Swarthmore College Continues its Anti-Israel Propaganda

In 2014, when he was a lecturer in peace and justice studies at Tufts University in Massachusetts, Sa'ed Adel Atshan, an adviser to the campus Students for Justice in Palestine, and now a tenured assistant professor at his alma mater, Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, took part in a campus event held, in the words of Matt Lebovic reporting for The Times of Israel,

'to expose what they call the “intersectionality” of Zionism with other forms of oppression.'

And what, you may ask, was that all about?  Here, in a nutshell, is the answer:

'Israel was condemned for imposing an “interlocking matrix of oppression” onto Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Jews, women, children, gays, the disabled, and others.'

Lebovic continued:

'Coined in 1989, the feminist sociological theory of intersectionality has often been applied to studies of black women, who – so goes the theory – derive their most potent sense of identity from the intersection of being female and black, as opposed to one characteristic over the other.

More recently, anti-Israel groups have adopted intersectionality to denounce Zionism’s alleged subjugation and silencing of its many critics, including Jews.

“Our very bodies disrupt Zionist narratives,” said Sa’ed Atshan ...

Identifying himself to conference participants as a gay Palestinian, Atshan demanded Israel be “decolonized” for its racist policies. He also condemned Israel for creating a Palestinian society rife with honor killings and the persecution of gays – all caused by the intersection of Zionism with misogyny and homophobia, he said.

“Let us not let the Zionists shape the narratives of Palestinian imperfections,” said Atshan, who received a standing ovation from more than 300 students in a Tufts auditorium.

“We all know Israel is an apartheid state and should be boycotted,” Atshan said.

The activist professor said one-third of his SJP chapter’s students are Jewish, and he cited the “deeply racist and pervasive Birthright Israel program” as an obstacle to peace.

Atshan and other speakers used SJP’s fourth annual conference to call for “reciprocal solidarity” among oppressed groups around the world. Indeed, during the half hour before Atshan’s keynote, three black presenters scarcely mentioned the Mideast, focusing on racially charged events in Missouri and Michigan instead...' [Emphasis added, here and below]

I have blogged several times about Atshan, who each year takes his students on slantedly propagandistic study tours of Israel and the Disputed Territories (see here and here and here).
Canary Mission has some eye-opening lowdown on him here

He's on record as stating:

"I dream of a binational secular democratic state in Israel/Palestine that provides equal rights to all citizens and inhabitants of the Holy Land (Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians and Muslims) regardless of ethno-religious affiliation.

I believe that we can and will realize this within our lifetime."  

In 2018, as reported in the Jerusalem Post by Benjamin Weinthal,  a talk entitled “On Being Queer and Palestinian in East-Jerusalem” that Atshan was due to give at the Berlin Jewish Museum as part of the museum’s ongoing exhibit “Welcome to Jerusalem” was cancelled following protests, the Israeli Ambassador to Germany telling a Munich newspaper that “Atshan is very closely connected with BDS" and “is not a person who wishes to build bridges of understanding with Israel” 

The Swarthmore Bulletin, meant for the noted  liberal arts college's alumni, is published quarterly.  This year's most recent (April) issue consists of 80 pages.  The first 48 pages are occupied by feature articles, the final 32 by class notes.
Fully ten pages of the features section (an inordinate number in comparison to the remainder of the articles) is devoted to an international conflict, and that conflict is -- yes, you've guessed it.  This is not the first time that Atshan's propaganda has infiltrated the Bulletin, and I fear that it will not be the last. Indeed, no article sympathetic to Israel has ever been published in the magazine.

The latest anti-Israel piece, written by Alisa Giardinelli, focuses on a Study Tour of "the Holy Land" led by Atshan during the past academic year, the latest of several he has undertaken since being appointed to the college staff, and the most-subscribed tour to date.

Adulatory of Atshan, Giardinelli's article is headed "Empathy & Exploration; This journey to the Holy Land offers immersive lessons in understanding conflict", and in it we read such passages as the following:

"Now, with two books forthcoming this spring, Queer Palestine and the Empire of Critique and The Moral Triangle: Germans, Israelis, Palestinians, and a third, Paradoxes of Humanitarianism: The Social Life of Aid in the Palestinian Territories, under contract, the responsibility Atshan feels to continue his scholarship and teaching has never been stronger"

 Beneath the subheading "Gaza": 

"To reach the last stop on the last day, the bus turned off the highway and onto a dirt road that rumbled past a three-man Israeli tank unit. It would be as close as civilians could get to the Israel-Gaza border. There, from the vantage point on a low ridge, was the buffer zone immediately in front of everyone as well as the distant high-rises of Gaza City. As the group stood next to a military range tower with shell casings underfoot, it was just about sunset. Then the call to prayer sounded. The group stood in rapt silence, mesmerized by the gorgeous sky, the deep, lyrical tones, and the knowledge that, while separated by an electric fence less than 100 yards away, they shared this scene with the 2 million residents in this blockaded strip of land. A short burst of distant but distinct automatic gunfire broke the reverie. Everyone quickly returned to the bus."

In the caption of an accompanying photo taken by Giardinelli she tells us:

'The group outside a West Bank village. Nancy Yuan ’20, who was born in China and raised in New Zealand, says she appreciated the trip’s many vantage points ... says “And since the plight faced by Palestinian refugees is so protracted, I thought if I don’t take this class, I might miss the chance to grasp what is happening in this multifaceted conflict.”

Layan Shaban, a Haverford student who went on the tour, whose brotjher  Ahmad ('19), who took Atshan's class "a couple of years ago but did not go on the trip", explains:

“My dad wouldn’t let him,” she says, citing her father’s concerns about how an Arab would be treated in Israel. “I also wanted to strengthen my Palestinian identity. I think I’m getting there.”

Beneath the subheading Sderot:

“I’ve been closer to death as a student here than as a soldier on the Gaza border,” says Dar Cohen, 27, from the Sderot Media Center... The Swarthmore group stood with him outside the city’s police station. There, stacked against a wall, were remnants of some of the many rockets that had been launched indiscriminately into the city from Gaza, less than a mile away. Although they fall far less frequently than they did 10 years ago, he says the most recent fell less than two weeks before this visit..."

But then:

'Driving through Sderot’s streets, Angeline Etienne ’22, of Miami, says the bomb shelters prompted her to question who can afford them.

“That doesn’t take away the fact that you’re scared and that you’re in danger,” she says. “But whose fear is more valuable? Whose safety is more valuable?”..."

Regarding Hebron:

“As a Jewish male, I know I won’t have to deal with a lot of the security checks and other security measures that a lot of other classmates are having to deal with,” Max Katz-Balmes ’20 says after an incident in Hebron. “If I’m feeling uncomfortable, as one of the people with the most privilege, I can’t imagine what they’re going through.”

.... For most students, the frequent presence of armed Israeli soldiers — on the streets of Hebron, in a lounge in Ashkelon’s Sapir College, even briefly on the bus crossing a checkpoint — was a new, and unsettling, sight.

“Speaking from my perspective and my community, weapons do not make us feel safe at all,” says Etienne, the sophomore from Miami. “So learning that for a majority of the [Jewish Israeli] population, Mizrahi or Ashkenazi, weapons make them feel safe — that’s genuinely something that I don’t understand.”...'

In Lifta an old man, Yacoub Odeh, told the student group “That was my house”:

'Standing in what had been Lifta’s central plaza, Yacoub Odeh, 79, pointed past a tree and up to the ruin of a modest stone structure that still clung to the side of the hill. It was one of about 50 that together were all that remain of what had been, until 1948, a vibrant Palestinian village on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

On this Sunday, Odeh led a tour through the village’s overgrown paths, past groups of male teenagers who also gathered there, in what is now a nature reserve. Along the way, Odeh spoke of a future in which everyone — Christian, Jewish, Muslim — could live together, “as our grandfathers did.”

“That was a very moving experience,” says Robert Zigmund ’21, a philosophy and peace & conflict studies major from Glenside, Pa., “especially with the contrast of walking past the remains of the houses and seeing people laughing and just playing on them.”...'

Note how that old man's vision dovetails with Atshan's professed vision of a binational state in Israel's place.  Surely it does not take an average Swarthmore IQ to foresee the likely demographic and religious consequences of such a state.

Am Israel Chai!

For Friends of Israel, a Frosty Swarthmore February

Ah, those earnest left-leaning bastions of a "liberal" education.  Don't you just love 'em?

I've written before (see here and here) of the zeal for the anti-Israel pro-Palestinian cause that seems to have taken hold at Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania, one of the top liberal arts colleges in the United States.

And now here's a look at Swarthmore College's 2019 calendar, where alumni and others turning to the February page will be confronted by this image:

Was it really necessary to depict a student wearing a keffiyeh, that universal symbol of Israel-hate among wearers in the West, in a publication that should surely be non-political and inclusive?

Presumably the keffiyeh reflects the "change, and impact on the world" that the college is fostering, according to the accompanying blurb.

Shame, Swatties, shame.

Israel/Palestine: A Swarthmore Education

Ah, left-liberals. Dontcha just, well, quake at their Mary Poppins view of the world?

Perusing the Winter 2018 (sic) issue of The Bulletin, alumni magazine of Swarthmore College, the egghead left-liberal Quaker college in Pennsylvania whose Hillel chapter caused a rumpus a few years ago, my eye fell upon a feature about a member of the class of 2007 who, to quote the item's header,

"wants to change the negative narratives about Muslims that dominate the media."

We read of this (non-Muslim) holder of a doctorate about 18th and 19th century women dramatists:

"As founding executive director of the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil-rights group in the country, he says the importance of his work has intensified in the last year.

“The stereotypes about Muslims are around violence or lack of belonging,” says [he]. “The more that we can introduce positive stories of people who are serving their country, who are going through the challenges of adolescence, who are struggling to belong in the same way that many other Americans are, the more we are going to impact how Americans of all backgrounds view Muslims.”

In the face of ignorance and hatred, Robbins is motivated by the proactive efforts of advocacy. CAIR’s programs include anti-bullying seminars with teachers, administrators, and parents; meeting with elected officials and getting American Muslims involved in the political process; and responding to speaking requests from the community to learn who Muslims are and what they believe....

[His] team helped organize a protest in Boston’s Copley Square [to which]

“People brought hundreds of these incredibly passionate and moving signs ...Signs about their Jewish identity, or the fact that they were immigrants or refugees or children of immigrants or refugees, or that this was not the world they wanted for their kids.”

I gather these are glimpses into the demo described, replete with pacifists, placards, pussy hats, and islamophiles, ignoring what should be every left-liberal's target for excoriation, the subjugation of women in Islam.  How many adherents or supporters of the so-called highly mischievous Jewish Voice for Peace organisation are among that lot, I dread to think.

Regular readers of my blog will know that I have posted about Swarthmorean ("Swattie") campus liberalism before, in regard to Israel.  Here, for example, where I discussed the influence of alumnus ('06) and academic Sa'ed  Adel Atshan, who's on record as stating:

"It is essential to talk about Israel/Palestine, considering that Israel is the world's largest  recipient of US aid...

I dream of a binational secular democratic state in Israel/Palestine that provides equal rights to all citizens and inhabitants of the Holy Land (Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians and Muslims) regardless of ethno-religious affiliation.

 I believe that we can and will realize this within our lifetime."   [Emphasis added]

Since then, through popular demand, he's been made a tenure track member of the teaching staff in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program.

Among the alumna of that program are a pair of young female Jewish progressives whose website contains such propaganda as this:

'.... Human Rights Hummus: Voices of the Holy Land focuses on the personal narratives of those living within Israel and the West Bank. We do not refer to the current situation in Israel/Palestine as a “conflict.” A “conflict” implies two equal sides. Israel, however, enjoys one of the strongest militaries in the world alongside massive funding from the United States, while Palestinians maintain neither statehood nor an army. Furthermore, there is international consensus, including by the UN , that the situation in the Territories is legally characterized as a military occupation. In fact, Israel sustains the longest-standing military occupation in human history. Jewish Voice for Peace describes, “The Israeli Occupation can be understood as a system of military rule under which Palestinians are denied civil, political and economic rights and subjected to systematic discrimination and denial of basic freedom and dignity”. This podcast explores how ongoing occupation affects the everyday lives of Palestinians and Israelis alike, as well as how basic human rights have become one of the key casualties.'

And whose list of resources, singularly imbalanced, may be seen here

Perniciously,  their website also contains this message:

'We at Human Rights Hummus believe in the power of education to change the world. If you are interested in teaching the Occupation in your classroom, do not hesitate to reach out and let us know how we can help. We will post sample lesson plans and syllabi here. Check back or email us for more information.'

Meanwhile, the "education" of Swarthmore's Peace and Conflict Studies students is being supplemented by Siraj, as seen below.  Explained its Facebook page (12 January):

"Swarthmore group had the unique opportunity to visit cultural and historical sites in hebron including the Old City, Glass Factory ,kufiya factory and Ibrahim Mosque."

And at the latter, to hide their shameful female bodies, the modern young misses, obediently shunted behind the males, seem to have happily donned grotesque gowns that made them look like a cross between the Ku Klux Klan and executioners at an auto-da-fé!

That's progressivism for you!

"Why is There So Much Politics in Arabic Class?"

I've been browsing the Spring 2017 issue of the Swarthmore College Alumni Bulletin.  It's clear that along with all the other socio-political stances that comprise the often bizarre and contradictory (women's rights, Islamophilia) package deal of ideologies and attitudes of the Left, an anti-Israel default position is integral to that publication.

Regular readers of my blog may remember that not so very long ago I exposed the sympathetic publicity given by the Bulletin to visiting professor and alumnus (class of '06) Sa'ed Atshan, who deplores Israel's very existence.

The current Bulletin assures us that he has again

"completed his annual class trip with his Swarthmore students to Israel and Palestine.  He'll continue to inspire future generations as as assistant professor of peace and conflict studies." 

There's plenty regarding Atshan by Canary Mission here

Under the heading "Global Thinking" the current Bulletin has a feature article by staff writer Elizabeth Slocum about another anti-Israel activist, Missoula, Montana high school Arabic teacher Brendan Work ('10). 

Beneath the title "Speaking the Same Language: His immersion in Arabic became a lesson in empathy" Slocum tells us:

'Brendan Work '10 jokingly tells his students that they are learning "an enemy language."

“They sometimes ask, ‘Why is there so much politics in Arabic class?’” says Work ... “Well, when you’re learning Spanish or French, there just isn’t an international conflict with the U.S. that involves those speakers now.”

This is important context for his students, who must work through so much history and tension tied up in the study of the language through class discussions on the Israel-Palestine conflict, the Iraq War, and Syrian refugees. He seeks to offer them a point of view beyond bias or preconceived notions that he honed as a reporter.  [Emphasis added here and below]

“I knew I wanted to find employment at the intersection of Arabic and journalism,” says Work, who studied the language at the College as a comparative literature major. “I was looking for the big story, so I bought a one-way ticket into the occupied territory,” at a time when Palestine was submitting its statehood bid to the U.N.

Work secured a job at a small press agency in Bethlehem where he improved his language skills ...before heading into the field as a reporter and photographer. As Work detailed the struggles of those in the conflict zone, he realized the Arab narrative was often told from a limited perspective.

For example, while covering a planned protest near the West Bank wall on the day of the statehood bid, a clash escalated and a Palestinian teen was struck by a tear-gas canister. (A Reuters photographer captured an image of Work aiding the boy moments after the violence.) Denied access to the nearest hospital because it was on the other side of the wall, the youth ultimately lost his eye. Later, out of concern, Work met with the teen’s parents...

“Their thinking was, ‘Resistance is our reality. In America, I thought, protests happened out of a sense – rather than a reality – of injustice.”

Work brought this empathy back to his Montana hometown, where an Arabic teaching position opened shortly after his return. In the classroom, he encourages students to see past stereotypes and to instead learn the cultures and customs of Arabic speakers...

Compassion, he teaches, is key...

“They [his students] enjoy the responsibility of being their family FAQ,” he says. “When their dad sees something about Iraq on the television, they love being in the room so they can say, ‘Here’s what I learned in Arabic today.’” 

What Slocum neglects to tell the Bulletin's readers is that Brendan Work is a hardened anti-Israel activist who has, for example, contributed Israel-demonising articles to the Electronic Intifada

Transparency on the Bulletin's part is needed.
 
And so is an attempt at balance regarding Israel in its feature columns.

Academic Who Dreams of Israel's Demise Takes US Students on Free "Trip of a Lifetime"

"It is essential to talk about Israel/Palestine, considering that Israel is the world's largest  recipient of US aid...

 I dream of a binational secular democratic state in Israel/Palestine that provides equal rights to all citizens and inhabitants of the Holy Land (Jewish Israelis and Palestinian Christians and Muslims) regardless of ethno-religious affiliation.

 I believe that we can and will realize this within our lifetime."
 [Emphasis added, here and below]

The words are those of Swarthmore College visiting professor in Peace and Conflict Studies (and class of '06 graduate) Sa'ed Atshan [pictured], quoted  in the Summer 2016 Swarthmore College [alumni] Bulletin that I finally got around to reading today, having flicked through the class notes a fortnight or so ago.

It's on a profile of Atshan on page 8 by one Michael Agresta, demonstrating how Atshan, an Arab Quaker who attended Ramallah Friends School, "balances scholarship and peace activism".

Inter alia:

"Atshan's most recent foray beyond the ivory tower is the inaugural Swarthmore College Israel/Palestine Study Trip, but he has long worked to build bridges from academia to the front lines of social justice and peace activism.  As a graduate student at Harvard, he organized a similar spring break study trip to Israel/Palestine; the program has endured and is in its eighth year.  He has also partnered in projects with Human Rights Watch, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees....'

On page 15 is a cross-referenced report by Bulletin managing editor Carrie Compton headed "Trip of a Lifetime".  Illustrated, as you can see here, by, respectively, "Rainbow in Jericho; Palestinian potter; Lunch in Hebron; Dome of the Rock", it tells us:

'Over winter break, 19 students from Sa’ed Atshan ’06’s Israeli-Palestinian Conflict class spent 10 days in that region of the Middle East, meeting with top humanitarian figures on all sides of the conflict. The journey was free for the entire class, thanks primarily to funding from an anonymous donor.

Though the trip occurred during a break in the academic year, the students found it as demanding as any other Swarthmore experience. 

“They were rigorous, emotionally draining days filled with phenomenal meetings,” says Omri Gal ’19, whose parents are Israelis from Jerusalem. “I can’t even count how many times I’ve been to Israel before this, but this was something else entirely: an all-access, insider’s trip.”

The group’s itinerary swept the region, with stops in Israel and the West Bank: Tel Aviv, Haifa, the Negev, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Hebron. On each day the travelers spoke with about 10 of the area’s most influential peace activists, including Israeli and Palestinian Swarthmore alumni, during meetings that began at 8 a.m. and typically ended around 10 p.m. 

“We really got to see every single aspect of the region’s struggles from the conflict zones, which as a tourist, you’d never be able to do,” says Gal. “The vast majority of students came away from the experience with an incredible amount of hope for the situation, because the people we met were so full of strength and resilience.” 

“One of the inspirations for this trip was to help students better think about how they can be engaged globally,” says Atshan, “and how they can contribute to the amelioration of suffering and creating a more peaceful and nonviolent world.” 

Professor Atshan’s course on the Israel-Palestine conflict is slated again for fall 2016, but funding for another trip has yet to be secured.'

So who precisely did fund this trip?  Swarthmore? Soros? CAIR? ...

There is a podcast interview here by Joelle Hageboutros of this extremist Swarthmore group with three participants in the trip.

If you can be bothered to listen to this depressing piece of Israel-bashing (the photo below is a clue to the slant) you will notice that Ms Hageboutros states that the trip was organised by Atshan "in conjunction with Boston College and fully funded by Swarthmore" (which conflicts with the information given by Carrie Compton).

The interview shows how much these young participants have been brainwashed by the "peace activists" with whom they came in contact. 

Though I suspect, that at least one of the interviewees needed little encouragement to become a "useful idiot". 

 When they talk of "peace" is it the demise of Israel that they, too, seek?  Sadly, I assume so. 

Sa'ed Atshan is gay, it seems.

The photo at the top shows him at Swarthmore in 2013, visiting from Tufts.

No doubt he had only good things to say about the treatment of gays in Israel compared wiith Arab states, and his audience was duly impressed and appreciative. with the enlightened attitude of the little Jewish State.  Huh?

Alas for Dr Atshan's "dream" of a replacement state in which all would live in harmony, tasting and meting out only loving kindness,  we don't need a much-vaunted Swarthmore or Ivy League education to work out who, in the kind of state that would inevitably follow his "dream" of the fall of the Zionist Entity, would have reason to fear the sight of cranes and the tops of tall buildings.

Let's hope the kids snap out of their fantasies soon.