Nevertheless, West tweeted, “Is Harvard a place for a free Black man like myself whose Christian faith & witness put equal value on Palestinian & Jewish babies- like all babies- & reject all occupations as immoral? After being tenured at Yale, Harvard, Princeton & Union Theological Seminary, the recent Harvard denial of a tenure process strikes me as a political decision I reject. Nothing stands in the way of my profound love for & solidarity with oppressed peoples wherever they are!!”
I don’t see how to read this other than as a claim that a Zionist faction controlling Harvard is denying him tenure because as a Christian he supports Palestinian rights and opposes Israel’s “occupation.” And I don’t see how that can be read as suggesting something other than Jews controlling Harvard are preventing his tenure–it’s not like there is a big evangelical Christian pro-Israel faction in the Harvard administration, and it hardly seems incidental that Harvard’s president, Lawrence Bacow, is Jewish–and because he’s a good Christian, no less. The victim of perfidious Jews [update: though, in fairness, West may be among those extremely harsh critics of Israel who has grown so used to harsh criticisms of “Zionists” or “the Israel lobby” that he distinguishes in his mind from “Jews” that he may not realize the extent to which the average person wouldn’t draw this tenuous distinction in these circumstances.]
Meanwhile, Saturday Night Live’s weekend update anchor announced that Israel has vaccinated half of its population, “and I’m going to guess it’s the Jewish half.” This joke badly misfired.
