Palestine Studies professors to choose any one of my longer articles on their own area of expertise and critique it, and then give me a chance to defend it, online. Most of my articles are written in less than an hour, so finding mistakes in my own research should be simple. All my facts are referenced with hyperlinks. I have no specific academic expertise in any of the fields they mention and I would still be happy to defend my writings against the best they have to offer. Let independent scholars judge whose arguments are best.

But if the position is meant to only be given to anti-Zionists, then perhaps that should be made more clear in the job description. At least that would be honest.