Recently, Professor Hillel Weiss was accused in Haaretz of calling to eliminate Palestinian Arabs on his Facebook page. Bar Ilan University and Elkana College, where Prof. Weiss lectures and advises doctoral students, were asked for their responses, and used strong language condemning the alleged post., but only Arutz Sheva turned to Professor Weiss himself..
This is Professor Weiss' response, which he requested Arutz Sheva to post:
I did not call to eliminate the Palestinians
On October 21, the Haaretz newspaper wrote, as did other media, that a "professor called for eliminating the Palestinians, and Bar Ilan condemned his words."
That is not what happened.
1. I did not write or call to eliminate Palestinians. I wrote that I do not recognize them as a people (and not as individual members of a non-existent nation either).
2. I did write to Abu Maazen: You should be destroyed as rabble are. But the Prime Minister said similar things. He said that Hamas is our ISIS. Now that Abu Maazen has joined up with Hamas, he is part of ISIS – and ISIS are rabble.
3. The existing organizational framework in the Islamic world is made up of large extended families, many of them similar to gangster families, of tribes from Morocco and Libya, all the way to Indonesia and Malaysia and back to Syria, Iraq, Iran, Lebanon, Jordan. That explains why most of the "states" created by the various Mandates have no historical political foundation besides a common hatred of Israel.
4. In the year 2000 I wrote a draft constitution for the state of Israel that was published on Arutz Sheva and is part of the collection of such suggestions in the government's possession. It includes a position paper that is meant to elevate the status of the Arabs living in Eretz Yisrael and free them from the leftist and rightist politicians who will end up leading them to destruction – it is a suggestion that provides them with an identity and respect as the Torah mandates. This is a bona fide, logical and beneficial position paper that is much better than all the false "peace" plans.
5. Bar Ilan's response to the leftist media's complaint included a major error: I never asked to continue lecturing there after my retirement and certainly did not initiate doing so on a volunteer basis. They turned to me, asking me to teach without renumeration and I agreed.
6. If my lectures and guidance to Ph.D. students on a volunteer basis, my heading the Yiddish Center for three years on the same basis (including travel and other expenses) seem to the university an act of kindness towards me, I will be pleased to stop doing so.
7. Bar Ilan's spokesperson did not have to come out on the side of Israel's leftists and our people's enemies.