Campus Watch Fellow A.J. Caschetta, noting the refusal of Palestinian leaders to even negotiate the Trump administration’s “deal of the century,” takes the academic world to task for its role in encouraging this ongoing rejectionism. Examining the response of an array of international academics to Trump’s deal, Caschetta then turns his eye on notorious Columbia University professors Hamid Dabashi, Joseph Massad, and Rashid Khalidi, whom he dubs “the academic triumvirate of Palestinian sympathizers” presiding over “Ramallah on the Hudson,” or the Center for Palestine Studies. His article appears today at JNS.
The Palestinians’ bold sense of entitlement comes primarily from their leaders, both the PLO/Palestinian Authority and Hamas. But a close second place in the competition for encouraging Palestinian rejectionism goes to the academic world. Without both an elite class of Palestinian ideologues and an international coterie of academics instilling jealousy and anger in the Palestinians, there would likely be a Palestinian state today. Instead stateless Palestinians are encouraged and applauded for turning down offers that stateless Kurds and Tibetans would jump at.
