Pro-Palestinian Stormtroopers Get Israeli Historian’s Talk Canceled

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At the University of Leipzig, a lecture by the Israeli historian Benny Morris was cancelled after a pro-Palestinian group on campus threatened to violently disrupt it. Instead of increasing the number of security personnel to protect Professor Morris and those attending his lecture, the university — a German university, mind you — caved and cancelled the lecture. There would be no “exchange of views” or “useful debate” that might lead to a rethinking of fixed positions. The pro-Palestinian mob that called the shots in Leipzig must be very proud: they have yet again silenced the voice of someone who might actually teach them something about Israel, might possibly cause them to rethink their fixed belief that it is a colonial-settler state hellbent on genocide. More on this cancellation of a lecture by the Israeli historian Benny Morris can be found here: “German University Cancels Lecture by Israeli Historian Benny Morris Due to Student Protests, ‘Security Concerns,’” Algemeiner, December 2, 2024:

The University of Leipzig in Germany has canceled a lecture by Israeli historian Benny Morris following student protests described by the school as “understandable, but frightening in nature.”

Morris, one of Israel’s leading public intellectuals, was scheduled to deliver a lecture about extremism and the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, in which the Jewish state secured its independence, at the university on Thursday as part of a lecture series on antisemitism.

However, the school released a statement this past Friday announcing that it had canceled the planned event, citing protests over the lecture and what it described as security concerns.

“Our invitation to Prof. Morris was motivated by the desire to talk about his earlier work, which has had a profound impact on historical research,” the university said in its statement. “Unfortunately, Prof. Morris has recently expressed views in interviews and discussions that can be read as offensive and even racist. This has led to understandable, but frightening in nature, protests from individual student groups.”…

When the university says it wanted to “talk about his earlier work,” it is alluding to the fact that as a young historian, Benny Morris was one of the “New Historians” who rewrote the early history of Israel, being far more critical of the behavior of Israelis than their predecessors. But after living through the Second Intifada, and the murderous hate consistently demonstrated by the Palestinian Arabs over the past 75 years, he rethought his criticism of Israelis during the 1948 war, when some Arabs were expelled, though most had left voluntarily. He now thinks that such expulsions were justified in the circumstances. The University of Leipzig, however, wanted to hear his earlier views, despite the fact that Morris no longer held them.

“Regardless of this case, we want to express our concern that a double standard is being established that is being applied to Israeli scholars, who are increasingly marginalized and excluded from events under the pretext of political differences of opinion, while other voices are given unhindered access to the university,” the university said. “This applies, for example, in Leipzig to events by colleagues who are close to the BDS movement, which is classified as a suspected extremist case in Germany. We are far from establishing a culture of cancellations, but the possibility should remain open to be able to discuss difficult and critical voices from both sides in a tough manner.”

If you are so concerned, grand panjandrums at the University of Leipzig, about the “marginalization” and “exclusion” of Israeli scholars, why did you cave so quickly to the demands of wet-behind-the-ears stormtroopers trying to — and thanks to you succeeding — prevent him from speaking? Why couldn’t you face down the bullies trying to prevent Professor Morris from speaking and instead, with a large police presence, make sure that he could deliver his lecture?

It’s a shameful display of cowardice by the University of Leipzig, where antisemitic Sturmtruppen are again riding high. What’s next? Will those campus bullies in Leipzig demand that the university, that all German universities, fire their Jewish faculty members, just as Hitler did in 1933, but for slightly different reasons — the suspicion that those faculty might support the “colonial-settler genocidal” state of Israel?