Oberlin prof. says Israel responsible for ISIS, Charlie Hebdo attacks

A professor at Oberlin College wrote a series of anti-Semitic Facebook posts claiming Israel was behind the Charlie Hebdo Paris attacks and the rise of ISIS.

Shortly after the Charlie Hebdo shooting last year, Joy Karega, an assistant professor of rhetoric and composition, posted a picture of a man with an ISIS facemask pulling off a mask of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The man also had the words, “JSIL,” “Israel,” and a star of David tattooed on his forearm.

“This ain’t even hard. They unleashed Mossad [Israel’s national intelligence agency] on France and it’s clear why...And I stopped letting folks bully me with that ‘You’re being anti-semetic’ nonsense a long time ago. Just a strategy to shut folks up who criticize Zionism…” Karega wrote along with her post.

Later that day, Karega wrote another post blasting Netanyahu for attending a free speech rally in Paris when French President François Hollande had asked him not to come.

“Netanyahu wanted to bend Hollande and French governmental officials over one more time in public just in case the message wasn’t received via Massod [sic] and the ‘attacks’ they orchestrated in Paris,” she wrote.

In November, Karega posted another theory to her Facebook, claiming Israel’s national intelligence agency was conspiring with ISIS.

“It’s troubling in this day and age, where there is all this access to information, most of the general public doesn’t know who and what ISIS really is. I promise you, ISIS is not a jihadist, Islamic terrorist organization. It’s a CIA and Mossad operation, and there’s too much information out here for the general public not to know that.”

Karega quickly removed the posts after she garnered some attention from the media but The Tower managed to capture some screenshots before it was too late.

Oberlin president Martin Krislov released a statement last week defending Karega, saying that the college “respects the right of its faculty, students, staff and alumni to express their personal views.”

Alan Dershowitz, an emeritus professor of law at Harvard University and outspoken critic of college students, spoke poorly of Krislov’s reaction.

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“If Karega had expressed comparably bigoted views about Blacks, Muslims or gays, the President of Oberlin would not have posted the boilerplate he posted,” Dershowitz said. “He would have condemned those views, even if he defended her right to express them.”

Campus Reform reached out to Karega and representatives from Oberlin College but did not receive a response by press time.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @brianledtke