Image from onestateconference.org
I’m pleased to announce that several of us here at Harvard have organized a conference about the one-state solution. Or rather, it’s a conference whose aim is to help us define what one-state actually means.
We will be hosting nineteen speakers on ten panels (we may consolidate some of the panels) to discuss what a few of the major issues around the one-state are. Equally, we’d like to identify some of the challenges that may impede its realization. Members of the community here provided helpful advice and feedback during the planning phase of the conference - and two of the on-campus centers are acting as co-sponsors.
I’m happy to say that as a student, I was treated with all the respect, consideration and good-will that any of my peers working on any other issue would have received.
I want to emphasize however that that does not mean that any member of this institution endorses our views or supports our agenda (defining one alternative to a two-state solution). Instead, it highlights the University’s commitment to open and free discussion.
Please see our conference website (onestateconference.org) for a full description of what we will be discussing on March 3 and 4. And register soon!
Any questions or comments can be directed to info[at]onestateconference.org
Awesome Ahmed! Hope it turns out to be productive and people come and participate.
“I’m pleased to announce that several of us here at Harvard have organized a conference about the one-state solution. Or rather, it’s a conference whose aim is to help us define what one-state actually means.”
Congrats to all involved! Don’t cease the campus to the hasbara idiots.
Dr. Hagopian also found time to provide “extensive comments on an earlier draft” of M. Shahid Alam’s book, Israeli Exceptionalism: The Destabilizing Logic of Zionism, published late in 2009.
Dr. Alam is Professor of Economics at Northeastern University in Boston [maybe he'll attend the conference!] and has published three previous books, Markets in Economic Development Strategies (1979), Poverty from the Wealth of Nations (2000), and Challenging the New Orientalism (2006).
Israeli Exceptionalism is a Rosetta stone to deciphering the zionist mindset and ideology. After reading the first chapter of Dr. Alam’s book, I next viewed again the interview of Ronen Bergman where he discusses as casually as if he were reciting a recipe for hummus, the fact that Israel has used overseas assassination more than any other state, even more than Stalin and Saddam Hussein.”
Following Alam’s insight into zionist thinking, one could perceive just how frightening we all should be that people like Bergman walk freely, and that they are merely mouthpieces for a nuclear armed hypermilitarized regime. Shouldn’t Americans be both ashamed and very afraid to be riding this wild tiger?
Terrific that Dr. Hagopian will be part of this important conference.
Thanks for the reference to Alam’s book, which I was not aware of. The Amazon review of it by Sansom was enlightening, and most of the comments on that agreed.
Very apt, riding this wild tiger
Whoa what an incredible speaker line up. Sure is looking like the one state solution is the only solution. Israel has basically wiped out the possibility of a two state solution based on the 67 border.
Ahmed is there any way to summarize the reasoning behind a push for a one state solution in a sentence or two?
Ahmed, will somebody be recording these exceptional speakers? I really wish I could fly in for this conference.
irena, the kennedy forum website indicates that it broadcasts events. or so it seems.
link to iop.harvard.edu
thanks marc! will keep an eye on this site
de nada, irena. i hope to attend one of the dates.
I wish we could manage something like this in the UK.
what an amazing lineup of speakers. incredible.
Best of luck to this movement as of course a one state solution is the only just solution.
Though I think the next step might best be a 2SS (as hard as it seems to get there)… I’m all for this, and pushing it as an option (it is the best option, but I’d fear another 1948 before a just 1SS). I hope it ends up there somehow.
But this conflicts with occupy AIPAC! Grrrrr. I’m gonna leave Cambridge, living right next to Harvard, to hit DC for occupy AIPAC, and miss this great event. Hope there is good video taken and shared on the internet (I wish there was better documentation of all I/P events).
Ahmed, this is absolutely FABULOUS! Thanks for letting us know!
Please give us some follow-up after-the-fact and links to videos.
The Boston Jewish Advocate ran a story attacking the one-state conference, text below. The Israeli consul called it “the end of the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people.” These are of course the main fictions of Zionism, and it is impossible to speak meaningfully of a unitary state in Palestine with equal rights for all citizens without addressing Zionism.
A unitary state cannot be conceived if half the population are not merely citizens, but members of an international “people” with a right to emigrate from all over the world and be granted citizenship on arrival. The “Jewish” national group can only be Israeli Hebrew, a secular nationality, not an international “people” open only to those of putative “Jewish” descent. Boas Evron discussed the history of this idea in his 1986 book “Jewish State or Israeli Nation”.
Nor can a unitary state be conceived without support in the US, Israel’s crucial supporter. Yet anti-Zionism is a foreign language here, no less on the left than in the Zionized mainstream. I discussed these issues in a recent story called “Liberal Citizenship, not ‘Jewish Identity’” on DissidentVoice and my web site.
link to dissidentvoice.org
My site links to a PDF with notes
link to questionofpalestine.net
Here is the story from the Boston Jewish Advocate. It’s behind a paywall so no URL.
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Harvard under fire over Israel
¦ Student-run conference eyes one-state solution
By Leah Burrows
Advocate Staff
A controversy has arisen over a student-organized conference at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government focused on a one-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict. Pro-Israel groups and the Kennedy School dean have criticized the conference agenda for lacking balance.
The conference’s purpose is to consider the feasibility of a single state that could encompass Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, according to organizers. It would result in the end of Israel as a Jewish state and, depending on its borders, eventually leave Jews in the minority.
The One State Conference, which is scheduled for March 3 and 4, is co-sponsored primarily by graduate-student groups, including Justice for Palestine, the Palestine Caucus and the Association for Justice in the Middle East.
Scheduled speakers include Stephen Walt, co-author of the controversial book, “The Israel Lobby”; llan Pappé, an Israeli historian who has accused his nation of ethnic cleansing; and Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson for the Palestinian Liberation Organization.
“This is a who’s who of the anti- Israel crowd,” said Rob Leikind, director of the American Jewish Committee Boston chapter. “If the organizers had invited people from a range of points of view to talk about the merits of the one-state solution, that is one thing. But there is a common thread among those present in that they have all been strong opponents of Israel, and they think that Israel should not exist in the way it does.”
Combined Jewish Philanthropies, CAMERA, Harvard Students for Israel and the Israeli Consulate to New England have also raised concerns about the conference.
In response, David Ellwood, dean of the Kennedy School, released a statement distancing the university from the conference.
“I want to emphasize once again that Harvard University and the Harvard Kennedy School in no way endorses or supports the apparent position of these student organizers or any participants they include. We hope that the final shape of the conference will be significantly more balanced,” the statement read.
Ahmed Moor, a graduate student at the Kennedy School who has been planning the event for the past year, rejected the notion that the conference should include two-state supporters.
“If I was holding a two-state conference, I wouldn’t be asked to invite people who are Kahanists, for instance, or Greater Israel types or one-staters for that matter,” Moor said. “One thing we are allowed to do as individuals, as groups of people, is circumscribe the range of the conversations we choose to have. And that’s what we’ve done here. We want to talk about one state.”
Moor said he did not expect conference participants to whitewash the challenges of the onestate solution. Several of the speakers, including Walt, do not view a one-state solution as viable, Moor said.
“In putting forth any kind of positive political program on the horizon, I think it’s important to grapple with the realities of the situation,” he said.
The university said that the event has received support from “modest” funds set aside for student conferences. Beyond that, neither Harvard nor Moor would detail other sources of funding.
“Students typically come forward with general ideas in many circumstances long before they have invited specific people or finalized a program, and generally administrators try to be supportive of student ideas for events that they are planning,” said Melodie Jackson, associate dean for communications at the Kennedy School.
Jackson noted that the conference was one of several student-organized events at the Kennedy School this semester. Others include the Jewish Caucus Seminar Series, and The Israel Conference scheduled for April, organized by Israeli students from around the university.
Harvard Students for Israel, an undergraduate group, said it planned to write letters and op-eds in student publications against the one-state conference. However, the group said it had no plans to protest at the event.
“We want to make it clear that [the one-state solution] is a minority opinion,” said Joshua Lipson, co-president of Harvard Students for Israel. “[The conference] is presenting the one-state solution as something mainstream, when what we are seeing is something that is genuinely radical. Whether we are dovish or hawkish, we think is pretty radical to think that a sovereign state should be dismantled without discussing why it should not.”
Lipson and many of the conferences critics, emphasized that the student groups had every right to discuss a one-state solution, but expressed hope they would include a diversity of viewpoints.
“We all understand and respect academic freedom, but this is really not doing good to anyone,” said Shai Bazak, consul general of Israel to New England. “To put an end to the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people in the state of Israel, it’s something that no one with clear mind really endorses.”
For Moor, the one-state solution is an avenue for equal rights, not the destruction of the Jewish people – and that is worth a conversation, he said.
“It seems like there is a lot of pressure to abort the conversation perhaps before we’ve had a chance to engage with one another in good faith,” Moor said.
Another attack from the Boston Jewish Advocate on the Harvard one-state conference. And an attack on the Harvard Middle East Center Outreach program.
The no-Israel conference (Feb 24)
What if Harvard hosted a conference “Eliminating Israel: What’s next?”
Actually, that’s not a hypothetical question; in effect, it is the premise of next month’s One-State Conference.
The student-run conference aims “to expand the range of academic debate” over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and “educate ourselves and others about the possible contours of a one-state solution and the challenges that stand in the way of its realization,” according to its Web site.
One might think that among those “challenges” are the concerns of the nearly 6 million Jews who live in the State of Israel, not to mention millions of others of Jews and non- Jews worldwide who believe strongly in the importance of a Jewish state. However, the roster of speakers is packed with academics who have been sharply critical of Israel.
But that can be explained: “One thing we are allowed to do as individuals, as groups of people, is circumscribe the range of the conversations we choose to have,” said Ahmed Moor, a graduate student at the Kennedy School of Government and a Palestinian-American, in an interview with The Advocate.
Yes, it would muddy the waters just a bit to provide historical context about how and why Israel came to be; about how Arab massacres of Jews during the British mandate derailed nascent discussions between moderate Muslims and Jews about a joint state; about how in 1948 the Palestinians rejected a UN partition plan that would have given them a state larger than any they can hope for today; and about the challenge of reversing the anti-Semitism that has been bred into Palestinians for decades through their schools, their mosques and their media.
Maybe, we’re wrong, and these concerns will be raised. We doubt it, though. The gaping hole in the conference guest list brings to mind, say, the United States sponsoring a conference about making all of North America a single nation, but not inviting Canada and Mexico.
Perhaps we do Moor a disservice by dwelling on balance. Chances are he would have found few Israel advocates willing to take part in a discussion about the demise of the Jewish state. Why lend credibility to a pipe dream that, if enacted, would in all likelihood turn into a nightmare for the Jewish people? Look at the bloodshed in Syria, Egypt and Iraq: If Muslims aren’t safe in their own lands, think what would happen to a Jewish minority in a Greater Palestine. But even if the Middle East were as tranquil as Switzerland, no Jews in their right mind would give up Israel – centuries of persecution have shown us that we must have our own homeland.
Still, while the one-state solution remains very much a fringe position, thanks to the stalled peace talks, it has been gaining traction on the left as has the push for a Greater Israel on the right. Indeed, if the status quo persists, as Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak warned two years ago, Israel risks becoming an apartheid nation where a largely Jewish minority dominates a largely disenfranchised Palestinian majority.
Such a one-state solution is no more palatable than the one envisioned by the organizers of next month’s Harvard conference.
We fear that the One-State Conference will be a waste of time at best and yet another forum for bashing Israel at worst. While the dean of the Kennedy School has declared that Harvard does not in any way endorse the conference, the university – even if unintentionally – is lending the event its prestige by serving as host.
But of greater to concern to us is that future world leaders – the very students who attend the Kennedy School – receive a complete and nuanced picture of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While we don’t expect the Middle East conflict to be solved in an Ivy League lecture hall, we do believe that universities can play an important role by encouraging rigorous, respectful debate among all those with a stake in the dispute. And that is no pipe dream.
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¦ Outreach center is accused of bias (Feb 17)
By Leah Burrows
Advocate Staff
A Harvard program that offers public and private school teachers resources on the Middle East is under fire from a media watchdog group and conservative blogs for bias against Israel.
The critics assert that the Outreach Center at Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies and its director, Paul Beran, are providing anti-Israel speakers and materials to primary and secondary school teachers seeking to supplement their Middle East curriculum.
The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) last December released an article outlining the center’s “biases,” citing its past use of the controversial “Arab World Studies Notebook” and Beran’s involvement in the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement.
Several blogs, including The American Thinker, and the national Jewish newspaper The Algemeiner have also picked up CAMERA’s accusations.
Both the university and Beran declined to speak with The Advocate about the concerns raised by CAMERA. The university also declined to comment on the specifics of the center’s funding, only confirming it receives money from the university, private donors and the federal government.
The center has advised teachers in Brookline and Newton, among other school districts, on such topics as the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Islam, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Sept. 11 and the Arab Spring. It also offers resources on the arts, culture, language and religion.
In 2010, the Center for Middle East Studies received about $280,000 from the US Department of Education’s National Resource Centers Program, which supports international studies centers at universities nationwide.
In its article, CAMERA criticized the resources Beran recommended on the outreach center’s Web site regarding the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The list of about 30 films and books includes “History of Modern Palestine: One Land, Two Peoples,” by Ilan Pappé, an Israeli historian who calls Israeli treatment of Palestinians ethnic cleansing; and the documentary “Occupation 101,” by Sufyan and Abdallah Omeish, which features interviews with several anti-Israel activists including Noam Chomsky and has been condemned by the Anti-Defamation League as propaganda.
The list also contains mainstream Israeli and Palestinian works, such as David Grossman’s novel “To the End of the Land”; the graphic novel, “Waltz with Bashir” about the first Lebanon war; and the Academy Award-nominated film “Promises,” which follows a group of Israeli and Palestinian children.
Steven Stotsky, the senior researcher at CAMERA who wrote the article, said that Beran and the center’s resources skew the history of Israel and prey on the ignorance of teachers about the region.
“You have to present accurate history because you’re dealing with people with limited knowledge,” Stotsky said in an interview. “If not, you do a huge disservice to the country because it’s mis-educating young Americans.”
Stotsky criticized Beran’s use of “anti-Israel” Jewish scholars, filmmakers and organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace, which supports the BDS movement; Sarah Roy, a senior research scholar at the Center for Middle East Studies whose review on Mathew Levitt’s book, “Hamas: Politics, Charity, and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad,” was rejected by peer review panel at Tufts University’s Fletcher Forum on World Affairs for lack of objectivity; and Israeli filmmaker Yoav Shamir, whose film “Defamation” questioned whether the Anti- Defamation League overstates anti- Semitism.
“There is clearly a motive here, and I think that motive is that Beran is trying to claim that Jews aren’t supportive of Israel,” Stotsky said.
CAMERA also questions Beran’s objectivity in light of his involvement with the boycott and divestment movement. Beran, who has a doctorate in international public policy from Northeastern University, has often spoken out in support of BDS.
At a 2005 Harvard conference on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, Beran said the BDS movement helps shed light on the “Zionists for their racist and ethnically focused concern in the Israel-Palestine conflict.”
The CAMERA article did not cite any examples of the Harvard outreach center’s materials being used in classrooms. Several teachers who have used the center expressed satisfaction to the The Advocate.
“At the center, they treat us like professionals who do our own thinking,” said Sean Turley, a social studies teacher at Newton South High School. “They say, here we think you should read this or look at this, but they are very diligent to present a lot of ideas.”
Turley sought help from the center when he designed a 10thgrade lesson plan about the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict. He said that in the three years he had been using the plan he had not received any complaints about the curriculum.
Last fall, one parent did complain about anti-Israel bias in a ninth-grade reading assignment given by another teacher from the “Arab World Studies Notebook,” which was used in a lesson plan about women in the Muslim world. However, the assignment was not provided by the Harvard center, according to Jennifer Morrill, head of the Newton South history department.
The article is no longer being used, according to Morrill.
Kate Boynton, a social studies teacher at Brookline High School, used the center to find a speaker to address her class about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and attended a workshop two years ago on teaching about the Middle East.
“The workshop presented information and materials from multiple perspectives,” Boynton wrote in an email.
The Advocate contacted other school districts, but few responded or were able to name teachers who had used the center.
There have not been any other specific complaints from teachers, students or parents about anti-Israel bias in the classroom related to the center, according to Margot Einstein, a Newton-based activist looking into the center.
A group of local activists, not affiliated with any specific organization, is evaluating textbooks and other readings for bias in their presentation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of Islam, Einstein said.
Over the past several years, the Israeli Consulate to New England had sponsored a professional development course at Framingham State about Israel and the Middle East conflict for public and private schools teachers.
For budget reasons, the consulate said it was unable to offer the program this year
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Clarification:
In the Feb. 17 article “Outreach center is accused of Bias,” Newton activist Margot Einstein is reported saying that she knew of no specific complaints about high school courses that used resources from the Outreach Center at Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies. In a follow up interview after the story ran, Einstein said that her comment was not intended as an endorsement of the center. She said that she and a group of fellow Newton residents continue to be concerned about how Israel and Islam are presented in Newton schools, and about the role played by the Harvard center.
Harry Clark
link to questionofpalestine.net