Jewish students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) accused the college of failing to stop antisemitic acts from campus groups that vandalized holocaust displays and publicly declared support for the terrorist group Hamas.
A document compiled by MIT students and shared with The Post shows evidence of racist behavior dating back to October 2022 — a year before Hamas terror attacks on Israel, largely carried out by the leadership of the Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA).
According to the document, the CAA hosted Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd as a speaker on campus that month, although he had declared at X that he hoped all Israeli soldiers would die “in the most torturous and slow way”.
“I hope they see their mother’s suffering (not that these unscrupulous pigs would care),” El-Kurd added in a 2021 post.
Papers obtained by The Post say the CAA ignored strong opposition from Jewish students who raised their concerns ahead of time.
A police officer outside MIT, guarding campus David McGlynn Holocaust exhibit at MIT that students say was defaced with Free Palestine graffiti on Holocaust Memorial Day Provided to NY Post
“In his speech at MIT, El-Kurd targeted Israeli students on campus, falsely claiming that there were students who had tied up and gassed Palestinian children during their service in the Israel Defense Forces,” according to an eyewitness.
Two days after appearing at MIT, El-Kurd went on to speak at Harvard, according to the Jewish News Syndicate.
MIT students also reported CAA members defaced a Holocaust display on Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, by scrawling the slogan “Free Palestine” on it, then “proudly posted [it] on their Instagram account” in April this year.
They claim the group’s most recent social media posts, “unequivocally support, condone, and glorify the violence perpetrated by Hamas”.
CAA and MIT did not respond to The Post when contacted for comment on the allegations on Thursday.
People walk through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. David McGlynn
“The Coalition Against Apartheid is a student group at MIT focused on advancing anti-colonial and anti-apartheid organizing on campus,” its site reads.
“We support the liberation of all people, with a focus on the Israeli occupation of Palestine.
“In addition to working for administrative and institutional change, we hold events on campus that range from social to educational.”
Separately, the document also called out MIT Postdoctoral Associate Afif Aqrabawi for allegedly claiming in a tweet that Zionism is a “mental illness”, and suggesting Israeli soldiers had “harvested organs” from the bodies of dead Palestinians.
MIT Postdoctoral Associate Afif Aqrabawi’s X message @AjAqrabawi/X
“Aqrawabi has posted extreme anti-Zionist, anti-Semitic and blood libel rhetoric,” the document said.
But Aqrabawi told The Post that the allegations against him were just a failed attempt to silence him “from telling the truth” because he is “a Palestinian who is outspoken against the active genocide taking place in Gaza”.
“As a Palestinian, I am anti-Zionist by blood and I am not afraid to voice my attitude towards Zionist supremacy,” he said on Thursday.
A line of hot questions from Rep. Elise Stefanik, RN.Y., who repeatedly asked MIT’s president, along with two from other schools, whether “calling for the genocide of the Jews” would violate each university’s code of conduct, fueled further tensions. on campus. David McGlynn
“I abhor antisemitism in general and believe Zionism itself is the greatest threat to Judaism.”
Agrabawi also doubled down on his claim that “Zionists stole…our bodies for organ harvesting”, citing an Al Jazeera report from 2009.
Some of his contentious tweets were reported to MIT by students who said feedback from members of the school’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) department was disappointing.
In an email seen by The Post, DEI described Aqrabawi’s tweet as “disturbing, inflammatory, and polarizing” but warned people who reported it not to accuse “any of our colleagues, staff or trainees of hate speech”.
“The painful truth is that many people around us are grieving and many lives and families are at risk,” the email read.
“And now more than ever (as a faculty member, DEIJ associate department head, and also as a Jew whose father was born and raised in Tel Aviv) I am committed to ensuring that those values include all possibilities of compassion for their respective intensity. – and all tenderness for each other’s fragility.”
On Wednesday another protest was held at MIT calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, attended by about 150 people, both students and non-students.
Protester Safiyya Ogundioe, a 4th year student majoring in chemical engineering said she and her colleagues were protesting “MIT’s proprietary relationship with Israel,” including alleged research funding from the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
In the middle of the chant he explains: “From the river to the sea…” simply means “freedom for all people, Palestinians and Jews, in this region, from the river to the sea,” a definition that most Jews disagree with.
Dr. Sally Kornbluth, president of MIT, testifies before the House Education and Workforce Committee December 5, 2023, in Washington, DC REUTERS
Students at the rally called the IDF’s actions in Gaza “genocide” and argued anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.
Israeli student Dana Rubin disagreed with the rally and said she has become more politically active since the October 7 Hamas attack.
He said: “It’s dehumanizing [Jewish people] that has been experienced for the past 100 years does not disappear, it just changes. Instead of being bad for ‘controlling the money,’ we are now bad for being ‘white colonialists.’
“There’s a bunch of white liberals who think they understand what’s going on, but they don’t, and they’re more extreme, in my opinion, than the real Palestinians I know,” he added.
Details of the split at the school emerged after more than 700 MIT Jewish alumni and allies accused MIT of failing to condemn its President Sally Kornbluth, who is Jewish, for not doing enough against antisemitism following her testimony on Capitol Hill last week.
“During congressional testimony on December 5, 2023, President Kornbluth implied calls for the genocide of Jews cannot constitute bullying and harassment under the MIT code of conduct, depending on the context,” the letter to the school’s governing body, the MIT Corporation, reads.
The university said in a statement to The Post: “MIT and our president, Sally Kornbluth, reject antisemitism in all its forms. Our senior leaders are working to stay focused on keeping the campus safe and functioning.”
In their letter, the MIT alumni called for “immediate and concrete” action from the institution, including “enforcing meaningful consequences for individuals who violate MIT rules, creating a dedicated antisemitism task force on campus, and publicly announcing that calls for violence against civilians are pretext to be removed and amend the MIT Code of Conduct to include this if necessary.”
In response, MIT said: “We recognize there are deeply and sincerely held diverse views across our nearly 30,000+ community on campus and our broader MIT family off campus, including nearly 143,000 living alumni.”
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
