‘Activist’ or Antisemite? Dr. Noura Erakat’s Poorly-Timed Speech at OSU

Several incidents involving swastikas, harmful antisemitic libels, and images of the burning Israeli flag took place on Ohio State University (OSU)’s campus in the months and weeks leading up to the anniversary of Kristallnacht.

One would have hoped that OSU administrators and students could come together to resist this unprecedented and abhorrent increase in antisemitism on campus. 

Sadly, those hopes were crushed by the invitation of a speaker to campus who spews the very same libels.

On November 9, the OSU Palestinian Women’s Association hosted Rutgers University Professor Dr. Noura Erakat, who spoke to Ohio State students over Zoom to discuss her new book, “Justice for Some: Law and the Occupation of Palestine.” 

Although she is hailed by her university and many anti-Zionist activists as an expert in international law, fallacies in her book can be found as early as the introduction, where Erakat discusses “Zionist militias established Israel by force, without regard to the Partition Plan’s stipulated borders.”

This falsehood negates the indisputable fact that in 1948, most Jews accepted United Nations Resolution 181, which partitioned the British Mandate of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. Arabs, on the other hand, vehemently rejected the proposal and tried to eliminate Israel and kill its Jewish inhabitants.

Israel’s current borders are defined by land acquired by military victories against neighboring Arab countries who invaded Israel following the rejection of the partition in 1948, and then in 1967.  Even the Palestinian Authority (PA)’s current president, Mahmoud Abbas, said that this rejection was “our mistake.”

Despite having received degrees in national security and legal education, Erakat frequently speaks out about issues of race and religion for communities she does not belong to — namely, the Jewish community. 

Erakat participated in a webinar in January 2022 for Nonviolence International, an anti-Israel group founded by American University professor Mubarak Awad, who justified violence such as stone throwing as a form of “civil disobedience” and “armed struggle.” During the webinar, Erakat boldly proclaimed, “The greatest threat in antisemitism is not Palestinian; it’s white supremacy.”

Erakat asserted at the January webinar that “Palestinians will not attack Jews because they are Jewish,” but merely “because they are their military occupiers and oppressors.” A week after the webinar, a Palestinian teenager went on a stabbing and car-ramming spree in the town of Ariel, killing Tamir Avichai and Michael Ladigin, both fathers of two children, and Moti Ashkenazi, a father of three with two grandchildren.

By justifying attacks against Jews under the pretense that they are perceived as oppressors, Erakat incites violence against Jews, and equates the actions of individual Jews and those of Israel with being one and the same. These bigoted claims did not stop Erakat from being warmly welcomed to the OSU under the title of “activist” and “human rights professor.”

During the OSU talk, Erakat asserted that “Israeli targeted strikes against innocent Palestinians are nothing new,” and alluded to Chapter 5 of her book, which discusses Israel’s policy of pre-emptive strikes against Palestinians who Erakat considers innocent.

What does Erakat use to illustrate this point? Israel’s missile strike in November 2000 against Palestinian Fatah Commander Hussein Abayat, who oversaw and carried out attacks against Israeli soldiers and acts of violence in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Gilo.

In an April webinar at the University of Illinois, Erakat claimed that “Zionism is a bedfellow of Nazism and antisemitism.” She has also specifically used “Nazism” to criticize Jewish ideology. To use rhetoric referring to one of the worst tragedies in Jewish and world history is insensitive to say the least, and only further disgraces Erakat’s reputation as a supposed “expert” in critical race theory.

Yet still, Erakat urged attendees of the November 9 event to “continue the good fight,” adding that “you will be marked as antisemites just for supporting Palestine, even though Palestine past and present has admired Judaism as a religion.” This claim reduces Judaism to only a religion rather than an ethnicity and peoplehood, and it also whitewashes a longstanding history of Palestinian violence against Jews, such as the 1929 Hebron massacre, or the violence incited by 20th-century Palestinian leader and Nazi collaborator Haj Amin Al-Husseini, who regularly compared Jews to bacteria and met with Hitler to discuss plans to murder Jews.

At a university where swastikas and antisemitic slurs have been found graffitied on school buildings, is Erakat an ideal speaker for OSU’s “safe and welcoming campus?” As figures like Erakat seek to speak on behalf of the Jewish community while diminishing Jewish and Zionist voices, Jewish students on campus must strive for inclusive dialogue in which they can speak for themselves.

Alex M. Grossman is a student at The Ohio State University.