Israel Bashing Profs Abdulhadi and Bazian Play the Victim at Berkeley

Rabab Abdulhadi

Year after year, Middle East studies professors call for the elimination of Israel. When their critics expose the vicious, false nature of their demands, these politicized profs cry “censorship!” and “McCarthyism.” One might think their ability to say whatever they please without university, much less government, retaliation would embarrass them into dropping these shop-worn clichés. But, lacking imagination and determined to milk the cult of victimology for all it’s worth, they repeat themselves. Year after year. They did it again recently at UC Berkeley, as Michael Lumish, writing for Campus Watch at the Daily Caller, reports:

Are University of California academics who engage in anti-Israel activism subject to “silencing”? Such were the strident cries on October 27, when about one hundred students gathered on a cloudy morning outside of Sproul Hall at the University of California, Berkeley for the 3rd Annual International Day of Action for Palestine.

Organized by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Bears for Palestine, the rally featured Israel-bashing, BDS-promoting professors Hatem Bazian and Rabab Abdulhadi, who insisted over loudspeakers that they were being repressed by the UC system.

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Winfield Myers is managing editor of the Middle East Forum and director of its Campus Watch project, which reviews and critiques Middle East studies in North American universities. He has taught world history and other topics at the University of Michigan, the University of Georgia, Tulane, and Xavier University of Louisiana. He was previously managing editor of The American Enterprise magazine and CEO of Democracy Project, Inc., which he co-founded. Mr. Myers has served as senior editor and communications director at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and is principal author and editor of a college guide, Choosing the Right College (1998, 2001). He was educated at the University of Georgia, Tulane, and the University of Michigan.
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