Kamau Bobb, Google’s global head of “diversity strategy and research,” and senior director of the “Equity in Computing” research center at Georgia Tech, claimed that Jews have an “insatiable appetite for war and killing” in a 2007 blog post on his personal website.
The post, titled “If I were a Jew,” slams Israel for an alleged “insatiable appetite for vengeful violence” and goes on to say “if I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.” The post was first reported on by the Washington Free Beacon.
Noting the various atrocities that have been committed against Jews throughout history, Bobb speculates that, if he were a Jew, the behavior of Israel towards the Lebanese and Palestinians would be irreconcilable with that aspect of Jewish identity.
I don’t know how I would reconcile that identity with the behavior of fundamentalist Jewish extremists or of Israel as a nation. The details would confuse me. I wouldn’t understand those who suggest that bombing Lebanon, slaughtering Lebanese people and largely destroying Beirut in retaliation for the capture of a few soldiers is justified. I wouldn’t understand the notion of collective punishment, cutting off gas, electricity and water from residents in Gaza because they are attacking Israel who is fighting against them. It would be unconscionable to me to watch Israeli tanks donning the Star of David rumbling through Ramallah destroying buildings and breaking the glass.
The Google diversity chief goes on to say that if he were a Jew, his “reflections on Kristallnacht” (the infamous pogrom in Nazi Germany) would lead him to empathize with the “animus, vengeance, and violence” now carried by Palestinians and Muslims.
My intellect would convince me that it cannot be that simple. The faith and reason of the Palestinians or of Muslims cannot simply be baseless. I would have to believe that the degree of animus, vengeance and violence that they now carry is not rooted in their identity, but rather in their experience; in the sordid nation shuffling and rebuilding that took place after World War II. It must be rooted in their hurt, in their sense of displacement, abandonment and hopelessness.
My reflections on Kristallnacht would lead me to feel that these are precisely the human sentiments that I as Jew would understand; that I ought to understand and feel compelled to help alleviate. It cannot be that the sum total of a history of suffering and slaughter places such a premium on my identity that I would be willing to damn others in defense of it.
If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself. Self defense is undoubtedly an instinct, but I would be afraid of my increasing insensitivity to the suffering others. My greatest torment would be that I’ve misinterpreted the identity offered by my history and transposed spiritual and human compassion with self righteous impunity.
Breitbart News has reached out to Google and Georgia Tech for comment.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.
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