This weekend, the “Popular Palestinian
Conference 2008” will be held in Chicago, and if past is prologue, a slew
of anti-Israel propaganda will be part of the repertoire. The organizers make
no effort to conceal their nefarious intentions, titling one of the workshops [emphasis added], “Inserting Palestine into High School Curricula in the US & Empowering
Students to Challenge Dominant Narratives” and subtitling the conference, “Palestinians in the US:
Reclaiming Our Voice, Asserting Our
Narrative.” Unfortunately, this “narrative” is a false
one in which Israel is the oppressor, the Palestinians its perpetual
victims, and the United States an accomplice in crime.
Various Middle East studies academics will be on hand to help propagate
this fictitious narrative. UC Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian, a skilled propagandist for
Palestinian victimhood in the classroom and a radical
activist outside it (he called for an “Intifada in this country!”
at a 2004 anti-war
rally in San Francisco), will be speaking on a panel titled,
“Palestinian Political Prisoners in the US: The Attack on Palestinian
Activists and Scholars.”
Bazian has long perpetuated the idea that off-campus criticism of Middle East
studies is a form of persecution. To state the obvious: there are no
“Palestinian political prisoners” in the U.S., only criminals convicted through
the justice system of aiding and abetting terrorist organizations.
One of them, former University of South Florida computer science professor Sami Al-Arian, who pled guilty in 2006 to conspiring to provide goods
and services to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and who awaits an August
13 trial for criminal contempt, will be represented on the panel by his
daughter, Laila Al-Arian. Al-Arian has enjoyed unstinting support from
the Middle East studies establishment, particularly founding director of
Georgetown University’s Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian
Understanding, John
Esposito. Unmoved by the murder of innocent civilians by Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, Esposito penned a letter last
month to the presiding judge urging that Al-Arian be granted bond and
describing him as “a man of conscience
with a strong commitment to peace and social justice.” Al-Arian’s radicalism is
nothing new: at a 1991 commemoration of the Palestinian Intifada featuring
Islamic Jihad spiritual leader Abdel-Aziz Odeh, he called Jews “apes and pigs.”
Wayne
State University anthropologist Thomas Abowd will moderate the “political prisoners” panel. This is fitting,
for Abowd fashions himself the victim of what his
supporters call “right-wing Zionist elements on campus.” But Abowd is hardly impartial. He is affiliated with the
radical group Anti-Racist Action (ARA-WSU), whose members have accused Israel
of “ethnic cleansing” and pro-Israel groups at Wayne State of practicing “white
supremacist politics,” along with defending
the use of a swastika to equate Israel with Nazi Germany at one of their
rallies.
Abowd spoke at “Palestine Awareness Week,” an
anti-Israel event at the University of Michigan in February 2008. Several
students who attended Abowd’s lecture described in a Michigan Daily op-ed his hostile and
dismissive attitude towards a student who dared ask a challenging question.
Abowd, as they put it, “smirked and
glared” and “used scare tactics
to intimidate and to alienate the student and to negate the importance of his
question.”
The
conference ends with
the panel, “One-State
Solution to the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict.” The so-called one state solution
is really just a fig-leaf for the destruction of Israel. There’s no evidence
that the Palestinian political leadership has any inclination towards the sort
of multi-religious, multi-ethnic democratic nation envisioned by “one-state
solution” proponents. The pathological hatred towards
Jews, persecution of Christians, advocacy of Sharia law, indoctrination of children, and violence among rival Palestinian
clans and terrorist groups all demonstrate the danger to Israel that lies down
this path.
Yet some scholars advocate
the “one-state solution” in spite of these glaring obstacles. Jennifer
Loewenstein, associate director of the Middle East studies program at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison, will be one of the conference panelists doing
just that. In a March 2008 article for the
rabidly anti-Israel, far-left publication Counterpunch
with the ridiculous title, “Gazan Holocaust,” Loewenstein asserts that “Israel
and its U.S. Master have long since resided in the lowest circle of Hell for
betraying the name of humanity.” No word from Loewenstein on the betrayals of humanity
by the Palestinians, both towards Israelis and each other.
Another
panelist, Tomis Kapitan, chair and professor in the Department of Philosophy at
Northern Illinois University, displays a similar blind spot. In a 2004 paper
on the Arab-Israeli conflict, Kapitan waxes philosophically about the
“reciprocal” nature of Arab terrorism, calls the
suggestion that “cultural or religious beliefs” motivate suicide bombings
“incredible,” and concludes that “the
maximalists in charge of Israeli policy and their supporters in the United
States and elsewhere, are chiefly to blame for the ongoing cycle of violence.”
Panelist Seif Da’Na, professor of sociology and international
studies at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, takes
a Marxist, populist approach. In a 2001 Media
Monitors Network article,
Da’Na calls for a “Palestinian liberation strategy” and urges activists to view
the “Palestinian struggle against Israel…in the larger context of the
struggle to bring human dignity and social justice to the world.” Surely “human
dignity” and “social justice” would first need to be established within before
serving as some sort of shining beacon to the world, but Da’Na overlooks this
minor matter.
So
too do conference organizers, who, as part of pushing their “narrative,” bemoan the 60th anniversary of “al Nakba,” the Arabic word for “catastrophe”
used to describe the creation of the modern state of Israel in 1948. But the
“60 Years of Catastrophe” trumpeted at the conference website
would more appropriately be placed upon the heads of Palestinian and regional
Arab leadership. They have perpetuated
a constant state of victimhood and refugee status while
fomenting chaos and violence. Palestinians are the second largest per capita recipients
of foreign aid in the world, yet precious few resources have been dedicated to the
building of a functioning civil society. In fact, rising levels of violence can
be directly correlated to rising levels of aid. The current civil
war between Fatah and Hamas and the resultant human
rights abuses are just the latest examples.
If
the Palestinians in the U.S. that conference organizers profess to represent,
and Middle East studies academics sympathetic to their cause, truly wanted to effect
a just resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict, they would start looking within
for answers. Instead, such conferences simply peddle propaganda intended to
demonize Israel. Those seeking the truth would do well to steer clear.