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Antisemite of the Week:

Taurean Webb -

Theological Distortion Expert

Taurean Webb, a longtime anti-Israel activist, was recently hired by Indiana University as Associate Director of the Center for the Study of Global Change. Webb has promoted vile antisemitism and repeatedly dismissed or minimized concerns regarding the hatred and discrimination Jews face. 


Webb is the author of the infamous "Journey Toward Justice" an antisemitic training program which teaches that the creation of Israel was "evil" and a "structural sin" and claims that American Jews have exaggerated the evils of the Holocaust in order to harm African-Americans and Palestinians. Webb goes out of his way to minimize the importance of the Holocaust and attempts to normalize it. He intentionally refers to it as the "European Jewish Holocaust" and just one of many "Holocausts" that have happened in order to erase the enormity of the largest genocide in modern history. 

 

He also falsely frames Israel as a state that was arbitrarily created in Palestine by the United Nations as a response to the Holocaust rather than Jews returning to their ancestral homeland in waves and building communities and institutions there since the 19th century.

Webb claims "It is instructive to consider the European Jewish Holocaust narration as a tactic of racial control … But Black bodies ... were not valuable enough to merit such attention." He continued stating "Palestinians epitomize that to whom access to these claims [of 'terror' or 'genocide' survivors] is aggressively barred," grotesquely insinuating Israel was committing genocide against the Palestinians.


Most frighteningly, Webb, in a now-removed Facebook post from November 2018, praised the "Holy Land Foundation Five" as heroes. He was referring to the five individuals who were convicted in a U.S. court for funneling millions of dollars to the terrorist organization Hamas, which controls Gaza.

Webb also outlandishly blames Jews for the white supremacist movement, stating "it has long been the case that American Jews have been a critical building block of the US white supremacist infrastructure." He attempts to label Israelis as "white" and Palestinians as "brown," ignoring the reality the majority of Jews in Israel are Mizrahi (of Sephardic descent) and brown. Webb's false and dangerous labeling ignores the fact that most Israeli Jews would be considered people of color by American standards and that all Jews are targeted by Nazis and other white supremacists who believe them to be a non-white group.


During a June 2021 bible study, Webb strongly implied that Palestinians and Arabs cannot promote antisemitic ideas because they are themselves semitic peoples. Intentionally distorting the meaning of antisemitism – a term which has always referred solely to bigotry and hatred against Jews – is hurtful and dangerous to all Jewish people as a whole.

 

After a string of antisemitic incidents at Indiana University, the last thing Jewish students need is an antisemite like Webb teaching on their campus, encouraging more hatred and division.


StopAntisemitism needs YOUR help - please email Indiana University President Pamela Whitten to demand an investigation be started into Webb's antisemitism and he be properly reprimanded.

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