Mick Hartley

A very American problem. A professor at the University of Kentucky has said that the state of Israel needs to be destroyed militarily by international force. He was suspended, and is now suing the university for reinstatement, with civil liberties groups taking his side.

Professor Ramsi Woodcock really, really hates Israel. And he doesn’t just hate the Netanyahu government, or the war in Gaza, or the violent assaults by West Bank settlers. Those are just symptoms, which even many Israelis oppose.

Woodcock’s hatred goes so much deeper — to the very survival of Israel itself — that he has demanded the forcible elimination of the Jewish state, with scant regard for the consequences. 

A tenured professor at Kentucky’s J. David Rosenberg College of Law, Woodcock asserts that the “State of Israel,” which he confines in scare quotes, has no right to exist. 

For him, the “destruction of Israel” is a moral imperative, and he has called upon the international community to launch a war to “end Israel.” 

On behalf of his self-initiated Antizionist Legal Studies Movement, Woodcock circulated a petition earlier this year for an international war against Israel. He posted it on various sites, including multiple discussion groups sponsored by the Association of American Law Schools. 

The petition’s seeming call for violence, demanding “that every country in the world make war on Israel immediately,” drew complaints from law professors and others who saw the posts, including the Majority Caucus of the Kentucky state senate.  

The article, by another law professor, suggests that the university’s suspension of Woodcock was “a drastic overreaction”, but admits that Woodcock is indeed antisemitic. Well yes…