Columbia University Professor Hamid Dabashi’s academic career has been repeatedly marred by outbursts of Jew hatred and the promulgation of anti-Semitic tropes and conspiracies. In 2004, the professor’s disdain for Jews and Israel was exposed in the film Columbia Unbecoming, which was produced by Jewish students on campus, and which named Dabashi and a handful of his colleagues in the university’s Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) as contributing to an atmosphere of anti-Semitism on campus.
The film cites quotes from Dabashi, including one from an article he wrote where he described Israeli Jews as suffering from “a vulgarity of character that is bone-deep and structural to the skeletal vertebrae of its culture” due to “Half a century of systematic maiming and murdering of another people.” Another student mentioned an incident in which Dabashi suddenly cancelled class in order to attend an anti-Israel rally because he felt it was his “moral duty” to do so.
In the years since these initial accusations of anti-Semitism, Dabashi has only intensified his attacks on Israel and the Jewish people. He has repeatedly promoted anti-Semitic conspiracy theories which claim that the Jews act as a “cabal” to control world affairs and consolidate their power.
In a December 2009 article, Dabashi stated that “the pro-Israeli Zionist lobby in the US banked and invested heavily in infiltrating, buying, and paying for all the major and minor corridors of power.” In an editorial published in July 2008, Dabashi wrote that “[former United States President Barack] Obama began his speech in front of AIPAC by falling right into the oldest trap that the American Zionist cabal has in its bag of tricks — dispatching its lunatic fringe to spread rumours (via emails) of facts and fantasies…” More recently, in May of 2018, Dabashi posted on Facebook that “Every dirty treacherous ugly and pernicious act happening in the world just wait for a few days and the ugly name of ‘Israel’ will pop up as a key actor in the atrocities…”
Professor Dabashi has also promulgated Jew hatred by comparing the democratic nation of Israel with the Islamic terror state ISIS and Nazi Germany, another common trope of anti-Semites.
In April of 2019, Dabashi wrote on Facebook (in a now-deleted post): “What’s the difference between ISIS and ISRAEL? … ISIS murderous thugs conquered parts of Syria and declared a ‘caliphate,’ no decent human being on planet earth recognized their armed robbery or their ‘caliphate’ – their ISRAELI counterparts meanwhile conquered parts of Syria and declared it part of their Zionist settler colony – no decent human being on planet earth recognizes their armed robbery …”
Dabashi added to this rant by again insinuating that Jews exert power over the media: “ISIS does not have a platoon of clean shaven and well coiffured [sic] columnists at the New York Times propagating the cause of the terrorist outfit as the Zionists columnists do on a regular basis.”
In August of 2014, Dabashi authored an article that compared Gaza to Auschwitz, stating that Israelis share a “sustained murderous history – from Deir Yassin in 1948 to Gaza in 2014,” adding “Is that not Zionism, the ideological foundation stone of being an Israeli?”
In a Facebook post from July 2014, Dabashi again implied that the Israelis are tantamount to Nazis. He placed images of the Warsaw Ghetto and Gaza side-by-side and commented: “Warsaw Ghetto 1943 (the site of Jewish uprising against Nazi barbarism)–Gaza 2014 (the site of Palestinian resistance against Zionist militarism).”
During the so-called “Great March of Return” in 2018, during which Palestinian terrorists repeatedly assaulted the Israel/Gaza border, Dashabi reiterated blood libel tropes depicting the Jews and Israelis as bloodthirsty monsters.
In May of 2018, Dabashi claimed, “As of Tuesday 15 May 2018 Israeli army had cold-bloodedly and in full view of the world murdered more than 100 Palestinians… during the Great March of Return protests held in Gaza’s since 30 March.” Dashabi went on to add, “The Israeli flag, the very term ‘Israel’ are now and forever synonymous with mass murderers… with massacres, with land thieves, with incremental genocide, with war crimes, with crimes against humanity.”
In another post that month, Dashabi described the conflict as “an epic battle between defenseless good and viciously armed evil — with their bare hands and their naked souls and their exposed bodies Palestinians went to face pure evil,” depicting the Israelis as “mass murderers who massacred defenseless Palestinians.”
The professor went on to praise the actions of the violent Palestinians who assaulted the border of a sovereign nation, writing, “Palestinians just taught the world a priceless lesson — a master class in their power of dignity and defiance… and in doing so they told the whole pitiful gang of Zionists from Israel to the US to Saudi Arabia they can go to hell — for Palestinians are not going anywhere from Palestine — Palestine is theirs, they are the master of their own destiny— the inhabitants of their own homeland— neither their own corrupt leadership nor those disgusting colonists occupying their country have a say in the matter.”
For his abominable promotion of anti-Semitic tropes and absurd conspiracy theories targeting Jews and Israel, Professor Hamid Dabashi deserves his place among the worst Jew-hating professors.