University of Arizona president becomes the voice of moral clarity on Israel
There are not many more powerful testaments to the miracle of education than Robert C. Robbins, the 22nd president of the University of Arizona.
A boy raised in the backwaters of southern Mississippi, Robbins earned his bachelor’s degree from tiny Millsaps College in Jackson.
From there it was a moonshot.
A medical degree at the University of Mississippi. Cardiothoracic training at Stanford University. Postdoctoral research at Columbia University and the National Institutes of Health.
Before he got to Tucson in 2017, he had already served as president and CEO of the world's largest medical complex — Texas Medical Center in Houston.
Before that, he was chairman of the Department of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine.
Robbins should add Oct. 7 to his resume
With such a distinguished record of achievement, there would seem to be little room for anything else on his resume.
He had better clear space for Oct. 7, 2023.
That was a day on which history pivoted, when a band of nearly 3,000 terrorists invaded Israel in three waves and commenced the medieval slaughter of civilians — torturing, mutilating and burning alive men, women and children.
If there is a definition of evil, this was it.
The trained killers of Palestinian Hamas butchered Israeli civilians to try to provoke an overreaction of the Israeli Defense Forces that would then lead to the collateral deaths of Palestinian women and children.
Hamas would, in turn, use images of suffering Palestinians to try to marginalize Israel on the global stage.
After their deed, Hamas went back to their Gaza tunnels stocked with food, clean water and ammunition and left Gaza's civilians to fend above ground with food shortages, filthy water and the inevitable Israeli airstrikes.
Elite universities offered no moral clarity
It was also a pivotal week in America, as tens of thousands of college students along with their whisperers in the faculty lounges of Harvard and Columbia and Stanford began condemning the Israelis before they had even answered the barbarians — before they had even recovered and counted their 1,400 dead.
This was a moment for moral clarity, and most of our elite universities could provide none.
History is often clouded with ambiguity. War, as they say, is a fog. And nowhere is that more true than the Middle East.
But the Oct. 7 raid on Israel was so diabolical it stands with other historic events — Hitler’s Holocaust, Pol Pot’s Killing Fields, Stalin’s famines, Bin Laden’s 9/11 — as an unmistakable crime against humanity.
Why did Hamas: Take the risk of attacking Israel now?
Hamas, whose senior political leadership luxuriates in high-toned quarters in Qatar and lives off the hundreds of millions of dollars it steals from the Palestinian people, is now being celebrated by American college students and professors.
These are the useful idiots who cannot distinguish good from evil.
They deserve our contempt and a powerful response from university leadership.
He condemned Hamas when others wouldn't
From Tucson came the voice of Robert Robbins doing what so many college presidents would not.
He described Oct. 7 with precision.
“As we continue to witness the horrendous acts of terrorism by Hamas in Israel targeted at innocent civilians, including children, this clearly is not just a political debate or incident related to geopolitical differences.
“Let's call it what it is: antisemitic hatred, murder, and a complete atrocity.”
He then condemned the National Students for Justice in Palestine, who in their call for a Day of Resistance emblazoned their posters with a paraglider — the Hamas raiders who had just raped, mutilated, shot and burned alive some 260 young people in southern Israel.
SJP had gone even further than merely celebrating Hamas’ bloodletting. In its toolkit for a Day of Resistance, it declared its unity with Hamas, a group the U.S. State Department long ago labeled a terrorist organization.
Said Robbins: “The national organization (of SJP) has made statements endorsing the actions of Hamas in Israel, which are, of course, antithetical to our university's values. ... I want to be clear that SJP is not speaking on behalf of our university.”
Students canceled their protest of Israel
SJP’s UA chapter responded by canceling its demonstration on the Tucson campus, the Tucson Daily Star reported.
“Due to President Robbins’ inflammatory letter, we no longer feel safe holding our rally on campus today and have postponed it to a later date,” the chapter wrote.
Wrap your mind around that.
The SJP students didn’t feel safe to celebrate the mass murder of Jews.
Hamas' atrocities: Are outmatched by Israel's cruelty
Maha Nassar, faculty adviser to the UA chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, said, “By issuing a statement that condemns Hamas again and mentions SJP in the same message it looked to many like he was equating or conflating the two.
“As a result, students felt like President Robbins put a target on their backs; they felt scared, hurt, alone, and vulnerable.”
Actually, it was National Students for Justice in Palestine who linked arms with Hamas.
“The revolution is being waged across historic Palestine — not just cross-factional, but unifying our people in the name of resistance,” read their tool kit.
“All Palestinian factions in Gaza appear to be participating under unified command. This is the first time since 1949 that a large-scale battle has been fought within 48 Palestine [the 1948 boundaries of the Holy Land].
“... We as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement, not in solidarity with this movement.”
Courage is speaking in unwelcome spaces
Often what is happening on the surface of the Middle East does not reflect the reality below.
On Friday, Dennis Ross, a long-time and respected U.S. negotiator in the region and a figure of the political left, wrote in The New York Times that even the Arab leadership knows this undeniable truth:
Hamas, not Israel, is the great enemy of the Palestinian people and an enemy of peace in the Middle East.
“Over the past two weeks, when I talked to Arab officials throughout the region whom I have long known, every single one told me that Hamas must be destroyed in Gaza,” he wrote.
“They made clear that if Hamas is perceived as winning, it will validate the group’s ideology of rejection, give leverage and momentum to Iran and its collaborators and put their own governments on the defensive.”
In conclusion, Ross wrote, “An outcome that leaves Hamas in control will doom not just Gaza but also much of the rest of the Middle East.”
There are plenty of voices these days that are mistaken for courage.
Real courage is a voice that speaks up where it is not welcome, that fills the void that is desperate for leadership.
America’s universities were exposed on Oct. 7 as hotbeds of antisemitism. Robert Robbins saw that depravity, stood in the breach and said, not on my watch.
Phil Boas is an editorial columnist with The Arizona Republic. Email him at phil.boas@arizonarepublic.com.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: University of Arizona president defends Israel when others won't
