The situation in Gaza is a Western and Israeli “Final Solution,” according to the rector of the University of Glasgow.
“Gaza is starving to death. The Final Solution is up on us. It is a US, UK, German, French Final Solution, with Israeli hands,” Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian plastic and reconstructive surgeon born in Kuwait, wrote on X/Twitter on Saturday.
Abu Sitta was banned from visiting Schengen countries in April 2024, shortly after he arrived in Germany to speak at a conference about Palestine. He was due to provide testimony about his work in Gaza hospitals during the conflict but was detained on arrival in Germany and forced to return to the UK.
On Friday, a chamber of three judges in Berlin’s administrative court ruled that the ban was disproportionate, resulting in it being overturned.
When Abu Sitta was installed as rector in April 2024, he pledged to make the university abandon the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which, according to Abu Sitta, “conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism.” All four of his pledges related to divestment from Israel or redefining antisemitism.
Concern by Jewish groups of Abu Sittah
At the time, the Glasgow Jewish Society said it was “deeply concerned” about Abu Sitta, given “his past eulogies for Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorists and his pledge to redefine antisemitism.” Abu Sitta lauded PFLP “shahids” (martyrs) Miloud Ben Lumah and Khaled Aker in a 2019 tweet and has praised PFLP co-founder Maher Al-Yamani.
“A campus environment where the appointed rector seeks to redefine antisemitism against the express wishes of those directly affected by it undermines Jewish students’ sense of security,” the GJS statement added.
It called the IHRA definition the “gold standard,” and said an attempt to repeal this would be a “serious threat” to Jewish students.
In a 2018 article in Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar, the doctor applauded terrorist Ahmad Jarrar, who was behind the murder of father-of-six Rabbi Raziel Shevach in a drive-by shooting near Nablus.
“The martyrdom of the resistance member Ahmed Nasr Jarrar, the hero of the Nablus operation, at the hands of the Zionist occupation army… like the hundreds of resistance fighters who were martyred at the hands of this satanic alliance, represents a pivotal moment,” the rector wrote.
He continued, “There is no weapon left in the hands of the people other than revolutionary violence.”
Notably, the IHRA definition would define his tweet about the “Final Solution” as antisemitic.
The IHRA defines “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” as antisemitism.
Additionally, “with Israeli hands” appears to be an antisemitic trope about Jews and or Israelis as “puppet masters.”
The IHRA also states that “making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective, such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government, or other societal institutions” is antisemitic.