<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<rss version="2.0"
	xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/"
	xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"
	xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/"
	xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom"
	xmlns:sy="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/syndication/"
	xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/"
	>

<channel>
	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Brendan Goldman</title>
	<atom:link href="http://www.frontpagemag.com/author/brendan-goldman/feed/" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
	<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com</link>
	<description></description>
	<lastBuildDate>Wed, 31 Dec 2014 13:47:27 +0000</lastBuildDate>
	<language>en-US</language>
		<sy:updatePeriod>hourly</sy:updatePeriod>
		<sy:updateFrequency>1</sy:updateFrequency>
	
	<item>
		<title>History as Propaganda</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/brendan-goldman/history-as-propoganda/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=history-as-propoganda</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/brendan-goldman/history-as-propoganda/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 05:01:36 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Brendan Goldman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Al Aqsa]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[al aqsa mosque]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american academics]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[archivist]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[audience]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Award]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[award ceremony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Beirut]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[ceremony]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[claim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[columbia university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Conference]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[cuny graduate center]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[david myers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[debate]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[digression]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[director]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Edward Said]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[event]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[foundation-]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[heart of new york]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[historians]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[History]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israeli]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Jerusalem]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[jewish studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[keynote]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[keynote speakers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Lebanon]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Los Angeles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[memory]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New York City]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[operation iraqi freedom]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinian history]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[PLO]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[political biases]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[powerless victims]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[professor david]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Professor David Myers]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Rashid Khalidi]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Salameh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Scone]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Stanley Cohen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[state]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[sympathetic audience]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[university of california los angeles]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[work]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[year]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Yehoshua Freundlich]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49535</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Anti-Israel professor Rashid Khalidi politicizes and academic awards ceremony. 
]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/rashid_khalidi.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49536" title="rashid_khalidi" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/rashid_khalidi-300x199.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a></p>
<p>“This is not an Israeli-Palestinian debate,” Stanley Cohen, the director of the Scone Foundation, said. “It is [a conference] to honor the archivist profession.”</p>
<p>Cohen’s statement was half true: the event was not a “debate,” but only because there were no dissenting opinions to challenge keynote speaker <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6418">Rashid Khalidi’s</a> monologue portraying the Palestinians as powerless victims of an Israeli foe intent on destroying their historical records.</p>
<p>Cohen was speaking to an audience of approximately 150 people, mostly members of the general public and scholars of the Middle East, at the Scone Foundation’s “Archivist of the Year” award ceremony, held January 25 at the CUNY Graduate Center’s expansive auditorium in the heart of New York City.</p>
<p>The event was billed as an opportunity to honor the joint recipients of the seventh Archivist of the Year award, Yehoshua Freundlich of the Israeli Archives and Khader Salameh of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Library. <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=khalidi&amp;sa=Search#922">Khalidi</a>, Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University and a <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1211">former spokesman for the PLO</a>, and <a href="http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/myers/">Professor David Myers</a>, the director of the Center for Jewish Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, were the event’s keynote speakers.</p>
<p>Cohen made clear from the start that he subscribed to the political biases of academia. He claimed that a previous recipient of the Archivist of the Year Award had been “shelved by the Defense Department” for opposing Operation Iraqi Freedom. “Archivists cannot oppose faith-based policies,” Cohen joked with his seemingly sympathetic audience.</p>
<p>Salameh’s and Freundlich’s speeches followed Cohen’s address. The two archivists were dispassionate, thoughtful, and apolitical in describing their work. Salameh demonstrated a fluent grasp of Hebrew when speaking to an Israeli during his presentation, and Freundlich talked about his determination to preserve documents related to Palestinian history.</p>
<p>The American academics proved decidedly less capable of keeping politics out of their speeches. Myers spoke first, stating before he began his address that, “self-critical research,” meaning criticism of the Palestinian narrative, was a “defining feature of [Khalidi’s] work”—a preposterous claim that could not withstand the evidence presented in Khalidi’s own words.</p>
<p>Khalidi began his speech by saying that the “statelessness” of the Palestinians is a “condition that manifests itself directly in the lack of Palestinian national archives.”  This proved a half-hearted attempt to make his digression into politics relevant to the subject of the ceremony.</p>
<p>While Myers had discussed how Israel’s leftist “<a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/New_Historians.html">New Historians</a>” challenged the alleged “myths” of Israelis’ “collective memory,” Khalidi sounded almost giddy when he stated, “the founders of the [Israeli] state would be turning in their graves [if they read what these historians wrote].”</p>
<p>Khalidi later made clear that Palestinians, unlike Israelis and Americans, are exempt from the obligation to challenge their national myths: “The collective memory of the Palestinians was perfectly clear,” Khalidi said of the precision of the Palestinian refugees’ recollection of their “expulsion” from the Jewish state.</p>
<p>He neglected to mention that even according to the controversial estimates of the New Historians, <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/refugees.html">at most a third of the Palestinian refugees</a> of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence were expelled; the rest left on their own accord, Palestinians’ “collective memory” to the contrary notwithstanding.</p>
<p>Khalidi claimed Palestinian archives were systematically destroyed by the Israelis, adding that this issue was “exacerbated by the destruction or desecration of religious and historical sites.” He later expanded on this claim: “These actions are often linked to efforts to deny the existence of Palestinians in Palestine.”</p>
<p>The only examples Khalidi offered of such Israeli actions were the bombing of Palestinian archives at a PLO building in Beirut during the <a href="http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/1678203/the_first_lebanon_war_arab_israeli.html">First Lebanon War</a> and the closing of the PLO’s Jerusalem headquarters and archives at the <a href="http://www.orienthouse.org/about/index.html">Orient House</a> during the Second Intifada. The intuitive reason for such actions—<a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/testimony/5.pdf">the PLO’s documented support for terrorism</a> and not a desire to “deny the existence of Palestinians”—was seemingly lost on Khalidi.</p>
<p>Given Khalidi’s abandonment of any pretense of discussing the work of the two archivists, Myers was clearly hesitant to challenge Khalidi’s assertions during the question and answer session. He further politicized the conference with a digression on how historians could use their trade to assist Palestinians who claimed to have lost property in Jerusalem. Myers neglected to discuss how historians could help redeem the <a href="http://info.jpost.com/C003/Supplements/Refugees/12-13.html">much more significant financial losses</a> of the approximately <a href="http://www.meforum.org/263/why-jews-fled-the-arab-countries">900,000 Jews who fled Arab lands</a>.</p>
<p>However, to his credit, Myers did argue for the “ameliorative role” of archives and their “possibility to craft a shared history [between Israelis and Palestinians].” Cohen had also claimed in <a href="http://www.newyorkhistoryblog.com/2010/01/palestinian-israeli-archivists-feted-as.html">a flier</a> for the conference that, “Open archives may very well be instruments to reduce divergence, expand mutual understanding and fruitful cooperation [between Israelis and Palestinians].&#8221;</p>
<p>Khalidi ended the awards ceremony on a decidedly less optimistic note. He discussed how Germany and France had fought wars for a century and a half and had to wait 60 years after those conflicts ended before they could establish a joint “peace” curriculum for their schools. He then concluded, “[A Palestinian State], I fear, is unlikely to see the light of day anytime soon, if ever.”</p>
<p>Khalidi’s politicization of an awards ceremony intended to honor the unsung heroes of the archivist profession was predictable to anyone familiar with his public lectures, which routinely politicize rather than analyze the contemporary Middle East. More disturbing was Myers’s and the audience’s complacent acceptance of his usurpation. The professionalism of the Israeli and Palestinian archivists stood in stark contrast to the unwillingness of the American academics to check their politics at the door. The honorees deserved better.</p>
<p><em>Brendan Goldman is a senior at New York University majoring in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and an intern at the Middle East Forum. This essay was sponsored by </em><em><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/">Campus Watch</a>, a project of the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/">Middle East Forum</a>.</em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/brendan-goldman/history-as-propoganda/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>6</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>The Roots of Muslim Radicalism</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/brendan-goldman/the-roots-of-muslim-radicalism/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-roots-of-muslim-radicalism</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/brendan-goldman/the-roots-of-muslim-radicalism/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 28 Jan 2010 05:12:32 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Brendan Goldman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Abu]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abu ghraib prison]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abuse]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[abusive treatment]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ali]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[altschul auditorium]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[America]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[American]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[american servicemen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Britain]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Christian]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Columbia]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[columbia university]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[complicit]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Context]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[converts to islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[documentary]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[drug]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[equity studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Film]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[gang activity]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ghraib]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[God]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[group]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Hamza]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[hip hop group]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[immigrant experience]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[imperial project]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Iraq]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iraqi insurgents]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[iraqi prisoners]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[islam islam]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[keynote address]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[mujahideen]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Muslim]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[muslims in america]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[New]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Perez]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Pittsburgh]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[practice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[prison]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Razack]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[religious practice]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Samuel Huntington]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Terror]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Torture]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[U.S.]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[University]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[university of toronto]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[US]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[use]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[War]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Western Muslims]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Western Responses]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[zaheer]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=47893</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How does Islamic integration, or lack thereof, influence terrorism?]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p align="center"><strong> </strong></p>
<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-47896" title="6a00e008c6b4e58834012876355a2c970c" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/6a00e008c6b4e58834012876355a2c970c.jpg" alt="6a00e008c6b4e58834012876355a2c970c" width="590" height="364" /></p>
<p>“Too often when we think of Muslims in America we think only of the immigrant experience,” said Zaheer Ali, a doctoral student at Columbia University who studies America’s indigenous, primarily African-American and Latino, converts to Islam.  “Islam is no stranger to black art…Islam is not ‘foreign’ to hip hop.”</p>
<p>Ali served as an advisor for “<a href="http://www.newmuslimcool.com/">New Muslim Cool</a>,” a thought-provoking documentary that tells the story of Puerto-Rican Muslim convert Hamza Perez and his hip-hop group, The Mujahideen Team. The documentary was screened on Thursday, January 14, in front of an audience of approximately 100 students, professors, and members of the general public at Columbia’s Altschul Auditorium.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/144">Sherene Razack</a>, Professor of Sociology and Equity Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, prefaced the screening with a keynote address entitled, “Western Responses to the Torture of Muslims.” While the documentary provided a powerful reminder of how religious practice can be a means to confront prejudice, drug abuse, and gang activity in the inner-city, <a href="http://www.oise.utoronto.ca/depts/sese/sherenerazack.html">Razack’s</a> divisive lecture belied the more conciliatory themes of the film.</p>
<p>Razack began by discussing the 2004 incidents of torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, insisting that the broader American public was complicit in allowing the abusive treatment of the Iraqi insurgents held there.</p>
<p>“Torture is permissible for people we have evicted from personhood,” Razack said, explaining that the War on Terror must be seen as an imperial project that dehumanizes its victims. “You can’t make sense of [Abu Ghraib] unless you see it in the context of imperial practice.”</p>
<p>Though Razack’s use of “we” would seem to imply that she also considers herself complicit in America’s “imperial policies,” she later claimed to speak for all Western Muslims in identifying with the Iraqi insurgents, not American servicemen.</p>
<p>“[Abu Ghraib] reminds those of us who share a culture or religion with [the Iraqi prisoners] that we are similarly valued…. We are reminded that our bodies, the bodies of our brothers and sons, are violateable [<em>sic</em>].”</p>
<p>According to Razack, torture is a “source of social integration” that is “intrinsically about engraving [Western] civilization on the bodies [of the insurgents].”  She further argued that this assertion of the superiority of Western civilization was expressed through “sexualized torture” at Abu Ghraib because of “Orientalist” claims that Arabs are “sexually repressed and homophobic.”</p>
<p>Razack then stated that the foundation of America’s policy in the Middle East is based on “the same old Anglo-Saxon racialist arguments that have resurfaced post-9/11 as [Samuel Huntington’s] ‘Clash of Civilizations’.”</p>
<p>Having conflated race and culture, Razack went on to say that the “Anglo cluster”—the US, Britain, et al.—is dedicated to “upholding white supremacy.” In this context, Razack further claimed that, “Muslim is a racial category; you can’t disassociate from it.”</p>
<p>Razack seemed to suggest that the current War on Terror is an irreconcilable conflict between the Islamic world and the West, with all Western Muslims identifying with the former. Ironically, “New Muslim Cool,” which was screened following Razack’s address, provided a fundamentally different perspective, portraying American Muslims as part and parcel of America’s cultural milieu.</p>
<p>The movie not only addresses issues in the inner-city, such as crime and drug abuse, but also promotes inter-religious dialogue. Its main character, Hamza Perez, is shown progressing from a drug dealer to an angry Muslim youth to a mature man of religion seeking dialogue with Jews, Christians, and governmental institutions.</p>
<p>“When I was 21 my street side died in me and I became a Muslim,” Perez tells a group of inmates at a jail in Pittsburgh at which he serves as a chaplain. At the start of the film, Perez’s lyrics voice his disdain for the establishment, with assertions like “Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects” and “Zionist business controls America.”</p>
<p>However, as the film progresses, Perez finds a wife, settles down, and begins to confront his anger at the outside world. He works with Muslim, Christian, and Jewish inmates, telling them, “The highest form of brotherhood is the brotherhood of companionship of people you’re with to get closer to God.” Perez explains that for him “jihad,” which in standard use means holy war, is not in fact about holy war, but about overcoming “our lower desires,” including drug abuse. The choice to include the word “mujahideen,” or practitioners of jihad, in his hip-hop group’s name reflects Perez’s own rendering of the Arabic term.</p>
<p>When Perez’s security clearance at the prison where he works is revoked because the FBI finds out about his earlier political activism, he realizes that he cannot escape the hateful messages he had espoused in the past. After reading a passage from an interview he gave in 2003 in which he attacked the U.S. government, Perez reflects, “I got a little raw.  That’s so young of me.”</p>
<p>Perez is ultimately allowed to return to his job at the prison. In a poignant scene at the movie’s end, he talks about how his moderate vision of Islam has inspired his personal progression. “The more you study the life of the Prophet [Muhammad]…the more merciful you become. If you’re not becoming more merciful and you’re becoming more harsh, then you’re not studying it properly.”</p>
<p>While “New Muslim Cool” periodically fails its moderate message by justifying FBI conspiracy theories and neglecting the opportunity to address the issue of radicalized American Muslims, it clearly places the onus for reform and dialogue on the leaders of the Western Muslim communities.</p>
<p>Razack’s message, on the other hand, portrayed Muslims, including Western Muslims, as perpetual victims of “imperial practices” and as outsiders who are prevented from integrating because of Western “racism”—a bizarre argument that took cynical intellectual acrobatics to defend. Razack’s position justifies the self-segregation of Western Muslims, which not only undermines the cohesiveness of our society, but may also perpetuate the underlying causes of homegrown terrorism.</p>
<p><em>Brendan Goldman is a senior at New York University majoring in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and an intern at the </em><em>Middle East</em><em> Forum. This essay was sponsored by <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/">Campus Watch</a>, a project of the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/">Middle East Forum</a>.</em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/brendan-goldman/the-roots-of-muslim-radicalism/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>14</slash:comments>
		</item>
		<item>
		<title>Forum at Columbia University Whitewashes UN and Arab States &#8211; by Brendan Goldman</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/brendan-goldman/forum-at-columbia-university-whitewashes-un-and-arab-states-by-brendan-goldman/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=forum-at-columbia-university-whitewashes-un-and-arab-states-by-brendan-goldman</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/brendan-goldman/forum-at-columbia-university-whitewashes-un-and-arab-states-by-brendan-goldman/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:09:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Brendan Goldman]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=28764</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Covering for the UNRWA's program of Palestinian-dependency.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-28976" title="UNRWA" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/UNRWA-848x1024.jpg" alt="UNRWA" width="504" height="608" /></p>
<p>With all the irony of President Richard Nixon’s famous quip that, “there can be no whitewash at the White House,” the ivory tower played host to a September 25 “debate” at Columbia University’s Casa Italiano that exonerated the <a href="http://www.un.org/unrwa/">United Nations Relief Works Agency in Palestine</a> (UNRWA) and human rights violators throughout the Arab-Islamic world.</p>
<p>The conference was held in a small auditorium, decorated in classic Greco-Roman style with ornate columns and crimson curtains. The audience of about 100 filtered in slowly, filling the room with students, UNRWA employees, and professors.</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.un.org/unrwa/newyork/schedule_of_events.html">debate</a> entitled, “UNRWA historical performance in a changing context” and a roundtable labeled “The contribution of Palestine refugees to the economic and social development in the region,” <a href="http://www.mcgill.ca/politicalscience/faculty/brynen/">Rex Brynen</a> of McGill University and <a href="http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty/profiles/fullcvs/full-time/akram_s.shtml">Susan Akram</a> of Boston University’s School of Law distinguished themselves by castigating Israeli “occupation” while engaging in apologetics for Arab leaders who have violated Palestinian refugee rights.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6418">Rashid Khalidi</a> of Columbia University also made an appearance as the debate’s moderator—an indication of the spectrum of opinions present—deviating from his role as an objective overseer only to reiterate his colleagues’ anti-Israel and anti-Western diatribes.</p>
<p>To provide some context, UNRWA was established to accommodate the needs of several hundred thousand Palestinian refugees of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. <a href="http://www.heritage.org/research/internationalorganizations/bg436.cfm">The organization was originally intended to serve for a transitory period</a>, during which Palestinian refugees would resettle in Jordan (including the Jordanian-administered West Bank), Egyptian-administered Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.</p>
<p>Sixty-years later, UNRWA <a href="http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/templateC04.php?CID=306">oversees a massive welfare organization that perpetuates the economic dependency of 4.5 million Palestinians</a> and nurtures their impractical belief that they will one day return to the homes their families abandoned in modern-day Israel.</p>
<p>The Arab states, as one <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/refugees.html">former UNRWA commissioner general noted</a>, want to “keep [the refugees’ situation] as an open sore, as an affront to the UN and as a weapon against Israel.  Arab leaders don’t give a damn whether the refugees live or die.”</p>
<p>That history seems to have escaped the panel’s academics, who, along with two former commissioner generals of UNRWA and the current commissioner general, urged the audience to “draw lessons from [UNRWA’s] 60 years of service.”</p>
<p><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/451">Brynen</a> stole the forum’s first half with a witty but deceptive portrayal of the refugees’ status. He related the tragedies of Palestinian history, ending with the first and second intifada.</p>
<p>“It sounds like a Christmas carol,” he said of his list of Palestinian and (unmentioned) Israeli suffering.</p>
<p>He went on to implicitly chide the West for confronting UNRWA over the complete lack of <a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ghJYaVsRtbo7gYjq65Y1a0ZXi7twD9AJCIO81">Holocaust education at its schools</a>. UNRWA initially said it would rectify the situation, yet waffled under pressure from militant Palestinian groups. Over a week after the conference ended,<a href="http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1254756249254&amp;pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull"> UNRWA announced it would incorporate Holocaust studies in its </a>schools’ curricula.</p>
<p>“I’m surprised you haven’t sprouted horns,” Brynen joked with the current UNRWA commissioner general, Karen Abu Zayed.</p>
<p>Akram and Khalidi chose a different path: exculpating the Arab states for their abuse of Palestinians at Israel’s expense.</p>
<p>“I’ve written articles critical of Arab treatment of (Palestinian) refugees,” Khalidi stated.  “But the areas where the least rehabilitation (of refugees) has taken place are those under Israeli occupation (the West Bank and Gaza Strip).”</p>
<p>History begs to differ: Before the First Intifada, the Palestinians under Israeli administration had the <a href="http://www.discovery.org/a/12461">fourth fastest growing economy in the world</a>. At the same time, Arab Shi’ite and Maronite militias were hunting down Palestinians in Lebanon, while Palestinians in Jordan were reeling from the Black September massacres.</p>
<p>Susan Akram was even blunter than Khalidi in dismissing criticism of the Arab states’ failure to take responsibility for the Palestinian refugees within their borders.</p>
<p>“Arab states are under no legal obligation to provide for Palestinian refugees,” she said. Syria, Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon have hosted the Palestinians “at great social and economic cost” (a particularly ironic statement for a forum entitled, “The contribution of Palestine refugees to the economic and social development in the region”).</p>
<p>She noted the “surprising respect of Arab states for Palestinians,” and singled out the <a href="http://unispal.un.org/unispal.nsf/0145a8233e14d2b585256cbf005af141/e373eb5c166347ae85256e36006948ba?OpenDocument">Casablanca Protocol</a>, a document published by Morocco in 1965 that ostensibly gives “Palestinians the same rights as Arab citizens of the host states.”  There are only two minor caveats: Morocco is not a primary host of Palestinian refugees, and the Arab World has expressed little interest in its “Protocol.”</p>
<p>Unmentioned is that of the three major Arab host states of Palestinian refugees <a href="http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/refugees.html">only Jordan has unilaterally granted the Palestinians citizenship</a>, and that step was taken before the 1967 Six-Day War as part of the Jordanians’ annexation of the West Bank. It is also noteworthy that in the Israeli-administered West Bank only one-sixth of Palestinian refugees live in UNRWA camps, while in Lebanon, two-thirds of the country’s approximately 400,000 Palestinians live in UNRWA housing.</p>
<p>Israel and the West have tried to convince UNRWA and the Arab States to repatriate the Palestinians to the nations in which they now reside. Conferences like this one only feed the impractical notion that UNRWA’s program of maintaining the Palestinians’ refugee status indefinitely will prevail. Akram, Khalidi, and Brynen know that there is no chance that democratic Israel will commit demographic suicide by allowing millions of Palestinian refugees to settle within its borders. Their defense of UN excesses and Arab human rights abusers does a disservice to the very people they claim to want to help.</p>
<p><em>Brendan Goldman is a senior at New York University majoring in Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, and an intern at the Middle East Forum.</em><em> This essay was sponsored by <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/">Campus Watch</a>, a project of the <a href="http://www.meforum.org/">Middle East Forum</a>.</em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
			<wfw:commentRss>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/brendan-goldman/forum-at-columbia-university-whitewashes-un-and-arab-states-by-brendan-goldman/feed/</wfw:commentRss>
		<slash:comments>13</slash:comments>
		</item>
	</channel>
</rss>

<!-- Performance optimized by W3 Total Cache. Learn more: http://www.w3-edge.com/wordpress-plugins/

Object Caching 650/701 objects using disk
Content Delivery Network via cdn.frontpagemag.com

 Served from: www.frontpagemag.com @ 2014-12-31 09:01:06 by W3 Total Cache -->