Leader of campaign to fire Joseph Massad ran Twitter page for Israel's army

Students and faculty are condemning Columbia University’s leadership for allowing attacks on professor Joseph Massad to escalate. (Twitter) Students and faculty at Columbia University in New York City are denouncing the mounting attacks and smears against Joseph Massad, an author and professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at the university. Supporters of Israel have demanded that Columbia fire Massad over an opinion piece he published just over a week ago on The Electronic Intifada. They claim that Massad’s analysis is tantamount to “supporting terrorism” and have circulated a petition calling on the university to fire him. The petition was launched by Maya Platek, a Columbia student and former head content writer for the Israeli army’s “spokesperson’s unit.” That is a propaganda division in the military now waging a genocidal war against the people of Gaza. Platek’s page on LinkedIn says that she managed a Twitter account and a website for the Israeli military from 2018 to 2020. Her petition claims that Massad’s analysis “encourages violence and misinformation in and outside of campus, particularly putting many Jewish and Israeli students on campus at risk.” It is a common trope used by Israel defenders and its lobby to claim that any
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