US Senator Katie Britt Mocked by Four Academics for Supporting Israel

In a June 9 op-ed (“What Katie Britt Gets Dangerously Wrong about Antisemitism”), US Senator Katie Britt from the state of Alabama was maligned by four professors from the University of Alabama for the views she expressed in her article “Why We Must Stand United in Confronting the Escalating Threat of Antisemitism,” published a few days before. In Senator Britt’s op-ed, she states: “October 7, 2023, didn’t happen in a vacuum. The effects of the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history reverberated across the globe, and this evil found its way into the dark corners of our homeland. The Jewish people have been persecuted for centuries, but many Jewish Americans are experiencing violence today that they’ve never witnessed in their lifetimes.” Senator Britt also states: “The American Jewish Committee (AJC) reported that 63% of American Jews felt less secure in 2023 compared to the previous year, a significant increase from 41% in 2022.”

My Jewish great-grandparents fled the pogroms in Russia to come to the protected harbor of America. Our family members who stayed behind were later murdered by the Nazis in 1942. America has historically been a safe sanctuary for Jews, but things have drastically changed, and Senator Britt addresses this grave concern in her op-ed.

The fact that four college professors have attacked the views of Senator Britt is not noteworthy in today’s climate of anti-Zionism and antisemitism in the ranks of acedemic elites, but these four professors are Jewish, and although they defend their anti-Israel and pro Hamas views by saying, “We are Jews of conscience,” it is obvious their consciences are not clear when it comes to the atrocities perpetrated for many decades against Israeli Jews by radical Islamists. They are silent about the mass murder of innocent Israeli citizens during the years of the first and second intifada, when Palestinian suicide bombers blew up Jews in restaurants and buses. I traveled to Israel frequently in those years, partnering with ZAKA Israel, the volunteer organization tasked with the holy calling of collecting body parts of dead Jews—victims of Palestinian suicide bombers— and carefully, with utmost dignity, matching the clothing and skin hue of torsos, fingers, limbs, and heads spread throughout the bombed area. All this so a Jewish person could be buried with honor. I can tell you that the scenes within the buses and buildings were horrific, as were the scenes of mutilated Jews Hamas terrorists left behind on October 7.

In their op-ed, these Jewish professors proclaim that the October massacre of 1,195 Jews and the wounding of nearly 4,000 more in southern Israel—one of the largest terror attacks in world history—“was not the outcome of free-floating anti-Jewish animus but of resistance to 75 years of oppression, dispossession, occupation, and humiliation of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel.” The University of Alabama professors fail to mention that since 2005, Israel has not occupied Gaza because it gave its legal ownership of the Gaza Strip to the Palestinian people with the hope that they would peacefully co-exist as good neighbors. Instead, the Palestinian population voted in 2007 to come under the dictatorship of the terrorist organization Hamas, which in turn murdered hundreds of Palestinians in an assault against the Palestinian Authority.

Since 2007, rather than use the billions of dollars it has received in foreign aid to build hospitals, roads, and schools, Hamas has chosen to build rockets and tunnels of terror. Since 2005, Hamas has fired tens of thousands of rockets into Israel—a fact the professors from Alabama don’t mention. Hamas also trains young Palestinian children to use knives to slaughter Jews. Somehow, the culture of death Hamas has constructed to fulfill its frenzied ambition of murdering all Israeli Jews is mysteriously overlooked by the four professors. They are either blinded by naivety or ideology in stating that October 7 was “not the outcome of free-floating anti-Jewish animus.” Why this statement is so absurd is that the planned precision of the murders was up close and personal, face to face. Jewish parents were forced to watch their children murdered before their eyes. Mothers were raped in front of their children. Grandmothers and grandfathers were butchered and chopped into pieces, and others were burned alive.

For these four thinking Jewish professors to say that October 7 was not the outcome of antisemitic malevolence is tragic. I’m wondering if they would also explain away the root cause of the Holocaust as merely German resistance to Jews rather than bestial antisemitic hatred? By stating that October 7 was an act of Palestinian “resistance to 75 years of oppression” by the State of Israel, these professors reveal their disdain for the very existence of Israel, which was legally recognized by the UN in 1949, 75 years ago.

Interestingly, to support their claim that October 7 was not an act of hatred but resistance to the establishment of the State of Israel, they share a link to an Israeli “scholar” who argues for this position. The “scholar” is none other than Ilan Pappe, an activist in Israel’s far-left communist party. Pappe is a Marxist who lives and breathes to prove the illegitimacy of the State of Israel and ultimately dismantle it. In an interview with Baudouin Loos of Le Soir on November 29, 1999, Pappe states, “There is no historian in the world who is objective. I am not as interested in what happened as in how people see what’s happened. I admit that my ideology influences my historical writings… Indeed, the struggle is about ideology, not about facts. Who knows what facts are? We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth seekers.”

Over the years, Pappe has continuously dismissed Palestinian atrocities against Israeli Jews and views the conflict only through the filter of Palestinian victimhood. For Pappe, Palestinians are forever the oppressed, and Israelis are the settler-colonialists oppressing them. This narrative is just old, tired, repackaged Soviet-era Marxist-Leninist dogma that views the history of the world as a conflict between those who have and those who have not. In this case, the radical Islamist ideology of Hamas is the purest form of good, and Israel is the purest form of evil. For Pappe and, it would seem, the five University of Alabama professors who share his views, historical facts are of no consequence. Illan Pappe is a postmodernist who rejects the idea of historical truth and believes one’s story, however oblique it may be, is as valid as truth. Because postmodernity is thriving on American University campuses, the narrative that Hamas terrorists are innocent, heroic freedom fighters easily resonates. Subjective interpretations of reality have hijacked facts, truth, and reason.

In their op-ed, the four professors accuse Israel of genocide, apartheid, and settler colonialism. They also accuse Senator Britt of using her op-ed as “an act of misdirection”—an attempt to deflect criticism from some in the Republican party who have antisemitic leanings. When it comes to antisemitism, we need to be swivel-headed. We must have an awareness that the scourge of antisemitism is brewing on both the far woke left and the far woke right—ideologies that embrace the same Marxist dogma that the world can only be seen through the lens of the oppressed versus the oppressor. Senator Britt may very well address the issue of antisemitism in the fringe right in a future op-ed. This particular op-ed is not “an act of misdirection.” It’s a wake-up call that antisemitism must be addressed. Senator Britt states, “The sheer evil of antisemitism, left unchecked, has evolved and grown into an ever more virulent hatred, one that no American citizen should ever have to endure.”

If anyone has used their op-ed as “an act of misdirection,” it’s the four professors from the University of Alabama. They accuse Senator Britt of “the weaponization of antisemitism” that “has produced a new Red Scare.” According to Wikipedia, a “Red Scare is a form of moral panic provoked by fear of the rise of left-wing ideologies in a society, especially communism and socialism.” With their woke Marxist leanings inspired by their affection for far-left postmodern communists like Ilan Pappe and their solidarity with the radical Islamist ideology of Hamas—intersectionality at its worst—it’s no wonder they attack Senator Britt. They are misdirecting and deflecting criticism away from their misguided ideology. By calling themselves the “righteous opposition” and “Jews of conscience,” do they mean that those of us concerned about their embrace of Marxism and Islamism—ideologies that seek to dismantle the Jewish State—are unrighteous people without a moral conscience? It would seem so. Pontificating about one’s sanctimonious piety is always pretentious and reveals the shallowness of one’s argument—not a good strategy.

Once again, in the words of Ilan Pappe, “We try to convince as many people as we can that our interpretation of the facts is the correct one, and we do it because of ideological reasons, not because we are truth seekers.” I hope that the four professors from the University of Alabama would, for just a moment, set aside their ideology and emotionally driven storyline and examine the facts of history. Maybe by becoming truth seekers, they will gain a new perspective on why Israel matters. In the meantime, let’s be grateful for leaders like Senator Katie Britt who are willing to take on the fight against the mutating virus of antisemitism.