As part of the on-going controversy over the Olive Tree Initiative (OTI) at UC-Irvine, in which it was learned that a meeting took place in September of 2009 between student participants of the OTI trip to the West Bank with Hamas figure Aziz Duwaik, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has issued the below press release.
http://www.zoa.org/sitedocuments/pressrelease_view.asp?pressreleaseID=2028
I would like to add a couple of comments.
First of all, the documents just released by UCI under a Freedom of Information request do not include a response by UCI to the original letter of complaint sent by the Orange County Jewish Federation in October of 2009. (Receipt of more documents is pending.) Where is that response? Is there a response? If not, why not?
A question that needs to be answered is whether any OTI funds were expended in connection with this meeting with Duwaik-either to Duwaik himself or any organization/individual that facilitated it.
In addition, given the massacre in Itamar a couple of weeks ago, can it still be considered prudent to send Jewish students to the West Bank? I mean, who in the Hell do they want to dialogue with?
5 comments:
The students were instructed to lie about the meeting because they would encounter difficulties when they REENTERED Israel.
I seems that the OTI Professor and graduate students leading this trip figured that meeting with a Hamas leader in the West Bank is safe. They must have assumed that the probable questions and difficulties they would have encountered were just because the Israelis at the checkpoints are just meanies and ask these questions without good reasons.
I wonder if they checked with the Fogel family (those that remain) or the Daniel Pearl family or the Galil Shallit family, who is still being held hostage. I wonder if they knew about the suicide bombers that were Hamas heros or what is in the Hamas Charter. Did they know about the shelling of Sderot or Ashdod?
Obviously it was crucial to them to hear this Hamas propagandist so they took the risk. It seems just as obvious that the donors to the Jewish Federation, even AFTER knowing about this betrayal in 2009 and subsequent questionable speakers STILL refuses to part ways with OTI means they too WANT the students to hear the Hamas view of the world.
Thomas Sowell has said that it used to be the ignorance of the uneducated that worried us, now it is the ignorance of the educated, meaning those professors, graduate students who led this OTI trip, and students who attend these new age bastions of tolerance and free speech, like UCI.
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The questions not being asked are: How does a Professor at UCI know Hamas operatives? How did he make the meeting arrangements and is there an exchange of U.S. funds to Hamas?
With this said, will there be more opportunistic meetings with Hamas? Will Hamas be paid for the visit? Why is the UCI Professor, who is the Hamas buddy, still working at UCI?
The FBI and the IRS need to step in and do some questioning.
Squid
In other news, the Republican National Committee issued a press release denouncing President Obama, the NAACP issued a press release denouncing Andrew Breitbart, Colonel Qadaffi denounced the provisional government in Benghazi as a front for al Qaeda, and Nigel Farrage made a speech lampooning Von Rompuys. Also Pakistan and India are far apart in their intermittent negotiations over Kashmir.
I really haven't followed OTI that closely. I thought some people were upset that the OTI took students to the West Bank and meet with someone who used to be apart of the controversial group ISM. I didn't find that to bad. I don't mind so much if someone had dirty hands if they since washed them.
But meeting with someone that represents HAMAS is not something that should have taken place. The OTI lost a lot of credibility in my mind with this move.
I see there being some benefit for govt members of Israel and Hamas to meet to try to see if they can work towards peace - even though I don't see it happening.
But students shouldn't be meeting with HAMAS members. I would also be against students meeting with Aryan Nation members to hear their perspective even though I hope police communicate with their leaders.
Good point, Anonymous, the Israeli /Palestinian conflict is not going to be solved on the UCI campus or by UCI students.
At its heart OTI is an attempt to indoctrinate students to a certain way of looking at things and to see the grievances of the Palestinians. They aren't able to debate the Hamas spokesmen about issues... even the Israeli government spokesmen have a hard time doing it.
Federation spokesmen are getting to be more like Mark LeVine all the time.
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