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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Mitchell G. Bard</title>
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		<title>Something Is Rotten in UCLA’s Center for Near East Studies</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mitchellgbard/something-is-rotten-in-uclas-center-for-near-east-studies/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=something-is-rotten-in-uclas-center-for-near-east-studies</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/mitchellgbard/something-is-rotten-in-uclas-center-for-near-east-studies/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Fri, 19 Dec 2014 05:52:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitchell G. Bard]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[BDS]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Center for Near Eastern Studies]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[palestinians]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=247778</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Can you guess which country gets consistently picked on? ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/James-Gelvin.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-247782" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/James-Gelvin-450x299.jpg" alt="James-Gelvin" width="295" height="196" /></a>Recently, UCLA’s federally subsidized Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES) has come under fire by a pro-Israel watchdog that conducted a review of the Center’s programs from 2010-2013 and concluded that many featured “anti-Semitic discourse and anti-Israel bias.”</p>
<p>Among the findings of the report by the AMCHA Initiative:</p>
<p><strong>CNES Israel-related events had an overwhelmingly anti-Israel bias:</strong> Of the 28 Israel-related events, 93% were anti-Israel;<strong><br />
</strong></p>
<p><strong>CNES favors speakers who engaged in anti-Semitic activity prior to speaking at CNES: </strong>Of the 31 speakers at the CNES Israel-related events, 84% have engaged in Anti-Semitic activity, including the demonization and delegitimization of Israel, denying Jews the right to self-determination, comparing Israelis to Nazis and condoning terrorism;<strong><br />
</strong></p>
<p><strong>Each CNES director had engaged in anti-Israel and anti-Semitic activity: </strong>All three CNES directors from 2010-2013 publicly opposed the UC Israel Abroad Program, despite touting the public abroad program as part of the center’s fulfillment of the Title VI funding requirement. In addition, each of the directors endorsed boycotts of Israel, and one is a founder of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic Boycott of Israel.</p>
<p>Professor James Gelvin, a historian studying the Middle East, wrote a spirited defense of CNES on behalf of the Faculty Advisory Committee, which, oddly enough, appeared in an Arabic publication. Gelvin focused his rebuttal on AMCHA’s statistics regarding the number of programs regarding Israel; however, he presents no evidence to dispute the fundamental charge of anti-Israel bias. His answer to the failure to bring speakers who might balance some of the panels critical of Israel is to say that CNES also does not feel the need to “balance” the criticism of Arab states. He further justifies the faculty invited by CNES by asserting that they are “accomplished scholars presenting original work.” If you look at much of what the invited guests have said about Israel, it is highly questionable whether they deserve to be called accomplished and certainly are not presenting original critiques of Israel.</p>
<p>Gelvin becomes positively Orwellian when he tries to explain how a center purportedly devoted to academic freedom can tolerate directors who support the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) campaign, including the current director who, in 2014, signed a letter calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions and pledging not to collaborate with Israeli institutions, attend their conferences or publish in Israeli journals. Gelvin’s response is that the BDS movement, which calls for the destruction of Israel, “is not out of the mainstream within the scholarly community” because a few hundred faculty Israel deniers support singling Israel out for special treatment.</p>
<p>One can’t help but wonder how “accomplished” a professor can be if they can’t recognize they are part of a concerted campaign to destroy the only democracy in the Middle East while having no qualms about the activities of China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and the rest of the serial human rights abusers. Then again, Gelvin claims the BDS movement isn’t anti-Semitic because it is not on a State Department list of anti-Semitic activities. Rather than look to the State Department with its own dark history of anti-Semitism, he might look at the statement signed by more than 60 international Jewish organizations representing the spectrum of Jewish opinion that denounced the BDS movement as “counterproductive to the goal of peace, antithetical to freedom of speech, and part of a greater effort to undermine the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in their homeland, Israel.” The cosigners acknowledged that “individuals and groups may have legitimate criticism of Israeli policies,” but added that “criticism becomes anti-Semitism…when it demonizes Israel or its leaders, denies Israel the right to defend its citizens or seeks to denigrate Israel’s right to exist.” A similar statement was signed by 38 Nobel Prize winners.</p>
<p>As AMCHA reported, two former CNES directors called on the University of California to stop Education Abroad Programs in Israel. Gelvin’s excuse? They were protecting the rights of Palestinian-American students who he alleges were “either harassed or prevented entry into the country.”</p>
<p>Rather than take issue with professor Gelvin’s own statistics defending the programs at CNES, let’s consider just one example of a symposium that took place in 2009, before the period examined by AMCHA. This public event, “Gaza and Human Rights” featured four outspoken critics of Israel. CNES director Susan Slyomovics opened the session by telling the audience they would learn the “truth” about Gaza that had been hidden or distorted by the media. UCLA historian Gabriel Piterberg compared Zionist policy since 1900 to European colonialism that led to the extermination and enslavement of the indigenous peoples. UCSB’s Lisa Hajjar, who chairs a Law and Society Program, accused Israel of war crimes. Richard Falk, who taught international law at Princeton before being named UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian Territories, compared the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the Nazi extermination of Jews, insisted that Hamas and its missiles posed no security threat to Israel, and labeled Israeli action in Gaza as a “savagely criminal operation.” The fourth speaker, UCLA English literature professor Saree Makdisi, said that it was Israel’s “premeditated state policy” to kill Gazans and stunt the growth of their children.</p>
<p>The event was later referred to as an “academic lynching,” a “one-sided witch hunt of Israel,” a “Hamas recruiting rally” or, at the very least, “a degradation of academic standards.” UCLA Chancellor Block responded to the controversy by restating UCLA’s commitment to the “free exchange of ideas &#8230; as a core value of academic freedom” and praised UCLA as one of the most invigorating intellectual campuses in the world.</p>
<p>The event may have violated the congressional mandate that federally supported outreach programs promote intellectual diversity and balanced debate. When asked if CNES would plan any events to present an alternative point of view, the center’s director, Susan Slyomovics, reportedly said no. Sondra Hale defended the one-sided panel and said it was necessary to criticize the “state policies that have led to this calamity.” In another example of the fox guarding the henhouse, Hale, chair of the center’s faculty advisory committee at the time, was an organizer of the academic boycott of Israel.</p>
<p><strong>Freedom Center pamphlets now available on Kindle: </strong><a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref%3dnb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&amp;field-keywords=david+horowitz&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;ajr=0#/ref=sr_st?keywords=david+horowitz&amp;qid=1316459840&amp;rh=n:133140011%2ck:david+horowitz&amp;sort=daterank"><strong>Click here</strong></a><strong>.   </strong></p>
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		<title>Fueling Israeli Settlement Growth &#8211; by Mitchell G. Bard</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/mitchellgbard/palestinians-aggression-fuels-settlement-growth-by-mitchell-g-bard/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=palestinians-aggression-fuels-settlement-growth-by-mitchell-g-bard</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2009/mitchellgbard/palestinians-aggression-fuels-settlement-growth-by-mitchell-g-bard/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 13 Oct 2009 04:10:39 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Mitchell G. Bard]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=28515</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How Palestinian aggression causes Israel's settlements to expand.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-21230" title="flag" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/flag.jpg" alt="flag" width="495" height="400" /></p>
<p>President Obama has called  for Israel to freeze all settlement activity. Obama’s policy has given the Arab  states a free pass to avoid any constructive steps to normalize relations with  Israel and dovetails with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’s  position that the Palestinians will not be pressured into resuming peace talks  with Israel as long as construction in Jewish settlements continues. Together,  the policy of the administration and the Arabs guarantees the settlement  population will only grow.</p>
<p>Bethlehem Mayor Elias Freij  understood the folly of this policy when he said in 1991, “The Palestinians now  realize that time is now on the side of Israel, which can build settlements and  create facts, and that the only way out of this dilemma is face-to-face  negotiations.”</p>
<p>Freij verbalized what many  analysts and Arab leaders will not admit today – that the Palestinians could  have prevented the building of most Jewish settlements in addition to achieving  their own independence had they accepted any one of the numerous offers for  statehood.</p>
<p>The Palestinians’  miscalculations can be traced back to 1937 and their rejection of Lord Peel’s  plan to divide Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. A decade later, they were  offered an even more generous division by the United Nations. The 1947 partition  plan created a Palestinian state that encompassed significantly more territory  than just Gaza and the West Bank; in fact, it would have included about 40  percent of what is now Israel. The Palestinians, however, would settle for  nothing less than the entire territory. A few months later, they joined the  neighboring Arab states in a war to drive the Jews into the  sea.</p>
<p>Instead, Israel emerged  victorious from the 1948 War and with an even larger Jewish state than the UN  had envisioned. During the next 19 years, not a single Jewish settlement was  built in the West Bank or the Gaza Strip because those areas were conquered by  Jordan and Egypt and Jews were prohibited from living there. The Palestinians,  however, did not demand an independent state in the occupied territories. No  international outcry was heard calling on the occupiers to withdraw from  “Palestine” and the United Nations showed no interest in the occupation of  “Palestinian land” by the two Arab states.</p>
<p>In 1967, Israel fought a  war of self-defense that led to the capture of Gaza and the West Bank.  Immediately afterward, Israel expressed a willingness to return most of the  territory it had acquired in exchange for peace. Moshe Dayan said he waited for  a phone call from Arab leaders to start negotiations. That call never came.  Instead, the Arab leaders proclaimed a policy of three “noes” &#8211; “no peace with  Israel, no negotiations with Israel, and no recognition of  Israel.”</p>
<p>It was only after the  Palestinian rejection of these peace offers that Israel began to settle Jews in  the West Bank and Gaza. Still, 10 years after the Six-Day War, when Israel began  to negotiate a peace agreement with Egypt, only 6,000 Jews lived in the disputed  territories.</p>
<p>In 1979, Israel and Egypt  negotiated a peace treaty. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin offered the  Palestinians an opportunity to have autonomy in Gaza and the West Bank. Begin’s  plan fell short of the full independence Palestinian leaders demanded, but  autonomy would have inexorably led to statehood. As in 1947, the Palestinians  were unwilling to compromise on their maximalist demands.</p>
<p>The decision proved  catastrophic for the Palestinians. While Israel dismantled the settlements it  had built in the Sinai and returned the territory to Egypt in exchange for  peace, Begin also began to develop more Jewish communities in the West Bank and  Gaza. By the end of 1979, the settler population had doubled to 12,000.</p>
<p>At any point after 1979 the  Palestinians could have said they were prepared to end what had become an  incessant campaign of terror against Israel and begin negotiations. It was not  until 1993, however, that the leader of the Palestinians, Yasser Arafat, agreed  to renounce terror and to negotiate what became known as the Oslo accords. The  decision was reached because Arafat, like Mayor Freij, realized that if the  Palestinians did not reach an agreement, so many Jews would be living in the  contested territories that a Palestinian state would no longer be a viable  option.</p>
<p>Israel agreed to the  creation of a Palestinian state within five years, but the Palestinians had to  fulfill certain promises, the most important of which was the cessation of  terror. Violence never stopped, however, even as Israel withdrew from 80 percent  of the Gaza Strip and more than 40 percent of the West Bank. Facing daily  attacks by Palestinian terrorists, Israel was reluctant to continue to make  territorial concessions. The bargain they made at Oslo was land for peace, not  land for terror. While terrorists killed hundreds of Israelis in the hope of  forcing Israel to capitulate to their demands, more than 50,000 Jews moved to  the territories under Israeli control.</p>
<p>The Palestinians blamed  Israel for the failure of the Oslo accords. They claimed that Israel had not  stopped building settlements regardless of the fact that a halt in construction  was not part of the Oslo agreement. The expectation, which had been the  understanding of Israel and the United States since 1967, was that Israel would  retain some territory for the “secure and defensible borders” specified in UN  Security Council Resolution 242. Israel therefore had no reason not to develop  those areas. Furthermore, once a final agreement was reached with the  Palestinians, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin expected that either the settlements  would be dismantled or the Jews would be allowed to remain in the new  Palestinian state. At that time, Israelis felt that just as Arabs lived in  Israel, Jews should be permitted to live in Palestine. It was the Palestinians  who insisted that the entire area be free of Jews.</p>
<p>By 2000, the optimism of  Oslo had faded. More than 250 Israelis had been killed in Palestinian terror  attacks while the Jewish population in the territories had swelled to more than  200,000. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak then tried to resolve the conflict  with the Palestinians in one sweeping gesture. In talks with Yasser Arafat and  President Bill Clinton, Barak offered in exchange for a peace 97% of the West  Bank and all of the Gaza Strip, agreed to dismantle most settlements and to  allow the Palestinians to establish a state with the predominantly Arab part of  Jerusalem as its capital.</p>
<p>Arafat rejected the deal  without making a counteroffer. In the end, American negotiator Dennis Ross  explained, Arafat was not prepared to end the conflict. Rather than peace, the  Palestinians again resorted to violence and instigated another uprising.</p>
<p>In a 2001 report on the  cause of the uprising, George Mitchell called for an end to Palestinian terror  and recommended a cessation of settlement construction as a “confidence builder”  for the Palestinians. Mitchell’s report and subsequent statements made clear  that Israel was not expected to act before the violence stopped. It never did  and Jews continued to move to the territories. Since rejecting Begin’s autonomy  offer, the settlement population had grown 20-fold to more than  225,000.</p>
<p>Following on the Mitchell  Report, the Bush Administration joined with the United Nations, the European  Union and Russia in 2003 to promote a road map for peace aimed at the  establishment of an independent Palestinian state within two years. The  agreement was again predicated on a cessation of Palestinian violence, but  instead terror escalated. Over the five years (2000-2005) that the Palestinians  waged war against Israel, more than 1,000 Israelis were murdered. The failure of  the Palestinians to fulfill their promise to stop terror allowed Israel to evade  its commitment to freeze settlements and another 50,000 Jews moved to the  territories.</p>
<p>Like prior initiatives, the  road map was a failure and a Palestinian state was not established as hoped by  2005. The Palestinians were given a second chance, however, when Israeli Prime  Minister Ariel Sharon decided to evacuate all 21 of the Jewish settlements in  Gaza as well as four settlements in the West Bank. More than 8,000 Jews, many of  whom had lived in their homes peacefully for decades, were uprooted in September  2005.</p>
<p>The Israeli move provided a  test for the position long held by the Palestinians and their supporters that  the “occupation” and settlements were the obstacle to peace. Now there was no  occupation and no settlements in the Gaza Strip and the way was cleared for the  Palestinians to begin to build the infrastructure for a state. Instead, they  launched a three-year rocket and mortar bombardment against southern Israel that  kept the civilian population in a state of constant anxiety. Once again, instead  of land for peace, Israel traded land for terror. Rather than force Israel to  give up more land, however, Israel further strengthened its hold on the West  Bank as another 25,000 Jews were added to the population.</p>
<p>Many Israelis believed the  disengagement had reinforced the Palestinian view that they could force Israel  to make concessions through violence and the group that believe Palestine can be  liberated through terror, the radical Islamic organization Hamas, violently  seized control of the Gaza Strip from the Palestinian Authority in 2007. Hamas  continued the attacks on Israel until they finally provoked Israel to mount  Operation Cast Lead in December 2008 to stop the rocket fire.</p>
<p>In the preceding months,  Israel had once again offered the Palestinians an opportunity for statehood,  with Prime Minister Ehud Olmert agreeing to withdraw from all but 6.5 percent of  the West Bank and swapping land inside Israel to make up for keeping the land  where most Jewish settlers live in the major settlement blocs. The Palestinians  once again rejected the deal and now seem to believe it is just a matter of time  before Israelis capitulate to all their demands. The Palestinians’ chief  negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said in a June 2009 interview that “At Camp David  [2000] they offered 90% [actually 97%] and [recently] they offered 100%. So why  should we hurry, after all the injustice we have suffered?”</p>
<p>This belief that time is on  their side has been reinforced by Obama’s position. Following his May 2009  meeting with the president, Abbas expressed the view that Obama’s opposition to  Israeli settlements would eventually bring down the Netanyahu government and he  was content to put off any peace talks until Netanyahu is out of office. Jackson  Diehl wrote in <em>The Washington Post</em> that “Abbas and his team…plan to sit  back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister  from office. ‘It will take a couple of years,’ one official breezily predicted.”  Until then, Abbas stated, “in the West Bank we have a good reality… we are  having a good life.”</p>
<p>For Israelis, Obama’s rush  to diplomacy in an effort to resolve the conflict is also out of sync with their  current political, strategic and psychological outlook. Instead of the  disengagement representing the start of a gradual withdrawal from the  territories, the Palestinian terror campaign has made the prospect for statehood  more remote. Few Israelis today are willing to risk giving up land in the West  Bank that could become a launching pad for rockets that would threaten Tel Aviv,  Jerusalem and Ben-Gurion International Airport.</p>
<p>Six decades of Palestinian  irredentism and violence has not brought them independence. Meanwhile the Jewish  population in the territory they claim has grown from zero to 276,000. Whether that  total will continue to grow remains, as it always has been, in the hands of the  leadership of the Palestinians.</p>
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