Setting The Record Straight
Campus Watch corrects false allegations made against it.
Response to:
Palestine: 100 Years of Colonialism and Resistance
by Samir Twair
Washington Report on Middle East Affairs
October 24, 2017
Categories:
False allegations of attacking professors who criticize Israel
False allegations of suppressing free speech
False allegations of being a Zionist organization
False accusations of being part of a lobby or conspiracy
Original text from Palestine: 100 Years of Colonialism and Resistance:
Excerpt of pertenent material from article:
"On Oct. 14, 2016 and May 3, 2017, students found in plain view dozens of racist, bullying posters that targeted student advocates for justice in/for Palestine, including members of the General Union of Palestinian Students (GUPS), Professor Abdulhadi and AMED," the only program to focus on Arab and Muslim communities in the U.S. These relentless, bullying attacks by "rght-wing pro-Israel groups such as David Horowitz, Canary Mission, AMCHA, Campus Watch, Stand With Us, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Daniel Pipes' Middle East Forum and the Zionist Organization of America are deliberate." |
Campus Watch Responds:
It's hardly surprising that when Samir Twair of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs wanted to smear Campus Watch and other organizations for their critiques of terrorist-excusing San Francisco State University professor Rabab Abdulhadi, he took the intellectually lazy route of quoting from another, equally biased and unreliable source: a June 1, 2017 petition titled "Fight Racism and Islamophobia at SFSU: Stop the Intimidation of Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi and Her Students" posted at Launch Good.
Had he troubled himself with any research, he would have found that Campus Watch West Coast Representative Cinnamon Stillwell had already corrected the faulty claims of Launch Good. Here's the pertinent part of her correction from June (click here for the entire correction):
A Launch Good campaign to raise money for a "legal defense fund" for Rabab Abdulhadi, director of San Francisco State University (SFSU)'s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diaspora Initiative (AMED) and a founding member of the U.S. Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel, makes several errors involving Campus Watch (CW) and Middle East Forum (MEF) President Daniel Pipes.
The fundraising drive text describes CW and MEF as "right-wing pro-Israel groups," when neither CW nor MEF's missions include being "right-wing" or "pro-Israel." MEF promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects Western values from Middle Eastern threats, while CW critiques shoddy, politicized scholarship in the field of Middle East studies with the goal of reform.
It also accuses CW and MEF of subjecting Abdulhadi to "relentless bullying," when, in fact, CW's criticism of Abdulhadi revolves around her inappropriate and divisive anti-Israel, anti-American campus activism, including brokering SFSU's Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with radical An-Najah University in the West Bank. The MEF/CW campaign to end the MOU is based on Najah's documented history of promoting radicalism, anti-Semitism, and terrorism. MEF/CW doesn't believe taxpayer dollars should be used to promote a partnership with a terror-friendly institution, nor to fund a potentially dangerous student exchange program.
(Posted by Winfield Myers)
