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France: Med school test wonders if Gaza strikes are 'genocide'
Question posed on Paris' Diderot University's Faculty of Medicine test stirs controversy; school apologizes
A recent question posed on an exam held at the Bichat Hospital Faculty of Medicine in Paris' Diderot University has stirred great controversy, as it asked student to determine whether IDF strikes in Gaza constituted genocide.
According to the umbrella organization of French Jewry, CRIF, Diderot’s Professor Christophe Oberlin drafted the question – which wondered "To what extent does it constitute a perpetual crime (war crime, crime against humanity, genocide crime)?" – in regards to the deaths of 22 members of the same family in a bombing during Operation Cast Lead.
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CRIF called the question "scandalous," adding it was a blatant incitement against Israel.
Diderot University President Vincent Berger said he was investigating the matter and expressed his "consternation" at the professor’s choice "to include this question in the context of a non-compulsory medical exam.
“It implies a regrettable polemic attitude which contravenes the neutral and secular nature of higher education,” Berger’s statement said.
"As it stands, this question constitutes an absolute incitement to hate Israel,” Richard Prasquier, president of CRIF said. "It has no place in medical education, much less in a university, and amounts to a violation of the neutrality (demanded of) professor Oberlin."
According to the Jewish Press, the Union of Jewish Students in France (UEJF) claimed that Oberlin had "encouraged the students to adopt condemnatory positions" in posing the question to them.
“In the eyes of the UEJF, Professor Oberlin abused his position of authority, in his role as exam moderator, by not allowing students to publicly express their disagreement with this misleading ideological statement,” the organization declared in a statement.
UEJF president Jonathan Hayou said.
Bichat's Dean Benoit Schlemmer, expressed his regret as well saying that he "shares the legitimate feelings" that the question invoked.
AFP contributed to this report
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