"Palestine Studies" is academically acceptable antisemitism. Here's why. ~ Elder Of Ziyon

Tuesday, February 25, 2025

"Palestine Studies" is academically acceptable antisemitism. Here's why.

My Monday post joking about me applying for the job of "Palestinian Studies" instructor at Hunter College may have been tongue in cheek, but the description of the job itself points to a very uncomfortable fact: The entire field of Palestine Studies should really be called Anti-Zionism, and its obsession with Israel makes it a truly antisemitic field.

Let's review the topics that Hunter wants the candidates to be familiar with:

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.

Notice what is missing. Nothing about Palestinian politics, or culture, or history. Nothing about how Palestinian women or children or gays live outside the prism of "occupation." Nothing about how Palestinians treat animals or the environment. Nothing about how Palestinian Arabs live outside the territories, and the challenges they face as second-class residents in the Arab world for generations.

Most glaringly, nothing about Palestinian terror or "resistance," which is a fundamental part of Palestinian psyche. Most Palestinians support murdering Jews, in poll after poll taken after specific terror attacks. Palestinians consider salaries for terrorists to be the most important budget item for their government. They name schools and sports contests after murderers.

If Palestine Studies was a legitimate, objective field, why is it so centered on slandering Israel? All of the listed issues, without exception, are mainly about attacking Israel, not studying Arab Palestine. (I have sometimes seen papers on topics like Palestinian women's health or other issues that don't revolve around blaming Israel, but they are the exceptions that prove the rule.)

This job description shows that there is no room in Palestine Studies for debate on its core tenets. The field postulates that Israel is guilty of apartheid, genocide and settler colonialism. One cannot advance in the field of Palestine Studies without accepting those lies as axioms.

And yes, they are lies. But even if you do not accept that they are lies, you must admit that there are some excellent arguments on the other side of those issues. Within the bubble of Palestine Studies, however, these are settled issues. Any other opinion is not only unthinkable; anyone in the field who dares contradict the orthodoxy would be canceled and lose their jobs. Palestine Studies is as objective as a Yemeni Studies program where the only valid point of view is that of the Houthis.

Palestine Studies exists as merely an excuse for putting a scholarly facade on old fashioned Israel bashing. It is not an organic yearning to study Arab Palestine but purely a reaction to, and forum for attacking, Israel.

If you think that I am overly generalizing from Hunter College's job description, let's look at how the field is described in the website of Istiqlal University in Jericho. The "Educational Objectives and Outcomes" include:

Finding a Palestinian elite capable of engaging in a sharp, serious, scientific, academic, and cognitive engagement with Israel’s political, intellectual, religious, and historical system and its narratives that target the Palestinian cause.

Strengthening the Palestinian presence in the Arab collective memory, which Israel has begun to target through cultural normalization, and filling this void only through a solid and academic Palestinian presence.

The truth is not a goal. Countering Zionist narratives is.

And what kind of job can one expect to get after achieving a masters degree in Palestine Studies? Among others, according to the site, is working on boycott campaigns against Israel!

Or look at how the Centre for Palestine Studies at SOAS University of London chooses to illustrate its program - with a picture of a defensive barrier Israel constructed to limit Palestinian terror attacks against Jews but framing it as prison walls.

Their description of their fields of study is, again, Israel-centered (and also inaccurate.)

The question of Palestine and the lack of resolution to the so-called conflict with Israel has implicated various countries across the Middle East and North Africa and further afield. Palestinian refugees remain the largest body of refugees in the world, Palestine is the theatre of the longest ongoing illegal occupation recognised as such in international law, Palestinian holders of Israeli citizenship have been permanently engaged in fighting for their rights, and a wide range of social and political movements locally and globally claim to represent the Palestinian voice.

The best known purveyor of Palestine Studies is the Institute for Palestine Studies. They held their third annual Palestine Forum in Doha last month. The forum featured over hundred presentations over three days. Virtually every paper features or centers an anti-Israel component; even a lecture on Palestinian graffiti is based around the artwork drawn on the separation barrier.

If the field has nothing to say about Palestinians without referring to Israel, that is a strong indication that Palestine Studies, and indeed Palestinian nationalism as a whole, is a reaction and counter to Zionism that has little to do with "Palestine." In Palestine Studies, Palestinians themselves become bit players in a grand anti-Israel narrative. They are defined purely in relation to Israel.

If Israel didn't exist, neither would Palestine Studies.

Let's compare with Israel Studies. There are lots of people in Israel Studies programs who are anti-Zionist, who are passionate critics of Israel, even professors who would accuse Israel of apartheid or genocide. Being an anti-Zionist does not automatically disqualify someone from the field of Israel Studies.

Do you think there is a single Zionist instructor in Palestine Studies? The very idea is laughable.

All of this makes Palestine Studies a dogma, not an academic field. It is as scholarly as a Flat Earth society that debates whether the Earth is shaped like a circle or a square.

Since Palestine Studies is wholly congruent with anti-Zionism, that makes it effectively antisemitic. As Professor Andrew Pessin comprehensively demonstrates and as Jews worldwide can feel in their bones, anti-Zionism is largely a form of antisemitism. They are both characterized by the irrationality and obsessive hate of their believers. My book gives example after example of how anti-Zionism is modern antisemitism.

There is one major difference between how antisemitism infiltrated German universities in the 1930s and how modern antisemitism disguised as anti-Zionism has invaded Western academia. That difference is not complimentary towards today's academic antisemites.

The Nazis fired all professors who were Jewish or who didn't accept the racial purity beliefs of the Third Reich. They imposed antisemitism into all academic fields from the top down.

Today, no government is forcing the antisemitism/anti-Zionism that is rife in academia now. It is the academics themselves who are embracing a fundamentally hateful, anti-intellectual philosophy and imposing a set of beliefs that are utterly at odds with both the truth and with free inquiry. Palestine Studies may have been designed to make anti-Zionism (and therefore antisemitism) acceptable, but its false ideas have infected the rest of the social sciences and is moving into every conceivable academic field. It is almost comical to see how students and academics try to find new, novel crimes to accuse Israel of.

The German professors had no choice but to embrace antisemitic philosophy. Today's Western academics are too often the trendsetters for modern antisemitism.

Any objective review of Palestine Studies leads one to that conclusion.