London University professor calls Israel a ‘Western virus’

Former Israeli professor who voluntarily “exiled” himself to the UK goes on an anti-Israel rant at an Islamic organization event.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

A professor who fled Israel over alleged persecution for his anti-Zionist views was hosted by an Islamic organization that pushed his anti-Israel messages, the Jewish Chronicle reported over the weekend.

Prof. Haim Bresheeth of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) called Israel a “Western virus” and said that Zionism was “riding on the latent Islamophobia inherent in Christian society since the Crusades.”

An apparent communist sympathizer who felt that he had to leave Israel 20 years ago and relocated to London, Bresheeth said that Western Christians created Zionism at the end of the nineteenth century in order to exert control over the Middle East.

“The West had conceived of Zionism as the bulwark of Western capitalism against Islam and the Arab world and used it to open the Middle East for Western interests,” Bresheeth said during a “webinar to slam normalization with Israel” held earlier this month by the Islamic Human Rights Commission (IHRC), a London-based NGO that described Bresheeth as an “ex-Israeli Jew and ardent anti-Zionist.”

“In this way Israel became the Western virus in the region during the Cold War,” Bresheeth said, mimicking calls by Iranian leaders who have repeatedly called Israel a “cancer” that must be removed from the Middle East.

One of the webinar participants was Marwa Osma, a Lebanese commentator who called for support for “armed resistance” coupled with “international pressure” against what she said was “Zionist aggression.”

IHRC chairman Massoud Shadjareh attacked Israeli policy that was “focusing particularly on inter-faith initiatives between the Jewish and Muslim community” and saying any “normalization” with Israel was unacceptable.

The SOAS has a long history of complaints over its staff and student organizations frequently displaying open hostility to Israel, including incidents of anti-Semitism, the Chronicle reported.

“We, as anti-Zionist Jews, are together with Palestine,” Bresheeth said at an anti-Israel rally sponsored by the IHRC last year. “We call for all of us in Britain to use boycotts, divestments and sanctions to bring about the end of Zionism.”

Wearing a flag on his back that said “boycott Israel,” Bresheeth said at the June 2019 rally that he supported “a secular democratic state as proposed by the PLO.”

“Free free Palestine,” he shouted at the crowd. “In our hundreds and in our millions, we are all Palestinians.”