Shachar Rabinovitch, age 13, wrote to retired Cambridge University professor Dr. Marsha Levine for help with a school project. The Israeli girl had questions about Dr. Levine’s field of study, the genetics of horse breeding.
It was a simple and polite request from a child who shares Dr. Levine’s interest in horses and, coincidentally, her Jewish heritage. Any reasonable person would have expected an equally polite response, whether the academic researcher felt inclined to help or not. But shockingly the only reply Shachar received was full of hate.
“I’ll answer your questions when there is peace and justice for Palestinians in Palestine…You might be a child, but if you are old enough to write to me, you are old enough to learn about Israeli history and how it has impacted on the lives of Palestinian people. Maybe your family has the same views as I do, but I doubt it.”
The professor added that she is “a member of Jews for Justice for Palestinians. I support Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions.”
The BDS movement has no shame. Its blind hatred of Israel and all Israelis is not based in fact, logic, or even a reasonable strategy for achieving peace or helping Palestinians. Bullying a 13 year old girl based purely on her nationality is shocking, but not surprising, given the BDS movement’s pattern of violent, hateful rhetoric that routinely smears all Israelis as murderers and racists.
Dr. Levine is an educated woman living in an “enlightened” Western society with a respected career at one of the world’s most distinguished universities. What a shame that she can’t see past her hatred of her own people to be kind to an innocent child.
