Franklin and Marshall is a private college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania whose annual tuition exceeds $63,000 a year.  If the recent "Franklin & Marshall Faculty Statement in Solidarity with Palestine," as signed by two dozen F&M professors, is in any indicator of the school's quality, students should look into public universities whose tuition is one-third of this or even less.  More to the point is the fact that Godwin's Law ceases to apply when somebody really does talk like a Nazi.

The letter's first paragraph refers to "refugees expelled and driven from their homes during the Nakba (1947–49) that accompanied the creation of the state of Israel."  "Nakba" (catastrophe) does not refer to Israel's well-justified seizure of land in the 1967 war — the third war that its neighbors started or provoked in less than twenty years followed by the one in 1973 that could have started the Third World War.  The Anti-Defamation League explains that pro-Palestinian sources use "Nakba" to depict the creation of Israel as a catastrophe and deny Israel's right to exist.  That, as opposed to arguments over the subsequently occupied territories, is anti-Semitic.

The truth is that while some Arabs were driven from their homes by Israelis, most fled at the behest of the countries that invaded Israel in 1948 with the openly expressed intention of driving all the Jews into the sea.  "Israel maintains that it is not responsible for the Palestinian refugee problem since it is the result of a war forced on Israel by invading Arab armies."  The ADL adds accurately that the countries that started the war and were therefore responsible for most of the displacement refused, with the exception of Jordan, to accept their fellow Arabs.  The signatories also leave out the inconvenient fact that roughly 800,000 Jews had to flee nearby countries still in possession of the property they stole from the Jews in question.

The letter continues, "The story of children killed in the most recent Gaza attacks alone reveals the absurd inaccuracy of the 'evenhandedness' narrative."  The story of the children killed in Gaza is the story of Hamas's use of its own civilians as human shields with the intention of getting them killed so Hamas's dupes and useful idiots can bleat about how the Israelis murder children.  Some were even killed by Hamas rockets that fell short of Israel.  The Germans (not Nazis, however) behaved far better during the Second World War.  General Frido von Senger took particular care to avoid looking out the windows of the Abbey at Monte Cassino lest he see Allied troops, which would technically turn the Abbey into an "observation post" and therefore a legitimate military target.  He also kept his soldiers and weapons off the premises, entirely in contrast to Hamas.

The letter continues, "The brutal system that controls Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories is ideologically founded upon Jewish supremacy," which is where it really talks like a Nazi.  "The phrase 'Jewish supremacy' can be traced back to Nazi Germany and has been retreaded for use in today's conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, writes Gil Troy in Newsweek."  Nobody needs to pay $63,000 a year to learn about Jewish supremacy at Franklin & Marshall when he can get it for free from the Stormfront White Nationalist Community where a Google search brings up more than a thousand links for this topic.  One of the Stormfront pages cites David Duke's "My Struggle Awakening" (Ku Klux Klansmen can get "woke," too!), which covers Jewish supremacy in extensive detail, according to the table of contents.  I did not buy a copy because there is no longer a shortage of toilet paper.  Here, meanwhile, is a free online lecture on Jewish supremacy that makes just as much sense.

The letter's signatories then published a follow-up "Clarifying the 'Franklin & Marshall Faculty Statement in Solidarity with Palestine,'" which explains, "Effectively, we are co-signing and cross-posting a letter written by many scholars across the academy with the expectation that this shared language increases the power and solidarity of the message."  Does this mean that if somebody else publishes a letter with racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynist, or similar content, then it is OK for others to sign it because they did not write it themselves?  The N-word also is shared language, at least among white supremacists; does that make it acceptable for others to use it?

The follow-up adds, "Some have expressed concern about the phrase in our statement 'Jewish supremacy' to characterize Israel's founding and governance.  The phrase is taken from an Israeli human rights organization, B'tselem, run by Israelis."  B'tselem is yet another stooge and useful idiot for Hamas, as shown here.  The article begins, "It's Like George Floyd.  We Have Our Knee on the Palestinians' Necks," which is interesting because George Floyd, unlike Hamas, was not firing rockets or throwing bombs at other people when Derek Chauvin put his knee on his neck.

The article continues, "El-Ad, 50 ... he established a strong position — some would say a more radical one — that encouraged international pressure on Israel and a halt to cooperation with Israeli agencies such as the Israel Defense Forces and the military police's investigative unit."  He is upset that people call him a traitor, which is a false accusation because, at least as defined in the United States, treason consists solely of levying war against one's own country or aiding the enemy during a time of war.  B'tselem's actions fall far short of either even though they undermine Israel and promote the agenda of its enemies.  The boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement does not similarly violate U.S. laws against material support for terrorists because it gives them none, but it nonetheless aids the terrorists by harming Israel.  B'tselem cannot, by the way, bring itself to condemn BDS: "We have no position regarding the BDS movement, and nor will we have one."  This is the organization the F&M professors cite to justify their use of the phrase "Jewish supremacy."  The one thing to their credit is that their follow-up letter does condemn anti-Semitism.

There is no call here for the professors to be fired or for F&M to take "action" against them.  They made it clear when they signed the material in question that they were representing themselves and not their employer.  I wrote here previously that "cancelers" who bring social media and blogging disputes into their own workplaces or those of others are organizational risks who should perhaps not be hired themselves.  We cannot have one set of rules for the left and another for the right, so the proper course of action is to simply denounce and ridicule with facts material such as the "Franklin & Marshall Faculty Statement in Solidarity with Palestine," and leave it at that.

Civis Americanus is the pen name of a contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way.  The author is remaining anonymous due to the likely prospect of being subjected to "cancel culture" for exposing the Big Lie behind Black Lives Matter.

Image via Libreshot.

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