In recent columns, I described disturbing cases of antisemitism in Arkansas. The first involved University of Arkansas-Fayetteville's King Fahd Center for Middle Eastern Studies Professor Mohja Kahf. She hung on her government office door vile invectives equating the Israeli viewpoint with some of history's worst racists, alongside the mantra calling for Israel's destruction: "Palestine, from the river to the sea."

I also detailed Kahf's poem--published just after the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Jews by Palestinian terrorists--in which she erases Jewish indigeneity; presents Jews as foreign interlopers in their own Biblical and historical homeland; and casts Israel's creation as an act of colonial theft by that nonexistent empire of post-WWII, largely unarmed, vagabond Jews who traveled on foot to board barely seaworthy pre-war freighters and steamers seeking--according to Kahf--to attack other Jews (those who lived in Israel since its Biblical inception).

The second instance featured the on-air fiction (presented as fact) from Val Emmons, producer on the Dave Elswick radio show, that Jews were offered multiple homelands prior to 1947. Never happened. Emmons included Madagascar on her fantasy-football list of free-to-Jews homelands--which, in reality, was a Nazi-proposed waypoint in Germany's extermination program. Just wow.

The third involved recently fired Fahdian director, Shirin Saeidi, whose posts and reposts included:

Ayatollah Khamenei, "[t]he leader who kept Iran intact during the Israeli attack, May god protect you and the Iranian people from the Israeli regime." (That one didn't age well.)

"To the Arkansas State Legislature: You were unable to punish me because of the Zionist proxies who give you money and know your secrets, and now you are attacking the Middle East Studies Center and my colleagues." (Classic antisemitic tropes. But she's right about one thing: Legislators didn't punish her. The university did.)

"Of course [the Legislature] want the syllabi [from King Fahd Center courses] . . . [T]he biggest reason--the one they'll never admit in public--is that their billionaire donors (many with direct ties to Israel) need everyone to keep hating Islam." (More classic antisemitic tropes reposted with endorsement.)

"[T]hrust the dagger from Doha into the throats of the Zionists, so that all of them howl." (Reposted, original in Farsi. Who talks like this in the 21st century?)

In response to my penultimate column on the topic, Gwynne Gertz, a retired professor from UA-Fayetteville, penned an apologia for Kahf. Gertz sets the tone of her endorsement with, "[a]s a Jew who used to teach at our university"--reflecting the failed logic of identity politics that preferred ancestry replaces analysis, genetics supplants logic, and pigment and plumbing supersede facts. But even on its own terms, Gertz's argument collapses--because I am also a Jew. And I am confident that her race card does not trump my Jack of Clubs.

Gertz next flaccidly attempts to isolate one of Kahf's deeply troubling statements, asserting that "from the river to the sea" has multiple interpretations--genocidal to Jews, emancipatory to Palestinians. But the geography "from the river to the sea" has only one meaning--the borders of the entire land of Israel. If a Palestine exists "from the river to the sea," where's Israel? Uh, nowhere.

Moreover, Kahf's office door did not present a single context-free expression. She also posted imagery comparing Israelis to the Ku Klux Klan--a grotesque analogy equating Jews in the world's only Jewish state with a domestic-terrorist organization devoted to racial supremacy and murder.

Interestingly, since my previous reporting, the dean of the Fulbright College ordered Kahf to remove these signs. She said no. Facilities staff took them down instead. Kahf then added new posters. Her door now has three hangings:

Another "river to the sea" declaration--again in both English and Arabic--with the colors of the Palestinian flag completely superimposed over a map of Israel. (Very, uh, emancipating.)

A sign reading: "Who Are the Terrorists? Aspects of Zionist and Israeli Terrorism." (That tracks. Sigh.)

A poem titled "Shine, Perishing Republic," proclaiming America's descent into vulgarity, empire, and moral decay. (Joker, Joker, and a triple! Ugh.)

Gertz then accuses me of ignoring Britain's earlier contradictory promises to Jews and Arabs alike. I still can't figure out why she thinks this is relevant. No doubt that the British Empire--actual imperialists--made contradictory claims. But, in 1947, Britain reconciled at least those inconsistent commitments that Gertz finds so enlightening into a coherent policy with something for both parties seeking land in Britain's mandate: partition--two claimants, two states.

This plan did not give Jews everything. Biblical Israel was dramatically bigger than today's Israel. Nor did it give Arabs an entirely pan-Arab Middle East. But both groups were offered more than they had before--an independent country. Only the Jews accepted this compromise, while Arab leaders chose war--attacking the Jews with the hope of extinguishing their independent national identity. That's the meaning of "from the river to the sea."

Gertz similarly elides the documented antisemitic history of Kahf's academic base, UA-Fayetteville's King Fahd Center. In addition to former Fahdian director Shirin Saeidi's social-media celebrating the former Iranian Ayatollah, trafficking in classic antisemitic conspiracy tropes, and endorsing language advocating violence, I previously reported on how the center's then-course offerings included 35 classes with "Arab," "Arabic," "Islam," "Islamic," or "Quran"--but zero with the word "Jew," "Christian," "Hebrew," "Torah," or "Bible." A Middle Eastern Studies program that ignores Jews and Christians is not incomplete by accident.

But wait. There's more.

In response to my previous criticisms, the Fahd Center sought to clean up its image by hiring a visiting professor to teach a seminar on Israel. But that course--"Israeli Politics and Society: Settler Colonialism, Occupation, Struggles"--did no such thing. It was an anti-Israel hit piece that the school itself described as "stud[ying] three major themes in politics and society in Israel-Palestine: . . . the transfer of population as means of colonization . . . the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip . . . [and] societal struggles such as those by Mizrahi [Middle Eastern] Jews, Ethiopian Jews, Feminists, LGBTQI+ people, and Palestinian citizens of Israel . . ."

So what should've been a viewpoint-expanding opportunity turned out to be more anti-Israel propaganda falsely accusing the country of being a settler colony (from what imperial power?) that somehow discriminates against Middle Eastern Jews (who were forced out of all Arab countries in the Middle East and non-Arab Iran from 1948 on and--wait for it--welcomed into Israel), Ethiopian Jews (Black Jews whom Israel rescued from famine, civil war, and entrenched discrimination), feminists and LGBTQI+ people (who live freely in Israel and are largely reviled across the rest of the Middle East), and Palestinian citizens of Israel (who have the same rights as Jews and serve in the legislature and on the Supreme Court). Emetic.

Against this devastating backdrop, Gertz's insistence that I misinterpreted Kahf's one expression that Gertz alleges benevolent becomes untenable. Antisemitic slogans do not become benign because some naïve Jews excuse them.

This is your right to know.

Robert Steinbuch, the Arkansas Bar Foundation Professor at the Bowen Law School, is a Fulbright Scholar and author of the treatise "The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act." His views do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.

Robert Steinbuch, the Arkansas Bar professor at the Bowen Law School, is a Fulbright Scholar and author of the treatise "The Arkansas Freedom of Information Act." His views do not necessarily reflect those of his employer.

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