יום ראשון, 20 בנובמבר 2011

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

Elder of Ziyon Daily Digest

The Forward's jihad against Touro College and JOU

Posted: 19 Nov 2011 08:21 PM PST

Naomi Zeveloff at The Jewish Daily Forward wrote an article entitled "Is Jerusalem Online U. a Real College"?

The article is trying to create a controversy about how an Israel education and advocacy website has had some of its materials used by Touro College for a small number of students to gain credit.

The headline itself is proof of how little interest the Forward has in telling the truth, because buried in the eighth paragraph the founder of JOU says quite clearly that the website is an education portal, not a university.

Zeveloff's ire seems to be that JOU "boasts an explicitly pro-Israel mission that seems distinctly at odds with academic principles."

Only two classes from JOU can gain credits at Touro, and only one of them, "Israel Inside/Out", is what is making Zeveloff so upset - so much so that she has a follow-up article where she attempts to marshal academic experts to agree with her that such a class should be considered problematic.

I have not taken the course myself, but the list of people giving lectures - while they may be biased - hardly exhibits the fluff that Zeveloff implies. They include Sir Martin Gilbert, Professor Bernard Lewis and Dr. Daniel Pipes, Professor Alan Dershowitz, and Bassem Eid, the executive director for The Palestinian Human Rights Monitoring Group along with others who are without a doubt staunchly pro-Israel like Caroline Glick.

It seems that being angry at a single course in a college that offers hundreds of courses - and the implication that somehow because of that course one should question the academic strength of the entire college - shows far more about the reporter than it does about Touro.

For example, one person that Zeveloff quotes in each of the two articles is Zachary Lockman, NYU professor of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, who said that the syllabus for this course strikes him as "tendentious."

Perhaps. But a quick look at NYU's Middle East courses reveals one called The Emergence of the Modern Middle East, taught this term by Nahid Mozaffari. In that course, only one book is recommended that discusses Israel specifically - and that book is "A History of Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples" by Ilan Pappe. In the introduction to that very book Pappe writes:
My bias is apparent despite the desire of my peers that I stick to facts and the "truth" when reconstructing past realities. I view any such construction as vain and presumptuous. This book is written by one who admits compassion for the colonized not the colonizer; who sympathizes with the occupied not the occupiers.
Which means that according to NYU, the only book worth reading in this course that talks about Israel is written by a pseudo-historian who freely admits that he is not interested in even the pretense of bias and who is against the very idea of Israel.

To me, the idea that a course on Israel in a Jewish school is biased towards Israel, where the contents and goals of the course are open for everyone to see, is far less offensive than the idea that students at a multi-cultural school are force-fed a biased version of history in their courses under the guise of being fair and balanced.

And this is only a tiny example. Who can expect that Joseph Massad's classes at Columbia have anything good to say about Israel, when he states ad nauseum that Israel is racist and colonialist? Indeed, Columbia's new Center for Palestine Studies is apparently a way to bash Israel under the guise of academia.

JOU, on the other hand, does not try to hide its agenda. Zeveloff spends quite a bit of time finding nefarious-sounding connections between JOU and Aish HaTorah and other pro-Israel organizations and funders, all in an attempt to give the reader the impression that something is really rotten there, without quite finding anything substantial.

I am not saying that "Israel: Inside/Out" is a fantastic college course, or that it represents the pinnacle of academic standards. But in a world when students at even Ivy League schools can find dozens of classes that teach nothing and hand out A's as if they were candy, it hardly seems controversial that a Jewish college gives credit for a pro-Israel course.

I would argue that Zeveloff is far guiltier posing as an objective journalist while writing these two hit pieces than Touro or JOU are in openly offering a single for-credit course that is biased towards Israel.

(Disclaimer: I have done some graphics work for JOU, including this poster for an educational initiative they have for Jewish high school students. And one more disclaimer: A long, long time ago, under a different name, I wrote a funny article that ended up being used as source material in at least one college course.)

Barak: During Camp David there was 4x the building activity of today

Posted: 19 Nov 2011 06:00 PM PST

An interesting part of the Charlie Rose interview with Ehud Barak, at about the 25 minute mark of the video.

EHUD BARAK: ...When the Palestinians tell you the Israelis are building in the settlement, it`s propaganda.
CHARLIE ROSE: Wait, wait, wait. Propaganda -- they`re not building in the settlement?
EHUD BARAK: No, we build but we built a building -- we have the --
CHARLIE ROSE: Are you building in East Jerusalem?
EHUD BARAK: Of course. That`s our capital, we build. We do not build in the -- within the Palestinians suburbs. We build in empty areas or Jewish neighborhoods.
But let me tell you honestly, when I was sitting with Clinton and Arafat in relative (ph) negotiations --
CHARLIE ROSE: Camp David.
EHUD BARAK: -- that failed because of (INAUDIBLE), we were building in four times the pace at which we are building now. And when Olmert came so close with some cigarettes and some maps on the table with Abu Mazen, the same Abu Mazen, not Arafat -- to reach an agreement, we were building about twice [the pace]--
(CROSSTALK)
CHARLIE ROSE: Ok. But wait a minute. This is a very important point. Stop, this is a very important point. You`re saying that on the issue of settlement they were prepared to negotiate an agreement and essentially had an agreement that seemed to settle most of the issues and there were settlements being built at that moment and they were not an impediment to an agreement.
EHUD BARAK: Yeah, yeah. I'm saying it. And the reality is that you know after 44 years, the whole Jewish settlement in the whole West Bank together doesn`t cover even 2 percent of the area. If we take 10 percent we have a good settlement bloc. It`s not a problem.
CHARLIE ROSE: But it is a problem and the Palestinians --
EHUD BARAK: No. It became a problem because some without thinking far- sightedly enough, some leaders donated the formula that not a single brick should be put. That`s a little bit too far and the Palestinians immediately adopted this as the standard. They say we are not ready to be less Palestinian than some world leaders.
Hmmm, who could he be referring to?

(h/t Russell)

PalArabs admit using UNESCO for political goals

Posted: 19 Nov 2011 04:23 PM PST

From Ma'an:

UNESCO could help restore the Palestinian Authority's cultural presence in Jerusalem, the president of the Palestinian Committee for Education Culture and Science, Yahya Yakhlaf, said last week in Ramallah.

Yakhlaf, who used to be Minister of Culture and is a well known Palestinian novelist, stressed that Palestinian ambitions within UNESCO would remain merely cultural. "But we can achieve political goals through cultural means," he added.

"In the next months we will register more than 20 Palestinian sites as our national heritage," Ismail Tellawi, secretary general of the Palestinian UNESCO-Commission, said in his Ramallah office.

One of the sites Palestinians will try to register is the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, also known as the Cave of the Patriarchs, where Abraham is believed to be buried.
How many of these sites will not also be important Jewish historical sites?

If you doubt that the "Palestinian Committee for Education Culture and Science" (which is part of the PA government) is political, note that one of their stated goals is "To do best efforts at international, Arab and Islamic levels to emphasize the Palestinian refugees rights to education, to preserve their Palestinian national identity, to enhance their human right to return back to their homeland in accordance with the resolutions of the inter national legality."


In other words, to destroy Israel.

But, it is a cultural thing.
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