When Misinformation Masquerades as Scholarship
A faculty-run webinar series billed as “Understanding Israel/Palestine” is presenting students with a steady stream of misinformation and unchallenged narratives.
Author’s note: A Connecticut College faculty webinar series billed as “Understanding Israel/Palestine” is presenting students with something else entirely: a steady stream of misinformation and unchallenged narratives. On October 8, the guest speaker was Mouin Rabbani, an analyst and co-editor of Jadaliyya, a publication focused on the Arab world and Middle East. According to Professor Andrew Pessin – and supported by extensive documentation – this recurring series has become a platform for persistent anti-Israel bias and unvetted claims. Pessin calls these webinars the “hate series.”
If you listened to Mouin Rabbani, you would not know that Hamas is designated as a terrorist organization. You would think that Hamas was committed to non-violence, and the massacres it perpetrated on October 7 were justified because of a blockade imposed by Israel that “dehumanized” the Gazan population. You would then believe that Israel commenced a “genocide,” motivated by “bloodlust, revenge, and racism.”
But Rabbani’s narrative is unsupported by the historical record.
Before I correct Rabbani’s factual errors, I want to highlight one deeply troubling element of the webinar. Moments before it began, it was announced that Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire and the release of hostages. This was an enormously positive development for both sides, the greater Middle East and indeed for the rest of the world. But there was no rejoicing by Rabbani or the faculty moderators, only criticism that the deal did not fully address issues such as Palestinian statehood.
It takes a profound lack of compassion for the victims of this war – on both sides – to not celebrate the announcement of a deal that will at least pause and possibly end the conflict. At the very least, if you truly believe a genocide has been occurring you would be thrilled at any pause in the fighting.
Rabbani was wrong on every aspect of Middle East history. He misleadingly described the creation of Gaza. He referred to the 1947-1948 Israeli war for independence as the “Nakba” (Arabic for catastrophe) suggesting that Israel was responsible for the “mass dispossession and exile” of thousands of Palestinians, many of which went to reside in Gaza. But the truth, entirely omitted by Rabbani, was that the UN proposed partitioning the land into an Arab and an Israeli state. Israel accepted the partition; the Arabs refused it and declared war. As in any war, people were displaced, while many moved voluntarily. Some ended up in Gaza, but it was not because of forced displacement by Israel. The only catastrophe was that the Arabs did not accept the partition and instead declared war.
Rabbani falsely reported the historical record on peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. For example, he said the failure of the Oslo process was because Israel would not accept a Palestinian state. But President Bill Clinton, who was present for those negotiations, said this is not true. According to Clinton, those negotiations broke down in 2000 because Arafat refused to compromise on issues such as the status of Jerusalem and the right of return. Clinton said that he was “heartbroken” that Arafat would not accept a deal that would have established a Palestinian state, giving them nearly everything they wanted. He also said that Arafat refused the 2000 deal for fear that, if he accepted it, he would be murdered by Palestinians – suggesting that Palestinians themselves were not eager to get a state if it came at the cost of recognizing Israel.
Rabbani then described a fictional history of Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal in 2005. He claimed that Israel “occupied” Gaza because it controlled its borders and airspace and instituted a blockade. Hamas, according to Rabbani, engaged in peaceful protests before October 7, including the 2018 March of Return. He acknowledged that Hamas committed atrocities on October 7 but said that the attack was because of Israeli actions on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
But the truth is that Hamas has engaged in violent aggression against Israel ever since it took power in a violent and illegal coup in 2007. Palestinians received more per capita foreign aid than any other country, and Hamas used that money to build terror tunnels and acquire rockets, which it fired into Israel. Israel did not occupy Gaza according to international law. Rabbani’s claim was a blatant lie about international law, for which “occupation” requires, in effect, actual control of events in the territory and thus “boots on the ground.” The blockade Israel (and Egypt) imposed targeted weapons and military goods and was initiated only after Hamas began its terror activities.[1] Food, humanitarian goods and construction supplies (which were used to build the tunnels) were allowed to enter Gaza. Rabbani referred to Israel’s repeated “assaults” on Gaza, leaving out that in fact it was Hamas that started wars in 2008, 2012, 2014 and 2021, and fired rockets at Israeli citizens almost daily prior to October 7. Nor was the 2018 March peaceful: it was a test run to see how Israel would respond if its sovereign border was breached and was led by armed Hamas members.[2]
Security and intelligence assessments indicate the October 7 assault was planned for months, not triggered by any single incident. According to Yahya Sinwar, Hamas started the war to derail peace initiatives that Israel was pursuing , free Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and target the “Zionist project.”
Rabbani went on to claim that Hamas’ goal on October 7 was to “alter the status quo” and not to kill as many Israelis as possible; it only wanted to demonstrate that it could attack positions of strength – by breaching the border fence and occupying military bases.
But Sinwar was the architect of October, and he ordered Hamas to “kill as many people and take as many hostages as possible.” Anyone who has been to the Nova site or visited the kibbutzim in southern Israel, as I have, knows full well that Hamas’ tactics were merciless, and that no Israeli was too young or too old to be shot, raped, mutilated, burned alive or taken hostage. Records seized by the IDF[3] reveal that Hamas hoped to continue its rampage well into the north of the country and into the West Bank, and was planning for Hezbollah to join in, with the clear intent, literally, to murder as many Israelis as possible.
Rabbani accused Israel of genocide, as have many others. But genocide, as defined in 1948, requires intent – the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group. There is no evidence that Israel has ever intentionally targeted civilians. The opposite is true. Israel has taken extensive measures to evacuate civilians from military targets, warning them with phone calls, leaflets, and non-explosive devices dropped on top of buildings. Even accepting Hamas’ casualty statistics, Israel killed two civilians for every combatant, the lowest such ratio in the history of modern warfare. Hamas itself reports that the Gaza population has increased during the war. Hamas committed genocide; Israel did not.
As evidence for his claim of genocide, Rabbani cited a declaration by “scholars” who are members of the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS). But he did not tell the audience that anyone (including those reading this article) can join the IAGS by paying $30. Many of those scholars are from Iraq, a country notoriously hostile to Israel. It has been shown that the members of the IAGS include Sesame Street characters and someone named “Hitler in Gaza.” Rabbani did not mention that there is a letter, signed by hundreds of bona fide scholars, that claims that Israel has not committed genocide.
Rabbani cited the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and the recent ruling that Israel could be tried for genocide. But he did not mention any of the well-known criticisms of the ICJ, such as its historical bias against Israel, the fact that its justices are political appointees or that it has no mechanism to enforce its rulings.
Rabbani accused Israel of “razing” all universities, hospitals and schools in Gaza. That is false since, for example, multiple field hospitals continue to operate in Gaza. But Rabbani did not mention that Hamas used those buildings to operate its terror infrastructure. Nor did he mention the pervasive use of human shields by Hamas, or the fact that Sinwar stated that civilian deaths were “necessary sacrifices.”
Rabbani’s falsehoods were too numerous to fully document. But two more are worth mentioning. He accused Israel of being an “apartheid state.” But apartheid is defined as racial segregation. There are no laws or policies in Israel that make distinctions based on race or religion. There are laws that apply to Israel citizens versus non-citizens, but that is not apartheid. Rabbani also accused Israel of causing a famine in Gaza. But the IPC Famine Review Committee (FRC, a UN agency) has responsibility for declaring famines. Among other criteria, there must be at least two deaths per day per 10,000 citizens from malnutrition. As of July, there were approximately 100 documented deaths due to malnutrition in Gaza. That number would need to be greater than 10,000 for there to be a famine in Gaza. As of today, with the announcement of the ceasefire, even UNRWA is reporting that it has enough food to last at least three months. There was never any famine.
The message for Connecticut College and its students
If Rabbani’s reckless disregard for the truth were not enough, he also engaged in antisemitism. He said that prominent Israelis and leaders “say it is perfectly legitimate to kill Palestinian children before they become adults.” The accusation of deliberate killing of children by Jews is a classic antisemitic trope. He accused Israel of genocide but not Hamas. Holding Israel to a double standard meets the definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
This webinar was presented using the Connecticut College Zoom account, and Rabbani thanked the college for allowing him to speak. Anyone watching this would assume the webinar was a Connecticut College offering.
The faculty moderator and one of the organizers, Caroleen Sayej, sought only to amplify Rabbani’s inaccuracies and did not challenge any of the claims he made. The other faculty organizer, Eileen Kane, stated that the Holocaust was what made Zionism a “mass movement,” that the majority of Jews in the world lived in Europe from the first century, and “the reason we have the state of Israel is because of events in Europe.” This is a false narrative designed to deny the Jewish people their indigenous rights to Israel. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel for more than 3,000 years, and the historical record contains undeniable evidence this is their ancestral homeland.
The leadership of Connecticut College – its president and board of trustees – owes its students a commitment to intellectual rigor, not ideology dressed as scholarship. By lending its platform to unchallenged narratives and unchecked claims, the college risks normalizing misinformation – and eroding trust in academic discourse. This is not only a disservice to Jewish students; it undermines the integrity of the entire institution.
By allowing this hate series to continue, Connecticut College is supporting activism against Jews.
Editor’s note: We contacted Professor Sayej to see if she wished to rebut the claim made by Mr. Huebscher. She was unavailable for comment.
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Thank you, Joan
israel is commiting a genocide, hope this helps!