Ohio professor says Israel ‘spiritual heir to Nazism’

A professor at Kent State University in Ohio with a colorful history of anti-Israel sentiment has struck again with a letter addressed to “academic friends of Israel,” cursing them “more than the Israelis” for hiding behind “academic objectivity,” and holding them responsible for deaths in Gaza.

Dr. Julio Pino, an associate professor of history at the university, said in the letter, published by the History News Network, that he holds these academics “directly responsible for the murder of over 1,400 Palestinian children, women and elderly civilians over the past month,” as Israel launched its military campaign aimed at stopping rocket fire at Israeli cities and destroying tunnels that infiltrate into Israeli territory.

The missive, dated August 2, charged the scholars of having “chosen to openly work for and brag about academic collaboration with a regime that is the spiritual heir to Nazism.”

Pino said he could call them “another Martin Heidegger [a German philosopher who championed Nazism] but that would be an insult—to Heidegger.”

Screenshot from the profile page of virulent anti-Israel professor Dr. Julio Pino.

“I curse you more than the Israelis, for while The Chosen drain the blood of innocents without apologies you hide behind the mask of academic objectivity, nobility of research and the reward of teaching to foreign youth—-in a segregated university, of course,” he wrote, before signing off with “jihad until victory!”

The Cuban native and convert to Islam, who adopted the name Assad Jibril Pino in 2000, is best known for having shouted “Death to Israel!” at a public lecture in 2011 hosted by Israeli diplomat Ishmael Khaldi, the first Bedouin member of the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

In 2002, according to the Akron Beacon Journal, he wrote a letter eulogizing a teenage Palestinian suicide bomber.

According to the journal, Pino has tenure and it is very difficult to terminate his employment, even as the university has tried to distance itself from his remarks and stunts.