“The time has come for you as head of the University to make a strong stand against what has clearly become a trend of vitriolic hatred against the Jewish state on your campus,” Jewish Home Party Head Naftali Bennett wrote.
By: Jack Gold, World Israel News
Israeli Minister of Education Naftali Bennett sent an open letter to the University of Michigan after a Jewish student was apparently forced to sit through an overtly anti-Semitic lecture that compared Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Adolf Hitler.
The image, shared by lecturer Emory Douglas, a graphic designer who served as minister of culture for the Black Panther Party, branded Netanyahu with the caption “Guilty of Genocide.”
In his letter to the university’s president, Bennett stated his strong condemnation of the incident while noting that such a comparison breached the official definition of anti-Semitism formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA).
He noted that allowing such hatred to be expressed on campus was greatly harmful to the well-being of the students of the university.
He further noted that this was not the first anti-Israel incident. This incident comes shortly after a U. of Michigan digital studies professor, John Cheney-Lippold, rescinded an offer to write a letter of recommendation for a student after learning she was studying at Tel Aviv University.
Lippold, a supporter of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement, faced significant criticism, including from the university president, who disavowed boycotts of Israel, and a regent who called the professor’s behavior “anti-Semitic.”
“The time has come for you as head of the University to make a strong stand against what has clearly become a trend of vitriolic hatred against the Jewish state on your campus,” Bennett wrote in the missive, according to a statement from his office.
Rick Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for the university, defended Douglas’ lecture in a response to the Algemeiner, saying it centered on the “vast body of work” he produced, most during his time with the Black Panther Party.
“The Stamps [School of Arts & Design] program is intentionally provocative and we are clear with our students about this,” he wrote.