No empathy for the victims of the October 7 massacre at the 2024 Spring meeting of the American Chemical Society
A presenter at the 2024 ACS Spring meeting spreads antisemitic lies as a part of a presentation; praised for bravery and leadership, but there is no empathy for the massacre victims.
It seems like these days, every day brings new instances of antisemitism in Western academia. Recently, we have witnessed an antisemitic debacle at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP) Annual Convention that took place in February 2024 in San Diego. This time, antisemitism raised its ugly head at the 2024 Spring Meeting of the American Chemical Society in New Orleans on (Twitter hashtag #ACSspring2024).
To see a detailed account of what happened at the SPSP, take a look at the two posts by Lee Jussim at his Unsafe Science. In brief, SPSP failed to take down or censure the authors of libelous poster with no data—despite several people contacting SPSP Ombudsman, Kathy Canul. On the other hand, SPSP did remove a previously accepted, bona fide, if allegedly low quality, poster due to “Islamophobia”.
After some discussions with the communist-leaning supporters of the jihadi wannabies in academia on Twitter, I thought it was important to write about the #ACSspring2024 debacle, because I believe that the majority of people do not understand what is happening in the scientific community. They should. If you thought the atrocious behavior of the three university presidents, of whom one still has not resigned, at the congressional hearings was the worst academia could deliver, you were very wrong. Read on.
The short of it is that Dr. Safia Jilani (@finetraces786) included in her scientific presentation a slide alleging an on-going genocide of Palestinians, with some claims regarding academics that were killed in Gaza (presumably by IDF, as if Hamas has never killed their own). She was heaped with praise on Twitter for her leadership and bravery.
Another academic, John Streicher (@JohnStreicher1), came to her defense on Twitter, accusing me of lack of empathy and extremism, hoping “with every fiber of my being that you don’t have Palestinian of even Muslim trainees.” – apparently, he assumes that all Muslims are fanatical jihadists, and that all Palestinians are Hamas monsters.
I have two issues here. One, there is no place for political statements of any kind at scientific presentations at scientific meetings. I would not support such a political statement being made regarding Israel as a part of a scientific presentation, either, but I am not aware of such an instance. This is a tremendous failure on the part of the American Chemical Society that professes the core values of “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Respect” and pledges “to enhance inclusion within ACS.” Their only response should have been to ban Dr. Jilani from attending any of its meetings in the future.
Two, as scientists, we have a responsibility to the truth. The truth is that there is no genocide in Gaza, just like there was no genocide of Germans or the Japanese in WWII. There was a war then, and there is a war now. That war was started by Hamas that invaded Israel on October 7th, to the cheers of many Palestinian civilians, some of whom have also partaken in the carnage. On October the 7th, Hamas committed the worst atrocity against Jews since the Holocaust and perpetrated the deadliest attack against Israel in its history. The truth is that as early as October 8th, a spigot of antisemitism opened in the West, ugly and violent, on University campuses and beyond.
The truth is that Hamas-supplied death numbers and videos are fake; we know it just as well as we know not to trust Putin's assessments and proclamations over the Ukraine war. Instead, the truth is that Israel is going out of its way, sacrificing its soldiers to minimize civilian casualties - to protect the very Palestinians these "academics" are pretending to care about. Israel could have ended the war in days. Remember what the Soviets did with Berlin in 1945, particularly to the German women? What about the allies and Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Hamas = Nazis, so the comparison is more than fair. It could have been over before it started, but it continues. Carefully, steadily, with surgical strikes and arrests, the monsters responsible for the atrocity are being brought to justice or elimiated.
The truth is that these “peace loving” academics scoring points off of their Palestinian victimhood, and their communist-leaning “allies”, do not, and never did care one iota about the Palestinian cause, whatever they think that is. The truth is that their allegiance is only and exclusively to the elimination of the state of Israel and extermination of Jews by any means necessary.
How do I know this? Simple. Examine their Twitter feeds. What were they doing on October the 7th? What were they saying after? See for yourself. Below I show the first posts I found after the massacre by @finetraces786 and by John Streicher, who accuses Israel of a war crime it did not commit.
Not one of the people demanding empathy and claiming imaginary genocide has EVER expressed regret over the deaths of the people who made it their life’s work to help Palestinians, such as the Canadian activist Vivian Silver, murdered by Hamas on October 7th.
Not one of them has ever said a word about their colleagues, Israeli university students, staff, and faculty, who lost their lives in the October 7th attack.
Here is a list of the members of the Ben Gurion University of the Negev community who died in the massacre or subsequently defending Israel. Among them are graduate students, faculty, that include chemists, for whom I have not seen anyone at the #ACSspring2024 shed a tear. But there was time enough for spreading lies about the Jews and about Israel. A comprehensive list of those lost to the attack can be found here.
Of course, it is too much to expect the radical lefty racists infesting academia to show empathy for those they consider white, but the very same people who were ready to rip to shreds anyone who questioned the communist lives matter movement (aka BLM) have also not shown any empathy for Clemence Mtenga, an agricultural intern at Kibbutz Nir Oz, or Joshua Mollel, both from Tanzania. Both were killed by Hamas. Joshua Mollel was stabbed, stepped on by the monsters shouting “Alahu Akbar”, and then shot from an automatic weapon at point blank range (source: the South First Responders Telegram Channel). No empathy. It’s all in the name of a god and a good cause.
Nor has any sorrow been expressed by these people over the plight of the Palestinian workers, who used to be able to cross into Israel to work but now can’t.
Why is that? It is because none of this matters to these jihadist wannabies or their allies. These acts, these deaths, this suffering, even of their own people, of innocent children, are all justified. It’s all for the greater good. What is the greater good? The “final solution”, one they believe is just over the horizon.
Not very likely. But, their performative victimhood, their actions and statements, they are not only a political maneuver in the antisemitic game they see as the only worthy cause to pursue, but they are also very much driven by regret. Yes, regret. Regret that they were unable to partake in the carnage over there and that they are unable to engage in such carnage over here; at least not yet.
What the likes of Dr. Safia Jilani and John Streicher need to realize is this. Nothing will ever be the same after October the 7th. Nothing will ever be the same after the spigot of antisemitism opened on our campuses, scientific societies, and our streets, the day after the massacre. From this point on, walking into an academic hall, I will wonder whether the person I used to know as my colleague would behead me if given a chance – because now that I have seen your true faces, I know that this is who you really are. This is what you have done.
The irony here is that a clearly political poster inspired by hatred and falsehoods while also being completely unrelated to any possible connection to the ACS meeting session in which it was presented was lauded and celebrated while my own poster AGU 2018 that was completely truthful and related to society policies discussed in a session on ethics was retracted. I was fired from my job and cancelled professionally for speaking unwelcome truths in a professional and appropriate manner. This demonstrates that the scientific community as a whole has lost all credibility and its "literature" is no better than politically correct propaganda. The public has no reason to believe anything the scientific community says.