Columbia Professor Criticized for Anti-Semitic Facebook Posts
Rachel Frommer
The Washington Free Beacon
Tue Nov 14 2017
A tenured professor at Columbia University has been criticized by students for a social media post in which he referred to "Jared Kushner's Zionist kins [sic]" who "kill and rob Palestinians," and described the Jewish White House adviser as a "creature."
Hamid Dabashi, the Hagop Kevorkian professor of Iranian Studies and comparative literature, wrote the offending Facebook post on Sunday.
"There is a reason why a small gang of European Zionists could land in Palestine and in broad daylight of history steal it from under the feet of Palestinians smack in the middle of hundreds of millions of Arabs and Muslims—that reason throughout the recent history has had many faces and today that reason is in the shape of this contemptible coward Mohamed bin Salman [Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia]," he wrote.
"Like a rich brat teenager that [bin Salman] is he hides behind the wing of his Israeli and American protectors and benefactors, buys them with his windblown wealth, so that Jared Kushner's Zionist kins can kill and rob Palestinians even more as they enable him to slaughter Yemeni women and children apace," he wrote.
"Look at all their ignoble ugly contemptible countenances— who are these creatures, from what subterranean holes did they creep out? What are they laughing at? What colossal misery of our doomed humanity has sent a giggle through their infested abdomens?" he wrote above a photo of bin Salman, Kushner, and Ivanka Trump taken during the official White House trip to the Middle East in May.
The posts appear to be in response to reports that bin Salman has urged Palestinian leadership to accept an anticipated Trump administration peace plan, following an unannounced trip by Kushner to Saudi Arabia in October.
"Intentionally or not, Dabashi alluded to conspiracy theories of Israeli-American puppet masters. He repeats the trope that Zionists, and therefore most Jews, are subhuman, and uses vermin imagery that is, of course, reminiscent of Nazi propaganda," said Dore Feith, a Columbia student and former president of Aryeh: Columbia Students Association for Israel.
