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Student leftists at Hebrew University spark outrage with video attacking IDF soldiers

The communist group urged students to take action against students in uniform.

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

The pro-Zionist student group Im Tirzu called Monday for the Hebrew University in Jerusalem to take action against a left-wing student group that posted an anti-Israel video that called students on campus in IDF uniform “occupiers.”

The student branch of the Hadash communist party student group on campus uploaded a video to its Facebook account to mark “Nakba Day.”

The video criticizes Hebrew University, saying it’s a “partner” in “the occupation” by permitting IDF soldiers to take courses while in uniform.

Complete with subtitles in Arabic, Hebrew and English, the video shows a timeline of events in the country’s modern history since 1948, but accuses Israel of crimes against humanity before claiming that IDF soldiers studying at Hebrew University are part of the occupation.

The video derides the presence of IDF soldiers on campus saying, “In the library, they sat next to us. At the checkpoints, they humiliated our families. On one hand they drink coffee with us, on the other hand they point a rifle at us.”

“72 years of the Palestinian Nakba. And until today… We are confronting and fighting the occupation’s soldiers and policies: on [sic] the checkpoints, in houses and neighborhoods, and in the universities,” the video said. “Is it the Hebrew University, or the Military one?” the video dialog asks.

In a letter to the university administration, Im Tirzu demanded that the heads of the Hadash branch be disciplined, calling it a “serious incitement against students at our university.”

“It is inconceivable that an official student branch at the university, which enjoys the services and prestige of the university, shamelessly accuses it of being a criminal and cooperating with the so-called enemy – the State of Israel and IDF soldiers,” Im Tirzu said in a statement, calling on the university “to summon the heads of the Hadash branch to a disciplinary hearing and to exercise the full weight of the law in the face of this incitement against IDF soldiers. The university cannot allow this incitement to rear its ugly head.”

Last Friday, Palestinians commemorated what they call “Nakba Day,” which translates as “day of disaster.” It marks the anniversary of the 1948 Arab refusal to accept the UN plan to create independent Jewish and Arab states in what was then British mandatory Palestine and the subsequent loss of the war by the Arab armies that tried to wipe out the nascent Jewish state.

“Students from my sector who spit on the state inside are hurting our society and coexistence and everything from a political motive of separatism and extremism,” tweeted Israeli Arab activist and disabled IDF veteran Joseph Haddad. He said the Hadash students were pursuing “a bachelors degree in hypocrisy.”

The university is no stranger to anti-IDF sentiment by left-wing academics. Last year Dr. Liat Kozma, the university’s director of the Nehemia Levtzion Center for Islamic Studies, wrote a post on Facebook detailing why she and a few other professors object to the presence of 150 soldiers from the IDF’s Intelligence Corps who have enrolled in classes on Islam and Middle East history.

Kozma said “dozens of soldiers in uniform in class affects the class dynamics.”

Following that incident Hebrew University Rector Prof. Barak Medina said the claim was from “a small minority of lecturers” and stated “we have no problem with uniforms.”