A friend has sent me this article written by a Palestinian activist named Rahim Kurwa. It appears in Jadaliyya this past February and is entitled, "Why Students in Solidarity With Palestine Should Not Join the Olive Tree Initiative". As my readers know, the OTI is a program created at UC Irvine ostensibly to take students from various backgrounds to the Holy Land (Israel and West Bank) and expose them to both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I have often attacked the OTI as a fig leaf operation weighted to the Palestinian narrative. Kurwa apparently buys into the "balanced" ads, which is why he objects.
Kurwa's article includes a response by Arturo Jimenez Bacardi, a graduate student at UC San Diego, who is involved in the OTI program there.
http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/10009/why-students-in-solidarity-with-palestine-should-n
I take issue with both writers. If Kurwa believes OTI is really balanced, then he looks silly pretending there is only one just side to this issue. I am surprised the Muslim Student Union at UCI hasn't brought him in to speak at their annual May hate-Israel fests. By the way, as to that big thanks he gave to Tom Pessah; this person is head of-or was recently head-of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UC Berkeley.
As for Mr Bacardi, I'm not buying his response either. OTI is heavily slanted to the favor of the Palestinians. Just research the articles written here about the Palestinian contacts OTI has on the West Bank, people like George S Rishmawi (co-founder of the International Solidarity Movement), Mazin Qumsiyeh, the meeting in 2009 with Hamas official Aziz Dweik, the refusal to produce their expenditures under a California FOIA request, the number of Jewish students who have returned from OTI trips and joined SJP, and the involvement of the Centre for New Diplomacy, whose board of directors included numerous Swedish anti-Israel activists. Last year, we showed a photograph of the OTI visiting the mayor of Bethlehem, with the founder of OTI and the vice chancellor of UCI wearing Palestinian scarves beneath the benevolent gaze of a portrait of Yasser Arafat.
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com/2013/03/olive-tree-initiative-picture-says.html
These two fellows should get to know each other. They may find they have more in common than they think.
A militant Palestinian criticizes the Olive Tree Initiative for being balanced, and Gary says the Palestinian has to be wrong because Gary has been criticizing it for being pro-Palestinian.
ReplyDeleteSounds to me like OTI is doing a good job. You are known by your enemies as well as by your friends.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteThere is a wealth of reporting here on this site about the OTI. Much of it comes from personal observation at UCI.
read it.
I've been reading your reporting on OTI Gary. Its given me a very favorable impression of OTI. There is a wealth of commentary on this site about how good OTI is (mine among others). And your friend who first called Finkelstein "Norm," the one who either went on an OTI trip or helped organize it... he seemed to have a good head on his shoulders.
ReplyDeleteThis criticism from a militant Palestinian only affirms the impression I got from you. Its a good program, which is understandably rejected by those with an ax to grind who don't want to hear facts that might include something true that casts their own heroes in a bad light.
Siarlys,
ReplyDeleteThe question by the student to "Norm" was so innocuous I don't even recall it.
Without mentioning his name, I should add that he joined the Students for Justice in Palestine. (He was a Jewish student, by the way.)