Poor professor Matory

By Ed Lasky

J. Lorand Matory is a professor at Harvard, in anthropology and African and African-American studies, and he is feeling mighty oppressed today because some people on campus disagree with him. Scott Johnson of Powerline writes today on the professor's expressed plight, and excerpts enough of his writing to demonstrate the point that the professor is sadly lacking in the logical argument department.

[W]hy does the U.S. rightly defend Jewish people's claims on European bank accounts, property, and compensation for labor expropriated during the 1930s and 1940s, while quashing the rights of millions of Palestinians refugees to lands, houses, and goods stolen as a condition of Israel's founding in the late 1940s?

Let's do a cursory glance at Matory's positions. A larger number of Jewish refugees left Arab lands than Arabs who left Israel. They left penniless, after being stripped of their assets. The Arab refugees left at the prompting of their leaders (in part) who broadcast their plans to wreak devastation on their way through Israel as they promised to push the Jews into the sea.

Let's ponder his equivalency argument over the genocide committed against European Jewry-the destruction of a people-against the displacement of Arab refugees who left of their own volition. These Arab refugees consists not only of those who left in 1948 but ALL OF THEIR DESCENDENTS-accorded this unique status by virtue of the UN which established this UN Agency just for Palestinian refugees: UNRWA-United Nations Relief and Works Agency.

Over the years billions have been sent to these refugees to aid them. UNRWA has also aided them in their terror efforts -- admitting that it has terrorists on its payroll and being forced to admit that its offices have been used as hideouts for terrorists. Its employees are exclusively Palestinians.

The Jewish refugees who were pushed from their homes in Arab lands did not have the benefit of aid flowing from the United Nations. Instead, they had to struggle to make new lives for themselves in Israel and elsewhere. This they accomplished because Israel welcomed them; in contrast, Arab nations kept Palestinian refugees locked up in camps and, with the exception of Jordan, denied them citizenship, rights to engage in various professions, and rights to own property. Arab refugees have been abused-by their own brethren and their own leaders. This does not equate them to victims of genocide.

Maybe it is time for Harvard to take some of its billions of dollars and find some better qualified professors.