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Inside Brandeis’s Anti-Israel Listserv

Brandeis Officials distance themselves from list

Wikimedia Commons
July 16, 2014

Brandeis University officials are working to distance themselves from a virulently anti-Israel internal listserv that shows a group of professors lashing out at the Jewish state in bizarre terms and attacking Brandeis’ Jewish leadership.

Professors on the faculty listserv shared false stories about Israel harvesting organs, claimed the Benghazi attacks were "not terrorism," and used staunchly anti-Semitic terms to describe Brandeis’s Jewish leaders.

Campus activists exposed portions of the "Concerned" listserv on Tuesday, but those releases just scratch the surface of a voluminous email cache that shows longtime Brandeis professors engaging in vitriolic attacks on Jews, Israel, and even the Obama administration, according to a large number of emails provided to the Washington Free Beacon.

Brandeis officials sought to distance the school from the listserv when contacted Wednesday by the Free Beacon.

"The opinions expressed by individual faculty members do not reflect the opinions of Brandeis University," Ellen de Graffenreid, the university’s senior vice president for communications, told the Free Beacon in a statement.

However, Brandeis encourages its professors to engage in a robust discourse.

"Brandeis University—like our peer institutions—upholds the principles of free speech and academic freedom for our students and faculty, which means that members of the community may hold many different opinions on a variety of topics and express them in ways that do not reflect the university's official position on a given issue," Graffenreid said.

Slurs against Brandeis’s Jewish leadership, including former university President Jehuda Reinharz, are a common theme on the listserv, where Reinharz and his wife are referred to as "Mein Leader und Frau."

During one 2009 discussion about "Israel and our organs"—which focuses on a blood libel accusing Israelis of harvesting organs—politics Professor Donald Hindley refers to the "Reinharz’ shetl" and offers to send fellow listserv members a picture of his penis.

"As an inhabitant of the not-yet-history Reinharz’ shetl, there remain important questions [about the organ harvesting], at least for me an an [sic] immigrant with his manhood still unmutilated [sic] [photos if desired]," Hindley writes.

Hindley then launches into a bizarre rant about his organs possibly being stolen by Jews if he dies in "Occupied Palestine (aka Israel) " and refers to a "Brandeis fuhrer and frau."

"Am I now assured that should I die (targeted assassination? overly energetic "interrogation;" nod and wink of the "l'université c'est moi" Brandeis führer und frau faithfully implemented by His administrative academic appointees ?) in Occupied Palestine (aka Israel) my organs (all of them? some still feel even at my advanced age more personal and "me") will be taken - and if not of use to His People, re-cycled as (non-Kosher, I hope, but money doth corrupt us all, as witness the Jewish Orthodox occupiers of Palestinian territory) sausages - frankfurters - weenies - erstwhile hot dogs?"

In a strange 2010 missive again lashing out at Reinharz and his wife, Hindley refers to "schwarzes," a derogatory Yiddish term for black people, and appears to take issue with U.S. taxpayer support for Israel.

What's with these Chicago schwarzes (and Israelist) parochials?  - NEVER missed a greeting on time to Israeli recipients of our nose-reared billions upon billions from the stretched American taxpayer - but what of the apparently decent monarchs  in Lichtenstein (there is a question here), Denmark, Norway, Spain, Sweden and Lesotho and Swaziland?  Swaziland is an especial problem, Tens of wives and innumerable half-royal brats . . .  and not serial wives as in civilized societies.

At least the incumbent Brandeis Royal Couple appears to be cutting and running with their a fabulous Brandeis  cache - and NOT angling (that I know of) that their first born retain control of The Trough.

Hindley again engages in anti-Semitic rhetoric when describing the Reinharz family in another 2010 missive to the listserv that includes an email from the far left Middle East advocacy group B’tselem, which Hindley refers to as "NOT Reinharz Jews."

Shulamit [Reinharz’s wife] and Jehuda were incapable (money; ideology?) of offering a Brandeis degree and podium to any of such humanly decent (a.k.a. to Israelists as self-hating, Arab-loving Jews) Israelis or American Zionists. Instead, we got moral mierda. Says a lot about Mein Leader und Frau and their financiers and courtiers.

Brandeis spokeswoman Graffenreid declined to comment on the remarks about Reinharz and his family.

Discussions about other hot-button topics also take place on the list.

Associate Professor of Physics Bob Lange claims in one 2013 email that the attacks on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, Libya, were "not terrorism."

"Whether or not the administration did or did not try to manage publicity, this Bengazi [sic] attack was not terrorism," Lange wrote. "The targets were not random Americans whose death would make us all fearful that it could be us."

Lange goes on to say that he is "not terrorized when a representative of my government working in a country where we were just heavily involved in a war that led to the murder of the president and a change of government is killed."

"It is not terrorism to kill representatives of a government that you are opposed to," Lange writes.

The discussion ultimately comes back to Israel.

"If an Israeli soldier protecting a settlement is killed by Palestinian militants, it is not terrorism," Lange writes. "If a bus in Tel Aviv is blown up, it is terrorism."

Other conversations between professors focus on what they claim are Israeli war crimes against Palestinians.

Another 2009 message from Hindley includes an article about the Holocaust and commentary from the professor stating: "None of which justifies what Zionists have done and are doing to the Palestinians."

During the 2012 controversy over an anti-Muslim film that the Obama administration ultimately blamed for causing the Benghazi attacks, Hindley expressed anger over NPR coverage of the issue.

Hindley expressed anger that NPR "made no mention of the Israeli Jew film creator and his American Jewish financiers" when reporting on the controversial film.

"Typical for NPR News, serving what the Israeli government wants us Americans to know and believe – or no [sic] know and not believe," he wrote. "Profoundly shameful and anti-American."

Hindley also expressed frustration with the Obama administration in an email with the subject line "Obama kisses (as usual) Extremist Israeli Ass."

One professor ultimately got fed up with the listserv’s rhetoric on Israel and expressed his dismay to the group in a more recent note from April.

"Let’s not be disingenuous. You guys hate Israel. That’s what unites the group. That’s why is was founded," history Professor Doran Ben-Atar wrote in a lengthy note that outlines the group’s numerous slanders against Israel.

Professors Hindley and Lange did not respond to a Free Beacon request for comment on their e-mails and the listserv.

Published under: Israel