Shahd Abusalama is Another Academic to Have Fallen Foul of Zionism's McCarthyist Lobby
Dear Professor Husbands,
On January 21 Shahd Abusalama, a PhD student,
was suspended by Sheffield Hallam University on the eve of teaching her first
class. Shahd has been subject for the past 4 years to harassment from the Zionist
lobby and its fetid supporters for the fact of being a Palestinian willing to
speak out about Israel’s war crimes.
Shahd was told that a complaint had been
lodged with the university but was not told who made the complaint or what the
substance of the complaint was, although that was not hard to guess. It was of
course ‘anti-Semitism’.
Of one thing Zionists are certain. Just
because Israel demolishes their homes or evicts them to make way for Jewish settlers
as well as arresting and imprisoning their children, if not killing them
outright, the Palestinians have no reason to resist the Occupation or the other
foul misdeeds that they get up to. No the only reason why Palestinians still resist
a 55 year old occupation is because they hate the Jews out of some unique pathological
condition that they suffer from.
According to the CAA this is anti-Semitic. In fact it is literally true. The Talmud has been used to justify Israeli atrocities, see e.g. https://reformjudaism.org/blog/torat-hamelech, a book by 2 rabbis which justified the murder of children and infantsTorat Hamelech
It therefore follows that anyone who supports
the Palestinians must also do so because of anti-Semitism. Even anti-Zionist Jews
who are widely recognised as the ‘wrong sort of Jew’, in so far as they are
recognised as Jewish at all, are also susceptible to this ‘anti-Semitism’.
After all anti-Semitism is a virus.
Rather than going through all the details to Shahd’s
case and what happened there is an excellent article on Electronic Intifada, UK
Israel lobby takes aim at Palestinian university lecturer.
Below
I copy my letter to Sheffield Hallam’s Vice-Chancellor, Prof. Chris Husbands.
Tony
Greenstein
This is the real agenda of those who targeted Shahd but Professor Husbands is either too stupid or too malevolent to understand this
Dear Professor Husbands,
I write concerning your (now revoked) suspension of Shahd Abusalama from her role as a lecturer because of an anonymous complaint against her. After over a week Shahd stated that she still hasn’t had sight of the allegations. When you announced the investigation into her you didn’t even inform her of this fact. This is Kafkaesque.
It was on the evening of 21 January, just prior to her
first class, that Shahd was informed that she had been suspended. No reason was
given. Shahd’s suspension has now been revoked because of ‘issues’ with how you
handled her case but no further details have been provided.
Shahd is a refugee from Gaza. She was born
and raised in Jabalia refugee camp and witnessed at first hand Israeli bombing
raids on the camp and attacks on unarmed civilians in Gaza. What she says makes
uncomfortable reading for the Zionist lobby in this country and it is that, not
anti-Semitism, that is the reason for her suspension.
According to the 'Israeli war room' opposing the IRHA is itself antisemitic!
As
Vice-Chancellor of Sheffield Hallam you have a responsibility to defend academic
freedom and freedom of speech. In this you have lamentably failed. Your
behaviour is reminiscent of the failure of Martin Heidegger, Rector of Freiburg
University to speak out against the dismissal of his mentor Edmund Husserl and
other Jewish academics.
When
Victor Klemperer was dismissed from his post at Dresden University he recounted
in his diaries that the only person to say farewell was the cleaner. It is unfortunate
that most academics are afraid to speak up against injustice however you do not
have Nazi terror as an excuse for your cowardice.
Shahd has long been under attack by supporters of the Israeli state. Her ‘crime’ according to the so-called Campaign Against Anti-Semitism is having defended another student who used the term ‘Palestinian Holocaust’ whilst saying that she would not use such a term. If you or your protégés had bothered to access her Twitter feed then you would have seen a nuanced and thoughtful exposition. Something entirely lacking in your own explanations.
The
attacks on Shahd have come about because of her insistence on speaking out
against Israeli Apartheid, conclusions both B’Tselem
and Human
Rights Watch have reached. It has nothing to do with comparisons between
Israel and the Holocaust. They were merely the pretext.
You are directly responsible for this state of affairs because it was you who
insisted that Sheffield Hallam bow to the dictates of the Tory government and
Gavin Williamson when you adopted
the IHRA misdefinition of anti-Semitism in February 2021.
The vile Islamaphobic CAA has been to the forefront of the campaign against Shahd, led by racist Gideon Falter, who is Vice-Chair of the ethnic cleaning JNF
Perhaps
you might recall the statement
which you put out at the time? It read:
The definition is a
useful tool for understanding what constitutes antisemitism and investigating
allegations. Freedom of expression is an integral part of our values, therefore
we are committed to promoting and protecting free speech. The ability to
rigorously discuss and challenge ideas goes right to the heart of what it means
to be a university.
This was a lie, wasn’t it? You adopted the IHRA not
to protect freedom of speech but to destroy it. The IHRA has no other purpose.
It is certainly not a definition of anti-Semitism. Your adoption of this ‘definition’
was an act of political expediency. You adopted it despite criticism from many
distinguished legal and academic scholars.
Former Lord Justice of Appeal, Sir Stephen Sedley,
who is himself Jewish, wrote that the IHRA ‘fails the first test of any definition:
it is indefinite’. Human rights barrister, Geoffrey Roberson
QC said
the ‘IHRA
definition of antisemitism is not fit for purpose’. Another prominent barrister, Hugh Tomlinson QC
described the IHRA as having:
a potential
chilling effect on public bodies which, in the absence of definitional clarity,
may seek to sanction or prohibit any conduct which has been labelled by third
parties as nti-Semitic without applying any clear criterion of assessment.
An observation that perfectly describes your
actions. Kenneth Stern, who drafted the IHRA definition, in testimony to Congress described the use of the IHRA by the CAA to try and effect the
dismissal of Rachel Gould, a Jewish lecturer at Bristol University, as ‘chilling
and McCarthy-like’.
A child could have told you that you don’t need to have a
definition of anti-Semitism in order to recognise it. The Oxford English Dictionary definition: ‘hostility to or
prejudice against Jewish people’. is perfectly adequate. My father who took
part in the Battle of Cable Street against Moseley’s fascist thugs didn’t need
a definition of anti-Semitism to know what he was fighting. As Justice Potter
Stewart remarked ‘I know it when I
see it.’ The real purpose of the IHRA, with 7 of its 11 illustrations of
‘anti-Semitism’ mentioning Israel, is to conflate anti-Zionism and
anti-Semitism.
It is of course 'antisemitic' to compare what Israel does with the holocaust. Only Zionists are allowed to do that. Note the assumption that the holocaust is a Jewish only event from which the disabled and Gypsies and others are excluded
The specific allegation which led to Shahd’s
suspension was comparisons of Palestinian oppression to that of the Jews under
Hitler. There is nothing anti-Semitic about such a comparison. It might be
right or wrong but comparing Israel to the Nazis is not anti-Semitic.
There are many Jews, including Holocaust survivors,
who make just such a comparison. Perhaps you can explain why it is anti-Semitic
to compare mobs in Germany shouting ‘Death
to Jews’ with mobs in Israel chanting ‘Death
to the Arabs’?
If you are right then Hannah Arendt, herself a
refugee from the Nazis, was also anti-Semitic for comparing Israel’s marriage
laws to the Nuremberg Laws in Eichmann in
Jerusalem.? Just like Nazi Germany, it is forbidden in Israel for a Jew to
marry a non-Jew.
Perhaps Deputy Chief of Staff in Israel Yair Golan was
wrong to compare Israel with Nazi Germany? And maybe Professor Ze’ev Sternhall of the
Hebrew University, a child survivor of the Przemsyl Ghetto in Nazi occupied
Poland, was also anti-Semitic to write of a ‘Growing Fascism and a Racism Akin to Early Nazism’ in Israel?
Yehuda Elkana, a child survivor of Auschwitz
and Rector of the Central University of Europe was, by your standards, also anti-Semitic
when he wrote that
the deepest
political and social factor that motivates much of Israeli society in its
relations with the Palestinians is not personal frustration, but rather a
profound existential "Angst" fed by a particular interpretation of
the lessons of the Holocaust
When the IHRA says that making such comparisons is
anti-Semitic what it is doing is providing elites with an excuse to close down
discussion on topics that question their own war mongering. The question is a
simple one. Do you or do you not support
the censorship of political debate and thought? If you do then you are in the
wrong job.
Holocaust education today is used, not to draw
universal lessons, such as opening our borders to refugees, but in order to
legitimise the racism of the British and Israeli states, not least the
oppression of Palestinians. But according to you and those who suspended Shahd it
is anti-Semitic for Palestinians to reply in kind.
As Gideon Levy wrote in Ha’aretz:
I have yet to hear
a single teenager come back from Auschwitz and say that we mustn’t abuse others
the way we were abused. There has yet to be a school whose pupils came back
from Birkenau straight to the Gaza border,
saw the barbed-wire fence and said, Never again. The message is always the
opposite. Gaza is permitted because of Auschwitz.
The lying Jewish Chronicle led the attack against Shahd
The context to all of this is the recent dismissal
of Professor David Miller at Bristol University, also after a concerted series
of attacks by the pro-Israel lobby. The Jewish Chronicle’s reaction was that ‘Miller’s
sacking should be the beginning, not the end’. That is what Shahd’s suspension was really about – a
Zionist witchhunt.
I am aware of who it was who was responsible for making
the complaint against Shahd. The person in question is an open supporter of
Jewish Supremacy. Your suspension of Shahd was no different to suspending a
Black student after a complaint from a member of the British National Party. You
should hang your head in shame, assuming you understand the meaning of the
word. There are however a number of steps that you can take to make amends.
Firstly you owe Shahd Abusalama an apology and
compensation for the hurt she experienced.
Secondly you should immediately ditch the IHRA. If
you really need a definition of anti-Semitism then the Jerusalem Declaration on Anti-Semitism is more suitable as it avoids equating anti-Zionism
and hostility to Israel’s Apartheid State with anti-Semitism.
Thirdly, given your role in this affair, the honourable
thing to do would be to resign as you are clearly unfitted for the role of
Vice-Chancellor. I realise that today politicians don’t resign unless they are
dragged out of their office but to paraphrase Malcolm in MacBeth, nothing would
become your office like the leaving of it.
Yours sincerely,
Tony Greenstein
In this Twitter thread Shahd explains her position on the use of the Holocaust when criticising Israel
