Im Tirtzu demonstrating in Hebrew U
Im Tirtzu demonstrating in Hebrew UIm Tirtzu

The Im Tirztu campus watchdog organization has launched a hotline that would enable students at Israeli universities to complain about far-left professors that besmirch Israel and deride Zionism.

The hotline will allow students who allege extreme left-wing incitement by lecturers in Israeli universities to report the professors to Im Tirtzu, who would then register complaints with the university.

"It gives the students an immediate hotline," Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg told Arutz Sheva. "Many times we get these complaints later on and there isn't anything we can do about it. They ask why we didn't complain when it happened."

"We want to set up this hotline so students will know that they can complain immediately. The genius of this is that we can respond much quicker. Until now we released a report every few months...from the minute you have a hotline you can get the story out to the public and do something about it."

Peleg pointed to instances of far-left lectures censoring students with right-wing views, which he alleges is especially egregious at Ben Gurion University in Beer Sheva and Jerusalem's Hebrew University. "We have instances of lecturers exploiting their position in order to make political statements and they don't let anyone else respond," said Peleg. "We had a student beaten up by an Arab at a demonstration and the student was summoned to appear before a disciplinary committee when he complained."

"Unfortunately, nothing is changing. The lecturers are still behaving in an extremely blunt way, and they feel strengthened when they see that the university doesn't do anything about it," Peleg charged.

In June, a storm erupted after Dr. Ofer Cassif, a professor at Hebrew University, was recorded telling students that his comparisons between Israel and Nazi Germany were based “on fact, not opinion”. During classes, he said a number of laws – including Basic Laws – in Israel were eerily similar to laws passed by the Nazi regime, including the infamous Nuremberg Laws.

When a student objected, the Cassif argued that his statements were facts and that there was no room for argument. "There's not really much to argue about here," he said in the recording.

While Cassif acknowledged that Israel was not guilty of genocide, he claimed that the Jewish state was on a “slippery slope” towards Nazism.

Jewish Home Chairman and Education Minister Naftali Bennett recently commissioned Professor Asa Kasher to write an academic code of ethics in order to deal with the problem of professors attacking Israel and the IDF during classes.