Open support for terrorism by Shia Association of Bay Area visitors: Asad Jaffi
The San Jose, California’s Shia Association Bay Area (SABA Mosque) keeps producing evidence of support for the Hezbollah terrorism group and the militant Islamist regime of Iran almost every day.
The latest evidence pointing to this are the frequent visits to the SABA Islamic Guidance Center by one Syed Asad Jafri, a mullah who speaks frequently at there, indoctrinating the congregation with Khomeinist ideas and messages of anti-Semitism.
Syed Asad Jafri
Jafri was born and raised in Toronto and completed his high school studies in Canada, then moved to the United States to pursue a college degree in computer technology. He received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in 1998 and became a computer professional, relocating to work back in Canada, but his claim to fame in the Shia community is as a militant, anti-Semitic, pro-Hezbollah mullah.
This should come as no surprise since his upbringing was strongly influenced in his religious community by another militant mullah named Mohammed Zaki Baqri, another imam who was to become a SABA Mosque leader and who is also well-known for his hatred of Jews. Baqri hails from Alipur in India, the same Khomeinist stronghold where the Mosque’s imam Nabi Raza Mir comes from as well as other militant members of the Mosque’s leadership.
Asad Jafri became a loyal acolyte of Mohammed Zaki Baqri to such a degree that he married the militant mullah’s daughter, Zehra, who today is still his wife.
Flag of the terrorist organization Hezbollah
Asad Jafri has made statements at the Mosque that he openly supports the international terror organization Hezbollah. In lectures to pro-Khomeinist congregations in Canada and the United States, he has never shied away from promoting the image and ideas of Hezbollah. During one virulent session where he sought to indoctrinate the SABA Mosque congregation, while praising historical attacks on the “Infidel”, he praised the terrorist group’s attack on Israel by saying:
“And if that's not enough for you, that's too far in history, come to the summer of 2006, a small group of Shias in Southern Lebanon [i.e. Hezbollah terrorists], holding the flag of Husayn, defeated the Yazid of today (meaning Israel and the United States, since a “Yazid” is the most evil person to have ever been born.”
The Shia Muslims curse the Yazid throughout the year, especially during the Islamic month of Muharram al-Haraam. Citing from the Koran, Jafri told the congregation of “how many a small group defeated a numerous group (meaning Israel) with the permission of God only.”
In other words, Hezbollah was doing “God’s work” while kidnapping and ultimately murdering Israeli soldiers and innocent civilians and launching a war that killed many people on both sides.
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SABA Center
In 2004, Jafri relocated to the Shia religious studies center that is the city of Qum, Iran, along with his family. Both and he and his wife Zehra entered into the Hawza (religious seminary) and began their theological studies, later starting his tabligh missions such as to the SABA Mosque as early as 2006, when he started touring militant Islamist Khomeinist centers back in America and Canada. While touring in the U.S., Jafri spoke in Atlanta, Dallas, and Phoenix, but also made his presentations at the SABA Mosque because of its centralization in the northern California Islamic community. Jafri later returned to Qum where he resides today with his family and continues to study religion.
Asad Jafri is still openly hostile towards the United States. He frequently attacks the policies of the U.S. Government and openly promotes Khomeinist theories among the misguided American youths who frequent Islamist centers such as SABA in San Jose. In so doing he never strays from his open endorsement and promotion of the ideas of the late Ayatollah Khomeini.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Sunday, June 12, 2011
MANZAR FOROOHAR TRIES TO SNEAK ONE BY THE CALIFORNIA FACULTY ASSOCIATION
Manzar Foroohar: The California Faculty Association's Secret Weapon
by Lee Kaplan
FrontPage Magazine
June 3, 2011
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/06/03/manzar-foroohar-the-california-faculty-association%E2%80%99s-secret-weapon/
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/11388
When the California Faculty Association (CFA) adopted a resolution in 2009 condemning Israel for its military incursion into Gaza, it reinforced the fear that academic unions would be the next front in an ongoing propaganda offensive against the Jewish State. Amidst the ensuing controversy, one of the key players in the resolution's formation—Manzar Foroohar, an Iranian immigrant and history professor specializing in the modern Middle East and Latin America at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo—came to the fore. However, the extent of her involvement was never publicly acknowledged. In fact, Foroohar authored and championed the resolution, which was presented by the CFA Peace & Justice Committee (Committee), unanimously adopted by the CFA Board of Directors on February 7, 2009, and passed by the CFA General Assembly in Sacramento on April 4-5 that same year.
Blandly titled, "CFA Call for a Halt to Violence Against All Civilians in Palestine and Israel," the resolution was, in fact, blatantly anti-Israel. According to University of California, Los Angeles, professor emeritus Leila Beckwith, writing at American Thinker in January, 2010:
The resolution states seven propositions that form the basis for the actions recommended. The propositions include affirming a moral equivalence between Israel defending its citizens from missile attacks and Hamas firing missiles against Israeli civilians, a misstatement of the conditions in Gaza, an omission of the U.N. Security Council's condemnation of acts of terrorism, and a false charge against the U.S. of not seeking a just peace agreement.
Why would an academic union that acts as an exclusive bargaining representative within CSU and is devoted to improving working conditions for its members pass a resolution regarding international affairs? It turns out CFA president and California State University, Los Angeles, history professor Lillian Taiz—according to interviews with CFA members, and as the list of Committee resolutions makes clear—appointed the members of a statewide Committee in 2008 for this very purpose. With the exception of Foroohar, none of the unelected committee members have any expertise in Middle East studies, which might explain why their names were not listed on the resolution, nor was it prominently displayed on the CFA website in 2009. But during a phone interview, Stanley Oden, a professor in the department of government at Sacramento State University and a current member of the Committee, acknowledged that Foroohar was behind the 2009 resolution. Additionally, even though the names of Committee members no longer appear at the CFA website, a screen capture from 2008 demonstrates that both Foroohar and Oden were on the committee not long before the resolution was passed.
The resolution was slipped quietly in front of CFA members—for whom monthly dues are mandatory— for endorsement; afterward, several of them, when contacted by this author, said they felt duped. Decrying "violence against civilians—whether in Palestine or Israel" in the "interest of peace and greater humanity in the region," the wording of the resolution led CFA members to believe that by signing it they would simply be supporting innocent victims. They were also unaware of the level of anti-Israel activism engaged in by Foroohar and others on the Committee.
A cursory review of Foroohar's academic work at Cal Poly reveals that she donates a good deal of her time both inside and outside the classroom to demonizing Israel, particularly by promoting boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS). Indeed, Foroohar, along with a number of Middle East studies academics teaching in California, is on the organizing committee for the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, a group that works internationally to promote BDS.
The bibliographies and hand-outs (click here, here, and here for examples) for Foroohar's Middle East history courses reveal a biased professor trying to convince her students to blame Israel for the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and to reject Zionism. Student comments at PolyRatings.com demonstrate as much, with one of them flatly stating that, "This professor has an agenda. Her classes are nothing but propaganda to support her cause." Fittingly, she supports her "research" with pseudo-scholarship that reiterates standard anti-Israel propaganda, including selections from Stephen Walt and John Mearshimer's notoriously shoddy book The Israel Lobby.
Foroohar is known for inviting virulently anti-Israel speakers to Cal Poly. In January 2003, a lecture series offered in conjunction with one of her courses included Israeli "peace activist" Susy Mordechay speaking about "The Assault on Palestinian Civilian Life, 2000-2002"; University of Southern California linguistics professor Hagit Borer on "Zionism: Myth and Reality"; and Jeff Halper, anthropology professor emeritus at Ben Gurion University in Israel and director of the one-man NGO, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, on "The Key to an Israeli-Palestinian Peace: Dismantling Israel's Matrix of Control." In November 2004, Foroohar moderated a presentation featuring Ilan Pappe, an Israeli expatriate and "New Historian" who is one of Israel's harshest critics and now teaches in the UK. Among other attempts to rewrite history in order to tarnish Israel's image, Pappe was involved in the scholarly fabrication of a nonexistent massacre of Arabs in the village of Tantura in 1948.
Along the same lines, Foroohar gave lectures at California State University, Sacramento, in February 2009 titled, "Occupation of Palestine: The Obstacle to Peace" and "Zionism and Peace: Compatible or Contradictory Ideas?" In March 2009, she took part in a panel discussion at the University of Southern California titled, "From la Frontera to Gaza: Chicano-Palestinian Connections." She presented a slide show and discussion at California State University, Fresno, in October 2002, on "Occupation and Resistance." In May 2005, Foroohar moderated a discussion session at Cal Poly following a Muslim Student Association co-sponsored screening of several anti-Israel "documentaries," including Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist atrocities, Foroohar blamed U.S. support for Israel, in large part, for the attacks and warned that Israel would use it as pretext for violence. As she put it:
Fundamentalist extremists also resent the fact the United States helps Israel target Islamic civilians. . . . Now that our attention is on the attacks, it's giving license to the Israelis to shoot at will.
According to another Cal Poly faculty member who prefers to remain anonymous, Foroohar helped organize the Students for Justice and Peace in the Middle East-sponsored "Wall of Separation" displays on her campus from 2007 through 2010. During at least one of those occasions, she also gave a presentation. He added that:
In 2007, two of our Hillel students, on their own and not representing Hillel, made a couple of 2×3 posters and held them on the sidewalk, perhaps thirty feet away from their wall on our Dexter Lawn area. When she came in and saw them, she called the police to come and remove the students! The police responded, but told the students to walk with the signs, not plant them in the lawn. Complaints to the university about violations of free speech drew no response.
Had CFA members been aware of Foroohar's extremist background, it's a safe assumption they would have been hesitant to endorse the 2009 resolution. That a radical academic such as Foroohar was able to impose her anti-Israel positions on a union representing 23,000 faculty, counselors, librarians, and coaches on twenty-three campuses speaks volumes about the ability of a fanatical few to advance a deceptive, and often false, narrative on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Moreover, the campaign to delegitimize Israel through the CFA didn't stop with the 2009 resolution. It may have opened the door for a future resolution to boycott and divest from Israel, which union leadership—responding to this author's interview requests during and after the closed-door 74th CFA Assembly in San Francisco on April 8-9, 2011—refused to confirm or deny is in the works. At the conference, Nena Torrez, an education professor at California State University, San Bernadino, and current member of the Committee, was whisked away by her colleagues before I could broach the subject of BDS, while later requests for an appointment with CFA staff were stymied and eventually labeled "harassment."
A number of CFA members certainly believe that a BDS resolution has been passed, and the fact that union leadership has engaged an attorney who has advised them not to discuss boycott-related issues with the rank and file would seem to back up their suspicions. In addition, several CFA members have consulted an attorney about the unelected members of the Committee authoring politicized resolutions against the wishes of the membership-at-large. Meanwhile, the second largest academic union in the U.S. may soon begin promoting boycotting and divesting from the Jewish state.
Lee Kaplan is an investigative journalist and columnist who writes for Isracampus.org.il, Israel National News, and the Northeast Intelligence Network. He is a Fellow at the American Center for Democracy and the founder of DAFKA.org and StoptheISM.com. He wrote this article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.
by Lee Kaplan
FrontPage Magazine
June 3, 2011
http://frontpagemag.com/2011/06/03/manzar-foroohar-the-california-faculty-association%E2%80%99s-secret-weapon/
http://www.campus-watch.org/article/id/11388
When the California Faculty Association (CFA) adopted a resolution in 2009 condemning Israel for its military incursion into Gaza, it reinforced the fear that academic unions would be the next front in an ongoing propaganda offensive against the Jewish State. Amidst the ensuing controversy, one of the key players in the resolution's formation—Manzar Foroohar, an Iranian immigrant and history professor specializing in the modern Middle East and Latin America at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo—came to the fore. However, the extent of her involvement was never publicly acknowledged. In fact, Foroohar authored and championed the resolution, which was presented by the CFA Peace & Justice Committee (Committee), unanimously adopted by the CFA Board of Directors on February 7, 2009, and passed by the CFA General Assembly in Sacramento on April 4-5 that same year.
Blandly titled, "CFA Call for a Halt to Violence Against All Civilians in Palestine and Israel," the resolution was, in fact, blatantly anti-Israel. According to University of California, Los Angeles, professor emeritus Leila Beckwith, writing at American Thinker in January, 2010:
The resolution states seven propositions that form the basis for the actions recommended. The propositions include affirming a moral equivalence between Israel defending its citizens from missile attacks and Hamas firing missiles against Israeli civilians, a misstatement of the conditions in Gaza, an omission of the U.N. Security Council's condemnation of acts of terrorism, and a false charge against the U.S. of not seeking a just peace agreement.
Why would an academic union that acts as an exclusive bargaining representative within CSU and is devoted to improving working conditions for its members pass a resolution regarding international affairs? It turns out CFA president and California State University, Los Angeles, history professor Lillian Taiz—according to interviews with CFA members, and as the list of Committee resolutions makes clear—appointed the members of a statewide Committee in 2008 for this very purpose. With the exception of Foroohar, none of the unelected committee members have any expertise in Middle East studies, which might explain why their names were not listed on the resolution, nor was it prominently displayed on the CFA website in 2009. But during a phone interview, Stanley Oden, a professor in the department of government at Sacramento State University and a current member of the Committee, acknowledged that Foroohar was behind the 2009 resolution. Additionally, even though the names of Committee members no longer appear at the CFA website, a screen capture from 2008 demonstrates that both Foroohar and Oden were on the committee not long before the resolution was passed.
The resolution was slipped quietly in front of CFA members—for whom monthly dues are mandatory— for endorsement; afterward, several of them, when contacted by this author, said they felt duped. Decrying "violence against civilians—whether in Palestine or Israel" in the "interest of peace and greater humanity in the region," the wording of the resolution led CFA members to believe that by signing it they would simply be supporting innocent victims. They were also unaware of the level of anti-Israel activism engaged in by Foroohar and others on the Committee.
A cursory review of Foroohar's academic work at Cal Poly reveals that she donates a good deal of her time both inside and outside the classroom to demonizing Israel, particularly by promoting boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS). Indeed, Foroohar, along with a number of Middle East studies academics teaching in California, is on the organizing committee for the U.S. Campaign for the Academic & Cultural Boycott of Israel, a group that works internationally to promote BDS.
The bibliographies and hand-outs (click here, here, and here for examples) for Foroohar's Middle East history courses reveal a biased professor trying to convince her students to blame Israel for the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict and to reject Zionism. Student comments at PolyRatings.com demonstrate as much, with one of them flatly stating that, "This professor has an agenda. Her classes are nothing but propaganda to support her cause." Fittingly, she supports her "research" with pseudo-scholarship that reiterates standard anti-Israel propaganda, including selections from Stephen Walt and John Mearshimer's notoriously shoddy book The Israel Lobby.
Foroohar is known for inviting virulently anti-Israel speakers to Cal Poly. In January 2003, a lecture series offered in conjunction with one of her courses included Israeli "peace activist" Susy Mordechay speaking about "The Assault on Palestinian Civilian Life, 2000-2002"; University of Southern California linguistics professor Hagit Borer on "Zionism: Myth and Reality"; and Jeff Halper, anthropology professor emeritus at Ben Gurion University in Israel and director of the one-man NGO, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, on "The Key to an Israeli-Palestinian Peace: Dismantling Israel's Matrix of Control." In November 2004, Foroohar moderated a presentation featuring Ilan Pappe, an Israeli expatriate and "New Historian" who is one of Israel's harshest critics and now teaches in the UK. Among other attempts to rewrite history in order to tarnish Israel's image, Pappe was involved in the scholarly fabrication of a nonexistent massacre of Arabs in the village of Tantura in 1948.
Along the same lines, Foroohar gave lectures at California State University, Sacramento, in February 2009 titled, "Occupation of Palestine: The Obstacle to Peace" and "Zionism and Peace: Compatible or Contradictory Ideas?" In March 2009, she took part in a panel discussion at the University of Southern California titled, "From la Frontera to Gaza: Chicano-Palestinian Connections." She presented a slide show and discussion at California State University, Fresno, in October 2002, on "Occupation and Resistance." In May 2005, Foroohar moderated a discussion session at Cal Poly following a Muslim Student Association co-sponsored screening of several anti-Israel "documentaries," including Peace, Propaganda & the Promised Land.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist atrocities, Foroohar blamed U.S. support for Israel, in large part, for the attacks and warned that Israel would use it as pretext for violence. As she put it:
Fundamentalist extremists also resent the fact the United States helps Israel target Islamic civilians. . . . Now that our attention is on the attacks, it's giving license to the Israelis to shoot at will.
According to another Cal Poly faculty member who prefers to remain anonymous, Foroohar helped organize the Students for Justice and Peace in the Middle East-sponsored "Wall of Separation" displays on her campus from 2007 through 2010. During at least one of those occasions, she also gave a presentation. He added that:
In 2007, two of our Hillel students, on their own and not representing Hillel, made a couple of 2×3 posters and held them on the sidewalk, perhaps thirty feet away from their wall on our Dexter Lawn area. When she came in and saw them, she called the police to come and remove the students! The police responded, but told the students to walk with the signs, not plant them in the lawn. Complaints to the university about violations of free speech drew no response.
Had CFA members been aware of Foroohar's extremist background, it's a safe assumption they would have been hesitant to endorse the 2009 resolution. That a radical academic such as Foroohar was able to impose her anti-Israel positions on a union representing 23,000 faculty, counselors, librarians, and coaches on twenty-three campuses speaks volumes about the ability of a fanatical few to advance a deceptive, and often false, narrative on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Moreover, the campaign to delegitimize Israel through the CFA didn't stop with the 2009 resolution. It may have opened the door for a future resolution to boycott and divest from Israel, which union leadership—responding to this author's interview requests during and after the closed-door 74th CFA Assembly in San Francisco on April 8-9, 2011—refused to confirm or deny is in the works. At the conference, Nena Torrez, an education professor at California State University, San Bernadino, and current member of the Committee, was whisked away by her colleagues before I could broach the subject of BDS, while later requests for an appointment with CFA staff were stymied and eventually labeled "harassment."
A number of CFA members certainly believe that a BDS resolution has been passed, and the fact that union leadership has engaged an attorney who has advised them not to discuss boycott-related issues with the rank and file would seem to back up their suspicions. In addition, several CFA members have consulted an attorney about the unelected members of the Committee authoring politicized resolutions against the wishes of the membership-at-large. Meanwhile, the second largest academic union in the U.S. may soon begin promoting boycotting and divesting from the Jewish state.
Lee Kaplan is an investigative journalist and columnist who writes for Isracampus.org.il, Israel National News, and the Northeast Intelligence Network. He is a Fellow at the American Center for Democracy and the founder of DAFKA.org and StoptheISM.com. He wrote this article for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum.
JOSEPH MASSAD IS NO EXPERT ON INTERNATIONAL LAW
Columbia’s history professor Joseph Massad decides he’s an expert on international law above the entire world when it comes to de-legitimizing Israel.
By Lee Kaplan
Joining a long line of Palestinian and other Arab “academics” is a relentless quest to de-legitimize the Jewish state of Israel, Columbia’s Joseph Massad claims that the United Nation’s exercise of international law “against the Palestinian people” in 1948 creating Israel is rooted in a “ficticious”(sic) narrative of Israel having a "right" to exist.
Massad has taken pen or keyboard in hand to write a less-than-dignified propaganda rant against the Jewish state in the less-than-objective Arab news service, al Jazeera. In the article, dated May, 6th, 2011, Massad, who is not a law professor, nor has any expertise in international law, decides he knows more about international law than all the international lawyers in the world and throughout history including those who wrote UN resolutions pertaining to Israel’s existence and the establishment of states in the Middle East.
In the same Al Jazeera article Massad explains that “For the Palestinians and the international community, represented by the United Nations and the myriad resolutions its Security Council and General Assembly issued since 1948, what was to be negotiated were the colonization of land, the occupation of territory and population, and the laws that stipulate ethnic and religious discrimination in Israel, which, among other things, bar Palestinian refugees from returning to their land and confiscate their property. In their struggle against these Israeli practices, Palestinian leaders, whether in Israel, the Occupied Territories, or the diaspora, have always invoked these rights based on international law and UN resolutions, which Israel has consistently refused to implement or abide by since 1948. Thus for the Palestinians, armed by the UN and international law, the negotiations were precisely aimed to end colonization, occupation, and discrimination.”
Massad forgets or overlooks intentionally the United Nations in 1948 set up a Palestinian state on what is today called the West Bank the same time it created Israel (a state that was subsequently swallowed up by Jordan while Gaza was swallowed up by Egypt). Apparently, the United Nations setting up a Jewish state next door had no legal basis, but the Arab one did solely because Massad, the self-proclaimed international law expert says so. Massad also ignores that Jews were the majority population property owners who legally purchased all their land in the final area designated by the UN to be Israel. The remaining Negev desert had little going for it as private property back then. It is further a myth of the Palestinian movement that Jews just grabbed Arab property at the behest of the UN.
Massad further turns history and truth on their heads by ignoring that Israel was founded in international law by the United Nations over a 30 year period starting with the Balfour Declaration by the British. If Massad’s outrageous statements about law had any validity then most of the Arab states founded after the First World War would also have no legitimacy, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon that were sops for Arab tribes who fought against the Turks for the British and French. Massad further ignores that the Jewish majority in Israel legally purchased most of their land in pre 1948 Israel, and denies a Jewish presence in the land for 3,000 years even existing after the Roman conquest, thus negating his accusation that the founding population of Israel were little more than colonists dispossessing the “indigenous” population of Arabs. Massad also ignores that Jews were the majority population property owners who legally purchased all their land in the final area designated by the UN to be Israel, parts of which were stolen by Jordanian and Egyptian armies back in 1948. The remaining Negev desert had little going for it as private property back then. It is further a myth of the Palestinian movement that Jews just grabbed Arab property at the behest of the UN.
Of course, Massad, ignores the myriad pogroms of Jews by the Arabs in the region in 1921, in 1929 in Hebron, in 1936 and 1947 which led the United Nations and Britain to declare finally a separate state for Jewish self-determination in those areas where Jews were a majority.
Massad even ignores that a “Palestinian” back in 1948 was a term used to mean a Jew, and the term was not even adoptede by Arabs allegedly from the region until after 1964 as was explained by the PLO leadership in 1970. One can only attribute such outrageous claims of violations of international law to Massad’s being tenured which guarantees he will be able to continue to teach his falsehoods to Columbia students.
So is Massad, the historian making up new history to bolster is ignorant rantings about international law? Is he covered by academic freedom to make such outrageous statements? The intelligent answer would be no.
Here are some further re-creations of events taught by Massad as evidenced by the Al Jazeera article:
“On the other hand, one of the strongest and persistent arguments that the Zionist movement and Israel have deployed since 1948 in defense of the establishment of Israel and its subsequent policies is the invocation of the rights of Israel, which are not based on international law or UN resolutions. This is a crucial distinction to be made between the Palestinian and Israeli claims to possession of "rights." While the Palestinians invoke rights that are internationally recognized, Israel invokes rights that are solely recognized at the national level by the Israeli state itself. For Zionism, this was a novel mode of argumentation as, in deploying it, Israel invokes not only juridical principles but also moral ones.
‘In this realm, Israel has argued over the years that Jews have a right to establish a state in Palestine, that they have a right to establish a "Jewish" state in Palestine, that this state has a "right to exist," and that it has a "right to defend itself", which includes its subsidiary right to be the only country in the region to possess nuclear weapons, that it has the "right" to inherit all the biblical land that the Jewish God promised it, and a "right" to enact laws that are racially and religiously discriminatory in order to preserve the Jewish character of the state, otherwise articulated in the more recent formula of "a Jewish and democratic state". Israel has also insisted that its enemies, including the Palestinian people, whom it dispossesses, colonizes, occupies, and discriminates against, must recognize all these rights, foremost among them its "right to exist as a Jewish state", as a condition for and a precursor to peace.”
Professor Massad in two paragraphs doesn’t even credit Israel with trying to make peace with its Arab neighbors who have been screaming to drive the Jews into the sea since before Israel’s creation because it is not an Arab majority and Muslim dominated state. He states no objection to “Muslim” states all over the Middle East, most of which no longer have Jewish populations that were ethnically cleansed (murdered) by the Arab majorities within them.
Since Israel was created by the United Nations, is Massad simply lying or is he trying to rewrite history to the Palestinian narrative? Obviously, the latter. The Israeli Declaration of Independence from 1948 stipulates equal rights for all citizens of Israel despite their ethnicity and non-Jewish Israelis, a majority of which are Arabs and Muslims serve in Israel’s judiciary, police force and even the IDF is they wish. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arab women can vote. Israel even has US-mimicked affirmative action laws in its universities and Arab members in the Knesset (who routinely under rules of freedom of speech call for the desruction of the Jewish state. If Massad were less a political hack for the anti-Israel crowd and a truthful academic, he wouldn’t make such false statements about discrimination and dispossession. Arabs who remained in a nascent Jewish state, founded legally by international law in 1948 after Arab armies failed to destroy it, have had their population multiply ten thousand percent since then and enjoy the highest living standards and more human rights than Arabs living anywhere else in the world.
Massad, the now self-proclaimed expert on international law, even faults the Almighty for what is written in the Bible and even in the Koran: the right of Jews to live in their own land, Israel, for their own self-determination. He says he is incensed that Israelis would deign to say they want “peace” because they don’t even have the right to exist. One can translate this into an endorsement of violence and terrorism and certainly cannot interpret it as any call to a peaceful settlement. To Joseph Massad international law must be obeyed when it supports Arab and Muslim goals, it is irrelevant when it supports the creation or rights of Jews to “exist” within secure borders. As such, Massad sees his function as a historian to promulgate the jihadist line rather than to educate the world to seek truth and advancement of society. His remonstrations about the inadequacies of international law are no better than his lectures and writings on history when it comes to objectivity and the facts.
This article was originally published at the American Center for Democracy website,
www.acdemocracy.org .
By Lee Kaplan
Joining a long line of Palestinian and other Arab “academics” is a relentless quest to de-legitimize the Jewish state of Israel, Columbia’s Joseph Massad claims that the United Nation’s exercise of international law “against the Palestinian people” in 1948 creating Israel is rooted in a “ficticious”(sic) narrative of Israel having a "right" to exist.
Massad has taken pen or keyboard in hand to write a less-than-dignified propaganda rant against the Jewish state in the less-than-objective Arab news service, al Jazeera. In the article, dated May, 6th, 2011, Massad, who is not a law professor, nor has any expertise in international law, decides he knows more about international law than all the international lawyers in the world and throughout history including those who wrote UN resolutions pertaining to Israel’s existence and the establishment of states in the Middle East.
In the same Al Jazeera article Massad explains that “For the Palestinians and the international community, represented by the United Nations and the myriad resolutions its Security Council and General Assembly issued since 1948, what was to be negotiated were the colonization of land, the occupation of territory and population, and the laws that stipulate ethnic and religious discrimination in Israel, which, among other things, bar Palestinian refugees from returning to their land and confiscate their property. In their struggle against these Israeli practices, Palestinian leaders, whether in Israel, the Occupied Territories, or the diaspora, have always invoked these rights based on international law and UN resolutions, which Israel has consistently refused to implement or abide by since 1948. Thus for the Palestinians, armed by the UN and international law, the negotiations were precisely aimed to end colonization, occupation, and discrimination.”
Massad forgets or overlooks intentionally the United Nations in 1948 set up a Palestinian state on what is today called the West Bank the same time it created Israel (a state that was subsequently swallowed up by Jordan while Gaza was swallowed up by Egypt). Apparently, the United Nations setting up a Jewish state next door had no legal basis, but the Arab one did solely because Massad, the self-proclaimed international law expert says so. Massad also ignores that Jews were the majority population property owners who legally purchased all their land in the final area designated by the UN to be Israel. The remaining Negev desert had little going for it as private property back then. It is further a myth of the Palestinian movement that Jews just grabbed Arab property at the behest of the UN.
Massad further turns history and truth on their heads by ignoring that Israel was founded in international law by the United Nations over a 30 year period starting with the Balfour Declaration by the British. If Massad’s outrageous statements about law had any validity then most of the Arab states founded after the First World War would also have no legitimacy, such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon that were sops for Arab tribes who fought against the Turks for the British and French. Massad further ignores that the Jewish majority in Israel legally purchased most of their land in pre 1948 Israel, and denies a Jewish presence in the land for 3,000 years even existing after the Roman conquest, thus negating his accusation that the founding population of Israel were little more than colonists dispossessing the “indigenous” population of Arabs. Massad also ignores that Jews were the majority population property owners who legally purchased all their land in the final area designated by the UN to be Israel, parts of which were stolen by Jordanian and Egyptian armies back in 1948. The remaining Negev desert had little going for it as private property back then. It is further a myth of the Palestinian movement that Jews just grabbed Arab property at the behest of the UN.
Of course, Massad, ignores the myriad pogroms of Jews by the Arabs in the region in 1921, in 1929 in Hebron, in 1936 and 1947 which led the United Nations and Britain to declare finally a separate state for Jewish self-determination in those areas where Jews were a majority.
Massad even ignores that a “Palestinian” back in 1948 was a term used to mean a Jew, and the term was not even adoptede by Arabs allegedly from the region until after 1964 as was explained by the PLO leadership in 1970. One can only attribute such outrageous claims of violations of international law to Massad’s being tenured which guarantees he will be able to continue to teach his falsehoods to Columbia students.
So is Massad, the historian making up new history to bolster is ignorant rantings about international law? Is he covered by academic freedom to make such outrageous statements? The intelligent answer would be no.
Here are some further re-creations of events taught by Massad as evidenced by the Al Jazeera article:
“On the other hand, one of the strongest and persistent arguments that the Zionist movement and Israel have deployed since 1948 in defense of the establishment of Israel and its subsequent policies is the invocation of the rights of Israel, which are not based on international law or UN resolutions. This is a crucial distinction to be made between the Palestinian and Israeli claims to possession of "rights." While the Palestinians invoke rights that are internationally recognized, Israel invokes rights that are solely recognized at the national level by the Israeli state itself. For Zionism, this was a novel mode of argumentation as, in deploying it, Israel invokes not only juridical principles but also moral ones.
‘In this realm, Israel has argued over the years that Jews have a right to establish a state in Palestine, that they have a right to establish a "Jewish" state in Palestine, that this state has a "right to exist," and that it has a "right to defend itself", which includes its subsidiary right to be the only country in the region to possess nuclear weapons, that it has the "right" to inherit all the biblical land that the Jewish God promised it, and a "right" to enact laws that are racially and religiously discriminatory in order to preserve the Jewish character of the state, otherwise articulated in the more recent formula of "a Jewish and democratic state". Israel has also insisted that its enemies, including the Palestinian people, whom it dispossesses, colonizes, occupies, and discriminates against, must recognize all these rights, foremost among them its "right to exist as a Jewish state", as a condition for and a precursor to peace.”
Professor Massad in two paragraphs doesn’t even credit Israel with trying to make peace with its Arab neighbors who have been screaming to drive the Jews into the sea since before Israel’s creation because it is not an Arab majority and Muslim dominated state. He states no objection to “Muslim” states all over the Middle East, most of which no longer have Jewish populations that were ethnically cleansed (murdered) by the Arab majorities within them.
Since Israel was created by the United Nations, is Massad simply lying or is he trying to rewrite history to the Palestinian narrative? Obviously, the latter. The Israeli Declaration of Independence from 1948 stipulates equal rights for all citizens of Israel despite their ethnicity and non-Jewish Israelis, a majority of which are Arabs and Muslims serve in Israel’s judiciary, police force and even the IDF is they wish. Israel is the only country in the Middle East where Arab women can vote. Israel even has US-mimicked affirmative action laws in its universities and Arab members in the Knesset (who routinely under rules of freedom of speech call for the desruction of the Jewish state. If Massad were less a political hack for the anti-Israel crowd and a truthful academic, he wouldn’t make such false statements about discrimination and dispossession. Arabs who remained in a nascent Jewish state, founded legally by international law in 1948 after Arab armies failed to destroy it, have had their population multiply ten thousand percent since then and enjoy the highest living standards and more human rights than Arabs living anywhere else in the world.
Massad, the now self-proclaimed expert on international law, even faults the Almighty for what is written in the Bible and even in the Koran: the right of Jews to live in their own land, Israel, for their own self-determination. He says he is incensed that Israelis would deign to say they want “peace” because they don’t even have the right to exist. One can translate this into an endorsement of violence and terrorism and certainly cannot interpret it as any call to a peaceful settlement. To Joseph Massad international law must be obeyed when it supports Arab and Muslim goals, it is irrelevant when it supports the creation or rights of Jews to “exist” within secure borders. As such, Massad sees his function as a historian to promulgate the jihadist line rather than to educate the world to seek truth and advancement of society. His remonstrations about the inadequacies of international law are no better than his lectures and writings on history when it comes to objectivity and the facts.
This article was originally published at the American Center for Democracy website,
www.acdemocracy.org .
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