Lee Kaplan: Duke University's Weekend Hatefest

By Lee Kaplan FrontPageMagazine.com October 15, 2004
http://www.frontpagemag.com

Below is Lee Kaplan's report for FrontPage on Duke's hate-fest this weekend. It is followed by Mr. Kaplan's follow-up report on Daniel Pipes' speech delivered at Duke yesterday, October 14, 2004 -- The Editors

Duke University, under the leadership of its president, Richard Brodhead, and most notably its Vice President for Governmental Affairs, John Burness, continues to whitewash the anti-Semitic and anti-American event still scheduled for this weekend on the Durham campus despite misrepresentation by the organizers over the event’s real purpose. The Palestine Solidarity’s conference, far from being an academic exercise in freedom of speech and academic freedom, will be a training session for anti-Semites and those seeking to support the Insurgents in Iraq who kill U.S. soldiers. It will be an event where attendees will learn how to conduct civil disobedience that can include the destruction of campus property and to support terrorists overseas while the organizers train others to recruit more of their same ilk on campuses all over the United States and Canada.

What is amazing is that Duke’s administrators seem so intent the event go forward they are practically telling outright lies to the public. On the Duke University official website and advertising for the event, whatever the organizers want the public to believe is posted or whitewashed to look good, courtesy of the University.

For example, Duke ran a statement that “Kill the Jews!” was not shouted at one of the previous conferences at the University of Michigan. After Front Page furnished John Burness with a signed legal affidavit, plus one eyewitness account by a Michigan attendee and proof that two newspapers had verified such epithets occurred, Burness altered Duke’s website to say only that “some other people have claimed such statements were made in Arabic ” and only after citing some unnamed faculty sources at Michigan who allegedly said it never happened. The fact those faculty sources may have had a part in bringing the event to the Wolverines’ campus was completely ignored.

Even worse, Burness cites an alleged endorsement by the American Jewish Committee that the Michigan event was an example of educational discourse and civility. This tale was no doubt given to Burness by Fayyad Sbaihat, the current head organizer of the Duke Hate Fest who I exposed in my article on last year’s Conference. Despite the American Jewish Committee sending a letter to Burness stating that such an endorsement by their organization never occurred, Burness at this writing has failed to correct the lie on the Duke website that whitewashes the event.

Scuttlebutt has it that Duke is spending upwards of $50,000 in added security costs to make sure the event happens on campus, including metal detectors to keep out recorders and cameras at this “open dialog” event. When I queried Burness by email if Saudi money was helping Duke to foot the bill, he wrote back saying he was unaware of ANY Saudi funding at all going to Duke University. Sending him proof of Saudi donations and funding for Duke in the past elicited no response at all. Such donations are too numerous to all be cited in this article.

Originally Front Page Magazine did not ask that Duke cancel this event, just merely allow tape recorders and cameras inside. Censorship is de rigueur for the organizers at all their events because they hold sessions where lawbreaking methods -- to be used to support terrorism overseas -- are discussed.

Burness left the banning of recorders and cameras open to the organizers as he insisted this event was open to all points of view. However, a recent Duke University Chronicle article reports that the press will also not be allowed to record quotes inside the workshops at all, even without cameras and recorders. What is the excuse given by the organizers? “To ensure free speech,” according to one leader, who fails to explain how reporting to the public hinders free speech.

Duke’s administrators, like a broken record, continue to cite the event as a model of open dialog and freedom of speech. The question is, “Open dialog and free speech for whom?” Duke states the event has no speech codes as long as things remain civil. But the organizers openly talk of ejecting people who do not talk in “consensus building” speech, no matter how civilly. How can one build “consensus” when the event’s Guiding Principles are full of doublespeak endorsements of terrorism and the destruction of Israel, they refusal to condemn terrorism, and call for civil disobedience?

In short, there will be no real dialog or discussion at this event and Duke’s administrators, in the most Orwellian fashion of doublespeak, are working hard to keep things that way.

The event's list of workshop speakers scheduled on the Palestine Solidarity organizers’ website reveals a collection of anti-Semites and non-academic “experts,” who are given academic credibility by Duke’s previous reputation (something this event should diminish for years to come). Duke’s conduct should make it the laughing stock of universities.

For example, one workshop is led by Abe Greenhouse, a former student at Rutgers University, whose greatest academic achievement there was to smash a pie in the face of Israeli Minister of the Diaspora Natan Sharansky during a campus visit. Greenhouse is a felon. He will be conducting and lecturing at a workshop titled “Anatomy of the Organized Zionist Community in the United States.” Greenhouse is no expert on Zionism. He has never written any scholarly books subject to academic scrutiny on the subject. Sharansky spent many years in a Soviet Union gulag as part of the Soviet Jewry movement and endured daily torture to finally earn the right to emigrate to Israel. Want to become famous and a speaker at Duke? Just commit a felony assault on campus against a champion of democracy and freedom.

But Greenhouse isn’t just an isolated example from the Conference.

Fadi Kiblawi, at the Michigan conference, spoke of his desire to strap on a belt and become a suicide bomber in an article titled “A Perspective on Palestine while High on Vicodin." (Muslim journal Al-Risalah, University of Michigan, Spring Edition II, June 24, 2001). He also lectured at the Ohio State conference on how to take over campus newspapers across the country. Kiblawi will also be speaking and running a workshop. A law student now at George Washington University, Kiblawi’s articles in the campus newspaper at GWU are monitored by pro-Israel groups on that campus who frequently have to write in to correct his false statements. He was arrested in Israel for trying to bring down the Security Fence, and Kiblawi also condemned the shut down of the Global Relief Foundation and the arrest of its head manager, Rabih Haddad, for funding al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas.

Howie Machtinger will lead a workshop on “An American-Jewish Anti-Occupation Perspective.” Like Greenhouse, Machtinger uses his Jewish ancestry solely as a weapon to advance his radical agenda to destroy American capitalism (while living here) along with Israel. Machtinger is a stereotype come to life; a comedy writer’s image of the aging activist. If he wasn’t real, his career would be too amazing to believe. Machtinger was on the barricades at Columbia University in 1968 and was one of the founders of the Weather Underground. He co-authored a tome that stated, “At the right moment, revolutionaries within the United States were to wage a ‘people’s war’ and attack from within. The government would fall and ‘world Communism’ would eventually be instituted.” He also spoke about “how the black liberation movement is so far advanced at this point that the only thing left for white revolutionaries is to support blacks by fighting cops as a diversionary tactic.” Machtinger has been a radical for so long he appears at radical retrospectives and he claims that H. Rap Brown is innocent of killing a black policeman during a traffic stop. Calling for the destruction of Israel is the cause of the millennium. This is another speaker Duke is hosting at this “educational conference.”

But the most telling speaker at this event who shows it is an anti-Semitic hate fest is Charles E. Carlson, whose hatred for Jews borders on psychosis. Carlson is an overt supporter of suicide bombers. He has written articles glorifying suicide bombers:

“Imagine taking the risk of being caught and beaten to death while trying to sneak out of Gaza, a fenced prison; then to travel alone overland to some populated area carrying a homemade pipe bomb that you know can only be detonated within a few feet of an enemy if it is not to be wasted. Imagine knowing that if you detonate the bomb too soon or in the wrong place you will kill only yourself and your friends....”

Carlson goes on to argue that the fact that so many Israeli soldiers are killed by suicide bombers “proves” that the bombers are targeting soldiers, not civilians. Soldiers are killed when they apprehend suicide bombers at check points. The bombers are, of course, en route to civilian targets.

Carlson is a hardcore anti-Semite, repeating long-discredited conspiracy theories claiming Jews run the money supply and are not, in fact, Jewish. For example:

“Are There any Zionist Judeo ‘Christians’ in your Town? Do they Act in Good Faith? Does the Truth have a place in their ‘Religion/Beliefs’? Or do they Serve the ‘Alleged Authorities’? The Rulers of Romans 13. You Know the Ashkenazim/Khazar Edomite ‘Jews.’ The Class A Stockholders of the Federal Reserve: [http://www.apfn.org/apfn/reserve.htm] - Share the Light of the Truth with the neo-conned ‘Judeo-Christians’ and lead them into the paths of righteousness.”

Carlson is also a publisher of al-Jazeera and will be joined by other virulent anti-Semites like Alison Weir from Sausalito, California. Weir has called the Hebron Massacre of 1929 an “Arab Uprising” and pushes the propaganda that the Nazis and Jews worked hand-in-hand during the Holocaust, among other ludicrous accusations.

The PLO, the Saudis and the Arab League have targeted American universities as the next outlet to spread the anti-Israeli, anti-American propaganda they already teach in their own schools. It’s a pity that Duke’s administration is so willing to aid them.

Duke President Richard Brodhead was inaugurated only weeks ago and has lowered Duke’s reputation by making Duke a training base to spread pro-terrorist hatred.

President Brodhead has told Duke’s trustees, “[T]he next few weeks promise to test our university in many ways. I am confident this current controversy will eventually be seen as a moment when Duke demonstrated leadership and preserved a principle at the core of what universities must be about.”

“Demonstrated leadership” is precisely what Duke is lacking. The purpose of a university should be to enable a free society to remain free through the exercise of scholarship, research and real dialogue. Brodhead and Burness are perfectly willing to let the organizers ban the press from strategy-and-training sessions. That has nothing to do with education.

Want to know more about what goes on inside the Palestine Solidarity Conference at Duke? Write President Brodhead and demand the press be allowed inside ALL workshops and events during the event.The American public has a right to know. You can e-mail President Richard Brodhead at: president@duke.edu. While you're at it, write the trustees of Duke University, as well.

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DANIEL PIPES SPEAKS AT DUKE
By Lee Kaplan

Durham, North Carolina- Daniel Pipes, the head of the Middle East Forum and an advisor to President Bush in the War On Terror, spoke tonight at Duke University prior to the Palestine Solidarity divestment conference that is taking place here this weekend.

The subject of his lecture was “The Palestinian-Israeli War: Where Did It Come From and How to End It.” As a preface to the actual speech, Dr. Pipes expressed his umbrage about the upcoming Hate Fest by stating, “ I am appalled that the administration at Duke University allowed the Palestine Solidarity Movement to hold this event.”

He continued by thanking the Duke Conservative Union for the great research they did in two open letters sent to Duke President Richard Brodhead condemning the event, and by illustrating how at past conferences the speakers and organizers, as well as two current speakers at this weekend’s event, Charles Colson and Fadi Kiblawi, have both openly encouraged suicide bombings and terrorist attacks against Israelis. He also pointed out that six people actively involved in the organization of the event are members of both the International Solidarity Movement that aids PLO terrorists in the West Bank and Gaza. Campus Vice President for Governmental Affairs at Duke, John Burness, has consistently tried to maintain that the ISM was not a part of this conference, even though some of the organizers openly admit their membership and affiliations.

Pipes briefly commented on the history of the conflict, and pointed out that when Israel began in 1948 it was based on a socialist past akin to political attitudes so prevalent on campuses today. The Soviet Union had actually supported the creation of Israel at that time along with many leftist groups. He told how the kibbutzim, farm movements and labor party actually dominated Israeli politics for the first 30 years of the Jewish state. He mentioned how numerous American liberals supported the nascent country, such as Harry Truman and others from the Democratic Party. He then pointed out how conservatives like Dwight Eisenhower were ambivalent about Israel.

He continued by explaining that from 1970 to about 1990 support for Israel by both political parties in the U.S. was virtually indistinguishable, but that during the 1990’s there was a new distancing by liberals from Israel. This coincided with a warming of relations with conservatives that has been a counterweight to the coldness and opposition Israel is now facing more often in the U.S. and other countries. He discussed the Durbin Conference where Israel was unfairly condemned as a racist state and violator of human rights by many of the most oppressive regimes in the world and how since then the Left is condemning Israel more and more. As an example, he cited the situation on U.S. campuses where Israel is routinely attacked, clearly a reference in part to the Palestine Solidarity Hate Fest scheduled this weekend. He called for a reclamation of our universities to bring them back to mainstream education rather than to a biased emphasis on left wing views.

Dr. Pipes then launched his lecture by explaining the war between the Palestinians and Israelis is “not a cycle of violence, not random violence, not an age-old feud like between the Hatfields and the McCoys.”

“It’s war. Violence is a symptom of the conflict that has many meanings and goals,” he said. He emphasized that such goals are very important and that most plans currently used for arriving at peace will not work.

He called for a change in U.S. policy.

Describing the eleven years since the Oslo Accords in 1993 to when the Intifada began in 2000, Pipes made an analogy between two handshakes. In September, 1993 on the White House lawn, Yasser Arafat had shaken hands with Yitzhak Rabin which led some national leaders to declare that “the impossible is within reach.” He explained that Oslo was perceived as a brilliant solution and a way to bring dignity and economic revival to the Palestinian people. Instead, he pointed out, after seven years the Palestinians faced more poverty, radicalism and corruption—including suicide bombings—than ever before.

On the Israeli side he told of 1,500 dead and over 6,000 maimed. In addition, Israel has suffered diplomatic and economic decline aside from all the terrorism.

“Oslo was supposed to mean a new epoch but it simply didn’t work,” he explained.

Dr. Pipes then explained why: “There was no real intent on the Palestinian side to live up to or fulfill the agreements.” First, he stated that in September 1993, at the height of the Oslo agreement, the PLO recognized Israel’s right to exist on paper only. Whereas Israel and the West took the agreement to mean an end of 45 years of war and a recognition of Israel’s right to exist, Arafat had no intention to doing so. If acceptance of Israel’s right to exist was actually achieved, then the next step would have been the settling of lesser issues such as borders, water, natural resources among normal issues between states.

Reminding the audience that the 1990’s were the period of the dot.com boom, of economic expansion, he explained that Israel had thought Oslo would mean an end to a tribal conflict and said Israel was flexible, restrained and generous in its offer to the Palestinians. He explained how a curious idea percolated about solving the ongoing war based on the notion “to enrich your enemy.” With the encouragement and aid of the U.S., the EU and Japan, an effort was launched to enrich the Palestinian economy and provide jobs, schools, homes and many other services.

However, all of the above was received as demoralization by the Palestinians who regarded these things not as goodwill but instead encouraged the ambition to destroy Israel. Money for peace was used to prepare for war as the Palestine Authority purchased weapons and set up a military and intelligence infrastructure for war. This only served to make Israel even more vulnerable.

He explained how a nascent Israel defeated five Arab armies in 1948 only to have the Arabs prepare for another round. In 1967, Israel overcame three Arab armies to win a decisive victory yet again. Over the following decades, the Arab world began to see they could not destroy Israel. This was further reinforced when Saddam Hussein was defeated in 1991.

During the seven years after Oslo, Israel continued to make one concession after another, but by 2000 the drive to destroy Israel only grew worse and worse as evidenced by Arab rhetoric, political statements and terror attacks. Arafat could barely deliver his own government.

“What was needed was not signatures…Arafat’s signature was worthless.” He explained. Dr. Pipes then cited the lynching of two IDF reservists seven years later in Ramallah as the example of the contrast with the handshake at Oslo in 1993: one of the killers held up both of his hands drenched in his victim’s blood and shaking them for the world to see.

“We need to learn from these mistakes,” Dr. Pipes said. “First, the presumption a paper agreement would create a real change. Second, that the Palestinians were ready to give up their goal to destroy Israel.” Going back to the notion of war, he told the audience how Germany in the First World War, after a defeat, came back a second time to try again.

He cited numerous wars in the past where enemies that were not completely vanquished once and for all rose again to continue protracted wars. He pointed out how the U.S. had to go into Iraq again after the war in 1991 and how that had also worked against the Taliban.

“What is needed in the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is not more negotiations, but rather to get one side to give up.” He continued, “We must draw a conclusion: Do we want Israel to exist and be accepted as a flourishing democratic state or destroyed.” The Arab goal is to destroy Israel, but Israel wants to be secure.

He urged no financial aid, diplomacy, no state and no recognition for the Palestinians until they are fully defeated as America’s enemies were defeated in past wars. He said that eliminating Arafat was not the answer because another leader might make war even more successful, and described the Security Fence as just a wall that cannot stop a real war that is going on nor lead to long term peace. Unilateral withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza would only be perceived as weakness by the Palestinians. He cited the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon that was done as a goodwill gesture in the early 1980’s but was declared a victory by the other side as an example. Transfer of populations, international troops, even a Marshall Plan for the Middle East were all ruled out as only temporary solutions that would not end the war. Only the absolute defeat of the Palestinians could bring an end to bloodshed.

“Once they give up, only then can they build an economy. As long as they are brainwashed, or give up their children for suicide bombings, only when they realize they are defeated can they make progress.” Palestinians must accept their defeat and the outcome would be good for all parties in the conflict, not just for Israel.

Later he explained the hypocrisy of American policy that condemns the Israelis for using targeted assassinations of terrorist leaders or fighting terrorists in ways that might lead to civilian casualties.

He explained the difference as being that the U.S. is at war but the Israelis are in a diplomatic process. Although, he left it up to individual attendees to decide for themselves if they felt supporting a democratic Israel was more viable than aiding the Palestinians to destroy it, Dr. Pipes’ speech emphasized that the way to end the conflict is to pressure our own government to consider the conflict a war between a democratic ally, Israel, and the Palestinians and to conduct our foreign policy to that end in order to stop terrorism and bring peace to the Middle East.

Lee Kaplan is a contributing editor to Frontpagemag.com.