An Israeli journalist has been condemned for “blatant antisemitism” after referring to “the Elders of Zion” during a university lecture.
Amira Hass, a reporter for Ha’aretz, alluded to a conspiracy which involved Israel planning “from the start” to take Palestinian land as their own, during a lecture she gave to 200 people at Kent University.
Speaking on Thursday evening during a talk jointly organised by the university and SOAS, she said: “As an Israeli and as a Jew, it's very hard for me to confront this subject, and I ask myself: did the Elders of Zion really sit together at the beginning of the ‘70s and then during the '90s, and plan, and have all these military orders, and changes?
Answering her own question, she told the audience: “I believe that they knew for sure that they didn’t want the land to be returned to the Palestinians. And in the ‘90s, my conclusion is that they wanted to do everything possible to forgo the two-state solution.”
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a fictional text created in the early twentieth century to promote the idea that Jews were planning to take over the world.
Audience member David Collier, who recorded the speech, said that Ms Hass’s comments were “sickening and unforgivable.
“I was sitting in a room with around 60 or 70 19-year-olds - they don’t have the knowledge or the understanding to deal with comments like that.
“What they heard was that there was a Jewish plot, and that is irreparable. You can’t get those students back into a room and explain that it was vile antisemitism. They take that information with them into the world.”
In a complaint to the Kent University vice chancellor, Mr Collier said that the lecture, titled “Israel and the Palestinians: Colonialism and Prospects for Justice”, had had the effect of “allowing and promoting antisemitism within campus”.
What Ms Hass said was “the stuff of conspiracy theorists,” he told the university, adding that following the lecture, British Jews “are all just a little bit less safe than we were.
“A simple apology is not good enough. 200 people left the room having been fed antisemitism on your campus. These people need to be told that what they applauded was antisemitism.”
But Ms Hass rejected the complaint, calling it “nonsense”.
She said: “Anyone who listened to my talks and reads me knows what an absurd allegation it is. Right-wing Jews who want to avert the attention from the dangerous reality to both peoples that Israeli colonialism creates, keep trying to manufacture scandals.
"This time it is a person who failed to get my Israeli sense of irony, and rushes to capitalise on this failure in order to flatten and deplete the full content of my talk.”
Board of Deputies senior vice-president Richard Verber said: "Amira Hass's invocation of antisemitic tropes and conspiracy theories is inexcusable, and completely undermines the credibility of her supposedly academic lectures."
And Stephen Spencer Ryde, whose daughter goes to the university and attended the lecture with him, said that Ms Hass’ comments about the Elders of Zion were meant “most clearly as a very direct accusation.”
He added that his daughter, who has visited Israel on multiple occasions, was “very upset to see so much ill feeling and disparaging information about Israel. Her three friends who came with her were truly shocked, and came away thinking Israel is a horrible state.
“They now think she’s an extremist, supporting apartheid and racial hatred.”
Mr Ryde has also complained to the university, as well as several MPs.
Kent University has been contacted for a comment.
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