The Louis D. Brandeis Center has recently had the pleasure of adding yet another impressive figure to the center’s long list of blog contributors. Polish legal scholar Dr. Aleksandra Gliszczyńska–Grabias will now be a regular contributor to the Brandeis Center blog. Dr. Gliszczyńska-Grabias joins a team of impressive legal and historical minds who regularly contribute to the Brandeis Center Blog, including Gil Troy, Greg Lukianoff, Alyza Lewin, Harold Brackman, Andre Oboler, Lesley Klaff and Rafael Medoff. Said Louis D. Brandeis President Kenneth L. Marcus, “Dr. Gliszczyńska–Grabias is emerging as an important voice in international human rights legal scholarship, especially as it relates to anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli discrimination, and I am excited to welcome yet another truly impressive scholar to the team of bloggers at the Brandeis Center.” As a young legal scholar with an expertise in international human rights law, Dr. Gliszczyńska–Grabias brings a long and remarkable list of accomplishments to the Brandeis Center’s blog team. After graduating from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland, she went on to receive several awards and recognitions. Some of these honors include the 2012 Fellowship of the Foundation for Polish Science for outstanding achievements in science and research, the 2010/2011 Graduate Fellow of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of anti-Semitism at Yale University, and the 2010 and 2009 Felix Posen Fellowship for doctoral candidates of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of anti-Semitism of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. (more…)
Palace of Westminster (photo courtesy: Wikipedia) Less than six months after the Liberal Democrat MP for Bradford East, David Ward, was accused of anti-Semitism for the equating the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews with “the Jews” treatment of the Palestinians, yet another Liberal Democrat MP, Sir Bob Russell, has equated the victims of the Holocaust with the ‘plight of the Palestinians’ since the birth of the state of Israel. This happened last week during a debate in the House of Commons on the national school curriculum. Given that English law requires the Holocaust to be taught to all school children as part of the History syllabus, Russell asked the Education Minister, Michael Gove, the following question: “On the assumption that [coverage of] the 20th Century will include the Holocaust, will he give me an assurance that the life of Palestinians since 1948 will be given equal attention?” Bob Russell’s statement, just as David Ward’s, has caused offence to the UK Jewish community and embarrassment to the Liberal-Democrat Friends of Israel, but as yet there has been no apology from Russell and no indication of any censure by the Liberal Democrat Leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg. There has even been little, if any, media attention given to Russell’s comments. It’s as if the ‘Nazification of Israel’, the idea that ‘the Jews are to the Palestinians what the Nazis were to the Jews’, has become so commonplace that it is no longer news worthy. Yet the idea that the plight of the Palestinians should be given the same prominence in the school curriculum as the Holocaust is not only extremely offensive, but is also absurd. Russell’s equivalence, just like David Ward’s before him, relies on the re-writing of Jewish history and the misreading of the Israel-Palestine conflict. It represents a misjudgement which, like that of the anti-Dreyfusards whose faith in Dreyfus’s guilt contradicted all evidence to the contrary, can only flow from the willingness to believe the absolute worst about Jews. This is anti-Semitism. (more…)