‘The browner the better’ – Zionist Oxford prof’s ‘racist and Islamophobic’ antisemite smear

Genocide-denying academic deletes post after outrage

Oxford academic Paulina Kewes has deleted a post appearing to link supposed antisemitism with ‘brownness’, after disgusted reactions to it.

Jonathan Glass is an Israel-supporting director of notorious antisemitism-smear group ‘Labour against Antisemitism’ (LAAS), who once posted appearing to suggest that he might have attacked loved author Michael Rosen if Glass’s wife hadn’t been present when he saw Rosen in the street and who also posted suggesting he knows where Rosen lives.

Glass reacted to a post by Green party deputy leader Zach Polanski, inviting ex-Labour voters to join the Greens, by suggesting that the Jewish Polanski was calling for ‘antisemites’. Bad enough, but par for the course from LAAS – but Kewes responded by adding ‘The browner the better’:

The post triggered a flood of angry reactions, and complaints to her University of Oxford employers:

At some point, Prof Kewes appears to have deleted her tweet. However, she continues to post disparagingly about Palestinians, for example Palestinian hostage and resistance figure Hussain Nassar, who was freed by Israel this month as part of a prisoner exchange:

The professor, a proponent of the anti-Corbyn ‘Labour antisemitism’ smear campaign, has a track record of ardent Zionism and criticism of those who challenge Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians, for example equating Ireland’s anti-Zionism with ‘rampant’ ‘antisemitism’ and condemning anti-genocide protesters as a ‘mob’:

And Prof Kewes is a literal genocide-denier – she has stated ‘There is no genocide in Gaza’ and expressed ‘gratitude’ to notorious ‘anti-Palestinian fanatic’ David Collier:

Prof Kewes has also claimed that casualty figures in Israel’s slaughter of Palestinian civilians in Gaza are ‘inflated’, despite leading peer-reviewed medical publications like The Lancet concluding that official figures are grossly understated:

And she has suggested that calling opponents of Israeli occupation, apartheid and genocide ‘crazies’ is too kind, because ‘they’ ‘want to eradicate any difference between Israel and Jews’ – when in fact the claim that support for Israel is part of Jewish identity is denied by anti-apartheid activists, especially the many who are Jewish, but determinedly and antisemitically pushed by Israel’s supporters:

Skwawkbox asked Prof Kewes:

I’ve had your tweet passed to me in which you reply to well-known pro-Israel activist’s X post, in which he suggests Jewish Green party leader Zack Polanski is calling for antisemites to join the Greens, with the comment: ‘The browner, the better’. It has been suggested that this is a racist and Islamophobic post unbecoming an Oxford professor. If you have any comment on the matter, please provide it by return and no later than 6pm.

No answer had been received by the time of writing.

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