Western media outlets reported on Tuesday night that Israeli air strikes had destroyed a Palestinian hospital, killing 471 innocent civilians. By morning, it was clear that every single part of that story was false. But that didn’t stop U.S. academics from serving as “useful idiots” for Islamofascism by spreading Hamas propaganda on social media.
In reality, a rocket fired by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a terrorist group allied with Hamas, had gone awry and hit the hospital parking lot. The hospital is still standing. And although the death count is not yet clear, it is far below the figure given to the credulous corporate media by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Healthy Ministry just moments after the explosion. The New York Times even ran a photo of the wrong building and had to quietly change its headline twice.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Michigan Democrat and de facto leader of what some call “the Congressional Hamas Caucus,” rushed to condemn Israel. After the official spokesperson for the White House National Security Council confirmed that Israel was not at fault, Tlaib’s colleague who also condemned Israel, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., eventually recanted (although she did not apologize).
Nevertheless, contrary to all the evidence, Tlaib continued repeating Hamas’ lie that Israel bombed the hospital. It’s nothing less than a modern blood libel.
While it might be expected that politicians would lie, academics are supposedly held to a higher standard of intellectual rigor and a sober commitment to the truth. Unfortunately, the institutional rot in academia has been all too apparent in recent years, and especially so in the past two weeks.
Too many academics are willing to sacrifice truth at the altar of progressive politics—even if that means serving as a mouthpiece for blood-stained terrorists who are holding children and Holocaust survivors hostage. Their reflexive endorsement of claims by a group that kills Jewish babies in front of their parents also reveals shocking antisemitism.
Just days after a Cornell professor declared how watching Hamas terrorists commit unspeakable atrocities against Israeli civilians was “exhilarating” and “energizing,” many of his colleagues took to social media to condemn Israel for a crime it had not committed. Several academics at Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Duke, Georgetown, Yale, and other supposedly prestigious universities fully embraced their role as propagandists for Hamas by sharing or reposting fake news on X (formerly Twitter), erroneously blaming Israel for the hospital bombing.
Examples include:
Ajantha Subramanian, professor of anthropology and South Asian studies at Harvard University, who reposted the X post below and also this one.
Yannis Hamilakis, professor of archaeology at Brown University, who reposted this:
Christine Marrewa-Karwoski, a lecturer at Columbia University, who reposted Tlaib, below, and also this one and this one.
Marina Calculli, a post-doctoral fellow in the department of Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African studies at Columbia University, who reposted what’s below as well as this and this.
Matteo Capasso, a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University, who reposted the X post below as well as this and this.
Frances S. Hasso, professor of gender, sexuality, and feminist studies at Duke University, reposted what’s below in addition to this one and this one.
Jonathan A. Brown, professor and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic civilization at Georgetown University, reposted what’s below and this, this, and this.
Elliott Colla, associate professor of Arabic literature and director of undergraduate studies at Georgetown University reposted this as well as this one and this one.
Marwa Daoudy, the Seif Ghobash Chair in Arab studies and associate professor of international relations at Georgetown University, had this to share, along with this and this.
Anna Bigelow, associate professor of Islamic and religious studies at Stanford University reposted this:
And Evren Savci, assistant professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Yale University reposted this one:
More than a day later, none of the academics listed above had corrected the record, nor even deleted their X posts or reposts, let alone apologized for spreading false Hamas propaganda. If they can’t be trusted to tell the truth about key issues of the day—where misinformation can catalyze violent riots—why should we trust them to be truthful in the classroom, especially if they’re teaching about Middle East conflicts?
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