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Dr. Leighton Armitage is an adjunct professor of political science in the Business and Social Sciences Department of Foothill College in Northern California. Foothill prepares more of its students to attend nearby Stanford and other major universities than any other two-year community college in California.
Professor Armitage specializes in Europe and Japan, but he nonetheless devotes valuable class time to pontificating about the alleged evils of Israel, a nation he loathes. Armitage believes that Jewish "Nazis" control the U.S. government, and that the American military has "fun" attacking Iraqi insurgents. He further believes that the security fence that Israel is currently building (to protect itself against aspiring Palestinian terrorists) is of an oppressive and immoral nature, not unlike the Ghetto Wall that the Nazis erected in 1940 Warsaw to pen in the city's Jews. Calling the Israeli fence "a land grab," Armitage says, "Instead of building on the green line, they're building in the West Bank and they're conveniently taking all the settlements constructed, illegally, in that area and they are taking all the water resources."
The "green line" to which Armitage refers is not a border but actually the 1948 ceasefire line established by the United Nations after five Arab countries attacked the newly founded Jewish state in a failed attempt to annihilate it. Many people, even American Jews, mistake that ceasefire line as Israel's "border." But much of the land in question does belong to Israel as per international law - because indigenous Jews were driven from the region by the Jordanian and Iraqi armies in 1948.
A bitter Armitage asks rhetorically, "Now when you wall in these settlements, rather generously, when you take land away from orchards and land that actually belongs to Palestinians, when you steal their water resources, what are you doing?" But Armitage's implication about an Israeli-perpetrated land grab is unsupported by the historical record. Prior to 1948, there were 23 Jewish settlements in the territories that the Arabs seized. United Nations Resolution 242, which followed the 1967 war, actually recognized Israel's right to take back those settlements. The Palestinians agreed to relinquish those areas in the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords but then proceeded to launch their terror war. The area the fence encompasses is territory still to be negotiated per those accords and is deemed vital to Israel's security in the event of war. In addition, the Israeli government pays for any "Palestinian property" that is fenced in.
"Few people realize how much influence they [Jews] wield," says Armitage. He states that America is hated all around the world because of its close relationship with Israel. He denounces both the U.S. military's destruction of the houses of Iraq terrorists, and the Israeli army's demolition of the homes of Palestinian terrorists. "Have you heard what we're doing now to houses of suspected terrorists in Iraq?" says Armitage. "We're blowing them up. If you're suspected of being a terrorist, your house will be blown up." He is unwilling to concede the plain truth that the American and Israeli armies do not target the homes of suspected terrorists, but rather of known terrorists. "Now, the Israelis do it with a bulldozer and we [Americans] do it a Howitzer, and Apache gun ships, so it's different. I guess we have more fun."
"What are [the Israelis] doing with the Palestinians, every day?" asks Armitage. "They're killing them," he answers. "They're not taking their glasses and gold fillings, and everything else, as far as I know, but they are still slaughtering these people. It's exactly what Hitler did to the Jews."
Armitage further claims that America's ills are due to the Jews because AIPAC, the American Israeli lobby in Congress, purportedly controls the U.S. electoral system. Echoing the basic message of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," Armitage contends that Jews do not contribute like other ethnic groups to the U.S. government, but rather they conspire to control it.
An interviewer recently joked with Armitage, "You know how Bush wanted to start retesting nuclear weapons, should we maybe just test one on Israel, and resolve this problem?" Armitage expressed neither horror, nor disapproval, nor annoyance in response to this shocking, albeit tongue-in-cheek, suggestion. Rather, he related a conspiracy theory (which he had seen described on television) that Israel had developed nuclear weapons by stealing uranium with the cooperation of the CIA.
Lamenting the monetary aid that the U.S. gives to Israel, Armitage ignores the fact that America gives more money, in aggregate, to the Arabs of the Middle East than to Israel. He similarly ignores the fact that American aid to Israel is actually a good financial investment for the U.S. For every dollar the U.S. pumps into the Israeli economy, it gets back three dollars in military, medical, and industrial technology. By contrast, American aid dollars to Arab countries end up going, in large part, to pay for more terrorism.
Armitage routinely regurgitates anti-Semitic stereotypes about the Jewish people. "They're good business people, you've got to respect them for that, if for nothing else," he says. "Of course they're buying our [American] elections, which really pisses me off. And this stuff you learn over time, it's not overt, no one tells you this and no one wants you to know it." He says that when he was an intern in Congress many years ago, a congressional assistant warned him about the evils of the "Jewish lobby."
Armitage further claims that Israel has long been in possession of a large stolen cache of "yellowcake" or unprocessed uranium oxide. This allegation is the result of a very long logical leap by which Armitage blames Israel for a November 1968 incident where a Liberian ship carrying 200 metric tons of uranium oxide departed from Antwerp but never reached its intended destination of Genoa, Italy. When the ship was eventually located two weeks later in Turkey, all of its crew members and its entire cargo were missing, never to be found. While there is no credible evidence pointing to Israel's involvement in these mysterious disappearances, Armitage is not hesitant to place responsibility squarely on the Jewish state.
Professor Armitage's remarks have been so public and outrageous that Foothill College President Bernadine Fong apologized to the Anti-Defamation League in March 2004. But even after he has revealed himself as an anti-Semite and thoroughly embarrassed his college - and even though he is an adjunct instructor with no tenure and can be removed from the classroom if the administration simply chooses not to renew his contract - Professor Armitage continues to hold a place on the faculty of Foothill.
This profile is adapted, in part, from the article "The Foothills of Hatred," written by Lee Kaplan and published by FrontPageMagazine.com on March 15, 2004.
