Harvard Faculty Group Slammed For ‘Inarguably Antisemitic’ Cartoon

Isaac SchorrFeb 19th, 2024, 12:47 pm
 

LEFT: Harvard University (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File) RIGHT: The cartoon shared by Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (via @RabbiWolpe on X)

Harvard University is again under fire for its alleged tolerance of anti-Semitism after a faculty group shared an inflammatory cartoon on its Instagram page on Sunday night.

According to the group’s website, “Harvard Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine is a newly formed collective of Harvard University faculty and staff committed to supporting the cause of Palestinian liberation” that “wholeheartedly reject[s] accusations that critique of the Israeli state is antisemitic.” It has 112 open members who have signed onto the statement heralding the organization’s founding, which laments what it calls “Israel’s genocidal war and ethnic cleansing in Gaza” and makes no mention of Hamas or the terrorist attack it launched on the world’s only Jewish-majority state last fall.

The social media post drew the attention of Rabbi David Wolpe, a Harvard Divinity School scholar who resigned from the school’s anti-Semitism advisory committee in December after concluding that “the system at Harvard… is itself evil.”

The post itself includes two cartoons, including one depicting a hand bearing an amended Star of David tattoo (a dollar sign is in the middle of it) holding a pair of nooses wrapped around the necks of one Arab and one Black man.

The post reads:

African people have a profound understanding of apartheid and and occupation. The historical roots between Black liberation movements and Palestinian liberation began in the late 1960s. This period was marked by a heightened awareness among Black organizations in the United States. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee likened Zionism to an imperial project…

…while the Black Panther Party aligned itself with the Palestinian resistance, framing both struggles as a unified front against racism, Zionism, and imperialism.

On X, Wolpe wondered if there was “no limit” after deeming the cartoon “despicably, inarguably antisemitic.”

He was joined by a number of other disgusted observers.

“There was a time when only uneducated reactionary boors trafficked in such poisonous Jew-hatred. Now it’s Ivy League intellectuals who specialize in this crude antisemitism,” mused Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby.

Fox News’ Guy Benson suggested that a “new exhibit for the Congressional anti-Semitism investigation into Harvard and other schools” had “just dropped.”

Actress Patricia Heaton concluded that the congressional hearings that first put Harvard under the microscope “actually had zero impact on rampant antisemitism at Harvard, where not only do Jew haters exist among students but with faculty and staff.”

In December, then-Harvard President Claudine Gay told a congressional committee that calling for the genocide of the Jewish people did not necessarily violate the school’s code of conduct. She resigned her position shortly afterward amidst a plagiarism controversy.

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