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I attended the California State University Fresno [CSUF] “Conference on Middle East Studies” this weekend. I can only hit some high and low spots. Where to begin?

With the good parts: One of the first papers presented was by Neda Maghbouleh, a Ph.D student at UC Santa Barbara, about the effect of Iranian popular music of the  ’70’s and ’80’s on first and second generation Iranian-Americans. It was like discovering a parallel universe, inhabited by Googoosh, among others. Ms. Maghbouleh obviously enjoyed her research a great deal and showed it.

There were a few other bright spots, like when Mary Husain, who was pilloried here (“Scholarship or Rubbish?“) for publishing a striking example of postmodernist academic boondoggling at its worst, actually mentioned this site as an example of “The post-9/11 Assault on Higher Education and Academic Freedom”! “I don’t even know who these people are”, she wailed.

Ms. Husain, please know that 1) I chose to focus “Scholarship or Rubbish?” on you rather than your co-author because you are a member of the CSUF Middle East Studies Program [MESP] and he is not, and not because of your Muslim-sounding name; 2) I chose to write about you rather than a non-Muslim member of your department because of the availability and staggering badness of your published article; and 3) I fail to see how my critique limits academic freedom. I am however, guilty as charged of “stealing” your photo from the CSUF academic website.

From here on, though, things went rapidly downhill. My original fear that the MESP would become a platform for anti-Israel political agitation because the initiators, Dr. Vida Samiian and Dr. Sasan Fayazmanesh have expressed extreme anti-Israel positions in the past, appears to have been justified.

Dr. Lawrence Davidson of West Chester University (Pennsylvania) presented two papers. The first, on “forced migration” of Palestinians was a 20-minute polemical recitation of charges against Israel, including “purposeful impovershment” of the Palestinians, “equivalent to genocide” by such means as the “apartheid wall” because “Israel covets Palestinian land”. The Palestinians live in constant insecurity, Davidson said, from incursions, air attacks, etc. Israel claims that this is in self-defense, but in fact “over the past 60 years Israeli policy has been motivated by racism”, a desire to have all the land “Palestinian-rien”.

Davidson presented ‘facts’ and figures more rapidly than I could write, but I would be interested in knowing how he documents such highly dubious statements as “Israel expropriated 50% of the land in the West Bank” and “40% of Israelis favor ‘transfer’ of Palestinians”. This was anything but a scholarly paper; it was at best a political speech, and at worst — incitement of hatred.

Davidson gave an interesting answer when asked how he could discuss all of the above without even mentioning Palestinian terrorism, or decisions such as the rejection of partition, etc.  Israel is the dominant power, he said, and therefore controls everything that happens. The Palestinians are by definition powerless, so their ‘resistance’ is simply a reaction to Israeli oppression. Hence, surprisingly enough, violent actions on both sides are Israel’s fault. This argument needs no further refutation!

He was also asked how he could leave out of the equation the historical backing of extremists by the Arab nations, and, recently, the Iranian proxy war against Israel being prosecuted by Hamas and Hezbollah.  He responded that Israel was offensively powerful enough to counter any imaginable military threat — ignoring tiny Israel’s unique home-front vulnerability. He further suggested that Israel should simply ‘take a chance’ and agree to the Saudi initiative — which I think I have shown is equivalent to national suicide for the Jewish state.

Davidson presented a second paper, this one on teaching about the Middle East. He believes that students arrive with an anti-Muslim and pro-Israel orientation which is created by overwhelming bias in the American media. I suppose he has had students who only watch Fox News, but I hardly think that NPR, CNN, the NY Times, Reuters, the AP, Pacifica Radio, etc. can be called pro-Zionist!

Nevertheless, he faces the problem of how to break down the students’ ‘emotional’ cleavage to Zionism and get them to understand the Palestinian viewpoint.  One of his most effective techniques is to have the students read various sources, including pro-Palestinian material written by Israelis — he even mentioned renegade Israeli academic Ilan Pappé as a good choice! He also likes the early Benny Morris — with its doctored quotations from Ben-Gurion and other Zionists.

The class then takes the form of a discussion, in which he presents his own position, all the while reassuring the students that disagreement will not affect their grades. Some students have difficulty overwhelming their ‘emotional’ attachment to Zionism, and those, he admits, often drop his class. The possibility that there might be a student who — though employing logical thinking and careful research — might nevertheless fail to agree with him was not mentioned.

Davidson was less a scholar than a polemicist and less a teacher than an indoctrinator. I can’t imagine that such a person could have held an academic position when I was in school, but I suppose that was a long time ago.

One of the sessions that I most looked forward to was one on “What the future has in store?” This was to be, unfortunately, my last, as you will see.

Dr. Eric Hooglund blamed Israel and settlements for everything. Why bother to repeat it yet again? He also did not mention terrorism or Hamas, but he claimed that the failure of Camp David, the Roadmap and the Annapolis negotiations to lead to peace were all because of Israel insistence on expanding settlements and building new ones.

He also said that friends and former students of his in the US State Department felt that US policy would change significantly — I understood him to mean in the direction of the Palestinians — if Barack Obama is elected.

Dr. Sasan Fayazmanesh spoke about American policy toward Iran, as determined by the power relationships between various groups in the US administration (and the administration to come). At one point I actually began to empathize with him. After all, he thinks that American policy is to wage war against his homeland — if not by armies, then by economics; and I think that American policy may lead to the destruction of Israel by its enemies. We both see little difference between the parties in this respect.

However, all good things come to an end. In this case someone asked a question about Ahmadinejad’s famous remark that is often translated “Israel will be wiped off the face of the earth”.  Fayazmanesh said that the translation was incorrect — a not unreasonable point, although it is quite clear from Ahmadinejad’s support of Hezbollah and Hamas, his financing of the Syrian missile buildup, etc., that he is at least aiming for what might be called ‘regime change’ in Israel, from Jews to Arabs.

“You see, he said, Ahmadinejad is not anti-Semitic.” And he displayed a Powerpoint presentation entitled “Ahmadinijad: is he an anti-Semite?”

The first slide showed the Iranian President sitting down at a table — perhaps at the notorious Holocaust denial conference of 2006 — with representatives of a radical Neturei Karta faction, a tiny sect — possibly less than one hundred members — of the favorite Jews of every anti-Semite, previously paid to perform by Yasser Arafat and now most likely by Ahmadinejad.

“You see,” said Fayazmanesh, “he cannot be an anti-Semite. These are Jews. They are his friends.”

All of us have character weaknesses and one of mine is that the level of crap that sets me off is not all that high. I stood up, and said quite loudly, and maybe without making enough sense: what about the Holocaust denial conference? What about the Holocaust denial conference? Then either I walked out, was asked to leave, or both. Really, it was the cumulative effect of some of the other speakers — particularly, but not exclusively, Davidson — with the surrealism provided by Neturei Karta taken seriously that did me in.

Several times an Israeli participant in the conference asked something like “Look, this is supposed to be an academic meeting, why is only one point of view presented?” The response from one moderator was that constant discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was — his word — “tedious”.  Apparently anti-Israel rants by Lawrence Davidson, Eric Hooglund and others were not “tedious” — only attempts to respond from the audience were.

Update [23 Oct. 1509 PDT]: Upon rereading my notes, I realize that I had wrongly attributed the statement about the State Department sources saying that Obama would lead to ‘big changes’ to Sasan Fayazmanesh. It was actually made by Eric Hooglund.

Technorati Tags: CSUF, Middle East Studies, Mary Husain, Lawrence Davidson, Sasan Fayazmanesh, Eric Hooglund

Sometimes you have to repeat the same facts over and over, because the other side never stops lying about them.

A case in point is the Clinton-Barak offer to Yasser Arafat in December 2000. Supporters of Israel have held that the offer was more than fair, an indication that Israel was prepared to make real sacrifices for peace, and that Arafat’s rejection of it and the ensuing intifada were proof of Palestinian unwillingness to accept any reasonable compromise.

Arafat — and since then Jimmy Carter and other supporters of the Palestinian cause — have claimed that the offer was not reasonable at all. For example, Lawrence Davidson — who, incidentally will be presenting several papers at a forthcoming conference sponsored by the California State University Fresno Middle East Studies Program — wrote the following:

The “generous offer” has been disproved by both American and Israeli experts. For instance, among others, Robert Malley, President Clinton’s advisor on Israeli-Arab affairs who was at Camp David II; Ron Pundak, Director of the Peres Center for Peace; Professor Jeff Halper (Ben Gurion University); Uri Avnery, head of Gush Shalom, Israel’s foremost peace organization; and finally Ehud Barak himself has twice (in the New York Times of May 24, 2001 and in the Israeli hebrew newspaper Yedi’ot Ahronoth of August 29, 2003) denied that his offer was anywhere near “generous.”

What did Barak really offer? According to the above reports his offer gave the Palestinians a little over 80% of the West Bank carved into nearly discontinuous cantons. The Israeli government would have controlled all the Palestinian borders (none of which would touch on another Arab state), it would have controlled the air space above the Palestinian territory, most of the major aquifers, retained sovereignty over East Jerusalem, maintained almost all Israeli settlements and access roads, controlled immigration into the Palestinian “state,” and retained the Jordan Valley through an indefinite “long term lease.” This is an offer that no Israeli would ever accept. However, most Israelis and Americans do not know these details and believe instead in the myth of generosity. — Davidson, “Orwell and Kafka in Israel/Palestine“

Before discussing the substance of Davidson’s allegation, let’s look at his sources.

Ron Pundak was one of the Oslo agreement negotiators, but he was not present at Camp David. His 2001 article “From Oslo to Taba: What Went Wrong?” appears to be Davidson’s source for the above. Pundak unsurprisingly argues that Oslo was a great idea, but it failed due to “miscalculations and mismanagement” on both sides, especially by former PM Binyamin Netanyahu and Barak. He does not specifically cite a source for the 80% figure, but a map included is an “approximation based on Israeli and Palestinian sources”.

Robert Malley was at Camp David as a special assistant to President Clinton. He is highly controversial today because he favors recognizing Hamas and calls for Israel to negotiate directly with Hamas. His 2001 article “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors” (with Hussein Agha) appears to be Davidson’s source. In it, Malley explains that Barak’s positions were always presented verbally in terms of what he would agree to if there were a final agreement, because of his [justified] fear that the Palestinians would ‘pocket’ any concrete written proposal and then use it as a starting point for further demands. What Barak was in fact prepared to accept then appeared as American ‘ideas’ from the mouth of President Clinton. Malley argues that therefore there was actually no ‘real’ offer other than some ‘bases for negotiation’ which were in the 90% range. He sees this as justification for the Palestinian claim that this was Barak’s best offer. But this is not the case by Malley’s own account of Barak’s negotiation technique!

Jeff Halper and Uri Avnery, with all due respect (not much) were not in a position to know what was offered at Camp David and are partisans of the Palestinian cause. Halper is presently in Gaza as part of the “Free Gaza” mission.

Now, what about the most interesting source, Ehud Barak himself? Try as I might, I could not find a mention of Barak in the New York Times archive on May 24, 2001 (nor could I find the Yediot reference). However, the following appears in an August 6, 2001 interview with Clyde Haberman of the Times:

When those negotiations collapsed, Israelis and American officials, including President Bill Clinton, put the blame squarely on Mr. Arafat. But newly published accounts [Malley, Agha and Pundak?] offer a different perspective. They say that all the parties at Camp David share responsibility, among them Mr. Barak for supposedly overbearing negotiating tactics.

Stung by the criticism, the former prime minister asked for time to make his case against what he called the ”gossipizing of history.” He has never been one to admit mistakes freely, and he was no different today when he said, ”I can answer almost every gossip item.”

He had offered the Palestinians more than any Israeli leader ever, he said, but his ”peace partner” chose to turn his back.

But there is a highly specific and authoritative source for the details of the offers. Dennis Ross was the chief Middle East negotiator for both Presidents George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. He was intimately involved in the negotiations from start to finish. Here is what he said about the final Clinton-Barak offer:

In actuality, Clinton offered two different proposals at two different times. In July, he offered a partial proposal on territory and control of Jerusalem. Five months later, at the request of Ehud Barak, the Israeli prime minister, and Arafat, Clinton presented a comprehensive proposal on borders, Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees and security. The December proposals became known as the Clinton ideas or parameters.

The Clinton parameters would have produced an independent Palestinian state with 100 percent of Gaza, roughly 97 percent of the West Bank and an elevated train or highway to connect them. Jerusalem’s status would have been guided by the principle that what is currently Jewish will be Israeli and what is currently Arab will be Palestinian, meaning that Jewish Jerusalem — East and West — would be united, while Arab East Jerusalem would become the capital of the Palestinian state…

Since the talks fell apart, there has emerged a mythology that seeks to defend Arafat’s rejection of the Clinton ideas by suggesting they weren’t real or that Palestinians would have received far less than what had been advertised.

Arafat himself later claimed he was not offered even 90 percent of the West Bank or any of East Jerusalem. But that was myth, not reality.

Indeed.

Technorati Tags: Israel, Lawrence Davidson, Camp David, Clinton-Barak offer

Fresno State’s Middle East Studies program is planning an “International Conference” on “Teaching about the Middle East in the 21st Century” this October.

Why do I care? Because, given the politicization of academia in general and Middle East Studies in particular — and the individuals running the conference — I expect that it will not be a quiet exercise in arcane scholarship.

Instead, I expect another attempt to bring the politics of hatred to our local university, just as the same people turned a benign “International Days” event into a vicious anti-Israel “Palestine Day” in 2003.

Papers apparently can be about absolutely anything Mideast-related. Some of the ‘disciplines’ listed are

• Culture, Gender & Ethnography
• Diaspora & Migration Culture
• Middle East Politics & Representations
• U.S. Foreign Policy

It’s easy to guess the kind of material that is likely to be presented in those ‘disciplines’, especially since the postmodernist revolution in academia has made it possible to claim that anything politically congenial to the writer is true (see Nadia Abu El-Haj and CSUF’s own Mary Husain).

The conference chair is Dr. Sasan Fayazmanesh, by trade an economist, but known for popularizing the term “USrael”, in support of his view that US and Israeli policy is closely coordinated (if only it were so), and dominated by a “neo-con” (Jewish) cabal.

The Middle East Studies program has been in existence for a year, funded by a grant from the US Department of Education. Judging by the course offerings and programs, my feeling is that it should have been called “Arab and Persian” studies, since there is no indication that there are or ever have been Christians or Jews in the region! The program is chaired by Dr. Vida Samiian, Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities, “Palestine Day” organizer, and an activist who has been responsible for bringing numerous anti-Israel speakers and films to the area.

Let’s hope this will not turn into Fresno’s Durban Conference.

Technorati Tags: CSU Fresno, Sasan Fayazmanesh, Vida Samiian, Middle East Studies