Former Israeli diplomat Shahar Azani told Newsmax on Friday that it's "high time" for "accountability" over antisemitism at Ivy League schools, which he referred to as "poison Ivy."
During an appearance on "Wake Up America," Azani said he was "baffled" by the testimony of the presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about the rise of antisemitism on their campuses.
The administrators appeared before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce during a hearing on antisemitism and Islamophobia on Tuesday.
"Think about our kids applying to these Ivy League schools, or, shall I say, poison Ivy, because the question of 'Is the calls for genocide for Jews acceptable in any way?' and the answer 'Would be depending on the context' is already a clear indication of an unbelievable moral haze, to say the least, if not cowardice," Azani said. "I also want to say that when they were asked if Israel should have the right to exist as a Jewish state, they refrained from acknowledging the Jewish nature of the state of the Jews.
"Now, it's not just this abominable answer. It's also the smirk when they gave that answer, as if they had the upper hand, not to mention the fact that, with all due respect to the hearing, it's the long and many months or years of inaction against hatred and antisemitism.
"UPenn itself, by the way, hosted, only a couple of weeks before the massacre against thousands of Israelis, a literary festival for Palestine with leading antisemites who called Israel a tumor," he added. "There is a direct line between allowing such hatred and hate fest of words to what happens on the ground in the murder of innocent Jews."
When asked where the Ivy League presidents' common sense was during their testimony, Azani said he was "baffled" and said there must be accountability for the schools' failure to educate.
"Don't we teach our kids to differentiate between good and bad?" he asked. "Between right and wrong? And here you have these presidents of these universities and this is what they have to say on Capitol Hill?
"What does that say about our generation? What does that say about parents who invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in educating their children? It's absolutely unfathomable and disgusting and you know what? It's high time for an age of accountability. There has to be a price to pay for such maleducation and misbehavior."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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