‘Antisemitism has No Place at Princeton’: Israel Diaspora Minister Calls on Princeton to Remove ‘Blood Libel’ Book from Course Curriculum

Book in question accuses Israel of deliberately “maiming” Palestinians.

By United with Israel Staff and The Algemeiner

Israel’s Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli has written a letter to Princeton University, calling on it to remove from the curriculum of a course beginning this fall a book by Prof. Jasbir Puar accusing Israel of deliberately maiming Palestinians.

Puar began making such claims in Feb. 2016, when she said at Vassar College that “young Palestinian men…were mined for organs for scientific research.” At the same event, she accused Israel of committing “genocide in slow motion.” Later that year, during a panel at Dartmouth College she said Israel uses “maiming as a deliberate biopolitical tactic” to enforce settler-colonialism.

In the letter addressed to the Princeton president and faculty dean last week and shared by Ynet, Chikli discusses the inclusion of the book “The Right to Maim” by Prof. Jasbir Puar in the curriculum of a course called “The Healing Humanities: Decolonizing Trauma Studies from the Global South.”

“It was shocking to see that this book includes explicit insinuations that Israel uses a deliberate strategy of maiming Palestinians,” Chikli wrote. “This delusional and false accusation is nothing but a modern-day antisemitic blood libel.”

Chikli asserted that the inclusion of such “antisemitic propaganda” in a formal course at Princeton does not promote “open academic debate” or “freedom of speech” on campus, “nor does it contain any educational merit.”

“Rather it contributes to a hostile and divisive atmosphere against Jews and Israelis who study at your university, as well as against the Jewish community.” It also “raises questions regarding the academic professional integrity of Princeton as a prestigious institution.”

Chikli called on the university to remove the book from the curricula of any of its courses and to conduct a review of the academic materials in the course in question and other courses “to ensure that they align with the principles of academic integrity and are free from any form of discrimination, including antisemitism.”

“Antisemitism has no place at Princeton or in any other institution, ” he concluded.

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