Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made several inflammatory comments about pro-Palestinian protesters during his speech to Congress Wednesday. Photo by Getty Images

By Arno Rosenfeld July 24, 2024

During his address to Congress on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu misrepresented comments made by the president of MIT during a controversial hearing on Capitol Hill this winter about where to draw the line between free speech and protests on campus. 

Echoing talking points of major American Jewish groups, Netanyahu condemned the presidents of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — where he got a business degree in 1979 — and two other elite schools for equivocating when asked whether certain chants violated their student codes of conduct.

“Eighty years after the Holocaust, the presidents of Harvard, Penn and — I’m ashamed to say, my alma mater — MIT, couldn’t bring themselves to condemn the calls for the genocide of Jews,” Netanyahu said. “You remember what they said? They said, ‘it depends on the context.’”

MIT leader answered differently

The presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, Claudine Gay and M. Elizabeth Magill, both gave equivocal answers when they were asked at the hearing whether “calling for the genocide of Jews” would constitute “bullying and harassment,” saying it would depend on the circumstances. Both later resigned under pressure from alumni and other donors. 

But MITs president, Sally Kornbluth — who is Jewish — answered first and with a more succinct and clear answer: “If targeted at individuals, not making public statements,” she said, it would be a violation.

Kornbluth, who remains in office, did reference “context” once, after Rep. Elise Stefanik, the New York Republican who led the grilling of the presidents, asked a follow-up about “chants for intifada” at MIT.

“I’ve heard chants, which can be antisemitic, depending on the context, when calling for the elimination of the Jewish people,” Kornbluth said, adding that such language would violate MIT’s policies if “pervasive and severe.”

Stefanik never asked Kornbluth, Magill or Gay to “condemn” calls for genocide, as Netanyahu suggested, and Kornbluth said during the hearing that calls for “Jewish genocide” had not taken place at MIT.

While Stefanik called on Kornbluth to resign, and she has faced criticism from some Jewish alumni, her more direct answers spared her from much of the pressure that ultimately forced her colleagues to step down.

Says protesters funded by Iran

In his nearly hourlong address on Wednesday, Netanyahu made other inflammatory claims about the protest movement targeting Israel in the United States. 

“For all we know, Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building,” he said, referring to an estimated 5,000 protesters who had gathered on the National Mall. 

Netanyahu pointed to a statement by Avril Haines, the American director of national intelligence, who said last month that the Iranian government had used fake online accounts to “encourage protests” and was “even providing financial support to protesters.” Haines shared no other details.

The protests against Netanyahu on Wednesday were organized by a variety of organizations including Jewish and Israeli groups like Americans for Peace Now, UnXeptable and T’ruah.

Netanyahu also said that campus protesters “get an F in geography” because they “chant ‘from the river to the sea, but many don’t have a clue what river and what sea they’re talking about.’” 

A May poll commissioned by Axios found that roughly two-thirds of college students who agreed with the statement “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” correctly named the Jordan River and Mediterranean Sea.

He sought to paint the protesters as a threat to both Israel and the U.S., claiming that “they burn American flags, even on the Fourth of July,” referring to an incident in New York City. And Netanyahu praised a group of fraternity brothers at the University of North Carolina who “protected the American flag against the anti-Israel protesters.”

The North Carolina incident took place on April 30 and involved students at a pro-Palestinian tent encampment who had removed a U.S. flag and replaced it with a Palestinian one. No flags were burned in the incident.

Claims antisemitism behind criticism of Israel

Netanyahu often accuses his opponents of antisemitism and used his speech to claim that “the world’s oldest hatred” had now been trained on Israel.

“Just as malicious lies were leveled for centuries against the Jewish people, malicious lies are now being leveled against the Jewish state,” he told the chamber. 

“No, no don’t applaud, listen,” Netanyahu scolded the audience before continuing.

“The outrageous slanders that paint Israel as racist and genocidal are meant to delegitimize Israel, to demonize the Jewish state and to demonize Jews everywhere,” he said. “And no wonder we’ve witnessed an appalling rise of antisemitism in America and around the world. 

“Wherever and whenever we see the scourge of antisemitism we must unequivocally condemn it and resolutely fight it — without exception!”

It was one of his biggest applause lines of the afternoon.

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