A British institute that claims to “study antisemitism” is instead turning it into a weapon with which to bash Israel. The Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at the University of London will feature a speaker on March 18 on “The Politics of Redemptive Anti-Antisemitism.” Set aside the arcane language, and what you find is the latest rhetorical weapon being used by anti-Israel extremists.
The speaker, King’s College’s Prof. Adam Sutcliffe, is worried about what he calls “enshrined opposition to antisemitism.” He accuses Jews of “emotionalizing public discourse” by “ascribing special meaning to Jewish suffering.” He fears that “the emotional authority of anti-antisemitism” is affecting attitudes toward Israel. In other words, he’s worried that concern about antisemitism is generating sympathy for the Jewish State.
Sutcliffe dislikes what he calls “exceptionalist thinking about the Holocaust and antisemitism.” Put simply, he doesn’t want the Holocaust or antisemitism to be seen as “exceptional.” As far as Sutcliff is concerned, they are just like any other form of persecution or bigotry.
According to Prof. Sutcliffe, “The political and emotional priority accorded to anti-antisemitism has increasingly stood in a rivalrous or antagonistic, rather than a solidaristic, relationship with campaigns against other forms of prejudice, especially with respect to Islamophobia.” Translation to English: People should pay less attention to antisemitism and more to Islamophobia.
Not surprisingly, Sutcliffe has a long record of extremism. He has publicly promoted the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel, and he played a central role in the anti-Zionist film 100 Years After Balfour.
Sutcliffe also signed a December 2023 letter asserting that the October 7 attack needs to be “placed within the context of Israeli settler colonialism,” even though every Israeli “settler” was expelled from Gaza eighteen years earlier. He wants us to focus on Israel’s “Jewish supremacy and exclusionary nationalism,” which is a thinly disguised way of saying that Israel is the real villain in this story.
Prof. Sutcliffe says he is “currently working on a history of the idea of historical empathy.” What would be even more interesting would be a psychological study of Jewish academics who seem to feel more empathy for those who rape and murder Jews than for the Jewish victims.
A long line of extreme Israel-bashers have been featured speakers
Sadly, Sutcliffe is just the latest in a long line of extreme Israel-bashers who have been featured speakers at the Birkbeck Institute in the past year. Others have included:
• Prof. Omer Bartov of Brown University, who claims Israel is committing “genocide” and says Zionism is “an ideology of ethno-nationalism, exclusion, and domination of Palestinians.”
• Prof. Derek Penslar of Harvard, who has accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing,” “apartheid,” and “Jewish supremacism” and has called for slashing US aid to Israel.
• Prof. Doug Rossinow of Metro State University (Minnesota), who has signed ads and open letters calling for halting US military assistance to Israel and “evacuating” (expelling) all Jews from parts of Jerusalem and other areas. He has also accused AIPAC of lobbying in support of “violence by the Israeli state against Palestinians.”
Last September, the Birkbeck Institute promoted a forthcoming lecture by an Indiana University professor on what it called “Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, and Israel’s counterattack on Gaza.” I sent a note to the Birkbeck leadership, expressing my concern about the deeply troubling moral equivalency inherent in that wording.
In my letter, I pointed out: “Israel did not launch a ‘counterattack on Gaza.’ Israel has never sought to harm Gaza in any way. Israeli forces are engaged in the hot pursuit of the terrorists who slaughtered, gang-raped, and beheaded 1,200 Israelis last October.
“Any harm that has befallen Gazans is a consequence of Hamas situating its terrorists, weapons, and command centers in schools, hospitals, and other residential locations. Israel has tried studiously to avoid harming civilians – something, incidentally, which Britain’s leaders did not do during World War II.”
I urged the Birkbeck leaders to “correct the wording of your advertising before any further damage is done to Israel’s good name by this misleading statement.” They did not reply.
The declared mission of the Birkbeck Institute is to promote research and teaching to combat “antisemitism, racialization, and religious intolerance.” On that basis, respected institutions such as the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and London’s Wiener Holocaust Library have partnered with Birkbeck.
But the roster of Israel-bashing speakers that Birkbeck has promoted demonstrates that the institute has strayed far from its mission. Their anti-Israel tirades make a mockery of the values for which Wiener and Sassoon stand. The Birkbeck Institute no longer deserves the luster that association with the Sassoon and Wiener institutes has bestowed upon it.
The writer is the national chairman of Americans For A Safe Israel, a leading pro-Israel advocacy and education group.