The most dangerous political movements rarely begin with mobs. They begin with professors.

In 1930s Germany, scholars provided intellectual scaffolding for persecution. Today, a different academic campaign seeks to redefine the legitimacy of the Jewish state. The parallel is not one of identity, but of method.

The role of academics in Germany’s persecution of Jews was methodically documented by Max Weinreich in Hitler’s Professors: The Part of Scholarship in Germany’s Crimes Against the Jewish People, which was published in 1946.  German academics found that pre-Nazi literature was not sufficiently antisemitic, and Weinreich showed how they streamlined the theory to delegitimize Jews and ultimately justify their extermination.

Nearly a century later, Hitler’s professors have become Hamas’s professors.

Peter Beinart, a prominent figure in that campaign, is a professor at the City University of New York and contributes articles to the New York Times.

Delegitimization is a cornerstone of what Beinart preaches.  He does not support the right for Israel to exist as a Jewish state in the traditional sense – meaning a state defined primarily by Jewish ethno-national character.

But Beinart’s hostility toward Israel and the Jews goes much deeper.  Much of his rhetoric is rooted in falsehoods.  In his most recent book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning, he states that Israel “denies most of its Palestinian residents citizenship and denies all of them legal equality.”  But the truth is that Palestinian citizens of Israel – who largely identify as Arab Israelis, not as “Palestinian” – have full rights and fewer obligations, as they are not required to serve in the Israeli military.  Similarly, Beinart accuses Israel of apartheid. But apartheid is defined as racially discriminatory policies, and no Israel policy or law is based on race or religion, except for the Law of Return (to make “aliya,” which doesn’t apply to citizens but to foreigners).  There are policies based on whether someone is an Israeli citizen or a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, but that does not meet the definition of apartheid.

In the mid-1920s, Hitler was aware of the need to present anti-Jewish ideology in a scholarly coating.  Academics placed special emphasis........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)