Israel has no moral grounds for protesting pro-terrorist UK Prof Abusalama

Shahd Abusalama is a new hire at the British Sheffield Hallam University. Originally from Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza, she obtained her PhD at that university and in December 2021 was hired as an associate professor. Concerns were raised about her prolific and hate-filled anti-Zionist social media postings but earlier this month she was cleared of all accusations and offered a secure employment contract. Israel promotes herself as the guardian of Jews around the world. But, after looking at Abusalama, let us see why Israel has no moral ground on which to support UK Jewish students against this abomination.

A report in JNS quoted the administration as having said that:

as a university, we uphold the principles of free speech and academic freedom.

We are proud that our staff and students come from a diverse range of backgrounds, with a wide range of views and beliefs. . . .. We do not tolerate discrimination or hate speech, and are committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive culture for all our students and staff.

How welcome will Jews feel on campus now that Abusalama is a member of the academic faculty? If she was hired after a “robust HR process” as the university spokesman was quoted as claiming, and after the outpouring of support from student bodies across the UK and the University and Colleges Union (as reported on several news sites), then Jewish and non-Jewish supporters of Israel may feel silenced. Moreover, if there are Jews studying in the Media Arts and Communication Department, where she teaches, I wonder if they will feel able to continue and complete their degrees there without capitulating to a clearly anti-Israel stance.

As reported in the Jewish Chronical, the Sheffield brand of the Union:

called for the university to apologise to the Palestinian academic and to impose a “moratorium” on the use of the internationally recognised IHRA definition of antisemitism.

Some of the reports on Abusalama’s antisemitism go back years but it is enough to look at her recent postings on her various social media platforms to see what she stands for.

Notice the scare/hate mongering of the shamelessly racist Jewish Chronicle. They don’t fight anti-Jewish bigotry. They fuel it. A statement by Israel-funded JSoc at @sheffielduni “branded” @sheffhallamuni as “unsafe for Jews” for standing on the side of a victim of Israeli terror pic.twitter.com/mAFIaHMMoT

— ShahdAbusalama (@ShahdAbusalama) February 11, 2022

From a recent Facebook Post:

Please don’t let the racist Zionists get under your skin, and always think that their hate reflects more on them. These haters & bullies don’t know me or my family struggles or have any ability to empathize with the Palestinian suffering. This is because they know deep down they are oppressors, and they see our mere existence as a threat as we challenge every human value Israel claims to have. We also challenge their heroic foundational narrative that erases their longstanding practices of ethnic cleansing, mass killing and land theft against the Palestinians that continues today since 1948. But we continue to resist by existing!

Perhaps there was supposed to be an “in” but it’s absence was a Freudian Slip and perhaps it was intentional, openly revealing that Israel should be totally dismantled. What do you think about this image that was posted on 4 Feb 2022 — should there have been an “in” between the words apartheid and Israel?

Abusalama writes a blog for electronic intifada, calls Zionism racism, praises terrorists, having called one of them “legendary” and others “heroes”.

But how is this any different from some of Israel’s own members of Knesset. Just last week, Ahmad Tibi (Joint List) gave what can only be called a “eulogy” to the three terrorists taken out by the IDF (my translation).

Honoured Chair and my fellow Member of the Knesset: We were sadly notified about the elimination and execution of three Palestinians in Shechem — Shohada Adam Shishanim, Mohammed abu Ra’ed and Rashad Inbaslat. These eliminations and executions are acts of terror according to international law. Ending the occupation alone will bring an end to the violence and not these eliminations that . . . This last execution is the most heinous, the most callous, the bloodiest of the past few years. This government and this coalition in all its parts bear responsibility for this deterioration.

And yesterday, a phone call Ayman Odeh (Joint List) made to the mother of terrorist was shared by the rightwing NGO Im Tirtzu on Facebook Watch. Im Tirtzu writes (my translation):

Ayman Odeh calls the terrorists who murdered ten Israelis “heroes” in front of the cameras of the Palestinian Authority television station.
Last month, before the PA TV channel, Ayman Odeh talks with Letifa Abu-Hamid, whose terrorist sons were involved in the murder of ten Israelis. Odeh calls her “mother of heroes”. In addition, in the conversation, Ayman expresses the wish to meet her son Nasser Abu-Hamid and carry him on his shoulders. The terrorist, sick with cancer, established the Al-Aqsa Martyr’s Brigade within the terrorist PLO organization. It is disgraceful that a terrorist-hugger such as Ayman Odeh sits in the Israeli Knesset. Whoever glorifies terrorists such as Nasser’s family needs to sit behind bars. (h/t Channel 14 and PMW)

Text of what Odeh says in the phone call (my translation):

Hero, the mother of heroes, may God protect you. Praise God, Nasser’s condition is improving, They took him off all respiratory equipment and he is breathing on his own, he communicates with his environment himself, his condition is improving, he is getting better, and tending toward improvement. . . . he can talk, I will try to go in to see him, I am determined to go see him and talk to him and with God’s help I will succeed at that and I will let you know, but his condition is better and is improving. May God protect you, Um Nasser, and with God’s help, we will come to your home and welcome him and raise him onto our shoulders with God’s help, when he is free and released and happy in his freedom.

If Israel does not immediately revoke the right for Odeh and Tibi to sit in the Knesset, why should any foreign university revoke the rights of academics such as Shahd Abusalama to sit on their faculties?

P.S. This is not a new issue. There have been attempts to recind candidacy rights of terrorist supporters before elections but the Knesset elections committee decision was over-ridden by the Supreme Court. I have written about this before:
Ofir Katz and the Yazbek Law
This MK Should Be Disqualified
Double Standards for Knesset MKs: Jews Out Arabs In