More than 20 senior faculty at Ben-Gurion University are demanding that a lecturer who said Israeli soldiers "have been taught to be baby-killers" be fired.
Their demand was sent on Friday to the university's rector, Chaim Hames, and its president, Daniel Chamovitz. Alongside the baby-killer post, it cites other posts by Dr. Sebastian Ben Daniel, an adjunct faculty member in the computer science department who is active on social media under the pseudonym John Brown.
The university said in a statement that their letter was forwarded to "the relevant parties," adding that it "condemns and rejects Dr. Sebastian Ben Daniel's comments and they don't represent it."
The faculty members wrote that they were calling for Ben Daniel's dismissal "despite our deep commitment to the principle of freedom of expression" because "a university lecturer, being someone who serves as an educational and public figure, has a special responsibility to express himself appropriately and respectfully, while avoiding hurtful generalizations or language that encourages hatred, incitement and violence — especially at a sensitive time like this."
Many of the posts cited in the letter express Ben Daniel's harsh criticisms of the government, the Israel Defense Forces and Israeli society, and particularly their treatment of the Palestinians. They include statements such as that in Israel, "everyone supports the IDF killing babies" and that "Zionism is polite Kahanism."
Another, posted after fans of the Maccabi Tel Aviv soccer team were attacked in Amsterdam, asserted that "99 percent" of residents of his hometown, Beʻer Sheva, were supporters of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and "neo-Nazis who would like to kill me in the streets."
The faculty members' letter also said several students had told them that Ben Daniel expresses his political opinions in class, even though the content of the courses he teaches isn't political.
"The lecturer teaches students — including reservists, pilot cadets in the air force's academic program, Beʻer Sheva residents and religious students — who, in his view, are largely neo-Nazis who support committing horrific crimes," it said. "It's doubtful that such a lecturer could treat students fairly."
Nevertheless, before the campaign demanding his dismissal began, the university had not received any complaints about discriminatory or degrading treatment of students by Ben Daniel.
The university suspended Ben Daniel earlier this month, after activists with the right-wing Im Tirtzu organization collected more than 1,000 signatures from students on a petition demanding his dismissal and then sent it to the university administration. However, no official suspension proceedings have been launched.
The activists based their request on a post by Ben Daniel last month in which he shared and them commented on a Haaretz report about how a pregnant Palestinian woman was shot and killed after the IDF's Central Command loosened the rules of engagement. "IDF soldiers murder babies not because of orders, but because they have been taught to be baby-killers," he wrote in that post.
In another post, about a Palestinian boy who was killed during the army's operation in the Tul Karm refugee camp, he wrote, "The IDF isn't shooting religious terrorists who attack civilians, but it is murdering a pregnant woman and a 7-year-old boy because 'he looked at the ground' — not because of orders, but because they have been taught to murder Palestinian children."
But a week after Ben Daniel was suspended, the university revoked his suspension. The rector, Hames, said he decided to bring Ben Daniel back to work after looking into the complaints against him. At the time, the university said Ben-Daniel had "apologized for his remarks as published and understood that he has to take into account that his style of writing could hurt students learning from him." It added that he had "cooperated with the inquiry."
Under Herzlianism, you can lose your job for stating the obvious!