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Duke University Press Is an Anti-Israel Defamation Machine
Clocktower Quad at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Photo: Warren LeMay/Wikimedia Commons.
Duke University Press has recently published two journal articles that could be construed as calling for the destruction of Israel.
In 2024, the Critical Times journal, a Duke publication, printed Layal Ftouni’s article that concluded, “For a free Palestine, from the river to the sea.”
In April of 2025, the South Atlantic Quarterly, another Duke publication, carried an anonymous article that similarly concluded, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) explains:
“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” is an antisemitic slogan commonly featured in anti-Israel campaigns and chanted at demonstrations.
This rallying cry has long been used by anti-Israel voices, including supporters of terrorist organizations such as Hamas and the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine], which seek Israel’s destruction through violent means. It is fundamentally a call for a Palestinian state extending from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, territory that includes the State of Israel, which would mean the dismantling of the Jewish state. It is an antisemitic charge denying the Jewish right to self-determination, including through the removal of Jews from their ancestral homeland.
A doctor at the Duke School of Medicine, alarmed by these publications, told me these Duke Press articles are a form of academic support for terrorism.
In addition to calling for the destruction of Israel, the 2025 article is attributed to anonymous authors. Duke Press has essentially concealed this “scholarship” so the public can’t see who is calling for the destruction of Israel. Would Duke Press ever publish an anonymous article — or any article — calling for the violent destruction of the Palestinian-controlled territories? I highly doubt it.
The Ftouni article states: “I would like to thank the editorial team, Samera Esmeir, Susana Draper, and Ramsey McGlazer.”
All three editors are anti-Israel activists. Esmeir signed a letter “calling on scholars and librarians within Middle East studies to boycott Israeli academic institutions.” Draper and McGlazer signed a letter titled “Academics Boycott Columbia University,” stating, “We endorse and reiterate the demands of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment: divest all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.”
Judith Butler is a member of the Critical Times Executive Editorial Board. Butler outraged many when, according to The JC, she publicly described the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas-led pogrom — in which 1,200 Israelis were murdered and many others were taken hostage and sexually assaulted — as “an act of armed resistance. It is not a terrorist attack.”
In a 2023 Duke Press book, The Cunning of Gender Violence, Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian writes:
Israeli ideology treats the colonized Palestinians as a demographic threat to be eliminated. Andrea Smith (2003) writes in her work on the sexual colonization of native peoples that the native Other is rendered “sexually violable and ‘rapeable’” within the framework of colonialism. The treatment of schoolgirls within the Israeli biopolitical colonial regime similarly can be read as constructing them not just as disposable but also penetrable ‘Others,’ especially through the use of guns.
She adds, Israelis “carry their rifles as an extension of phallic power.”
The language clearly portrays Israelis as sexual predators or sexual monsters. Given the longstanding perceived connection between Jewish people worldwide and Israel, this is even more problematic.
The book is part of a Duke Press series. The series editors are Inderpal Grewal, Caren Kaplan, and Robyn Wiegman.
Grewal and Kaplan both pledged in 2021 to promote the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel “in the classroom and on campus.”
All three editors signed a “Scholars Against the War on Palestine” 2023 letter calling for a “permanent ceasefire now,” stating, “We stand with Palestinians everywhere.” The letter relentlessly attacked Israel and did not mention — a single time — Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 attack, or the hundreds of hostages being held at the time by Hamas-led terrorists. Some of these hostages remain today in Gaza in horrendous conditions. The words “Hamas” and “hostages” did not even appear one time in the letter.
Such severe anti-Israel bias helps explain how Duke University Press apparently found no problem with a journal article stating that Israelis view Palestinians as rapeable.
In 2024, the Transgender Studies Quarterly journal, a Duke Press publication, published an article in which the authors explain, “the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) [are] referred to by resistance movements as the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF).” The authors then immediately used the term “IOF” twice in the column. For example, the authors discuss what they call “an IOF missile ostensibly on its way to destroy lives in Gaza.”
This article makes it clear that Duke University Press is being used as part of the “resistance movement” against Israel.
Duke University Press has a long history of publishing antisemitic works. For example, “The Right to Maim: Debility, Capacity, Disability” by Rutgers University professor Jasbir Puar, published in 2017, updated blood libels against the Jewish people. She states Israel specifically targets Palestinian children to maim them and then profit from their incurred disabilities. Like other Duke University Press authors, she compares Israelis to Nazis.
In 2018, I reported that seven members of the Duke University Press Editorial Advisory Board signed initiatives related to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel.
The Duke University Press website explains that during the peer review process, the publisher “performs an intellectual gatekeeping function, ensuring that only scholarship of the highest quality receives the imprimatur of Duke University.”
The Duke University Press peer review process is apparently a colossal failure that puts hateful, antisemitic content into the world, year after year after year.
Duke University Press is functioning at times more as an advocacy organization for promoting anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian positions than as a scholarly publisher. Perhaps Duke Press should change its name to “The Palestinian Point of View Publishing House.”
Peter Reitzes writes about issues related to antisemitism and Israel.
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At Least 12 Killed in Massive Russian Attack on Ukraine
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky speaks during a joint press conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kyiv, Ukraine June 10, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko
i24 News – Russia-Ukraine War: About three and a half years after the outbreak of the war, Russia carried out last night (Sunday) the largest air attack since it began. At least 12 people were killed, including three children, and dozens more were injured when 367 rockets and missiles were fired at Ukrainian cities, including the capital Kyiv.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky sharply criticized US policy, which so far has taken a soft stance towards Russia, and recently hinted that it would stop mediating between the two countries: “The silence of America, the silence of others in the world only encourages Putin,” he wrote on Telegram. “Every such Russian terrorist attack is reason enough for new sanctions against Russia.”
The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russia launched 298 drones and 69 missiles in a night attack. According to him, they shot down 266 drones and 45 missiles. Damage was caused to several areas, including the second largest city in Ukraine, Kharkiv, as well as Mykolaiv in the south and Ternopil in the west.
In parallel, a prisoner of war exchange deal was concluded. In Russia, reports said that 303 prisoners were transferred from each side. In total, over the last three days 2,000 prisoners, 1,000 Ukrainians and 1,000 Russians, have been returned to their countries. Zelensky thanked the servicemen of the armed forces, and promised to bring all the prisoners home. “Today, our armed forces, the national guard, the state border service, and the special state transport service are returning home.”
“I am grateful to the team that worked around the clock to successfully execute these exchanges,” he added. “We will certainly bring back each and every one of our people from Russian captivity.”
Meanwhile, The Washington Post reported that the Russian army may reach a severe shortage of manpower and weapons in the next year. The Ukrainian army is also in trouble, and it is offering generous economic grants to new recruits.
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UN Says More Food Needed in Gaza as Looting Hampers Deliveries
United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres speaks to members of the Security Council during a meeting to address the situation in the Middle East, including the Palestinian question, at UN headquarters in New York City, New York, US, April 18, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz
Israeli airstrikes killed at least six Palestinians guarding aid trucks against looters, Hamas officials said on Friday, as the head of the United Nations warned that only a “teaspoon” of aid was getting in following Israel’s 11-week-long blockade.
The Israeli military said 107 trucks carrying flour and other foodstuffs as well as medical supplies entered the Gaza Strip from the Kerem Shalom crossing point on Thursday, for a total of 305 since Monday when the blockade was relaxed.
But getting the supplies to people sheltering in tents and other makeshift accommodation has been fitful and U.N. officials say at least 500 to 600 trucks of aid are needed every day.
So far, an umbrella network of Palestinian aid groups said, 119 aid trucks have got past the Kerem Shalom crossing point and into Gaza since Israel eased its blockade on Monday in the face of an international outcry.
Despite the relaxation of the blockade, distribution has been hampered by looting by groups of men, some of them armed, near the city of Khan Younis, an umbrella network representing Palestinian aid groups said.
“They stole food meant for children and families suffering from severe hunger,” the network said in a statement, which also condemned Israeli airstrikes on security teams protecting the trucks.
The U.N. World Food Program said 15 trucks carrying flour to WFP-supported bakeries had been looted, which it said reflected the dire conditions facing Gazans.
“Hunger, desperation and anxiety over whether more food aid is coming is contributing to rising insecurity,” it said in a statement.
A Hamas official said six members of a security team tasked with guarding the shipments were killed.
Israel imposed the blockade in early March, accusing Hamas of stealing aid meant for civilians. Hamas rejects the charge, saying a number of its own fighters have been killed protecting the trucks from armed looters.
“Hamas constantly calls the looters ‘guards’ or protectors’ to mask the fact that they’re disturbing the aid process,” an Israeli military official said.
‘DESPERATION’
With most of Gaza’s 2 million population squeezed into an ever narrowing zone on the coast and in the area around the southern city of Khan Younis by Israel’s military operation, international pressure to get aid in quickly has ratcheted up.
“Without rapid, reliable, safe and sustained aid access, more people will die – and the long-term consequences on the entire population will be profound,” said U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres.
A German government spokesperson said the aid was “far too little, too late and too slow,” adding that delivery of supplies had to be increased significantly.
Israel has announced that a new system, sponsored by the United States and run by private contractors, will soon begin operations from four distribution centers in the south of Gaza, but many details of how the system will work remain unclear.
The U.N. has already said it will not work with the new system, which it says will leave aid distribution conditional on Israel’s political and military aims.
Israel says its forces will only provide security for the centers and will not distribute aid themselves.
As the aid has begun to trickle in, the Israeli military has continued the intensified ground and air operation launched last week, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said would end with Israel taking full control of the Gaza Strip.
The military said it had conducted more strikes in Gaza overnight, hitting 75 targets, including weapons storage facilities and rocket launchers.
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Swiss Authorities Exploring Probe Into US-Backed Gaza Aid Group
Displaced Palestinian children wait to receive free food at a tent camp, amid food shortages, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas continues, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, February 27, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ibraheem Abu Mustafa
Swiss authorities said on Sunday they were exploring whether to open a legal investigation into the activities of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a US-backed organization that plans to oversee aid distribution in the Palestinian enclave.
The move comes after a Swiss NGO submitted a request for a probe into GHF’s aid plan, which the United Nations has opposed, saying it is not impartial or neutral and forces further displacement and exposes thousands of people to harm.
The GHF, which has said it hopes to start work in Gaza by the end of May, told Reuters it “strictly adheres” to humanitarian principles, and that it would not support any form of forced relocation of civilians.
Israel has allowed limited aid deliveries to resume this week after having stopped all aid deliveries to Gaza on March 2.
TRIAL International, a Switzerland-based NGO, on Friday said it had filed two legal submissions asking Swiss authorities to investigate whether the Swiss-registered GHF complies with Swiss law and international humanitarian law.
The submissions were made to the Swiss Federal Supervisory Authority for Foundations and the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) on May 20 and 21.
The FDFA on Sunday confirmed to Reuters that both authorities had received the submissions.
TRIAL International said it asked the Swiss FDFA to explain if the GHF had submitted a declaration, in accordance with Swiss law, to use private security companies to distribute aid, and if it had been approved by Swiss authorities.
The FDFA told Reuters it is investigating whether such a declaration would be required for the foundation.
It said that the Federal Supervisory Board for Foundations cannot review whether foundations comply with their statutes until they start their activities.
The GHF told Reuters that though using private security firms represents a change from prior aid delivery frameworks, it would ensure aid is not diverted to Hamas or criminal organizations.
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