King's College London professor urged students to view Hamas as 'liberation group'

Dr. Rana Baker also made remarks comparing Zionists to Nazis and the “deployment of the Holocaust as a justification to build an exclusive Jewish state.”

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF NOVEMBER 29, 2024 03:40

Taken from the cover of Hamas's 16-page document released Monday, presenting a justification for its actions on October 7. (photo credit: N/A)

A King’s College London lecturer led a seminar earlier this year in which she used a Hamas propaganda document and encouraged students to think of the terrorist organization as a liberation movement, the Jewish Chronicle revealed in a report on Wednesday.

Dr. Rana Baker, a lecturer on Middle Eastern history, handed out the Hamas text titled “Our Narrative: Operation Al-Aqsa Flood,” which was originally published by the Hamas Media Office in January, as part of a seminar on the 1948 war and “Palestinian Arab identity-formation.”

The 18-page document refers to the October 7 massacre as a “necessary step” and a “normal response” to Israel’s actions.

Baker also made remarks comparing Zionists to Nazis and the “deployment of the Holocaust as a justification to build an exclusive Jewish state.”

Additionally, the JC reported that Baker’s preparation for the seminar included an extract from “A Reminder to the World, Who is Hamas?”, the fourth section of Hamas’s 2024 document.

Hostile indoctrination

A student recorded and delivered a recording of the seminar to university authorities, launching an investigation.

The anonymous student described the classes as “hostile” and an example of “indoctrination.” 

Additionally, the student said that they and at least one other person felt pressured to present Israel in a negative light in order to succeed in the course.

In the recording, which was obtained by the JC, Baker can be heard saying, “We have this tract from Hamas that we looked at. It says that it’s an Islamic national liberation resistance movement… it says they’re fighting against Zionists, not Jews, and they say that antisemitism is a European problem.” 

She went on to ask the class: “So what do we make of it [given the fact that] Hamas is recognized as a terrorist organization by all the major countries, the major powers?”

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Students in the course began to discuss how Hamas never intended to hurt the Jewish people.

“They seek to liberate their land. That’s what Hamas is about,” a student said.

One Jewish student who was present in the seminar told the JC that Baker was “almost overtly pro-Hamas.”

The student described the classes as being dominated by a “predominant culture of anti-Israelism.”

“It felt as though the entire handout was setting you up to sympathize with Hamas,” the student said. “All of the content of the handout was being curated so that you can build a textual narrative in which you get to the end of the handout and you find yourself identifying with Hamas and their mission and their goals.”

 At the end of the seminar, Baker played a video that argued that October 7 was an act of “armed resistance,” not a terrorist or antisemitic attack.

She then said the speaker – feminist scholar Judith Butler – is also Jewish, “So one cannot accuse her of being antisemitic.”

Antisemitism on social media

In 2014, Baker posted on X/Twitter celebrating the kidnapping of three Israeli teenagers, writing, “Wonderful, wonderful news that three settlers have been kidnapped.”

In January of this year, she wrote, “Only the bravest of us, i.e., our fighters, will put a stop not to Israeli hostilities only, but to Israel itself.”

The university told the JC it had “concluded” its own investigation without providing further details. 

“The suggestion… that students are pressured to express anti-Israel politics in their exams in order to be successful is untrue,” the university stated.

“ Like all history modules, students are free to make whatever claims they can argue well, which can be supported with evidence; and a diversity of viewpoint is encouraged.​”​