The Middle East is crucial to our national security interests, but it is imploding in internal turmoil and murderous inter-ethnic and inter-religious warfare. It is replete with failed states and barbarism. There are millions of displaced persons and hundreds of thousands of deaths. The United States’ efforts, the expenditure of our resources and the lives of our soldiers in Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan have failed to bring stability, democracy or human rights. Our policies are in disarray.
Yet, since at least 1965, the federal government, under the Higher Education Act, has given millions of dollars to American universities in order to secure accurate and deeply informed knowledge and understanding of international studies, including the Middle East, its ideologies, political movements and economic pressures.
The UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, designated by the federal government as a National Resource Center of Excellence, is one of the 129 international and foreign language centers receiving federal funding. The center received more than $1,300,000 from the Department of Education under Title VI of the Higher Education Act between 2010 and 2013. Part of that funding was to inform the public about the Middle East, and as Congress directed, to do so in a way that would be balanced and unbiased. As the law states, activities funded by Title VI grants would “reflect diverse perspectives and a wide range of views.”
However, a study just released by the AMCHA Initiative – “Antisemitic Activity and Anti-Israel Bias at the Center for Near East Studies, University of California at Los Angeles, 2010-2013” – indicates that CNES violated the law’s requirement to be unbiased and instead promoted anti-Semitic discourse and anti-Israel bias. In the study, all public events that were recorded on audiotape or videotaped occurring during 2010-2013, sponsored or co-sponsored by CNES, pertaining to Israel or the Arab-Israel wars, were analyzed for anti-Semitic discourse and anti-Israel bias using a definition of anti-Semitic activity derived from the U.S. State Department, as well as a definition of bias as pervasive criticism of Israeli government policies, society and/or people.
Despite the perfect storm of historical changes occurring in the Middle East – the Arab Spring leading to the Arab Winter, the Egyptian uprisings, Syria’s civil war, the Libyan government dissolution – CNES showed a disproportionate, excessive focus on Israel and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Of the Middle Eastern countries considered by CNES, more than 1/4 of the public events were devoted to Israel. Of all the Middle East political conflicts, a majority of events – 61 percent – focused only on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Moreover, 93 percent of the events discussing Israel showed anti-Israel bias. A large majority, 75 percent, included anti-Semitic content. The discourse demonized and delegitimized Israel, with a significant minority condoning terrorism against Israeli civilians, as well as promoting boycott and divestment efforts.
The bias is not surprising, as all three CNES directors had publicly expressed support for boycott, divestment or sanctions against Israel, including calling for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Such a boycott could constitute a violation of the requirement of CNES as a National Resource Center to maintain linkages with institutions of higher education in the Middle East.
In addition, all three directors, despite directing a program that is intended to encourage study abroad in countries in the Middle East, have publicly opposed the University of California Education Abroad Program in Israel, on the highly dubious grounds that Israel discriminates against Palestinians and deprives Palestinians of the “right to education.”
Although millions of tax dollars under Title VI of the Higher Education Act have been accepted by UCLA, the troubling anti-Israel bias of CNES has distorted its scholarly and educational mission, and has violated its federal funding requirements. By engaging in an obsessive focus on the one stable nation that has established civil rights for its ethnic, religious and gender minorities, CNES failed to analyze and predict the disturbances and chaos in the Middle East. Misled by personal political biases of the directors and other faculty, CNES has failed in its mission to understand and inform the public about this turbulent area that continues to be a crucial threat to the security of the U.S.
As a citizen, taxpayer, professor emeritus of UCLA and faculty member for more than 30 years, I am outraged.
Beckwith is a professor emeritus and the co-founder of the AMCHA Initiative, a nonprofit organization that combats anti-Semitism on college campuses across the United States.
The SJP should also be investigated for its systematic promotion of anti-Jewish hatred through anti-Israel libel and fraudulent abuse of human rights language.
—all three directors, despite directing a program that is intended to encourage study abroad in countries in the Middle East, have publicly opposed the University of California Education Abroad Program in Israel, on the highly dubious grounds that Israel discriminates against Palestinians and deprives Palestinians of the “right to education.”—
contrary to claims made by some at the UCLA center, there are many 1000s of Arab students in Israeli colleges and universities. At the Hebrew University on Mt Scopus, Arabs make up about 15 % of the student body. The Arabs living in the Palestinian Authority zones of control have a variety of higher education institutions to choose from: Bir Zeit University [funded in whole or in part by US AID], al-Najjah Univ in Nablus, the Islamic Univ in Gaza, etc etc.
This is typical of what goes on in Middle East studies department across the nation. Students deserve better than this indoctrination.
Don’t forget Omar Barghouti, the international anti-Israel agitator. Born in Qatar, raised in Egypt, he moved to the West Bank and got his higher education at Tel Aviv University (not to mention Columbia). He either refuses to tell audiences where he was born or claims Tel Aviv as his homeland since he is supposedly Palestinian.
I do not agree with AMCHA that promoting boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel is anti-semitic. AMCHA credibility is damaged by this assertion.The BDS movement is a non-violent response against the state of Israel in response to violations of international law, not against semites. BDS deserves to be supported.
Martin Kramer:
Gaza is a place with no Israeli settlements, from which Israel has totally withdrawn to the 1967 lines, and which nonetheless has become a Hamas terror state. That’s what happens in conditions of Gazafication. So when people say that in a two-state solution, Palestinians would have a “right of return” to the West Bank and not Israel, I do not find that particularly reassuring either. Any influx of Palestinians across the Jordan poses a problem for Israel, and it is naive to dismiss it. I would like to hear how, in a two-state scenario, Gazafication of the West Bank can be prevented. I haven’t heard it yet.
Neither have I.
Read The Haj by Leon Uris. And ask these questions:
What year did the nation of Palestine come into existance?
What were its national borders and what year did it cease to exist?
What currency did the nation of Palestine use and why is there no history of it?
Name one leader to the “nation of Palestine” prior to Yasser Arafat.
The Haj by Leon Uris (A Primer on the “right to return” scam)
Lessons from ‘The Haj’ A book review by Joseph Puder
http://www.frontpagemag.com/2011/joseph-puder/lessons-from-the-haj/print/
and
Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America by Brigitte Gabriel (These two books should be sold as a gift set.)
Fiction: The Source by James Michener-Need proof of the Jewish claim to Jerusalem?
Non-Fiction: Archaeology Exclusive: Ancient Gold Treasure Discovered in Jerusalem https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRP-qAzLIRo
The Book of Jewish Knowledge by Nathan Ausubel
The Archaeology of Ancient Israel by Amnon Ben-Tor
Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld, (CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood), That’s Conspiring to Islamize America by Gaubatz and Sperry
Getting to Know the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)
http://www.danielpipes.org/biblio_cair.php (Assorted articles)
CAIR: Islamists Fooling the Establishment by Daniel Pipes and Sharon Chadha (MEQ article)
meforum-org/916/cair-islamists-fooling-the-establishment#_ftnref60
Slavery, Terrorism and Islam, (and Holocaust in Rwanda), by Peter Hammond (This is an Ass-Kicking little resource of 276 pages.)
The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism by Andrew G. Bostom (Read the “Note on the Cover Art-Execution of a Moroccan Jewess” or this book Review/article by Benjamin District; “Jewess Heroine-Sol Hachuel” http://myrightword.blogspot.com/2008/02/jewess-heroine-sol-hachuel.html
Supplemental Article “The First and Last Enemy: Jew Hatred in Islam.” by Bostom
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=28549
The Legacy of Jihad by Andrew G. Bostom MD
Book Review-The Legacy of Jihad by: Alyssa A. Lappen
http://archive.frontpagemag.com/readArticle.aspx?ARTID=7334
A Concise History of the Crusades by Thomas F. Madden
Indoctrination U: The Left’s War Against Academic Freedom and The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America by David Horowitz
“Indoctrinate U.” Documentary Watch This Documentary!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHyvRHrYYBA
Ivory Towers On Sand: The Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America by Martin Kramer
The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men by Christina Hoff Sommers (Go to Amazon and read the Preface to this and the Introduction to “Taken Into Custody” by Stephen Baskerville; Your days of believing you live in a free country will disappear when you finish this book.)
Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals and Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores by Michelle (the hottest woman on the planet) Malkin
Infiltration: How Muslim Spies and Subversives have Penetrated Washington by Paul Sperry
American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us by Steven Emerson
The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America by Andre C. McCarthy
Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance by Pamela Geller
Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Justice Not Vengeance by Simon Wiesenthal
“Disinformation: Former Spy Chief Reveals Secret Strategies for Undermining Freedom, Attacking Religion and Promoting Terrorism” by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa and Prof. Ronald J. Rychlak
“The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia” by Tim Tzouliadis
Tortured for Christ by Richard Wurmbrand: Founder of The Voice of the Martyrs.
The New Moody Atlas of the Bible by Barry J. Beitzel
The Al Qaeda Reader by Raymond Ibrahim
Reliance of the Traveller: A Classic Manual of Islamic Sacred Law
Sahih al-Bukhari (With Sheikh Humaid’s article on Jihad and plug by Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid)
The Koran: Pickthall
Quran: Yusuf Ali: Translated by Prof. Syed Vickar Ahmed
Holy Qur’an with Commentary: Maulana Muhammad Ali
The Second Message of Islam by Mahmoud Mohamed Taha
The Qur’anic Concept of War Brig. S. K. Malik
Not Peace but a Sword: The Great Chasm Between Christianity and Islam by Robert Spencer
Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians by Raymond Ibrahim
From Time Immemorial by Joan Peters
A Lethal Obsession by Robert S. Wistrich
‘How Saudi Publications on Hate Ideology invade American Mosques’ -Testimony of Freedom House director before Senate Committee
militantislammonitor.org/article/id/1245
Jihad & Terrorism Studies Project September 26, 2002 Special Report No.10
Friday Sermons in Saudi Mosques: Review and Analysis
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/736.htm
“Incontrovertible evidence” that Saudi government officials helped 9/11 hijackers financially and logistically (Jihad Watch)
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2013/12/incontrovertible-evidence-that-saudi-government-officials-helped-911-hijackers-financially-and-logis.html
Full Story NY Post
http://nypost.com/2013/12/15/inside-the-saudi-911-coverup/