"White Privilege"

Is there anyone more stridently anti-Jewish and anti-Israel than a Jew who dislikes his birthright and takes exception to the exceptionality of Jewish history, as a memorial to suffering and indiscriminate hounding of a people because they are different, chosen to represent the world's scapegoat incarnate?

From such establishment figures as the famed linguist Noam Chomsky whose antipathy to Israel is legendary, to secular Jewish groups that establish themselves within the Liberal-left atmosphere of 'blame the Jews', and to a young woman descended from Holocaust survivors who, to curry her leftist chops as an unequivocal Jew-hater, writes a thesis on the Jewish narrative.

A rather different one, from the perspective of someone who loathes everything representative of Jewish experience, history and lamentation. A student at University of Toronto whose thesis is titled "The Victimhood of the Powerful: White Jews, Zionism and the Racism of Hegemonic Holocaust Education". Which sets out to detail Israel as an apartheid state.

Hamas and Hezbollah would most surely, if they had knowledge of her scholarship, urge her to forward copies of her thesis for their delectation. They could then wrap one of her gifts and send it along to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who could carry it with him to the upcoming United Nations Human Rights Tribunal session as proof positive of all that he has claimed, representing sufficient reason for the Islamic Republic of Iran to proceed with its mission to destroy the pernicious Zionist entity.

Another copy could be presented to Mahmoud Abbas for his library, to complement his own doctoral thesis debunking the real, living, historical occurrence of the Holocaust as a useful Zionist myth to support the Jewish insistence that they're a people deserving of a state of their own, for only such a state, reserved primarily for those of Jewish origin, could represent a haven for Jews, safe there from pogroms and genocidal plans of extinction.

Some members of the Ontario legislature have taken umbrage at the scholarly work represented by Jenny Peto's thesis. And it has been condemned in the Ontario legislature as a "shockingly anti-Semitic" tract. Which, assuredly, it was meant to represent. But as it also represents freedom of expression, however hateful, the academic freedom is not to be questioned or stilled.

"I never could have imagined an MA thesis getting this much attention", claimed Ms. Peto, disarmingly. "But given my reputation as a vocal critic of Israel ... I am never surprised to be attacked by pro-Israel groups or pro-Israel politicians, for that matter. Students and researchers should be able to research and publish on controversial matters without the fear of attacks from the government."

This deliberately disingenuously smug Jew-baiter is feeling fairly self-important. And it helps her self-assurance that her left-liberal-credentialed stance has such support from the academic community. Little surprising, given that OISE is involved, and where a 'panel of experts' grill each Masters' candidate to defend their thesis to meet their high institutional standards.

"That's what freedom of expression is, that's how it ought to unfold. Condemnation is not really how expression is done", according to University of Toronto provost Cheryl Misak, not at all condescendingly.

And that's how bigots and anti-Semites gain credibility.