Harvard Chabad rabbi Hirschy Zarchi told the Free Beacon that Maria Ressa engaged in ‘classic anti-Semitic rhetoric’
When media publisher Maria Ressa delivered a commencement speech at Harvard University in 2024, she said her pro-Israel critics were after “money and power,” prompting a rabbi affiliated with the university to walk off the dais. Now, Hillary Clinton is giving her namesake award to Ressa, the CEO of Rappler, who ran an editorial equating Israel with Nazi Germany.
Clinton herself is scheduled to bestow the award on Ressa, a 2021 Nobel Peace Prize recipient, at Georgetown University next Tuesday.
Ressa made headlines in May 2024 when Harvard University invited her to speak at its commencement ceremony, and the Washington Free Beacon reported she had published an editorial arguing Israel’s war against Hamas was comparable to the Holocaust.
“It is with great irony that the race that for centuries, suffered oppression, even genocide at the hands of Adolf Hitler, is the same race that is now depriving the Palestinians of this same dream,” the editorial read. “According to [sociologist Randy] David, ‘Yesterday’s oppressed have become today’s oppressors.’”
Ressa and Rappler lied about the contents of the editorial after the Free Beacon reported on the comparison between Israel and Nazi Germany, accusing the Free Beacon of peddling “propaganda.” Rappler’s executive editor, Glenda M. Gloria, told Time magazine the Free Beacon had misrepresented the editorial and failed to provide an “accurate translation” from its original Tagalog. But a second translation commissioned by the Free Beacon from Anna Katarina Rodriguez, former executive director of the Commission on Filipino Language, confirmed the accuracy of the original.
On stage at Harvard, Ressa used the occasion to savage her critics. “Because I accepted your invitation to be here today, I was attacked online and called anti-Semitic by money and power because they want money and power,” she said.
Her remarks prompted a university rabbi to walk out of the commencement and the school’s Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias to denounce her words, writing Ressa’s comments “echo traditional conspiracy theories about Jews, money, and power” and served as an example of the “ease with which ‘anti-Zionism’ slips into what is effectively antisemitism.”
“Why did a renowned humanitarian ad-lib seemingly antisemitic remarks against her Jewish critics at a highly scripted Harvard graduation ceremony?” asked the task force. “We do not know. … [V]isible political opposition to Israelis may make it easier for a speaker to slip into political opposition to Jews and say hostile things about the Jewish people who had attacked her.”
Clinton will present the award during a ceremony intended to “honor the courage, strength, and determination of women around the world who are standing up for democratic values and making their voices heard.”
Awardees are chosen for their “exceptional leadership in promoting women’s rights and creating a more peaceful and secure world for all,” according to the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security’s website.
Other Clinton award recipients this year include columnist Anne Applebaum, student protest leaders in Bangladesh, and women prisoners in Venezuela. The 2024 awards honored the former female heads of Estonia and Lithuania, as well as “Palestinian and Israeli partner organizations building pro-peace movements.”
Georgetown students have previously accused the university of allowing an atmosphere of anti-Semitism to flourish among both students and staff, and the House Education and Workforce Committee held a hearing in July in which members grilled Georgetown’s interim president over a rise in anti-Semitism on campus. Neither Clinton nor the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security responded immediately to Free Beacon requests for comment on whether Ressa’s words represent the values they seek to promote.
Harvard Chabad rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who was seated on stage for Ressa’s commencement address, told the Free Beacon he “approached [Ressa] as the ceremony was coming to an end to ask her to consider taking the opportunity to clarify—publicly—what she meant by saying that she was accused of being anti-Semitic ‘by power and money, because they want power and money.'”
Zarchi told the Free Beacon that Ressa’s response did not help.
“When she tried to justify and explain her characterization, it became clear to me that there was nothing more for me to say in that moment, and I promptly walked off,” he said, adding her “classic anti-Semitic rhetoric was all the more revealing when she went on in her address to slander Israel by falsely including Gaza on her list of places where a genocide is occurring. Of course, she said nothing about the greatest massacre against the Jewish people since the Holocaust and the continued genocidal attempts on the Jewish people by Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.”
Read the full article here
