DePaul Professor Rips Israel in Chicago Trib--Who Put the Stupid Pills in DePaul University's Water?

What is it with the Professors at DePaul University? First you have Norman Finkelstein, the mean spirited professor teaching that victims of the Shoah are using the Holocaust for their own selfish reasons and teaching that Israel is an evil nation. Now another professor, Marda Dunsky publishes an op ed in the Chicago Tribune that is filled with more errors and misstatements than it is has vowels (H/T Backspin).

40 YEARS AFTER THE SIX-DAY WAR
U.S. on a disastrous course
Aid from Washington has effectively sustained the Israeli occupation

For Palestinians, the upcoming 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War represents 40 years of freedom denied. For Israelis, it is a reminder that security and regional acceptance remain elusive after nearly six decades of statehood.Israelis and Palestinians have not had exclusive agency in the making of their conflict, however. U.S. Mideast policy has played a significant role.

The overriding American interest has been to preserve and enhance U.S. influence in the strategically vital, oil-rich Middle East. During the Cold War, countering Soviet encroachment in the region was paramount. Israel, with its developed economy and democratic processes, has been the United States' natural ally and proxy in achieving these objectives.

The United States has supported Israel since the Jewish state was established in 1948. However, the bulk of U.S. material support has coincided with Israel's 40-year occupation of the Palestinians. Ninety-nine percent of the estimated $107 billion in U.S. economic and military aid to Israel has been granted since 1967. (Since 1993, U.S. aid to Palestinians has totaled about $1.8 billion.)

Moreover, since 1970, the United States has cast half of its UN Security Council vetoes -- 41 out of a total 82 -- to shield Israel from international censure of its policies of occupation, annexation and military action.....

.....The continuing injustice and suffering that the Israeli occupation has brought on the Palestinians has served as a focal point for resentment toward the United States in the Muslim world. Jihadists who seek to harm Americans and U.S. interests have made the conflict a rallying cry.

The effect of U.S. policy on the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic also has dampened prospects for a just and sustainable peace. This despite the United States' self-described role of "honest broker" in the conflict and its repeated, though mostly failed, attempts at diplomacy.

Of the several "final-status" issues to be resolved, one of the most difficult is the presence of about 460,000 Israeli settlers on lands in the West Bank and in and around Jerusalem that have been occupied -- or, in the case of Jerusalem, illegally annexed -- by Israel since 1967.

OK Marda lets take a little break here. Lets start with the Illegally Occupied territories. From 1948 to 1967 they were "occupied" by Jordan and Egypt. In fact even through the Yom Kippur War, the call from the international community was to give the West Bank and Gaza back to Egypt. So it wasn't until after 1973 that the land was supposed to go back to an Arab "Palestinian" entity

Now about the UN--you see back in the good old days...40 years ago, the UN could actually create a Fair Resolution. One of those Resolution 242 was enacted right after the Six-Day. In the resolution the UN asked Israel to give back territories won in the war. Meaning some of the territories, the breadth of which to be negotiated. Since then people like the Peanut President and organizations like the NY Times misrepresented the document's wording by adding the word "the" to the text, indicating that Israel was supposed to give back All of the territories taken in 1967. I would suggest that the "good" professor read There is no "THE" in UN Resolution 242: CAMERA gets it straght from the Drafter's Mouths

The Professor continues:

The UN Security Council has passed numerous resolutions affirming that the Fourth Geneva Convention -- which prohibits an occupying power from transferring its own civilian population to the territory it occupies -- is applicable "to the Arab territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including Jerusalem." These resolutions also have declared that Israeli settlements in occupied territory have "no legal validity."

Despite international law and consensus on these issues, and even as the numbers of settlers and colonies continued to increase, U.S. aid to Israel during its 40-year occupation has continued unabated.

Gee and what about all the aid to Abbas despite all of all of the terrorism that he has ordered. Here are just some of the terrorist attacks perpetuated by Abbas' Fatah since he succeeded Arafat:

• April 17, 2006: Nine people were killed and at least 40 wounded in a suicide bombing near the old central bus station in Tel Aviv. The blast ripped through Falafel Rosh Ha'ir, the same restaurant that was hit by an attack on January 19. The Islamic Jihad and Fatah’s Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades both claimed responsibility for the attack.

• March 30, 2006: Four people were killed in a suicide bombing outside Kedumim in the northern West Bank. The Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades took responsibility for the attack.

• October 16, 2005: Palestinian gunmen killed three Israelis and wounded as least 5 others in two separate drive-by shootings in the West Bank. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for both attacks.

• August 28, 2005: A suicide bombing outside the Central Bus Station in Beersheba severely injured two security guards who stopped the bomber from entering the bus station. Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

• July 23, 2005: Two people were killed and three others wounded in a drive-by shooting near the Kissufim crossing in the Gaza Strip. Islamic Jihad and Al Aksa Martyrs Brigades claimed responsibility for the attack.

• June 24, 2005: Two teenagers were killed and three others wounded in a drive-by shooting near Hebron. The Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade claimed responsibility for the attack.

• January 13, 2005: Six Israelis were killed and five other civilians were wounded in a double suicide bombing at the Karni crossing between Israel and the Gaza Strip. The two suicide bombers used a very large explosive device to blast through a defensive wall that separates the Israeli and Palestinian sides at the crossing. Following the blast, the bombers crossed into the Israeli side, carrying explosives on their bodies, which they detonated. Hamas and the Fatah al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades claimed joint responsiblity for the attack.

• December 15, 2004: Five motorists, an officer, three soldiers and a civilian were wounded from gunshots fired by a terrorist at Israeli vehicles on the Kissufim road in the Gaza Strip. Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Fatah claimed joint responsibility for the attack.

The professor also seems to forget that during the summer of 2005 Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip--but still she goes on.

In 2003 the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that since 1967, Israeli governments had spent an estimated $10.1 billion on settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a figure that equaled approximately 11 percent of U.S. aid to Israel for the same period. U.S. law prohibits Israel from spending American aid in the occupied territories. However, money is fungible, and the math is clear: This aid has effectively underwritten the costs of Israel's building, enlarging and defending the settlements -- and thus has sustained the occupation.

In addition to decades of aid and diplomatic support for Israel, U.S. policy on the conflict has followed a disastrous course since the turn of the 21st Century.

The failed 2000 Camp David summit, under the aegis of the Clinton administration, presented the Palestinians with a new, U.S.-brokered approach to peace that r- framed the rules of the process, according to former CIA analyst Kathleen Christison.

"Contrary to previous expectations [based on UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338]," Christison wrote, "Palestinians must come to the peace process expecting to bargain over the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, not to obtain their return."

Maybe I am being unfair. Perhaps she can't get herself a copy of those resolutions because it is very obvious that she has never read a copy of them.

During the second Palestinian uprising that followed the summit, the Bush administration backed Israel's military and diplomatic isolation of the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat based on unproved allegations that he was tied directly to Palestinian violence against Israelis. This served to humiliate Palestinians and weaken their confidence in Arafat's Fatah party.

Unproved? Here you can find a State Department Document showing the Terrorist Arafat did some nasty things in his time.

How abut the fact that Arafat transferred millions of dollars in international aid and taxes transferred to the Palestinian Authority by Israel to purchase large quantities of weapons, the PA chairman's former financial aide, Fuad Shubaki, has told the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency). Some of the money, Shubaki told his investigators, was also used to fund Palestinian terror groups. (Jerusalem Post 5/17/06)

When Palestinian voters handed a stunning victory to Hamas in the January 2006 parliamentary elections, the Bush administration -- despite its pretensions of promoting democracy in the Arab world -- backed Israel in its boycott of the democratically elected Palestinian government and cut aid to the Palestinian Authority. In recent weeks the United States, which considers Hamas a terrorist organization, has reportedly funded the training and arming of Fatah fighters to battle Hamas forces in Gaza with the aim of bringing down the Hamas-led government, The Washington Post reported last month.

And all it had to do is renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist and say it will follow previous agreements with Israel. But it refused, thus admitting it did not even want to maintain the appearance of wanting peace.

The aggregate impacts of this American policy are stark: The Israeli government continues to build and enlarge West Bank settlements. Palestinian factions are engaged in fratricidal violence in Gaza. And the prospects for constructive diplomacy, much less peace negotiations, appear nowhere on the horizon.

At the 40th anniversary of the occupation, Americans should not be content to think of themselves as mere sideline observers to this folly. We have a stake, and should have a voice, in changing the course of a policy that has diminished hopes for Mideast peace while compromising our own interests. ---------- Marda Dunsky teaches "Reporting the Arab and Muslim Worlds" at DePaul University in Chicago. Her book, "Pens and Swords: How the American mainstream media report the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," is scheduled to be published by Columbia University Press in January.

Published by Columbia University--anyone surprised? Marda Dunsky is a shining example of why Tenure is a bad thing Academics has developed into strange world. Especially on the College level it has become PC to the max.Tenure the most political cut throat business I have ever witnessed(except for maybe synagogue politics). There is this short term goal around five years into your career called tenure---once you get it, unless you shoot a kid or something like that, you have a guaranteed job for life.

If you don't get tenure, in most cases, you have to change jobs. The original goal of tenure was to keep political pressure off of the professors backs so they can teach the truth. In many cases, on college campuses they have perverted that quest for truth into "academic freedom" a sort of first amendment right to "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story." Professors ZEALOUSLY guard that "academic freedom" to a fault. It protects their lifetime jobs---but in many cases it does not protect the truth.

Marda Dunsky like her her collegue Mr Finklestien perverts the truth--maybe its just something in the DePaul Water?