Closing American Minds, Excluding Arabs

Previous Posts on this Subject:

1. Gazan Fulbright Scholar at Columbia


2. Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars and


3. New Report on Gazan Fulbright Scholars.


4. Israeli Scholar Revisits Academic Boycott

In The Magnes Zionist: Please Help This Young Man Get to America, Professor Jeremiah Haber continues to cover the sage of the Gaza Fulbright scholars as was as a Gaza High School student who were going to attend school in the USA this September.

Philip Weiss discusses Haber's article in The U.S. Must Reverse Its Decision to Bar Gaza Boy From Coming Here to Study.

Haber writes:

That somebody like Ahmed could grow up in a place like Gaza seems incomprehensible to many Israelis. That Gaza could be home to doctors, lawyers, and university professors, seems as incomprehensible. Such is the power of prejudice and stereotypes.

Haber may be focusing on the wrong target group. The Israeli government is not particularly worried that Israeli Zionists might change their beliefs, for they are well indoctrinated.

If Americans meet real live Palestinians, Israel advocacy groups will have a lot more difficulty in demonizing and dehumanizing Arabs and Muslims as some almost certainly Zionist Jewish dominated PR firm attempted in the Nissan ad discussed in Nissan Pulls Ad Featuring Vengeful Arab Stereotype.

The Gaza scholars and student story is interesting because it fits a pattern in the battle for domination of American discourse. Israel Advocacy groups are making greater use of non-Jewish proxy groups to their dirty work -- in this case middle level bureacrats at the US State Department.

I will post more on the subject soon but in this case the benefit of the proxy discourse war is fairly clear. Pro-Palestinian advocates cannot argue that an Israeli siege of Palestinian students and scholars provides an undebatable argument for boycotting Israeli academia. Sphere: Related Content