A college professor who posted hate speech toward Israel on his Twitter account is now being backed by free speech advocates furious the hate speech cost him a job.

Steven Salaita, a Palestinian-American who had taught at Virginia Tech University, had been initially offered a tenured position in the American Indian Studies department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  After his hate filled tweets about Israel, the university rescinded the offer to him.

Some of Salaita’s anti-Semitic tweets stated:

“At this point, if Netanyahu appeared on TV with a necklace made from the teeth of Palestinian children, would anybody be surprised?”

“Zionists, take responsibility: if your dream of an ethnocratic Israel is worth the murder of children, just [profanity deleted] own it already.”

“You may be too refined to say it, but I’m not: I wish all the [profanity deleted] West Bank settlers would go missing.”

“Hamas” is the biggest red herring in American political discourse since Saddam’s “weapons of mass destruction.”

The moment Salaita revealed the offer to him was rescinded; outcry came from major media outlets and international activists.

Glenn Greenwald, who has been working with wanted fugitive Edward Snowden to release classified information, said “there were a lot of atrocious causalities from the Israeli attack on Gaza, but one of them was academic freedom at Univ. of Illinois.”

Inside Higher Ed author John Wilson said pro-Israel sentiment is on par with “Mazism, terrorism, racism, sexism and homophobia.”  Michael Hiltzik of the L.A. Times said it was “clear-cut infringement of academic freedom.”

The Huffington Post had a story saying that the “University of Illinois Repeals The First Amendment for Its Faculty.”