The Grand Deception on American Campuses

The Grand Deception on American Campuses

By Sarah N. Stern

On July 25, 2000, the day the Camp David II talks between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat broke off, I was sitting at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Elyakim Rubenstein, who was then the Attorney General of the state of Israel, came to address the group.

I will never forget his words, “What we offered was so generous— in fact others looking back on this might call it irresponsible. There are people now, from the Labor Party, on their way to the airport, crying in their limousines.

What was offered to the Palestinians was: 91 percent of Judea and Samaria, (the West Bank); custodianship over the Temple Mount; “administration” of the Muslim and Christian quarters of East Jerusalem; a return of up to 100,000 Palestinian refugees for family reunification purposes, and international control of the Jordan Valley, with Palestinian Security Forces controlling the border crossing with Jordan.

Arafat did not say, “no”. He did not say “yes.” He simply walked away from the table.

This will go down in history as one of the greatest failures of a leader; someone who would prefer to subjugate his people to more hatred, more one-sided propaganda, more  intifadas, more wars and more violence than to accept an exceedingly reasonable offer.

In fact, when President Bill Clinton was about to leave the White House, he got a phone call from Chairman Arafat. “You, Mr. President, are a great leader”, said the Chairman. President Clinton responded, “No. I am a failure, and you made me one.”

I am telling this story today, because the truth of what I had lived through has constantly been distorted.

Rashid Khalidi, The Edward Said Professor of Emiritus of Modern Arab Studies at Columbia University, has written a book entitled, “Resurrecting Empire”, in which he describes what Israel offered at Camp David II as “so miniscule, it isn’t even worth referring to.”

This grand deception, published in this popular book, is used as a textbook in college classes, throughout the United States.  Total lies and distortions of the truth are footnoted and indexed and passed along as well-accepted dogma.

I tell this story because Columbia has had a huge antisemitism problem for decades. And it is not limited to simply one professor.

On October 8, 2023, Joseph Massad, professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history, wrote in the “Electronic Intifada” of his “jubilation and awe” ; that the “sight of resistance fighters storming Israeli checkpoints separating Gaza from Israel was astounding, not only to Israelis but especially to the Palestinian and Arab peoples who came out across the region to march is support of the Palestinians against their cruel colonizers….No less awesome were the scenes of witnessed by millions of jubilant Arabs who spent the days watching the news, of Palestinian fighters from Gaza breaking through Israel’s prison fence or gliding over it.”

By now, this one-sided agitprop has gravitated away from the Middle Eastern Studies programs, and has steadily infiltrated the humanities, social sciences, and even the schools of Education.

And it is not just limited to Columbia. Cornell University Russel Rickford had called the October 7^th attacks “exhilarating” and “energizing.”  Reminder: This was when 4,000 Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and tortured, murdered, and raped 1200 Israelis, taking 251 hostage, parading them through the streets for people to jeer at.

Osman Umarji, a lecturer at the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine, stated on November 10, 2023, “The Zionists have been exposed for the criminals and blood-thirsty animals that they are. This is a gift from Allah to the world.”

Zareena Grewal, Associate Professor of American Studies, Ethnicity, Race, & Migration and Religious Studies at Yale University wrote on October 7, “Settlers are not civilians. This is not hard”. In another tweet that day, she wrote, “Palestinians have every right to resist through armed struggle, solidarity.”

Nina Farnia, Assistant Professor of Law, at Albany Law School wrote on the morning of October 7^th, “Palestinians are tearing down the walls of colonialism and apartheid”, and that “Palestinians are a beacon for us all.”

What sort of hatred motivates these comments? Is there no empathy for the other side?

We know that the minds of students are like sponges, and that is why in 2008, I had, together with Martin Kramer and Stanley Kurtz successfully worked with Congress to amend Title VI of the Higher Education Act to have our regional and area studies demonstrate “a diversity of viewpoints” and “wide range of perspectives.”

The amendments to this law have been totally overlooked and ignored by the universities. The trickle-down effect has exploded, and our nation’s youth are being brainwashed by professors who sympathize more with brutal, barbaric terrorists than with the courageous survival of the people of Israel.

It is our younger generation of Americans that are losing out. If this is whom they respect, what does that tell us about their academic inquiry, their  integrity, their sense of justice, of truth, their basic values?

Sarah N. Stern is Founder and President of EMET, a think tank and policy institute specializing in the Middle East.