Dr. Mika Tosca later walked back comments calling Israelis “savages” for retaliating against Hamas after it slaughtered 1,400 civilians, setting off Operation Iron Swords.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
A prominent trans and climate change activist who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) apologized last week for an antisemitic post written against Israelis after the Jewish state declared war on Hamas when it perpetrated the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on October 7.
“Yesterday I wrote some things on my Instagram story that I unequivocally reject and do not stand behind,” Dr. Mika Tosca wrote Wednesday. “I am deeply sorry for writing what I wrote, and for hurting many people with my words, and I am especially sorry to Israeli people that I broadly placed at fault for the war.”
“I allowed my reaction to the violence in Israel and Palestine to take an inappropriate and offensive form, and I am taking proactive steps to learn how I can do better and be better,” Tosca added. “[Israelis] did not — and do not — deserve [what I said], and I was wrong to post what I posted; I know that my words perpetuated harmful stereotypes.”
The associate professor and climate scientist had called Israelis a litany of epithets in Tosca’s original post after the IDF began a bombing campaign of military targets in the Gaza Strip following the Hamas murder of 1,400 men, women, children and babies, the vast majority of the adults being civilians in their homes and at a dance rave.
Saying the proven facts of the slaughter was “downright evil propaganda,“ Tosca wrote, “Israelis are pigs. Savages. Very bad people. Irredeemable excrement.”
“After the past week, if your eyes aren’t open to the crimes against humanity that Israel is committing and has committed for decades, and will continue to commit, then I suggest you open them,” Tosca continued. “It’s disgusting and grotesque. May they all rot in hell.”
The StopAntiSemitism NPO had called out the professor on X for Tosca’s “vile bigotry,” and demanded that SAIC hold her “fully accountable,” since “Jewish students deserve to feel safe on campus and people like her make that impossible when they’re unapologetically antisemitic.”
Other users reacted with disgust as well.
“Good Lord, how can someone have so much hate. A teacher who knows about the holocaust and still continue to spew hatred like this. Vile,” wrote one on X.
“She must be fired immediately. Such a narrow-minded fanatic antisemite must not be allowed to teach in any school nor near schools,” another posted.
The school told The New York Post that it “repudiated” Tosca’s comments, saying, “Those views are not reflective of the School or the values we as a community share.”