Historian Victor Davis Hanson asks “Why does the international community hate Israel so much?” The answers include not just the dimming memory of the Holocaust and, with that, the lessening restraint on anti-Semites and the far-left’s pernicious claim that Israel is an imperial force, but also the vast impact of Arab, especially Saudi, oil money spreading enmity toward the Jewish state.
The recent One-State conferenceat Harvard University is but the most recent instance of the expanding influence of anti-Israel ideology in the academy, a shift occurring against a backdrop of millions in donated oil money.
Harvard’s Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program is named afterthe donor of $20 million who underwrites that endeavor.
In the UK too, Alwaleed Bin Talal and other oil potentates have poured funds into universities, influencing discourse against both Israel and the West generally.
According to a 2011 Telegraph story:
(Bin Talal’s largesse in the form of a $10 million donation was rejected by Mayor Giuliani in the wake of 9/11 because of the Saudi’s linkage of the terrorist attack to Israeli treatment of Palestinians.)
