Teacher tells Jewish students to stand in a corner, just as ‘Israel does to the Palestinians’
A Stanford University lecturer ordered his Jewish students to stand in a corner and told them “this is what Israel does to Palestine”, according to reports.
The teacher is understood to have said “only” six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust and labelled students as “colonisers” or “colonised” depending on their heritage.
He also claimed the Hamas massacre of hundreds of Israelis was “legitimate” and described the terrorists as “freedom fighters”, according to The Forward, an American newspaper aimed at a Jewish audience.
Richard Saller, the Stanford president, and Provost Jenny Martinez said in a letter on Wednesday that non-faculty instructor had been suspended following reports he “addressed the Middle East conflict in a manner that called out individual students in class based on their backgrounds and identities”.
The lecturer was teaching a compulsory course for first-year students before announcing Tuesday’s lesson was on colonialism.
Rabbi Dov Greenberg, director of the Chabad Stanford Jewish Center, said three students in the class told him that the teacher had asked them to identify themselves.
The lecturer then told them to take their belongings and stand in the corner, before telling them: “This is what Israel does to the Palestinians”, Rabbi Greenberg said.
‘Reliving the justification of Nazis’
He said the teacher had told the class: “Hamas is a legitimate representation of the Palestinian people. They are not a terrorist group. They are freedom fighters. Their actions are legitimate.”
Nourya Cohen and Andrei Mandelshtam, co-presidents of Stanford’s Israeli Student Association, said several students in the class told them the lecturer “asked Jewish students to raise their hands” before separating them from their stuff to simulate what Jews were doing to Palestinians.
“He asked how many Jews died in the Holocaust,” and when students said six million, “he said, ‘Yes. Only six million,’ ” Ms Cohen told the San Francisco Chronicle.
He is then understood to have told students more people died from colonisation than from the Holocaust, and that colonisation was what happened to the Palestinians.
Ms Cohen and Mr Mandelshtam said that students claimed the lecturer labelled each student as either a “coloniser” or “colonised,” depending on where they were from. When one student reported being from Israel, students said the lecturer responded: “Oh, definitely a coloniser.”
“I feel absolutely dehumanised that someone in charge of students and developing minds could possibly try and justify the massacre of my people,” said Ms Cohen. “It’s like I’m reliving the justification of Nazis 80 years ago on today’s college campus.”
‘Cause for serious concern’
Joshua Jankelow, president of Chabad at Stanford, said he had also been told the story by a student in one of the classes.
While the university would not disclose details of the report, they said it was a “cause for serious concern” and “academic freedom does not permit the identity-based targeting of students.”
Banners which stated “the illusion of Israel is burning” and “the land remembers her people” alongside a drawing of a Palestinian flag were hung on Stanford University’s campus over the weekend before being removed.
It comes amid growing tensions across US university campuses. Harvard University has come under fire after 31 societies signed a letter blaming Israel for Hamas’ murderous attack.
The Telegraph has contacted Stanford University for comment.
