Yesterday, the American University in Beirut (AUB) announced, on the official page of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Instagram, that they would be hosting Alec Walen, a philosophy professor at Rutgers University, in a panel discussion titled "War Ethics in Gaza" with Bashshar Haydar a philosophy professor at AUB.

The planned event, which is scheduled to take place later on Friday via Zoom, was widely criticized on social media by AUB students and alumni who thought it vehemently disrespectful and insensitive to host a self-described "pragmatic zionist" to lecture people about war ethics in Gaza. 

Alec Walen had previously condemned the right of return of displaced and dispossessed Palestinians to their native lands as being equivocal to a genocide of Jews. 

Walen also holds the opinion that the religious/nationalist discrimination against Palestinian natives is justified because "Israel" is a safe haven for Jews after they were persecuted for so long in Europe. 

I’m appalled to see that amidst a genocide in Gaza, AUB is giving a platform to a Zionist who advocates against the freedom of Palestinians and for our annihilation.

Bashshar Haydar and anybody else involved in this should be too ashamed to show their faces in Beirut, spineless pic.twitter.com/VtDxC6y1Sj

— 𓂆 حلا (@hotgirlhala) November 9, 2023

Read more: Direct confrontations between Resistance, Israelis in South Lebanon

Bashshar Haydar, an Arab himself, has earlier described the BDS movement as being essentially a "tool for internal oppression to bully people into political submission".

Bashshar had tried in 2018 to host Jeff McMahan, an academic advisor at an Israeli University based in occupied Al-Quds, in a panel discussion titled "Rethinking the Ethics of War". The panel discussion was firmly opposed by the student body at AUB who called for a boycott of this clear act of fraternizing with Zionist academics. 

Students of the #Lebanese American University in Beirut gathered on campus in solidarity with #Palestine against the Israeli aggression, voicing Pro-Palestine chants.#Gaza #Lebanon @lebamericanuni pic.twitter.com/G1BESJqqD3

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) October 10, 2023

Back in mid-October, The American University of Beirut's (AUB) faculty released a statement expressing their "full and unconditional support for and solidarity with the Palestinian people" amid the ongoing Israeli aggression on Gaza, following Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.

The statement described the attempts to discuss the ongoing situation as a "battle between two equally belligerent nations" inaccurate, misleading, and morally vacuous," adding that "such framing completely erases the history of settler colonials in Palestine, as the Zionist state was built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and their forces expulsion from their land and homes."

In defense of the Palestinian Resistance, the statement stressed that the Resistance has "tried all possible peaceful means to fight for their rights for over a century." 

AUB's statement called out world leaders for supporting the Israeli government's genocidal attack on Gaza, adding that "the right of Palestinians to self-defense against their occupier, as per international law, has long been ignored and vilified."