Student Expelled From Prestigious French University for Anti-Semitism

Paris, France — Amira Jumaa is 20 years old; she is Kuwaiti and we were studying at the same French university, Sciences Po Paris. “Were,” because she recently got expelled for anti-Semitism.

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Last fall, on StandWithUs Facebook page, Amira debated with an Israeli student, and posted such comments as: “ You don’t belon[g] anywhere in this world – that’s why you guys are scums and rats and discriminated against wherever you are. Do not blame it on the poor Palestinians.”

She continued with: “ I am from Kuwait so my country can buy you and your parents and put you in ovens.”

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Last October, when “TheIngloriousBasterds,” an anti-Semitism watchdog blog, published Amira’s comments, she was suspended from both her internship at the French Embassy in New York and from Sciences Po. Two months later, a disciplinary committee expelled her from Sciences Po. She became the first student expelled through a disciplinary committee since the creation of the university in 1872.

It was not the first time Amira expressed anti-Zionist resentment. A year ago, she condemned one of my own Facebook posts about Israel,. When I questioned whether she was anti-Semitic, she insisted that she “was raised to respect all people despite their origins, race and religion”.

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Well, I guess my assumption was right…

Don’t get me wrong, this is not a personal vendetta. There are many more students just like Amira who pretend to be only anti-Zionist, but in the end, they are also strongly anti-Semitic. Hate, disseminated by anti-Zionist organizations such as the Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, stiffens anti-Semitism all over the world, and France is not an exception to it. I lost some friends by publicly supporting Israel. My fellow Sciences Po students have told me that Israel is not a legitimate state, and that it should cease to exist.

Sciences Po – a prestigious French university – trains many future French political leaders, and the anti-Zionist atmosphere in the university alarms me. A few months ago, while serving as an intern for the Brandeis Center, I reported on a BDS group’s actions at Sciences Po Paris, including threats of major demonstrations in front of the university if a conference on Israel was to be hosted. Disinformation imparted by French media outlets shapes this trend, and goes alongside a dramatic increase of anti-Semitism in France. Just last week, a French teen linked to terrorist organization attempted to assassinate a Jewish teacher in the South of France.

Today, I applaud the expulsion decision by the disciplinary committee of Sciences Po.
Today, it is time that the anti-Zionist veil under which anti-Semitism spreads, rises on the world.