A Program of the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies at Princeton University

It’s common knowledge that Middle East Studies programs at America’s elite universities have become ground zero for violent anti-Israel incitement, featuring professors, courses and conferences that excuse—and in some cases, even support—Palestinian terrorism.

It comes as no surprise, then, that Princeton University ’s Institute for the Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa , and Central Asia , created in 2003 and originally financed by the royal family of Morocco , is offering a new fellowship based on the righteousness of the Palestinian cause and the illegitimacy of Israel .

Once again, another Arab-financed and sponsored curriculum on another prestigious American university campus seeks to further roil the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, calling for the dismantling of Israel by classifying the Jewish state as the Palestinians’ “homeland.” At the same time, the word “Diaspora,” a term created to describe the world’s Jews scattered in exile after the destruction of the Second Temple by Rome in 70 A.D., is being further corrupted to describe Palestinian Arabs worldwide.

 

More than anything else, the fellowship description of “Society under Occupation: Contemporary Palestinian Politics, Culture and Identity” reads like a Palestinian propaganda pamphlet:

 

“Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has now persisted for over thirty-seven years, during which time the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied territories has grown to hundreds of thousands and Israeli control over the territories has been strengthened by the use of checkpoints, by-pass roads, military engagement and, most recently, the construction of a wall separating Palestinians from Israel and from one another. Despite living under occupation, as refugees, or outside their homeland, Palestinians have maintained a vibrant cultural and political life. In 2005-2006, the Institute will focus research on contemporary Palestinian life, both under occupation and in the diaspora. We wish to explore Palestinian culture, society and religious life, as well as Palestinian national identity and contemporary Palestinian political, legal and ethical thought. We also hope to examine Palestinians’ understanding of dispossession and occupation, and their visions of a post-occupation future.”

 

This description is blatantly biased against Israel . It implies that the areas of the West Bank under dispute are all “occupied,” that hundreds of thousands of Israelis, even those living in Jerusalem , are “settlers,” and that Israel somehow seeks to “control” the Palestinians with “checkpoints,” “bypass roads” and “military engagement.” There is no mention that Arab terrorism and suicide bombings necessitated these activities of normal self-defense.

 

That the 37 years of “occupation” are a response to an Arab world that has vowed, since Israel ’s creation, to violently destroy her, is never mentioned. Nor is the fact that, with the Oslo Accords, Israel gave back nearly everything for a promised “peace” that has been nothing but an ongoing war of attrition against her people, costing the lives of over 1,000 Israelis and maiming for life 10,000 more.

 

Yet the fellowship description continues by stating that the Palestinians are “living under occupation as refugees” and are “outside their homeland.” Since 98 percent of the Palestinian population in the West Bank and Gaza live under the control of the Palestinian Authority, that statement is an outright falsehood. And “outside their homeland” means inside Israel ’s 1948 boundaries. In reality, most of the “refugees” from 1948 are long since dead, their ancestors still claiming to be “refugees.”

 

By implication, “checkpoints and bypass roads” are also mentioned in the fellowship description as if they exist to deny Palestinian Arabs their rights. Checkpoints have been proven to stop suicide bombers sent and paid for by the Palestinian government, as well as the smuggling of armed terrorists who murder Israelis, even non-Jews. That bypass roads were created because Palestinians shoot at Israelis on the highways in the West Bank isn’t clarified, nor is the fact that West Bank Palestinian Arabs, after passing a security check, are then free to use those same bypass roads.

 

And of course, the Security Fence erected to keep out suicide bombers that the Palestinian Authority praises as martyrs and rewards with money is a “wall,” separating the Palestinians from the Israelis—according to the fellowship.

 

According to Miguel Centeno, the acting director of the Institute for Transregional Study at Princeton , the purpose of the fellowship is to “bring people onto campus to expand intellectual diversity.” Centeno stated that “ Princeton ’s role as an international university is to support the work of scholars that we consider important.”

 

When I asked Centeno about the program description, he maintained that it was unbiased. I detailed my criticisms as outlined above and he responded, “We cannot write a proposal that takes in all claims by each side.” He continued, “The job of the University is not to make ideological choices.”

 

“Not even to mention terrorist attacks and their effect on Israelis?” I asked.

 

“I feel perfectly comfortable with the paragraph as it stands,” replied Centeno in an irritated tone. “It was approved by Princeton and we will stand institutionally by the paragraph.”

 

When I had asked Centeno for the name of the author, he initially declined to reveal it but finally said, “You can assume I wrote it.”

 

The announcement for the fellowship on Princeton’s own website makes clear that the description’s perspective will be the “theme” of the university’s Middle East studies department through 2005 and 2006; that is, that the Palestinians are dispossessed as a result of Israel’s existence, and that Israel is subjugating them and using military might against them without provocation, thus keeping them from their “homeland.” In short, the course is little more than an Arab-subsidized activism program against Israel and its Jewish population.

 

Centeno himself claimed that he has no objection to Israel ’s existence but “does not like Ariel Sharon.” One wonders why Centeno objects to an Israeli prime minister who withdrew from the West Bank 14 times to effect a cease-fire, encountering each time more terrorist attacks on his own people. Indeed, Israel has endured some 22,000 terror attacks by Palestinians since the second Intifada began in 2000.

 

On the subject of Palestinian and Arab terrorism, Centeno said he hoped the program would help people to “understand” terrorism, “not excuse or condone it, but explain why terrorism occurs, why does a society produce this?”

 

It is a near certainty that the program will blame Palestinian terrorism on Israeli “occupation,” “checkpoints” and “military engagement” and not on the thugs who run the PLO and encourage such activities among the Palestinian population as they steal their foreign aid money.  Terrorism has become something to be explained and understood in Middle East studies departments at our universities, not something to be combated and eliminated.

 

Further inspection of the previous fellows and visiting professors under the program reveals that even the Israeli or Jewish academics in the department are chosen for their anti-Israel zeal. Past recipients have included Yoav Peled of the political science department at Tel Aviv University , who made news in 1997 after his niece was murdered in a suicide bombing by Palestinians. Peled flamboyantly invited a PLO spokesperson to the girl's funeral and, at the funeral, explained how her death was all the fault of then-Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. Peled pronounced this view to the world in an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times, where he argued that Netanyahu was the cause of Palestinian terrorism.

 

Richard Falk, another past fellow, wrote in The Nation that the United States and Israel are wrong to defend themselves from terrorists and that such self-defense contributes to a “cycle of violence,” as if not reacting would somehow deter those who commit terror attacks. Falk, during his earlier years at Princeton , was a cheerleader for the Ayatollah Khomeini, writing in 1979 that, “The depiction of Khomeini as fanatical, reactionary, and the bearer of crude prejudices seems certainly and happily false. Iran may yet provide us with a desperately-needed model of humane government for a third-world country.” Falk has also called Israel ’s Prime Minister Sharon a “war criminal.”

 

Sylvain Cypel, a former reporter for Le Monde (the French and EU have been notorious for funding PLO terrorist groups), was another fellowship recipient.  Cypel regularly writes of Israeli “oppression.”

 

Of even greater interest is past fellowship recipient Anders Strindberg. Despite common knowledge that the Christian population in the West Bank has shrunk enormously due to Muslim persecution, Strindberg writes that the Christians in the Holy Land were victims of the “Judaization” that created Israel . He even accuses Israel (falsely) of desecrating and destroying Christian religious shrines, something the Palestinians have done on more than one occasion. He also refers to Israel within the 1948 borders as “occupied Palestine .”

 

Strindberg’s rants against Israel are particularly troubling, since Israel officially recognizes Christianity as a religion with freedom of worship whereas Article 7 of the Palestinian Authority Constitution states that Islam is not only the official religion of Palestine but also the basis behind all law. The PA constitution is similar to that of Saudi Arabia , where Christian persecution is well known. Indeed, the Christian community in the West Bank has appealed to the pope himself to save them from Muslim persecution. Yet Strindberg—who has also praised the Shia terrorist group Hizbollah (which has played a huge role in the destabilization of formerly Christian Lebanon)— writes that it is Israel ’s Jews who are persecuting Arab Christians. Strindberg also says Christian Zionists are under the control of “neoconservatives” and the “ Israel lobby” in America , and emphasizes the opinion of Mahmoud Abbas that Israel is really Palestine . He doesn’t mention that Abbas’ Ph.D. thesis denied that the Holocaust ever occurred in Europe .

 

One has to wonder if Strindberg has even heard about the 2002 siege of the Church of the Nativity, where Christian priests were held hostage by terrorists from the PLO. When the church was finally freed, it was discovered that the Palestinian terrorists inside had defecated on Christian shrines and stolen all the gold icons.

 

But Strindberg is just one example of Princeton ’s “diversity” of views in Middle East studies. Incredibly, I could not find any past fellowship recipients who actively promoted Israel ’s right to exist in published documents, nor any who disproved and condemned Palestinian propaganda and lies against the Jewish state.

 

Centeno can’t see the abject bias in the fellowship description for his department’s theme for next year, because such demonization against Israel now passes as diversity— no matter how untrue the academic “studies” against Israel may be. Thus, the “theme” of Princeton ’s Transregional Study department for 2005-2006 will be an extension of the Israel-bashing that has always existed there.

 

Centano insisted that all programs in his department are funded directly by the university, but even programs funded by Princeton University always present notorious Israel-bashers and haters such as Hussein Ibish, formerly communications director of the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, and Mustapha Barghouti, a candidate who ran against Mahmoud Abbas in the recent Palestinian Authority election for president. Barghouti, who once headed the Palestinian communist party, or the PPP, had the endorsement during the election of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The U.S. State Department has classified the PFLP as an illegal terrorist organization.

 

Any effort to bring peace to the Middle East and end the War on Terror through education should be based on objectivity that recognizes Israel ’s right to exist, its attempts at a peaceful settlement and the losses its people have suffered, as well as viable workable solutions. The message from Princeton ’s Transregional Study department is simply the unending vilification of Israel , much of it without being fairly or factually developed, along with attempts to validate the Palestinians as the “victims” of Israelis.

 

The War of 1948 (started by the Arab world) left a greater number of Jewish refugees who fled to Israel —and, it should be mentioned, today comprise the majority of Israel ’s population—than Palestinians who fled during the conflict. Yet, who in succeeding generations of Princeton’s students will even know that basic information if the university’s Middle East studies department teaches them the unending Palestinian canard of “occupation” when referring to all of Israel, or of Jewish “persecution" (despite Muslim Arabs practicing real religious exclusion)?

 

Step by step, our universities are becoming like the indoctrination centers that exist in the universities of the totalitarian Arab world. Princeton ’s Institute for Transregional Study’s theme for 2005-2006 is a prime example of that transformation.

 

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Additional Statement from the Transregional Institute and Princeton University
on our 2005-2006 Theme

(Posted February 4, 2005)

In 2005-2006 The Princeton Transregional Institute will focus on the nature of Palestinian society. Whatever one's views about the history of the region or the best ways to shape its future, it seems evident to us that all would benefit from a greater understanding of Palestinian society and culture. There are close relationships between the United States and Israel and there is considerable study in this country of Israeli society and culture, but little is known about contemporary  Palestinian culture, society, political thinking, and identity. We need to understand this culture within its political context, but our focus will be on the society and culture, not on the politics. We will be approaching our study from a variety of perspectives, aided by speakers who will represent a variety of viewpoints.

Palestinians perceive themselves to be a society under occupation. Clearly there are different views about the causes of this occupation, and even about whether "occupation" is an appropriate word.  Our focus is on the society that has developed under the conditions that exist, however those conditions came into being.   Under these conditions, how do  Palestinians function?  How have they maintained their educational system, written novels, and negotiated their social lives?  How do they  understand the violence of their situation?  What can we learn from the majority of Palestinians who abjure violence and those who openly call for non-violent responses?  What sort of future do the Palestinians dream of, and what kind of future do they think is likely for their society?  What does “peace” mean for Palestinians?  How do Palestinians regard Israel and Israelis, and how do they envision their future relations with Israel when peace finally arrives? 

These are among the important questions we intend to address.  We hope to explore them by bringing to campus those who can speak directly to Palestinian family life, education, legal and moral thought, literature, the arts, and other aspects of culture.  The  lecturers we host will be able to inform us about the human dimensions of contemporary Palestinian life.

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Comments on our 2005-2006 Theme from the Princeton Community

A Letter from Jonathan M. Fluger ‘08 and Jeremy B. Golubcow-Teglasi ‘06

(Posted October 17, 2005)

We met with Professor Miguel Centeno at the beginning of last semester (Spring 2005) to outline our concerns about this year’s theme for the Transregional Institute. While we appreciate his care in responding to our points, we think that some questions remain and deserve to be shared with the wider Princeton community:

If the Institute means to productively study the formation of Palestinian identity, it should grapple with the complex interplay of social, cultural, and political forces shaping Palestinian life throughout history. To this end, the institute must broaden its focus beyond the relatively recent development known as “Israeli occupation.” In the modern period, the Arabs of Palestine have been ruled first by the Ottomans, then by the British, then by the Egyptians and Jordanians, and only finally by the Israelis. A full and methodologically sound investigation of Palestinian identity cannot ignore the Palestinians’ experience with non-Israeli occupiers. The exclusive focus on Israeli occupation—a period of less than forty years—as the determinate influence on Palestinian identity prejudices the research that the Transregional Institute intends to conduct.

Moreover, the fellowship advertisement does not mention studying the role of (Islamic) religion or religious thought on Palestinian identity. The addendum speaks of wanting to study Palestinian attitudes of non-violence, but there is no mention of its counterpart— Palestinian attitudes in support of violence and terrorism, including incitement against Jews, Americans, and Westerners. There is no mention of studying the motives and influence of the Palestinian Authority, the small elite that has dominated Palestinian public life for more than the last decade.

It is plausible to suppose that the self-definition of Palestinians has been to some degree constituted by and through encounters with the State of Israel. But it cannot be presumed, without justification, that Israeli occupation is necessarily more germane than all other factors in explaining current trends in Palestinian society. The current theme—which presupposes that Israeli occupation is the key to understanding Palestinian identity—is incompatible with an open-ended inquiry into the roots of contemporary Palestinian social phenomena.

We are puzzled by the terminology the Institute uses in describing the scholarship of this year’s Research Associate, Dr. Lauren Erdreich ‘95. In Dr. Erdreich’s writing, Israeli Arabs are apparently not called by that usual academic and journalistic convention but are instead “Palestinian Israelis” or “Palestinian women inside Israel.” Does this mean that for the Transregional Institute, Israeli Arabs—whether in Jaffa, Haifa, or Sakhnin—are Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, even if they were not refugees in 1948? Does this mean that in the eyes of the Transregional Institute, Israel, even within the June 4, 1967 borders, is an illegitimate occupying force? And therefore, what does the Transregional Institute mean by wanting to study “[Palestinian] visions of a post-occupation future”? If Israel is synonymous with occupation, then does “a post-occupation future” mean a future without Israel?

3. Why does the revised statement assert that there is comparatively little study of Palestinian identity?

The revised statement that was put out on February 4, 2005 states: “There is considerable study in this country of Israeli society and culture, but little is known about contemporary Palestinian culture, society, political thinking, and identity.” This is not supported by the available data. Among scholars affiliated with the Middle East Studies Association, 297 members list “ Palestine” as an interest whereas only 181 list “ Israel.” (1)

Palestinian society under occupation was also the Institute’s central theme during the 2000-2001 academic year. That year’s program focused on the thesis that the Palestinians had suffered despite and because of the Oslo peace process. The speakers that year, who included Edward Said, Robert Fisk, Ilan Pappe, Amira Hass, and WWS Professor Emeritus Richard Falk, all applied a near-identical post-colonial analysis to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We wonder why the Institute is studying the same (Israeli-Palestinian) conflict with the same (post-colonial) methodology that it used five years ago?

Signed,

Jonathan M. Fluger ‘08
Jeremy B. Golubcow-Teglasi ‘06
October 9, 2005

(1) Research by Martin Kramer ‘75 *78 *82, www.geocities.com/martinkramerorg/2005_03_21.htm

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Dr. Lauren Erdreich responds to the Fluger/Golubcow-Teglasi posting of October 17, 2005:

(Posted October 28, 2005)

In response to the statement:

“We are puzzled by the terminology the Institute uses in describing the scholarship of this year’s Research Associate, Dr. Lauren Erdreich ‘95. In Dr. Erdreich’s writing, Israeli Arabs are apparently not called by that usual academic and journalistic convention but are instead “Palestinian Israelis” or “Palestinian women inside Israel.” Does this mean that for the Transregional Institute, Israeli Arabs—whether in Jaffa, Haifa, or Sakhnin—are Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, even if they were not refugees in 1948? Does this mean that in the eyes of the Transregional Institute, Israel, even within the June 4, 1967 borders, is an illegitimate occupying force? And therefore, what does the Transregional Institute mean by wanting to studying “[Palestinian] visions of a post-occupation future”? If Israel is synonymous with occupation, then does “a post-occupation future” mean a future without Israel?”

As one of the research associates invited to take part in the Institute this year, I see part of my role as to help the Princeton community keep abreast of current academic approaches in the study of Palestinians and specifically in my field - Palestinian Israelis. This term itself reflects a growing trend in social science research on the population formerly referred to as “Israeli Arabs.” Indeed today the usual academic convention is to use this newer term (e.g. the work of Dan Rabinowitz, Amalia Saar, Tania Forte, Oren Yiftachel, Hanna Herzog, Ahmed Saadi, Amal Jamal). It is even adopted sporadically by the Israeli Hebrew media.

The term reflects an expansion of the way we look at how this community experiences identity, history, social issues, politics, and yes, citizenship in the Jewish State of Israel. In that respect the term reflects not a denial of the State of Israel, but a recognition of these Palestinian Arabs’ citizenship in the state, their concomitant identification with it and dissatisfaction with its oftentimes discriminatory practices towards them. At the same time, the term recognizes and acknowledges that this population shares a history and culture, religions, and family and social ties with Palestinians living outside of Israel. The researchers who use this term acknowledge that this community within Israel can and does at once identify with Palestinian history, culture, and social and political concerns, while also having its own concerns as minority citizens in a Jewish state.

The usage of the term grew out of a postcolonial approach to the social study of the area of Israel/Palestine, which takes into account the legacies of colonization (Turkish, British, and Israeli) in shaping the social and political life of this indigenous population as well as of other indigenous and immigrant populations (such as Mizrahi Jews). One of these legacies is the categorization of minorities: Palestinians in the state after 1948 were referred to as “Israeli Arabs” in order to distinguish them from their brethren outside of the state, despite any social, economic, political, religious, or familial ties they might share. The use of the term “Palestinian” or “ Palestine” was even forbidden in Arab sector schools until after Oslo. Similarly, Jewish immigrants from Arab lands were termed “mizrahim” (easterners) and never referred to as “Arab Jews,” despite the cultural, linguistic, and historic ties they shared with other Arab populations. In both terms we can see how the State tried to set boundaries around groups and determine where these groups would fit in and how they would identify with the State. It did not always work however, and so today we still see Palestinian Israelis feeling a dual and complex identification both with the State and with Palestinians, (as well as Mizrahi Jews feeling both part of the State and forcefully estranged from their “Arab” traditions).

The term “Palestinian Israelis” is then intended as a rejection of coercive state attempts to deny this community its heritage and identification, as well as a reflection of the community’s experience of duality in identifying as citizens of a state that often discriminates against them and their brethren.

Lauren Erdreich
2005-2006 Research Associate
Transregional Institute

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New Jersey Jewish News

Palestinian advocate urges Hamas
to embrace two-state solution

by Marilyn Silverstein
NJJN Staff Writer

www.njjewishnews.com/njjn.com/ 021606/mwPalestinianAdvocate.html