Education? Not on BDS’s Watch!
The Palestinian Solidarity Committee at Harvard University, a student organization that favors the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, has set its sights on Israel Trek.
Harvard’s Hillel sponsors Israel Trek, a student-led, student-organized spring break trip to Israel and the West Bank. Past participants speak of how the trip challenged their preconceived notions about Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One writes of his visit to Ramallah, where, at Fatah headquarters, his group heard “from a number of high-ranking [PLO] officials who discussed with us their views on the conflict, the state of affairs in Palestinian communities, and the prospects for peace going forward.” They had already met “members of the Knesset, a former Supreme Court justice, a prominent investigative journalist, and the spokesman for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
As this witness saw it, “our organizers truly strove to provide the broadest range of perspectives that they could” so that students could form their own judgments. Not that the student leaders weren’t Zionists. They evidently calculated that Israel’s reputation would benefit from the exchange of ideas.
Students who attend Israel Trek don’t necessarily emerge allies of Israel. Two participants wrote of their experience that they “had even more questions than we had before departing,” about, among other things, what a democracy is. On the question, “are you pro-Israel or pro-Palestine,” the students demur because they now think it “fails to acknowledge the deep nuances that complicate a conflict involving real people, each with their own experiences, politics, and pain.”
Those of us who are pro-Israel may find this a little too wishy-washy. We may find the students’ views of Fatah’s objectives naïve. But we can hardly, if we are also in favor of liberal education, object to a trip that dissolves a student’s sense of “Manichaean clarity.” Even a student who had done his best to understand the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by discussing it with friends and consuming news and opinion found this education no substitute for first-hand experience. He had, it turned out, “relied too heavily on external, and often biased outlets, both in favor and against Israel.”
MEMRI: Former Jordanian Health Minister Dr. Zaid Hamzeh: We Arabs Supported Hitler During WWII Because He Hated The Jews
Former Jordanian Health Minister Dr. Zaid Hamzeh said in an October 9, 2019 interview on A One TV (Jordan) that nations oftentimes only progress after having suffered for centuries and that future Arab generations must suffer before progressing. In addition, he said that he had supported Adolf Hitler during World War II like other Arabs, and recalled that in fourth grade his school had participated in demonstrations and chanted "Long live Abu Ali," which he said had been a reference to Hitler. Dr. Hamzeh said that the Arabs supported Hitler because he hated the Jews, although he added the Arabs have a general tendency to admire dictators.UNESCO book program puts antisemitic material on display
"Was That Really The Reason, Or Was It Because We Arabs, By Nature... Love Dictators"
Interviewer: "Was that really the reason, or was it because we Arabs, by nature – and I don't have time to give a historical review... We love dictators."
Zaid Hamzeh: "No."
Interviewer: "Really?"
Zaid Hamzeh: "Nobody loves dictators, except for people who have been led astray, and I don't want to use..."
Interviewer: "We love people who kill and slaughter. We consider this to be a sign of manliness."
Zaid Hamzeh: "Unfortunately, many people do, but we shouldn't generalize."
Interviewer: "Right, not everybody..."
Zaid Hamzeh: "But with regard to dictators, you are right. We laud the dictator and wish he would come back. We want him to come riding in on a white horse and to liberate the land, while the people here are in a slumber or watching from the sideline."
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf were among the books featured at a book fair in Sharjah, UAE sponsored by The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The Simon Wiesenthal Centre exposed the book fair on Thursday and the Centre’s Director for International Relations, Dr. Shimon Samuels, wrote a letter to UNESCO Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, condemning the book fair.
“Sadly, the name of UNESCO is abused as appearing to be complicit in validating for young Arab readers, the bigoted stereotypes of Jews - as expounded by Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran. This is particularly damning at a time of reconciliation between Gulf States and Israel, now facing common enemies,” Samuels wrote in a letter to Azoulay.
In the letter, Samuels added, “the organizers are known to carefully vet all titles on display for Islamophobia, but leave Jew-hatred in pride of place!”
Sharjah was declared UNESCO’s 2019 “World Book Capital of the Year,” as part of an initiative that was launched in 1996 “that seeks to encourage and promote publishing activities at the local and global levels by nominating for a one-year period the best city program aimed at promoting books,” according to the Sharjah World Book Capital website.
In July 2019, UNESCO published a blog post entitled “Addressing contemporary antisemitism: A global issue?”, in which the organization acknowledges that “antisemitism did not begin or end with the Holocaust.” It also stated that “antisemitic bigotry” was “no longer restricted to extremist circles,” in the modern world.