Stacked Deck at Wake Forest University

Hat tip The Israel Group


Wake Forest


"My goals with the class are many, but an overriding one is for students to understand the ways in which the histories of Jews and Palestinians are deeply intertwined with one another, both in the present and long before the dual catastrophes of the mid-twentieth century—the Shoah and the Nakba—brought them together." 

The below article, written by Wake University Jewish History Chair Barry Trachtenberg, shows just how the deck is slanted against Israel in our universities. It is not only the various Middle East Studies departments, which stand for nothing else than presenting a Pan Arab, anti-West, anti-Israel point of view, but all too often Jewish studies have been infested with those who carry water for the Palestinian side of the conflict. In the below article, written for the Association of Jewish Studies, Dr Trachtenberg explains how he presents the Israel-Palestinian conflict to his students. At first, it seems like he tries to expose his students to both sides. Yet, when he actually compares the so-called nakba to the Holocaust, and Israel to Nazi Germany, he betrays his own bias against Israel.

https://www.associationforjewishstudies.org/publications-research/ajs-news/no-exception-on-teaching-zionism-palestine-and-israel

First of all, to equate the nakba to the Holocaust is absurd on its surface. This is not to say that many Arabs-now referred to as Palestinians since the late 1960s- in many cases did not suffer injustices, dislocation or other tragedies during the 1948 war when many of therm left their homes in Israel at the urging of the Arab armies who promised them a quick return after the Israelis were wiped out, which didn't happen. Yet, 6 million Arab civilians did not die, there were no Auschwitzs, and Trachtenberg fails to address the fact that some half a million or more Jews were driven out of Arab lands during the same era simply because they were Jews. Furthermore, while the Holocaust destroyed most of the Jewish population of Europe, the Palestinian population has skyrocketed since 1948. That's because, while there was fighting between Israelis and Arabs during those years, there was no systematic attempt to wipe out an entire population on the part of the Israelis.

If there was a dual catastrophe in the 20th century (leaving aside World Wars I and II), it would be the Turkish massacre of the Armenians in 2015. Yet, it is overlooked in favor of the nakba (which means "catastrophe" in Arabic).

Nor is it fair for Trachtenberg to draw comparisons between Israel-a democratic nation trying to survive- and Nazi Germany, a dictatorship bent on world conquest and the elimination of the Jewish people. Yet that is what the pro-Palestinian crowd does on our university campuses. They indoctrinate college students that Israel is some sort of horrific nation committing all these abuses against the poor Palestinian people while ignoring the efforts of Hamas, Hizbollah, Iran, and others to destroy the Jewish state, and while ignoring the terror attacks, the suicide bombings, bus bombings, knife attacks, and everything else the "poor" Palestinians can do to kill the Jews of Israel. Where is there a class on that?

How disconcerting it must be for Jewish students who support Israel to have to encounter all the hate coming from the various chapters of the Muslim Student Association and Students for Justice in Palestine while also having to deal with the same propaganda from professors and departments that supposedly represent Jews.