Students at America's prestigious Brown University are in an uproar after a British philosopher lecturing at the school said Palestinian suicide bombings can be "morally rationalized".
In an address delivered last Friday at Brown, Professor Ted Honderich, Professor of Philosophy of Mind and Logic at University College of London, said that while there was no moral justification for last September's terror attacks on the United States, it might be possible to "morally rationalize" Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis.
"Palestinians have bad lives and little other recourse," the campus newspaper quoted Honderich as saying. Denied a reasonable path to secure "freedom and power in their homeland," he asserted, "humans will resort to almost anything".
Jewish and non-Jewish students alike reacted strongly to Honderich's remarks. Raffi Bilek, head of the campus group Friends of Israel, said, "I'm just ashamed to think that such a speaker would make at appearance at our school. I know that people exist out there with disgusting opinions like that - I just always thought our school was better than that."
Senior Naomi Reinharz was equally emphatic, stating, "I was pretty shocked by it. I don't understand how anyone could ever justify acts of terrorism on civilians that continuosly take away civilian lives.
A letter to the editor appearing in the Brown Daily Herald by graduate student Bill Dilworth said, "It is incomprehensible that a university professor would seek to rationalize murder. and grotesque that Brown would bring him to campus."
Honderich's lecture was part of a two-week colloquium entitled "9/11 + 1" organized by the school's Watson Institute for International Studies.