Featured this week

Baruch College: Terrorism: a Weapon
by Boris Genchev

Terrorists need both sides to be entangled in the vicious cycle of violence. Terrorist attacks and the counter-response of the IDF provide an additional advantage. Besides Israeli victims, there are also Palestinian casualties. The latter are essential because they make terrorism successful. The unfortunate deaths of these poor people justify the existence of the "resistance" and ensure that the flow of suicide-bombers and "resistance fighters" won't stop. What they also ensure is international support. This misguided solidarity comes predominantly from radical-left circles. Terrorist allies in the West play a twofold role. (The Ticker)

UCLA: The Hamas Isue Must Be Addressed
by Steven Spiegel

In short, the issue of Hamas must be addressed, and carefully, before the conference. It cannot simply be ignored, but this is not the time to end its isolation either. Rather, just as security measures to protect against possible acts of violence will undoubtedly be carefully planned by the IDF, so too Hamas should be apprised that if it wants to participate according to the rules of the meetings, then that possibility definitely exists. I see this alternative is the best of three largely unpalatable options we face in dealing with this issue. The writer is a professor of political science at UCLA. (Ha'aretz)

Columbia: Palestine Obsession on Campus
by Richard Bulliet

You have a big chunk of the [Middle Eastern history] specialist community that starts every sentence with the word Palestine. And they have successfully from 1967 onwards, partly through the extraordinary skills of Yassir Arafat, to turn this side-show into a great world concern so that it's a given in many, many quarters in the Arab world that all problems stem from the Palestine question. That's a great sell. Certainly it's succeeded on this campus. (The Bwog)

George Mason: Winds of Change in Holocaust Museum
by Manar Fawakhry

As part of my work as a Palestinian-Israeli woman at the Holocaust Museum, I have had the unique experience of introducing audiences from all over the world to the subject of the Holocaust. It seems to me that few make the distinction between the Holocaust as a human story and Israel as a political story. Certainly, for the Arab world, they are intertwined. In the Arab world, the Holocaust is not a story about human suffering, capacity for evil or indifference. It is understood only as an excuse for Israel to exist. It is perceived as a political vehicle through which Israel gets U.S. aid and is thus paid to be strong, stable and annoying to its Arab neighbors. Among scholars, intellectuals, educators, political leaders and the average person in the Arab world, the Holocaust is regarded as a tool to fool the world into legitimizing the Israeli occupation. The writer is a graduate student at the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University. (Baltimore Sun)

Goldsmiths, UK: It’s Not About Israel, Stupid
by David Hirsh

The atmosphere inside my union is poisonous. A colleague wrote recently to 700 members of the e-mail list that our opposition to the boycott was “racist down to its core.” He asked whether it was the “aim of those supporting Palestinian academics... to expose this rotten Zionist” - he meant me. This kind of sentiment and language is currently acceptable within my union and in parts public discourse. He argued that ordinary trade union issues “cannot be neatly compartmentalized so that we have separate arrangements for what is ‘safe’ (and does not threaten Zionism) and ‘not safe’ (in what actively opposes Zionism).” The writer is a lecturer at Goldsmiths College. (Ynet News)

IDC: And What Do We Get?
by Barry Rubin

There also has to be serious international recognition, safeguards and guarantees for the risks Israel is taking. Israel is negotiating with people who have no control over much of the territory or people on whose behalf they speak. Hamas will reject any agreement and do everything possible to wreck it, including killing PA leaders and launching terrorist attacks to force Fatah to guard Israel's borders or throw away the agreement. Beyond this, if Hamas were to take over the West Bank or any Palestinian state, it would immediately restart the conflict, using Israeli concessions to be more deadly. The writer is director of the Global Research in International Affairs Center at IDC Herzliya. (Jerusalem Post)

Kean: Will Israel Suffer for U.S. Mistakes?
by Gilbert N. Kahn

Israel's continuing reliance on American military assistance remains a huge albatross hanging around Israel's neck. It is in Israel's interests, nevertheless, now to demand that the relationship with Washington be upgraded. Israel needs to be willing to act more independently. It should "consult" with its ally, but in deed as well as word Israel must be more willing to act without being beholden to the United States. President Bush may be a good friend of Israel, but he ought in no way, because of his own political weakness, to be able to control or undermine strategies or directions that are in Israel's best interest. The writer is a professor at Kean University. (New Jersey Jewish News)

New Mexico: Israel Would Not Form a Coalition to Destroy Itself
by Rachel Fredman

Any reader with a vague knowledge of the Middle East would find it odd to claim that Israel created an organization whose sworn goal is to destroy the Jewish State. Hamas was neither created by the Mossad nor the Pasdaran. It was founded in 1987 by Sheikh Ahmed Yassin of the Gaza wing of the Muslim Brotherhood at the beginning of the First Intifada. Hamas is best known in the West for its suicide bombings and other attacks directed against Israeli civilians. Its charter calls for the destruction of Israel and its replacement with a Palestinian Islamic state. (Daily Lobo)

Oxford: Love Me, Love My Lobby
by Andrew Silow-Carroll

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, what do you make of famed atheist Richard Dawkins' desire to build a pro-atheist lobby on the model of the pro-Israel lobby? Dawkins, a biologist and author of the atheist manifesto The God Delusion, tells the Guardian that atheists need "some sort of political organization." And he has just the sort in mind: "When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous, I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists. And [yet they] more or less monopolize American foreign policy as far as many people can see," said Dawkins. "So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place." Dawkins' quote is a little like the Jayhawks' lyric: "All I know's I'm loving you for all the wrong reasons." It's debatable how much Jewish support for Israel is a religious impulse, and it's simply a delusion to say the pro-Israel lobby "monopolizes" American foreign policy. AIPAC often wins the day in Washington not because it "monopolizes" the debate, but because it takes positions that Americans and their representatives are often inclined to agree with in the first place. (Jerusalem Post)

State of the Campus
by Fred Taub

Two new major initiatives have been launched this year to help students. The first is Light Unto Nations, which produces pro-Israel posters weekly and faxes them to campuses. Light Unto Nations is a new concept in pro-Israel activism, as it teaches students about the great things happening in Israel via a series of posters that can be read in one minute or less and are politically pareve; so, every group can get behind the campaign, regardless of their political orientation. The second major campus initiative for this school year is "The Peace Resolution."  Arab groups are pushing a campaign to destroy Israel economically under the guise of forcing Israel into peace, yet economic cooperation is essential to peace between nations. Nations at peace have economic trade and nations without peace do not have trade. It stands to reason, therefore, that we should demand the end of the Arab League boycott of Israel before Israel makes any further concessions for peace. You can not have peace with those who are sworn to destroy you, including those sworn to destroy you economically, as is the Palestinian Authority, which is signatory to the Arab boycott of Israel. (Five Towns Jewish Times)

Boston: Archeology and the Propaganda War Against Israel
by Richard L. Cravatts

The effrontery of this recent, but not isolated, act by the Waqf is made all the more troubling by the fact that the archeological contempt shown by the trust reflects their attitude that a Jewish historical connection to the site is only apocryphal, that, in the same way that El-Haj denies a Jewish component to the archeology of Israel, the Waqf’s oversight of the Temple Mount has contributed to an effort, in pursuit of the Palestinian’s nationalistic cause, to erase or obscure Judaism and replace it with a Muslim historical narrative which predates a Jewish one. Hebrew University’s Yitzhak Reiter, who conducted a study for the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, observes that this has been a deliberate strategy, that "In the last generation, the Islamic and Arab history of Jerusalem has gradually been rewritten. At the heart of this new version is the Arabs' historic right to Jerusalem and Palestine. The writer is director of Boston University’s Program in Book and Magazine Publishing at the Center for Professional Education. (History News Network)

UCSC Series Is About Finding Solutions in the Middle East
by Howie Schneider

This series offers students, faculty and community members the chance to discuss Palestinian and Israeli narratives that take responsibility and stop blaming the other, and include the role of religion, culture and politics in the conflict and look at realistic and possible solutions. No, this series is not about those who want to wipe Israel off the map. This series is about Palestinians and Israelis who want to work together to make peace, and how to do that despite the naysayers on both sides. (Santa Cruz Sentinel)

Columbia: No Tenure for Massad
by Armin Rosen

Joseph Massad is effectively saying that anything “Jewish” in Israel (which, to Massad, means practically everything), is fair game to whoever is “resisting” it. This is an offensive position, although I suppose the violent or nonviolent destruction of “Jewish society” might be theoretically defensible if you advocate a similar fate for other ethnic, national, or religious groups. But two paragraphs earlier, Massad writes that after the future dissolution of the Zionist government, “the Palestinians can either have a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza or...opt for a binational state in all of Mandatory Palestine.” While Jewish nationalism is supremacist and racist, Palestinian nationalism and statehood is not. Far from it - in fact, Palestinian national ambitions are so urgent that they warrant the erasure of the social and national structuring of a country of seven million people. Meanwhile, Jewish national ambitions are insignificant when they aren’t racist, although Massad seems to take this discrepancy for granted and, unsurprisingly, makes no attempts at justifying it. He doesn’t oppose nationalism per se - just Jewish nationalism. (Columbia Spectator)

Georgetown: Reading 'Mein Kampf' in Cairo
by Chris McClure

This absolution of Nazi guilt, though, doesn't seem to fit with another common theme in the Arab press - accusing Israel of being a "second Nazi state." In major bookstores in Talaat Harb Square downtown, one sees books equating the Star of David with the swastika. This accusation could not make sense if Hitler is to be excused for only doing what one can't avoid doing in war. Similarly confusing is the fact that Hitler is revered as a great nationalist who should be emulated and whose work is a valuable resource to be used against Western propaganda, but whose political ambitions can also shed light on the imperialist goals of the United States. (Jerusalem Post)

Haifa: Why Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations Now?
by Judith Apter Klinghoffer

What does matter is that though some Palestinians would genuinely yearn for peace, their Arab allies want the issue. Hence, this conference will end up doomed just like its predecessors. Peace will follow, not precede regional democratization. Hence, the retreat of democracy in the Middle East is bound to mean a retreat for peace prospects. In the meantime, all we can do is pray that the Jewish state will do what it has succeeded in doing in the past perilous 60 years, survive and even flourish. The writer is an affiliate professor at Haifa University. (History News Network)

International Research Center for Japanese Studies: 'Olive Branch' Must not Fall Again
by Satoshi Ikeuchi

If Israel is to make concessions, it needs to feel confident about the security of its nation and citizens. For this to happen, a moderate and effective governing body must emerge on the part of the Palestinians; for this to happen, there have to be concessions by Israel. In other words, there is a chicken-egg dilemma that seems unsolvable. In reality, however, Israel must take the first step, or else peace will never be achieved. It may seem unfair to demand that Israel make concessions first. But the Palestinians have little land or rights left with which to make concessions. If Abbas fails to show any results from the peace process, support for Hamas may increase even in the West Bank within a couple of years. The writer is an associate professor at International Research Center for Japanese Studies. (Daily Yamiuri)

Leeds, UK: Hitler's Legacy: Islamic Anti-Semitism and the Impact of the Muslim Brotherhood
by Matthias Kuntzel

Some observers claim that political concessions by Israel would be enough to stop anti-Jewish hatemongering within the Arab-Islamic world. They are wrong. For Islamists, the issue at stake is not the welfare of individual Palestinians but the abolition of enlightenment, reason, and individual freedom - achievements whose spread is attributed primarily to the Jews. When even today Germans in Beirut, Damascus, and Amman are greeted with compliments for Adolf Hitler, this can hardly be Israel’s doing. When graffiti in Hampstead Garden Suburb combine swastikas with the words “kill all Jews” and “Allah” - what on earth has this to do with Zionism? Our historical excursion has, however, revealed that this combination is in no way accidental. The linkage of “kill all Jews,” “Allah” and the swastika indicates a specific ideology, one that is connected both historically and ideologically with Nazism and needs to be opposed with equal determination. (Matthias Kuntzel)

Oklahoma: Western European Consuls Answer Students' Question About Israel

Consuls from eight Western European nations discussed the changes the European Union brought in a panel discussion at the University of Oklahoma last week. Yonatan Reches, an OU student from Israel, asked Clouvel about the EU's stand on the Arab/Israeli conflict. This controversial issue is a good example of the benefits of the EU. Instead of each European country bringing their own historical alliances and prejudices, the EU benefits from everyone's experience. "So each of us, we can moderate each other, we can bring something," he said. (Norman Transcript)

Tufts: Israeli Academic Boycott Is Unwarranted
by Andrea Lowe

We should embrace every opportunity to exchange thought, especially coming from places where learning institutions are free from governmental influence. The choice to divest in thought from Israel represents a departure from our commitment to academic freedom, and we should remember this if the issue arises in the future. (Tufts Daily)