Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) is calling for the Department of Education to investigate the Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) at the University of Arizona. Gosar argues that the program has misused federal money and should have its funding stripped away by the Trump administration.
On February 24, Gosar sent a letter to Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos claiming that the program is “anti-American and pro-BDS.” One of the examples Gosar cites is a piece by CMES associate professor Maha Nassar that ran on this site two years ago. Nassar’s piece argued that the attempts by pro-Israel groups to demonize Students for Justice in Palestine would only end up strengthening the organization.
“I am further informed that there are CMES professors at U of A who, in spite of their association with the Title VI-funded center, openly support the hate group BDS that advocates for the extinction of Israel as a Jewish state,” wrote Gosar, “We are told that Maha Nassar, an assistant professor, wrote a defense of anti-Semitic ‘Students for Justice in Palestine’ in the anti-Semitic publication Mondoweiss.”
The Gosar letter comes amidst a wider campaign by the Trump administration, and various GOP lawmakers, to crack down on pro-Palestine campus groups. The battle was emboldened by an executive order that was signed by Trump last winter. Trump’s move allows the government to yank federal funding from schools if they determine that they have failed to corral the threat of antisemitism. Palestine solidarity activists perceived the executive order as a clear attempt to stifle the BDS movement.
Gosar is currently in self-quarantine after coming into “extended” contact with someone who had the coronavirus. When Gosar tweeted out this news, he referred to COVID-19 as the “Wuhan Virus”, a racist phrasing that health officials have called on people to avoid. Gosar doubled down on his bigoted characterization of the disease after he was criticized for it by MSNBC’s Chris Hayes:
Just astoundingly ignorant to have all major media refer to it as #WuhanVirus for months but somehow, today, you’ve decided that’s #racist. If you think this virus cares about your race you probably work for or watch MSNBC. Wuhan Virus. Wuhan Virus. Wuhan Virus. https://t.co/xOLD9XE8BT
— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) March 9, 2020
Gosar also tweeted this out, which we are still trying to decipher:
Been thinking about life and mortality today. I’d rather die gloriously in battle than from a virus. In a way it doesn’t matter. But it kinda does. pic.twitter.com/m6vU5RTQHJ
— Paul Gosar (@DrPaulGosar) March 9, 2020
To be brief:
Paul Gosar is just another two-bit, ignorant, self serving, uneducated bozo, a bought and paid for pro-Israel puppet and faithful servant of non-presidential President Donald Trump, the utterly corrupt Zionist serving Republican Bozo in Chief.
America is in big trouble!!
Calling the disease the “Wuhan virus” places the blame on the location of ground zero for the disease. It is not racist per se, although it may be the term preferred by racists.
America is in big trouble!!
Paul Gosar is a reassuring presence doing his part to guide the United States through these troubled times.
This, despite the good doctor being abandoned by his own flesh and blood –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1W7lx6IsnY
Pro-BDS? I’m sending money.
Like all Zionists, Gosar is repulsed by the notion of justice, accountability and equality in geographic Palestine because he believes that the religion-based identity of Jewish grants to those who choose to embrace it the “right”:
– to be supremcists;
– to have as large as possible a supremacist state; and
– to do unto others acts of injustice and immorality (a.k.a. “necessary evil”) they would not have others do unto them.
Like all Zionists, Gosar is a hateful and immoral supremacist hypocrite.