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[Order a copy of Robert Spencer’s forthcoming book, Muhammad: A Critical Biography, by clicking here.]
Campus fads come and go, but we’ve come a long way from swallowing goldfish, stuffing as many people as possible into phone booths, and the ever-popular drinking until you pass out. The latest craze among college kids is, as Sen. John Fetterman (D-Penn.) indelibly put it, “living in a pup tent for Hamas.” No sooner do cops clear out one encampment than another one springs up, and it looks as if they’re going to be with us for the rest of this semester and may even be revived once the universities reconvene next fall. This is, however, not even close to being a spontaneous phenomenon. The groundwork for what we’re seeing now has been laid for years.
Not only is it not spontaneous, it’s clearly orchestrated from outside the colleges and universities where the encampments have sprung up. New York City Mayor Eric Adams has acknowledged that “professionals” were involved in the Columbia University encampment. Another sign that this isn’t exactly a grass-roots movement is the fact that a large number of the pro-Hamas protesters have identical tents. Which well-heeled leftist bought them? We don’t know and may never know, but someone certainly appears to have done some buying in bulk.
Still, the movement needed foot soldiers. The cadres had to be recruited and indoctrinated. That has been the work of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the professional organization of Middle East Studies professors at colleges and universities nationwide.
MESA, whose members dominate the Middle East Studies faculties of most colleges and universities in the United States, says that it is “a non-profit association that fosters the study of the Middle East, promotes high standards of scholarship and teaching, and encourages public understanding of the region and its peoples through programs, publications and services that enhance education, further intellectual exchange, recognize professional distinction, and defend academic freedom.” That strikes all the right notes, but as you likely suspect, the reality is not so noble and high-minded. MESA is a far-left, pro-jihad activist organization that is dedicated to providing an academic sheen to Marxist agitprop and Palestinian jihad propaganda.
To see what MESA busies itself with doing, scan the 25 items that are currently on the front page of the news section of the MESA website. Two stories are pinned to the top of the page; one of them is actually on the side of genuine justice and human rights, decrying the Iranian Islamic regime’s dismissal of professors who supported the recent Woman, Life, Freedom protests in Iran.
The other pinned story, however, is entitled “Campus Climate Resources,” which gives the initial impression that it’s propaganda about the myth of human-caused climate change; it’s actually about the “climate” on campus regarding support for the Palestinian jihad against Israel. MESA here offers an assortment of links to this article denouncing the alleged “repression of protest on campuses,” the alleged “targeting of Palestinian students in Israeli universities,” and the like.
One of these linked articles carries this headline: “MESA Board Joint Statement with CAF [MESA’s Committee on Academic Freedom] regarding the ongoing genocidal violence against the Palestinian people and their cultural heritage in Gaza.” That article asserts that “the ongoing attack on Gaza by the state of Israel…has now claimed more than 100,000 Palestinians dead and wounded according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.”
Despite still being offered by MESA as if it contained current information, the article has not been revised to reflect Hamas’ admission that its casualty figures have been wildly inflated or any indication that the UN still carries on its list of journalists supposedly killed by the Israelis the name of a man who is very much alive. In MESA’s world, only the Palestinian side of the story is told, and it is believed without question. That is what the self-righteous and ignorant students who are in the encampments have been told, and that’s all they know.
Many of the other articles on the first page of MESA’s news section are letters to or from various universities regarding MESA protesting against the dismissal of such professors or the disciplining of pro-Hamas students. There is nothing, however, about the pro-Israel professor Shai Davidai getting barred from the Columbia campus, but plenty about how the cosseted toy revolutionaries on the campus lawn are being oppressed and their rights denied.
Given MESA’s relentless anti-Israel stance, it is easy to see how university students all over the nation have gotten the idea that supporting Hamas’ genocidal jihad is right and righteous. Yet MESA, like the universities where these students are posturing and screaming today, was not always this bad. Its Founding Fellows include genuine scholars such as S. D. Goitein, Majid Khadduri, and Franz Rosenthal. Among its Honorary Fellows were some of the most consequential figures in the study of Islam, Arabs, and the Middle East, including Sir Hamilton Gibb, Philip K. Hitti, W. Montgomery Watt, Maxime Rodinson, and Annemarie Schimmel.
These actual scholars have been followed, however, by today’s crop, which is a rogue’s gallery of academic hacks and propagandists. Yet their effectiveness cannot be denied: the pro-Hamas encampments on college campuses are their handiwork.
“Why is the Pro-Palestinian Encampment Craze Sweeping Our Colleges?”
Why? That is down to envy of Jewish achievements throughout history fuelled by the willful ignorance of history.
How? That is down to George Soros’ Open Society Foundations funding.
Useful idiots supply the crowds. George Soros’ ‘Open’ Society funds them.
The depraved psychopathic murderous vile berserk 1400 year old scourge of Islam is working overtime in America.
Especially on US university campuses.
Anyone remember what Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVous did to stop it?
Neither can I!
A for-profit association disguised as a non-profit that fosters the whitewash of the Near East, promotes non existent standards of scholarship and teaching, and engenders public misunderstanding of the region and its peoples through programs, publications and services that increase ignorance, further stupid exchange, recognize incompetent distinction, and destroy academic freedom.
From what you wrote, MESA is even worse than MEMRI. Much worse. As far as I can tell, MEMRI just lies about the Near and Middle East and islam to protect them from deserved criticism and censure, and to prevent people from knowing the ugly truth about them. MESA is obviously an organization that actively fosters and supports jihad under the false guise of scholarship.
Every aspect of islam and every trait of moslems is contemptible.
It goes back decades to the likes of Edward Said. And he only could get where he did because of the likes of Marcuse, Adorno and the Frankfurt School who landed here prior to WW2 and then stabbed us in the back, along with Horace Mann and John Dewey, by hijacking education.
I suspect that the major funding behind this comes ultimately from the Iranian regime via the Muslim Brotherhood and its numerous affiliated organisations and other Muslim states in the Middle East rather than the usual leftist billionaires in US such as Soros.
Or Soros and the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations.
The Tides Foundation and many other sources. There’s no dearth of funding for anti-American, Israeli, Jewish and white “causes.”
I suspect that the Saudis are funding the Democratic Party.
Islamic jihad, Marxism and Fascism all rolled into one. Why pick just one hellish dystopian nightmare when you can have all three?
Holy Beelzebub, Batman. Are there enough Patriots left to put em all in a burning trash can?!
The islamic terrorist take over of the educational system has been in the making for the decades.
No, it’s the communist takeover of education. See Paulo Freire. Islam and the Left have allied to destroy Western Civilization and that’s how the Islamists get their ugly mitts in this.
Photos of the encampments in Australia depict the same kind of tents. It’s a global operation that took months of planning. Expect more of the same this summer at the conventions.
Ami Horowitz once again showed his worth.
He’s got balls. Before he went to Sweden and visited a “No go” zone that we’re told don’t exist. They do, and it nearly cost Ami his life.
Another time he waved an ISIS flag on campus. Resulting in students engaging in supportive, cordial conversation.
Then he waved an Israeli flag that brought intense hostility.
This time he walked up to campus holding an American flag.
He determined not to argue pro Israel, so as to see if their beef was only with Israel attacking Gaza. Turns out it wasn’t.
Two arabic speaking low-lifes viciously attacked him – aiming specifically for the spleen & kidney.
These low-life pricks are mimicking perfectly the Brown-shirt students at Vienna University (and then spread to others) in the early 30’s.
The FBI know exactly who is funding it, and how, who is organising it, and how, where the equipment comes from, who is doing the training, just as they did in 2020 with the BLM terrorist sessions.
They don’t do anything about it because it serves the goal of The Swamp. The only question is just how many FBI Agents are directly involved.
You’re an optimist. I’m not sure they know or are even trying to find out.
Robert, remind everyone of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Strategic Memorandum where they outline the conquest of North America through cultural Jihad.
Infiltration of education, media, courts, and all levels of governance. It is playing out in full view for every to witness.
This infiltration of the Iranian backed MB is happening throughout the liberal West not just North America….and not forgetting South America also.
these arrogant, dumb ass snowflakes need a serious trip to the wood shed. As for the evil scum funding them, enabling them….they need a skull cracking.
What they need is … community service in a real cesspool … like Pakistan.
Doing something like … educating women …
Somewhere where they will not be protected by security or the tourist industry.
The ones who survive will come back sufficiently “red-pilled” …
Frighteningly, I see a much wider plan. The jihad surrounds us in every town waiting the command and our real military is disbanded to make way for it’s trans leftist powerless sham…while Islam has utterly no civilizational skills or merit, it possesses the savage vileness of treachery and desire to slaughter everything in its path, including our utterly pathetic leaders in a bloody war to end this beautiful pinnacle of civilization. May God bless and save America from his wretched leftist coup however He sees fit, and forgive us our faithlessness.
Amen. … And yes. Much wider plan.
Concerning the American Universities and Colleges across the United States that have heads of those institutions ‘sold out” to the influence of the stealth jihadists, who are, no doubt ,backed by oil rich nation as Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Therefore, those places of “higher education” which have become more of indoctrination centers for Islam and Islamic causes rather than genuine places of advanced education.
This is betrayal of all those young people who entered into those universities and colleges who sincerely wanted a actual, real, education. This is also betrayal the true spirit of America.
For example the former United States President, William Howard Taft, who in a speech, wisely, declared, “Anti-Semitism is a noxious weed that should be cut out. It has no place in America.”
Furthermore there should really no place in America for such un-American indoctrination centers, therefore such universities and collages need to reform or closed down, For those places are now doing more harm than good.
As the other former US President Theodore Roosevelt, had, rightly, announced in a speech that “There can be no fifty –fifty Americanism in this country. There is room here for only one hundred percent Americanism, only for those who are Americans and nothing else.”
Some of the reason for this is because many universities and colleges across the United States and in the United Kingdom have been thoroughly infiltrated and influenced by the insidious stealth jihadists.
There may be little doubt that those stealth jihadists are backed and funded by Qatar as well as oil rich Saudi Arabia.
In addition. It should be made clear that “Palestine” is a man-made fiction and a Muslim fantasy. In contrast, Israel is an historic and Bible based reality , Psalm 135:4.
Why is this Anti-American, Pro-Hamas, Pro-Hate-America Palestine, and Anti-Israel fad sweeping campuses now? If we use Ockham’s Razor and pare it down to one cause, it is because the elected office holders in National Government are too corrupt to do their job. Otherwise, it is Because (1) the U.S. Government in power right now finds it useful; (2) because U.S. National Governments of the past three or four administrations have ignored the Anti-American Billionaires, Millionaires, and Foundations inside the national borders who fund chaos and revolution; (3) because the past three or four National Government administrations ignored it when a non-citizen Muslim Marxist named Obama ran for President and was elected; (4) because U.S. universities, almost all of them, have been taken over by Neo-Marxists; and (5) because only the alternative media attend to what really is happening in and to America and the world and an ignorant populace is content to bask in a blissful ignorance. Basically, though, it is because of a corrupt Congress. and political parties.