IsraCampus.Org.il

(IsraelNN.com) A professor at Hebrew University wants to allow a convicted Arab terrorist who stole bomb-making materials from his chemistry lab to be allowed back to the lab, Channel 2 TV reported Sunday.

Six years ago, 160 liters of acetone – a chemical which is used for making the common explosive acetone peroxide – disappeared from the Laboratory for Medicinal Chemistry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. The theft led to an investigation by the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), which in turn led to the arrest of Adel Hadmi, a doctoral student at the laboratory.

According to Channel 2, Hadmi was convicted of being a member of a terror cell that planned suicide attacks against Israelis. In addition, he recruited other Arabs to the cell. He was convicted and jailed but is now free again, and would like to complete his doctoral studies in the very same laboratory the acetone was stolen from.

Prof. Goldblum thinks otherwise

The laboratory's previous director, Prof. Avi Domb, adamantly vetoed the idea of Hadmi's return, but his successor, Prof. Amiram Goldblum, thinks otherwise. Goldblum, one of the founders of radical leftist group "Peace Now," said that the university has no grounds to refuse to readmit Hadmi and allow him to finish his doctorate, because he has already been punished and served his jail sentence. Last week, the lab's students were told to free a table in the lab for Hadmi.

Domb, who was shocked to hear of Goldblum's decision, wrote a letter to the university in which he said that allowing the convicted terrorist back to the scene of his crime was both irresponsible and immoral. Students in the lab also protested but as of now, the university has not rescinded the decision to let the terrorist back in. The university did say, however, that he will probably not be allowed near dangerous substances because of his terrorist past.

According to watchdog group CAMERA, Prof. Goldblum was considered a radical even by his colleagues in Peace Now "after he explained away Saddam Hussein’s Scud attacks and threats of annihilation as due only to Israel’s alleged failure to make concessions to the Palestinians." In 1990, after an Arab stabbed and killed three Israelis in the Baka neighborhood of Jerusalem where Goldblum lives, "even his own neighbors began to stone his house in frustration at what they saw as his outspokenly pro-PLO views."