Michel DeGraff

Overview 

Michel DeGraff is a university professor who justified Hamas terrorism, spread anti-Semitism and called for the elimination of Israel in October 2023.

DeGraff’s remarks occurred following a series of Hamas terror atrocities and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings, which were executed on October 7, 2023.

The Hamas terror attacks left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”

Justifying Hamas Terrorism 

On October 21, 2023, DeGraff shared on Instagram a video glorifying Hamas terrorism. He wrote that the video “might give us a few more reasons why we should be Gaza — if we celebrate Indigenous People's Day, if we admire the Haitian Revolution and other acts of resistance against colonialism and slavery, etc.”

The video’s description said: “Israel has been calling Palestinian fighters ‘terrorists’ to justify its slaughter of Gaza…No different than the Native resistance to American colonization, slave rebellions in the Americas, the Haitian Revolution, Palestinians are resisting Israeli colonialism…”

Among Palestinians and anti-Israel activists, the term “resistance” can be a euphemism for nationalistic terror. It is often used to excuse or even glorify anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence.  

Spreading Anti-Semitism

On December 23, 2023, DeGraff shared on Instagram an article from The New Yorker that was written earlier that month. DeGraff thanked the author for her “thoughtful & compassionate comparison of the Jewish ghettos of Germany & Poland under Nazism with the Palestinian ghettos of Gaza under Zionism and its supporters worldwide.”

Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.

In the same December 23, 2023 post, DeGraff also praised the author’s “one courageous question that might help break the Zionist genocidal propaganda machine: Was the Holocaust really truly a singular historical event — not to be compared with, say, the ongoing genocide in Gaza?”

Calling for Israel’s Destruction

On December 10, 2023, DeGraff posted on Instagram: “Our call for Palestinian liberation is one for dignity and equality for all. It is for these reasons that we will always be proud to declare, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free” is a chant calling to dismantle the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state.

Biographical Information

As of December 2023, DeGraff, who also goes by Michel Anne Frederic DeGraff, was listed as a professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Also as of December 2023, DeGraff’s LinkedIn profile said he received a PhD in computer science and linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992.

As of the same date, DeGraff’s LinkedIn profile said he was located in Cambridge, Massachusetts.