So. I just watched Nancy Kanwisher, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive science (gulp!), and Sam Halabi, a Harvard law student, being interviewed about their support for this colossally asinine MIT-Harvard divestiture petition by FOXNews’ Neil Cavuto. The essence of the position being championed by these two jargon-slinging, pseudo-informed buffoons (once you cut through all the obligatory tripe about “root causes,” “occupation,” and “humiliation,” blah blah blah) is this: “we are smarter than the Israelis, and we know better than they do how to end the suicide attacks plaguing their country. After all, we’re ivy league thinkers, whereas they’re mostly, well, Jews…” The “peace” strategy offered by these nutjobs? Stop all U.S. monies to Israel! That way, you see, Israel would be forced to defend itself diplomatically rather than militarily. And diplomacy is the one thing the always-ready-to compromise Arabs will happily respond to. Would the Arab world take advantage of Israeli military weakness to slaughter the Jews and drive the Jewish state into the sea? Of course not! Because this whole li’l conflagration is all about “humiliation,” not hatred.

To which my reponse was, “Uh, do they not get cable in the North East? Or at least have access to reliable history books?”

I mean, how could these highly educated people be so sure of themselves — and yet be so absolutely wrong? How? How?

And then I came upon the answer, courtesy of a story I found via Common Dreams, of all places. An excerpt:

Nancy Kanwisher, an MIT professor of brain and cognitive science and one of the petition’s organizers, said she had been ‘politically dormant’ until she saw photographs of the Jenin refugee camp, where Palestinians allege Israeli forces massacred hundreds of civilians and violated the international laws of war during a three-week siege.

‘I looked to see where the protest was, and I couldn’t find it,’ she said. ‘I was shocked’ [my emphasis]

Got that? Go on, read it again. I’ll wait.

Or better still, allow me to translate it for you. Says Ms. Kanwisher (in essence): “To be honest with you, I didn’t follow the Middle Eastern situation until quite recently. But then someone brought to my attention some really scary pictures of rubble and tanks and empty clothes lines, and so — engaging in no research of my own, but rather content to rely on inter-department hearsay, the European press, and Palestinian propaganda (since disproven) — I became quite convinced that a massacre had indeed occurred, and that hundreds of Palestininian civilians had been slaughtered by the IDF (or as I like to call them, ‘the evil tank people’). So I decided to act.”

Working with a Harvard faculty friend and input from Chomsky, Kanwisher modeled the petition after one organized at Princeton University. It states that signers are ‘appalled by the human rights abuses against Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli government,’ and that they ‘find the recent attacks on Israeli citizens unacceptable and abhorrent.’

‘But these do not and should not negate the human rights of the Palestinians,’ the petition adds.

Translation: “Sure, exploding Arabs are bad, too — but more importantly, we believe that there’d be no exploding Arabs if the Jews would just stop defending themselves. Because every time the Jews defend themselves, they do so against Arabs. And that’s just racism, plain and simple.”

Paul Nemirovsky, a doctoral student at MIT who grew up in Israel, said he thinks many of the professors who signed the petition don’t understand both sides of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He wrote a response pointing out that other nations responsible for ‘infinitely larger’ civilian casualties haven’t been similarly condemned, and sent it out by e-mail, he said.

‘I felt hurt for who I am, as an Israeli and a Jew,’ he said of reading the petition. ‘It was the first time in my adult life that I ever felt these things mattered … What I really hated about it was the fact that they’re using the name of an institution that is by definition apolitical.’

Sorry, Paul. But when Ms. Kanwisher is able to marshal against you such overwhelming evidence as “the Palestinian propaganda mill told me so — and they have pictures to prove it!” — what can you do?

Except maybe email the goofy dunce these photos. And this story.

And the link to these documents.

Not that it’d do much good.

Idiots.