NEW YORK- The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has protested Columbia University’s decision to hire yet another anti-Israel extremist for its faculty.

Mary Robinson, the former United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, has been hired to teach in Columbia’s Department of International and Public Affairs and to serve as a senior research scholar at Columbia Law School’s Human Rights Institute. (Chronicle of Higher Education, Jan.23, 2004)

Examples of Robinson’s anti-Israel extremism:

• Under Robinson, the UN Human Rights Commission sanctioned the use of “all available means” —which implicitly includes suicide bombings and other terrorism— to fight Israel. (New York Sun, April 29, 2002)
  
  
  
• n an interview with Salon.com on July 26, 2002, Robinson falsely claimed that “the occupation is at the root of many of the human rights problems, and the intifada, which had started then [in September 2000], was only at the stage of stone throwing and young people being killed” —in fact, there had been many suicide bombings and other mass terror attacks before then.
  
  
  
  
  
• While condemning suicide bombings, Robinson in the same breath asserted that America is to blame for future Palestinian Arab suicide bombings: “I find it very disheartening that there is not more understanding here [in America] of the appalling suffering of the Palestinian population, nor appreciation that this is not going to lead to a secure future. It’s going to lead to greater hatred and desperation, of further suicide bombings.” (Salon.com, July 26, 2002)
  
  
  
  
  
• Robinson continues to defend the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic conference at Durban in 2001, in which she participated. She has complained that “there are those who refuse now to accept that any good came out of Durban.” (Salon.com, July 26, 2002)
  
  
  
  
  
• Robinson cited “the treatment of prisoners in Guantanamo Bay” —the arrest and questioning of Al Qaeda terrorists— as an example of human rights violations. (Salon.com, July 26, 2002)
  
  
  
  
  
• Robinson’s report, as U.N. Human Rights Commissioner, on conditions in Judea-Samaria and Gaza was denounced by the Anti-Defamation League as “distorted and detrimental” because Robinson “opted to blame the Israeli military and settlements for provoking the Palestinian violence.”

ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said: “The hiring of Mary Robinson sends a message that those who hate the Jewish State are welcome at Columbia. How many Jewish parents will want to send their children to a campus with such a hate-infested atmosphere?”

Other anti-Israel extremists at Columbia:

• Rashid Khalidi, who was recently named to the Edward Said Chair in Arab Studies, has been a longtime adviser to PLO terrorist chief Yasir Arafat and a member of the PLO’s Palestine National Council.
  
  
  
• Until his death last year, terror supporter Edward Said held the prestigious post of Parr Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia. Said publicly supported the Palestinian Arabs’ murder of fellow-Arabs whom it accused of helping Israel (Critical Inquiry, Spring 1989); personally threw rocks at Israeli soldiers at the Israel-Lebanon border (New Republic, July 24, 2000); and fabricated his life story to make it appear as if he was a refugee driven out of Jerusalem by the Jews when he was a child, when in fact he grew up in Egypt (Commentary, Sept. 1999).
  
  
  
  
  
• In 2002, Columbia hired Irish poet Tom Paulin as a visiting professor, even though Paulin told the Egyptian newspaper Al Ahram Online that American Jews who reside in Judea-Samaria “should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists, I feel nothing but hatred for them.” Paulin also said he “never believed that Israel had the right to exist at all,” and “I can understand how suicide bombers feel. I think, though, it is better to resort to conventional guerrilla warfare. I think attacks on civilians in fact boost morale.” In addition, in one of his poems, Paulin referred to what he called “the Zionist SS.” (Jerusalem Post, Nov. 14, 2002; Forward, Nov.22, 2002)