Tel Aviv University Retracts Nasrallah Invitation; ‘Too Zionist’

Tel Aviv, February 5 – Tel Aviv University has taken back its invitation to have Hassan Nasrallah address the students and faculty, after several professors and student activists complained that the Hezbollah leader was insufficiently anti-Zionist.

The university had issued the invitation for a conference on post-Zionism to take place early next month. Nasrallah was asked to address some of the political implications for Lebanon once Israel ceases to exist as a political entity and the Jewish inhabitants remaining in the land are relegated to second-class citizens or cannon fodder. The notable exception, in the university’s assessment, will be the enlightened left-wingers of North Tel Aviv, where the institution makes its home, who of course will be seen as allies and not corrupt Western Godless infidels.

But last week a group of students and faculty presented a petition to the university administration pointing to problematic statements by Nasrallah in which he did not foresee the immediate annihilation of the Zionist Entity. They also noted Hezbollah’s strategic decision to enmesh itself in the Syrian civil war, thereby proclaiming that Israel was not the number one danger to Lebanon or Hezbollah itself, but a more distant threat than the insurgents fighting the government of Basher Assad.

“We find the demotion of Israel from the position of Hezbollah’s most prominent immediate enemy a disturbing development, one that calls into question the organization’s priorities and vision for an Israel-free Middle East,” the petition said, adding a demand that the university retract its invitation until Nasrallah issues a clarification. The administration accepted the petition, and suspended its invitation pending such a clarification.

“We regret that it has become necessary to question the anti-Zionist credentials of a freedom fighter such as you, but cannot in good conscience consider the invitation open unless you retract your assertions that some other forces have displaced the Zionist Entity as most unworthy of continued existence. Until such a clarification is received, you will be considered too Zionist for our sensibilities and not welcome to attend or address our conference,” the university wrote to Nasrallah.

Nasrallah has yet to respond either to the invitation or to its retraction. A spokesman in Beirut professed no knowledge of it, but was doubtful the leader would have been able to attend. “There are obvious technical obstacles that would have to be resolved in any case, and those have not been remotely addressed,” said the spokesman. “For one thing, the Sheikh would have to obtain a visa to enter the country, and the Godless Zionists do not maintain a consulate or embassy in Lebanon where such a thing would be possible.”

The university administration has also not received a response yet from its other keynote speakers, former President of Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and former Reichsführer of Germany Heinrich Himmler.