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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Jonathan Gelbart</title>
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		<title>Joel Beinin’s Love Letter to the ‘New Protest Generation’</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jonathan-gelbart/joel-beinin%e2%80%99s-love-letter-to-the-%e2%80%98new-protest-generation%e2%80%99/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=joel-beinin%25e2%2580%2599s-love-letter-to-the-%25e2%2580%2598new-protest-generation%25e2%2580%2599</link>
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		<pubDate>Thu, 18 Nov 2010 04:40:18 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jonathan Gelbart]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[The Stanford professor reaches out to Israeli youth who hate Israel. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/anarchists.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-77034" title="anarchists" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/anarchists.jpg" alt="" width="375" height="617" /></a></p>
<p>Stanford University history professor Joel Beinin made the latest in <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/7478">a series</a> of appearances on the Peninsula Peace and Justice Center (PPJC) Palo Alto cable television program “Other Voices” on November 2, 2010. The subject of the show was “<a href="http://peaceandjustice.org/staticpages/index.php/Other_Voices_TV_New_Protest_Generation">Israel-Palestine: A New Protest Generation</a>” and, as before, it provided a platform for Beinin’s anti-Israel animus.</p>
<p>The show began with a brief discussion of what Beinin delightedly called the “overall decline” of the United States, evidenced by the “failure even at the crude military level in both Iraq and Afghanistan” and the resulting inability to employ the military “as an instrument of policy.”</p>
<p>Following these inflammatory claims, the interview turned to its focus: the recent phenomenon of young, Jewish Israelis—most of whom belong to a group called “Anarchists Against the Wall”—participating in Palestinian rallies against the “illegal settlements” and the West Bank security barrier. As Beinin put it, these Israelis stand “shoulder to shoulder with Palestinians” with the goal of preventing “some of the violence that the army might direct against them.”</p>
<p>Beinin pointed out that a culture has emerged in which Palestinians are willing to deem Israelis “one of us” if rubber bullets or other Israeli military actions cause them to suffer debilitating injuries during rallies. He described a recent tour of the West Bank led by an Israeli who had “lost sight in his left eye” at one of these rallies and, as a result, was considered a hero by the Palestinians. “I might as well have been going around with Yasser Arafat,” Beinin exclaimed. This Israeli, he boasted, was one of the leaders of what he called the “successful divestment [from Israel] campaign at Hampshire College” in 2009. In fact, it was <a href="http://cgis.jpost.com/Blogs/guest/entry/an_open_letter_to_alan">not a successful</a> divestment campaign, as was widely <a href="http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=34229">acknowledged</a> at the time.</p>
<p>In an ominous development, Beinin noted that these young Israelis are now “following Palestinian leadership.” To be more specific, he remarked, they “help [the Palestinians] conduct the struggle as the [movement’s] popular committee has decided it should be conducted.” Beinin claimed that these young Israelis are motivated by their willingness to look at their “colonial privilege” and “[think] about it seriously,” something the older “Israeli peace movement” did not do. Members of this “militant, persistent Israeli opposition,” he later added, are willing to act repeatedly as the front line in the protests, despite the “enormous psychological and physical toll” involved.</p>
<p>Palestinians, Beinin contended, organize regular meetings to coordinate their activities with this new cohort of Israeli activists. He narrated a typical dialogue:</p>
<blockquote><p>If [the Palestinians] say, ‘We would like you [the Israeli activists] to bring hundreds of Israelis on this day,’ we might tell them, ‘that’s not possible; it’s a holiday. How about that day?’</p></blockquote>
<p>“It’s the Palestinians who are running the show,” Beinin noted approvingly.</p>
<p>He went on:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Israeli young women . . . [have begun to] meet with the Palestinian women separately. Then they come to the [larger group] meetings and say, ‘This is what the Palestinian women want.’</p></blockquote>
<p>This gender segregation is necessary because Palestinian women, as Beinin pointed out, “don’t come to meetings with men they don’t know.” The fact that the Palestinian contingent would completely ignore its female members were it not for the participation of Israeli women apparently does not bother Israeli “peace activists.”</p>
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		<title>Beshara Doumani and the &#8216;Ironies of Palestinian History&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jonathan-gelbart/stanford-hosts-a-hate-talk/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=stanford-hosts-a-hate-talk</link>
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		<pubDate>Mon, 18 Oct 2010 04:03:21 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jonathan Gelbart]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

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		<description><![CDATA[Prof. Beshara Doumani explains why Israel should support those who wish to destroy it.   

]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Doumani.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-74427" title="Doumani" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Doumani.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="500" /></a></p>
<p>UC Berkeley history professor <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=beshara+doumani&amp;sa=Search#919">Beshara Doumani</a> came to Stanford University on September 29, 2010, to give a lecture sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies titled, “<a href="http://events.stanford.edu/events/250/25087/">The Iron Law and Ironies of Palestinian History</a>.” He was introduced by <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1472">notorious</a> Stanford University history professor <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=joel+beinin&amp;sa=Search#921">Joel Beinin</a>, who managed to insert his repeated, and unfounded, <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/385">claim</a> that academic freedom in the post-9/11 era is “very much still in jeopardy.” Beinin, quoting from Doumani’s <a href="http://history.berkeley.edu/faculty/Doumani/">faculty bio</a>, noted that he specializes in “recovering the history of social groups, places and time periods that have been silenced or erased by conventional scholarship on the modern Middle East.” This seemingly innocuous description belied a very specific, partisan subtext.</p>
<p>Taking a unique perspective, Doumani laid out his argument that current discourse throughout the Palestinian national movement is too “state-centric,” focusing on Palestinian nationhood as an end in itself without regard for “the lives of ordinary Palestinians” or whether they support such a goal. The wants and needs of the entire Palestinian diaspora, Doumani argued—including “those who are citizens in the State of Israel”—must be taken into account in discussions of a future “Palestine.”</p>
<p>Doumani repeatedly emphasized “the denial of the Palestinians’ right to exist as a political community” as the most egregious and harmful fault of “the Zionist movement and its supporters, Great Britain and the United States.” This denial, he alleged, has shown itself in the 1922 charter for the Mandate for Palestine (which, while it does not use the word “Arab,” repeatedly mentions the rights of non-Jews and the Arabic language); Israel’s insistence after 1948 that the Palestinian refugee issue was humanitarian and not political; and finally, Israel’s refusal to recognize Hamas following its victory in the 2006 Palestinian elections.</p>
<p>“This non-recognition,” Doumani stated boldly, has allowed “the twin engines of this conflict, which are of course territory taking and demographic displacement, to continue unabated as we speak.” The professor apparently felt no need to mention Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel’s existence, the continual glorification of terrorism on Palestinian television, and the Palestinians’ repeated rejections of peace deals spanning decades as “engines of this conflict.”</p>
<p>Doumani then began discussing the “five ironies” that “each mark a . . . moment of erasure of the Palestinians and birth of Palestine or the other way around.” These included statements such as “the destruction of Palestine in 1948 marked the creation of the Palestinians as we know them” and “the recognition by Israel of the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinians signaled the end of the PLO as a significant political movement.” Most interesting, however, was the fifth irony, which Doumani described as follows:</p>
<blockquote><p>The Palestinians today are being force-fed a state or two against their will. . . . I say force-fed because a state that can be a territorial home for Palestinians as a political community is not on the table. The Palestinians are being asked to give up the right of return as well as East Jerusalem and half of the West Bank. . . . This state has become the vehicle for pre-empting Palestinian nationalism. If it succeeds, it will . . . lead to the permanent disenfranchisement of the Palestinians. . . . There is really no support for the PA’s [Palestinian Authority’s] negotiating posture today among the majority of the 11 million Palestinians in the world.</p></blockquote>
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		<title>A State of Uncertainty</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jonathan-gelbart/a-state-of-uncertainty/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=a-state-of-uncertainty</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/jonathan-gelbart/a-state-of-uncertainty/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:00:50 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Jonathan Gelbart]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=63693</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is Israel occupying Palestine or keeping the hordes at bay? Two Stanford professors debate.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/aIsraeliFlag.gif"><img class="aligncenter size-medium wp-image-63723" title="aIsraeliFlag" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/aIsraeliFlag-300x199.gif" alt="" width="300" height="199" /></a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/survey.php/id/12">Stanford University</a> history professor <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/search.php?cx=015692155655874064424%3A-cjrsa07xqe&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=UTF-8&amp;q=beinin&amp;sa=Search#921">Joel Beinin</a> joined colleague Steven Zipperstein, a professor of Jewish culture and history, for an event on June 2, 2010 titled “Israel and Palestine: How To Talk About It and What To Talk About.” It was co-sponsored by the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies and the Taube Center for Jewish Studies—the first such joint sponsorship in the history of the two programs. Beinin lived up to his reputation for holding views whose <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1472">outlandishness</a> is matched only by <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/7478">the ferocity</a> with which he clings to them.</p>
<p>Beinin began his opening remarks by lamenting the “unhealthy” state of the Arab-Israeli conflict debate—something he chalked up to the allegedly disproportionate influence of pro-Israel groups. Invoking the typical “Israel Lobby” paranoia, he claimed that organizations such as the American Jewish Committee and the<em> </em>American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) discreetly control the debate with publications such as <em>Commentary Magazine</em> and think tanks such as the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. According to Beinin, these organizations routinely “attempt to ban [anti-Israel academics] from speaking [on college campuses] and attack them politically when they come up for tenure.” Using alarmist rhetoric, he claimed this behavior is tantamount to “a McCarthyite campaign of exclusion.”</p>
<p>As an example, he labeled “ridiculous” the characterization of <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/survey.php/id/16">Columbia University</a> Edward Said professor of Arab studies <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#906">Rashid Khalidi</a> as anti-Semitic, adding that, “advocating for the rights of the Palestinian people is not anti-Semitism.” Anti-Semitism aside, Khalidi—a former <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/1211">spokesman</a> for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and a well-known anti-Israel <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/6418">ideologue</a>—is hardly a dispassionate “advocate.” Moreover, neither Khalidi’s academic career, nor that of his likeminded colleagues, <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/5359">has suffered</a> as a result of politicized scholarship; that is, unless one considers <a href="http://www.campus-watch.org/blog/2008/02/nyu-hosting-the-latest-academic">mere criticism</a> permanently damaging.</p>
<p>Beinin went on to describe the rhetoric used to discuss the conflict as “demagoguery” in which “Jews whose opinions are similar to the bi-nationalist positions historically held by Albert Einstein [and others]&#8230;are effectively excommunicated and labeled self-haters.” Invoking the first of what would be several references to Jewish scripture and morals, he then asked, “Does all of this [name-calling]&#8230;help us be a light unto the nations?”</p>
<p>Beinin explained that he had been a member of an Israeli “anti-occupation group” in the 1970s and that “for decades, [he] supported a two-state solution to the conflict&#8230;because it seemed achievable and had international support.” Recently, however, he decided that “the failure of the Obama administration to halt the settlement project&#8230;[has] made the existence of a sovereign Palestinian state alongside Israel highly unlikely.” He made no mention of the Palestinian failure to govern since the Oslo Accords, nor Hamas’s destruction of Gaza. He continued: “The <em>de facto</em> one-state status quo will continue until the balance of forces changes,” and until that time, American Jews must, as he put it, “[resist] the occupation as best we can.” Resistance to this “oppression” is required of Jews as a biblical duty, he claimed, reading Leviticus 19:16 in Hebrew and then in English: “Do not stand idly by when your neighbor’s blood is being spilled.” This recitation of a biblical commandment felt forced, as if he were trying to placate critics who find his views threatening to Israel or to Judaism.</p>
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