Blink twice. Husam El-Qoulaq, a Harvard Law School student leader, asked Israeli Knesset Member Tzipi Livni: “How is it that you are so smelly?”
The setting was a panel on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
In a candidacy for a Guiness Book of World Records entry under disingenuous apology, El-Qoulaq wrote at length that he never knew that “smelly Jew” was an anti-Semitic stereotype.
As if a statement of this nature needs to be a stereotype to be straight from the gutter of hate. Even as El-Qoulaq’s non-apology apology expatiates on his innocence — “I would never, ever, ever call anyone, under any circumstances, a ‘smelly Jew.’ Such a comment is utterly repugnant, and I am absolutely horrified that some readers have been led to believe that I would ever say such a thing” — and even as 11 Jewish students and recent alumni of Harvard Law School came to El-Qoulaq’s defense — he meant his remarks as an attack on Livni for her key role in Operation Cast Lead, Dec. 27, 2008-Jan. 8, 2009 (in response to repeated rocket fire from Hamas on Israeli civilians) — the record contradicts all such post-facto apologetics.
The record shows that after El-Qoulaq asked Livni, “How is it that you are so smelly?” the moderator asked him to clarify his question.
He replied: “[My question was] about the odor of Tzipi Livni, very smelly.”
Rightly, the leaders of the Harvard Jewish Law Students Assn. called the question “blatantly anti-Semitic rhetoric,” which, of course, it was, regardless of whether it had a history as an anti-Semitic stereotype, which, of course, it does.
The Jewish Law Students Assn. noted that “the Nazis promoted the idea that Jews ‘smell’ to propagandize Jews as an inferior people” — which is nice for the historical record, but entirely unnecessary to identify El-Qoulaq as the rude and crude anti-Semite that he is.
The bottom line here, of course, is the sheer hatred of Israel and the sheer freedom that Israel’s haters feel on America’s most elite college campuses to express it with impunity — even expecting a salute for doing do.
It is certainly good that the likes of Harvard’s president of its Middle East Law Students Assn. condemned the comment in the Harvard Law Record.
It is also infinitely sad. This is what discourse, if the word can even be used, has come to on at least one American campus. Alas, we know all too well that sheer anti-Israel animus is not limited to one campus.
El-Qoulaq’s Jewish defenders noted: “Earlier this semester he tried a different tactic, calling a male Palestinian speaker a ‘smelly liar.’”
As if a rude and crude attack on a Palestinian justifies the same against an Israeli Jew — as if the common humanity of both Palestinians and Israelis may be dispensed with for the purposes of advancing a political agenda.
The Jewish Harvard Law students and grads could well learn a thing or two from Sahand Moarefy, the above referenced president of Harvard’s Middle East Law Students Assn. Even as the Jews engaged in all manner of contortion to excuse El-Qoulaq, Moarefy stated the truth, which, of course, is not very complicated:
“I unequivocally and unwaveringly condemn the recent anti-Semitic remarks at Thursday’s event on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
“As the president of an organization dedicated to representing and serving students across the Middle East, including Israel, I deplore any attack on individuals based on their race, religion or cultural heritage.”
An elementary point that, even if El-Qoulaq couldn’t figure it out, one would expect Jewish students to be able to. But they couldn’t — proof again, if proof were needed, that brainpower is not necessarily equivalent to moral sense, good taste, political balance, clear thinking or self-respect.
Copyright © 2016 by the Intermountain Jewish News
