Halle – The renowned Max Planck Institute has probably employed an Australian visiting professor in Halle since April 2023, who has been spreading antisemitic hate speech for years, as “ Welt am Sonntag ” reports. The Lebanese-born ethnologist Ghassan Hage was named “the most important intellectual commentator on multicultural Australia” by the academic platform “The Conversation” and should probably also become an ornament for the Max Planck Institute.
But when it comes to Israel, Hage falls into old, antisemitic ways of thinking. On December 11th he wrote on X: “The Israelis like to say that they are doing in Gaza what the Allies did in Dresden. The Allies never tried to humiliate the people of Dresden. Israeli violence in this respect is much more similar to antisemitic Nazi violence, with its destructive power and its desire to humiliate. It is also similar to Nazi violence in its vulgarity.«
Hage described Hamas’s brutal massacres simply as “resistance” against “colonial settler violence.” Much more: in the face of the massacres, he was kissed by the muse. »The Palestinians, like all colonized peoples, continue to demonstrate that their capacity for resistance is endless. They don’t just dig tunnels. “You can fly over walls,” he wrote on his private blog on October 7th .
According to “Welt am Sonntag,” the ethnologist wrote on X on December 24th that “the Zionists with their settler violence” were becoming the “wild beasts of the West.” The tweets have since been deleted, but another post published just days later can still be seen.
In it, Hage writes that he has no doubt that Israel will cease to exist “as a Jewish state.” The state will either dissolve back into what it was “as Palestine”: a place of multi-religious coexistence. If that doesn’t happen, Israel will continue to be a “superior bully” that destroys and humiliates the Palestinian people and their Arab neighbors. “In this scenario, the end will not be pleasant for anyone,” predicts the professor.
Ghassan Hage’s hatred of Israel has been publicly documented for years. Back in April 2016, he explained in an essay why he supports the antisemitic BDS movement. The Max Planck Institute was obviously surprised by the research carried out by “Welt am Sonntag”. The institute announced that it is currently examining the matter.
Hage ignored reporters’ inquiries, but commented on the article on X: “This is an article full of half-truths, lies and slimy innuendos. I would never dignify such people with an answer. They’re not intellectuals, they’re ideological assassins.« nko
