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Rutgers Law School Published a Paper Filled with False Anti-Israel Talking Points
Rutgers University president Jonathan Holloway attends a House Education and the Workforce Committee hearing on pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, on Capitol Hill in Washington, US, May 23, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amanda Andrade-Rhoades
In November 2023, the Rutgers Law School Center for Security, Race and Rights published a paper that is embarrassingly bad scholarship.
Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine–Israel Discourse is a collection of anti-Israel talking points. It starts off by admitting that it is using a troubled definition of Islamophobia for the purposes of the paper:
Islamophobia, as the term is being used here, refers to what Professor Sahar Aziz calls “an exaggerated fear of, and hostility to Islam and Muslims by the state and the public as a result of imputed inferior biological and cultural traits based on religious identity that produce systemic bias, discrimination, and marginalization, and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life.”
Although anti-Arab racism is separate from Islamophobia, the two forms of bias often overlap. A sizable minority of Arabs (including Palestinians) are not Muslim, but often experience Islamophobia because Americans incorrectly assume all Arabs are Muslim. The considerable overlap between these two prejudices in the West, and especially in the United States, should be noted while acknowledging the two are not identical. For the sake of brevity and clarity, this report uses Islamophobia broadly to describe both anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian racism.
Who is Professor Sahar Aziz, who claims that critics of Islam consider Muslims to be biologically inferior? Why, she is one of the authors of the paper. The paper is built around a definition that was literally made up by one of the authors. And that is then extended to claim that the fictional “anti-Palestinian racism” is by definition “Islamophobic.” Does this mean that any criticism of any Palestinian, including their overwhelming support for terrorism (according to polls), is presumed to be racist?
In fact, both Aziz and co-author Mitchell Plitnick quote themselves extensively in this paper, which cherry picks quotes and makes assertions that are absurd. One example is the claim that a newspaper headline “Omar, ‘squad,’ launch another anti-Israel strike” is Islamophobic. The paper claims without any convincing proof that debate about American support for Israel is restricted. It also implies that historic US support for Israel is based partially on Islamophobia.
Aziz is the Executive Director of the same Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights that published the piece. The Rutgers name implies that it is an academic paper that has serious research behind it, but the paper itself does not say whether the authors have any conflict of interest (e.g., anti-Israel activism) and does not consider any other viewpoints. There is an obvious conflict of interest in publishing a paper under the Rutgers name when it was written by the same person that is needed to approve its publication.
One of the key claims in the paper is that US Muslims are unfairly tarnished with the presumption that they are antisemitic.
There are surprisingly few surveys about this topic of American Muslim attitudes towards Jews. One 2022 article, using a methodology I disagree with, finds that American Muslims don’t have a significantly different attitude towards Jews than non-Muslims.
But a more recent Heritage Foundation survey found that American Muslims are far more likely to believe the antisemitic trope that Jews have too much control over the US government.
One other question that has been asked of US Muslims was whether they felt that the October 7 massacres were justified.
Right after 10/7, one poll found that 57.5% of US Muslims felt that Hamas was at least partially justified in the attack.
Whether American Muslims are presumed to be antisemitic is not clear, but when a majority in some polls believe antisemitic tropes and can justify an attack on mostly Jews in their homes and during a concert, way out of proportion to most Americans, then it is not Islamophobic to point that out.
The post Rutgers Law School Published a Paper Filled with False Anti-Israel Talking Points first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Smotrich Says Defense Ministry to Spur Voluntary Emigration from Gaza
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
i24 News – Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Sunday that the government would establish an administration to encourage the voluntary migration of Palestinians from the Gaza Strip.
“We are establishing a migration administration, we are preparing for this under the leadership of the Prime Minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] and Defense Minister [Israel Katz],” he said at a Land of Israel Caucus at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament. “The budget will not be an obstacle.”
Referring to the plan championed by US President Donald Trump, Smotrich noted the “profound and deep hatred towards Israel” in Gaza, adding that “sources in the American government” agreed “that it’s impossible for two million people with hatred towards Israel to remain at a stone’s throw from the border.”
The administration would be under the Defense Ministry, with the goal of facilitating Trump’s plan to build a “Riviera of the Middle East” and the relocation of hundreds of thousands of Gazans for rebuilding efforts.
“If we remove 5,000 a day, it will take a year,” Smotrich said. “The logistics are complex because you need to know who is going to which country. It’s a potential for historical change.”
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Defense Ministry: 16,000 Wounded in War, About Half Under 30
A general view shows the plenum at the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, in Jerusalem. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – The Knesset’s (Israeli parliament’s) Special Committee for Foreign Workers held a discussion on Sunday to examine the needs of wounded and disabled IDF soldiers and the response foreign caregivers could provide.
During the discussion, data from the Defense Minister revealed that the number of registered IDF wounded and disabled veterans rose from 62,000 to 78,000 since the war began on October 7, 2023. “Most of them are reservists and 51 percent of the wounded are up to 30 years old,” the ministry’s report said. The number will increase, the ministry assesses, as post-trauma cases emerge.
The committee chairwoman, Knesset member Etty Atiya (Likud), emphasized the need to reduce unnecessary bureaucracy for the wounded and to remove obstacles. “There is no dispute that the IDF disabled have sacrificed their bodies and souls for the people of Israel, for the state of Israel,” she said. Addressing the veterans, she continued: “And we, as public representatives and public servants alike, must do everything, but everything, to improve your lives in any way possible, to alleviate your pain and the distress of your family members who are no less affected than you.”
Currently, extensions are being given to the IDF veterans on a three-month basis, which Atiya said creates uncertainty and fear among the patients.
“The committee calls on the Interior Minister [Moshe Arbel] to approve as soon as possible the temporary order on our table, so that it will reach the approval of the Knesset,” she said, adding that she “intends to personally approach the Director General of the Population Authority [Shlomo Mor-Yosef] on the matter in order to promote a quick and stable solution.”
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Over 1,300 Killed in Syria as New Regime Accused of Massacring Civilians
Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad speaks during an interview with Sky News Arabia in Damascus, Syria in this handout picture released by the Syrian Presidency on August 8, 2023. Syrian Presidency/Handout via REUTERS
i24 News – Over 1,300 people were killed in two days of fighting in Syria between security forces under the new Syrian Islamist leaders and fighters from ousted president Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect on the other hand, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Sunday.
Since Thursday, 1,311 people had been killed, according to the Observatory, including 830 civilians, mainly Alawites, 231 Syrian government security personnel, and 250 Assad loyalists.
The intense fighting broke out late last week as the Alawite militias launched an offensive against the new government’s fighters in the coastal region of the country, prompting a massive deployment ordered by new leader Ahmed al-Sharaa.
“We must preserve national unity and civil peace as much as possible and… we will be able to live together in this country,” al-Sharaa said, as quoted in the BBC.
The death toll represents the most severe escalations since Assad was ousted late last year, and is one of the most costly in terms of human lives since the civil war began in 2011.
The counter-offensive launched by al-Sharaa’s forces was marked by reported revenge killings and atrocities in the Latakia region, a stronghold of the Alawite minority in the country.
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