Dr. Leighton Armitage is an adjunct professor of political science in the Business and Social Sciences Department of Foothill College in northern California. While he specializes in Europe and Japan, Professor Armitage nonetheless devotes considerable class time to discussing what he considers to be the evils of Israel, a nation he loathes.

Armitage claims that the anti-terrorism security fence that Israel is currently building in the West Bank is not unlike the Ghetto Wall that the Nazis erected in 1940 Warsaw to pen in the city’s Jews. Calling the Israeli initiative “a land grab,” he says: “Instead of building on the green line, they’re building in the West Bank and they’re conveniently taking all the settlements constructed, illegally, in that area and they are taking all the water resources.”

According to Armitage, America is hated all over the world because of its close relationship with Israel. “What are [the Israelis] doing with the Palestinians, every day?” he says. “They’re killing them. They’re not taking their glasses and gold fillings, and everything else, as far as I know, but they are still slaughtering these people. It’s exactly what Hitler did to the Jews.”

With an even hand, Armitage denounces both the U.S. military’s destruction of the safe houses of Iraqi terrorists, and the Israeli army’s demolition of the safe houses of Palestinian terrorists. “Have you heard what we’re doing now to houses of suspected terrorists in Iraq?” the professor asks. “We’re blowing them up. If you’re suspected of being a terrorist, your house will be blown up. Now, the Israelis do it with a bulldozer and we do it with a Howitzer and Apache gun ships, so it’s different. I guess we have more fun.”

Armitage believes that Jewish “Nazis” control the U.S. government. “Few people realize how much influence they [Jews] wield,” he says.  “… They’re good business people, you’ve got to respect them for that, if for nothing else. Of course they’re buying our [American] elections, which really pisses me off.” In Armitage’s calculus, AIPAC, the American Israeli lobby in Congress, exerts undue influence over the U.S. electoral system. He reports that when he was an intern in Congress many years ago, a congressional assistant warned him about the evils of the “Jewish lobby.” Echoing the basic message of the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” Armitage asserts that Jews do not contribute like other ethnic groups to the U.S. government, but rather they conspire to control it.

Because of the incendiary nature of some of Armitage’s remarks about Jews and Israel, Foothill College President Bernadine Fong apologized (regarding those remarks) to the Anti-Defamation League in March 2004.