December 2, 2015
Media Coverage:
The B’nai B’rith Anti-Defamation Commission (ADC) has denounced Professor Marsha Levine for refusing to help Shachar Rabinovitch, a 13 year-old Israeli schoolgirl who requested information about early horse species for a research project. Citing her support for the BDS, the retired Cambridge academic castigated the young girl in an email: “I’ll answer your questions when there is peace and justice for Palestinians in Palestine! You might be a child, but if you are old enough to write to me, you are old enough to learn about Israeli history and how it has impacted on the lives of Palestinian people.”
In an interview with the Telegraph, Levine said, “Kids have questions, I usually answer their questions. But I have agreed to BDS [the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel], and I do want to see justice for Palestine. In Israel the majority of Israelis support the policies of the government which abuses the rights of Palestinians, so the fact is I don’t want to help Israelis, and if you don’t start with children where do you start? And she is not that young anyway, her English is pretty good. If people don’t stand up for justice, the world is going to come to an end.”
In another interview with the Jewish Chronicle, Levine stated, “I didn’t ask her to email me. I don’t know how she got my email address. I can do whatever I want. I didn’t invite her to email me. If she wanted to read anything I had written she could find it on the internet. I made the decision that I have the choice not to waste my time on people who tread on the rights of other people. I didn’t do anything to her. I said that when there is justice for Palestine I will answer her – that’s a fair answer. I’m a signatory to Jews for Justice for Palestinians and I sent her a link. I did it as a matter of conscience. The way Israel treats Palestinians is totally disgusting. Benjamin Netanyahu wants ethnic cleansing. The Jews have become the Nazis. Jews are behaving just like the people who treated them. It’s not all Israelis or all Jews.” Levine added that due to their treatment of Palestinians in Gaza, Jews had “turned themselves into monsters.”
Dr Dvir Abramovich, Chairman of the ADC, issued the following statement:
“As we know, the viciousness of the Boycotts, Divestments and Sanctions movement knows no bounds, and it will target and shun any Israeli, regardless of age. The BDS is a mean-spirited, vindictive and immoral campaign that views all Israelis as wicked, even an inquisitive 13 year old schoolgirl, and its purveyors will resort to any tactic in the playbook of demonisation and double-standards to vilify Israel. Marsha Levine’s hateful response is part of a troubling pattern of politically driven, anti-Semitic boycotts which seek to isolate the Jewish state and bully its citizens. We hope that fair-minded and principled scholars around the world will vigorously reject and condemn Marsha Levin’s reprehensible and sickening conduct.”
For more information, please contact Dr Dvir Abramovich on, 03 9272-5677