Stanford’s Islamist Threat

By Alyssa A. Lappen
FrontPageMagazine.com | December 21, 2004

He denounces American “imperialism” on Al-Jazeera Television. A former Zionist, he refers to jihadist suicide bombers as “martyrs.” He praised Mideast scholars for ignoring the issue of terrorism, and he regularly repeats the most twisted and paranoid claims of Islamist regimes as though they were historical fact. He is Stanford Middle East history professor Joel Beinin, and his influence extends far beyond his classroom.

If one individual can showcase all the flaws of Middle East Studies in academia, Joel Beinin is that man. A former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Beinin teaches Middle East history at Stanford University. This professor’s politics color his work; the result is mediocre scholarship, baseless conspiracy theories, and partisan classroom instruction.

Beinin’s biography reads like a parody of an American radical. Born in 1948 to Labor Zionist parents,[1] he experienced an ideological transformation at age 22 while living on Kibbutz Lahav. Beinin joined the “New Left” at Hebrew University, then migrated to Trotskyite anti-Zionism and finally to Maoism.[2] A Marxist ever since,[3] he received his BA, MA, and Ph.D. from Princeton, Harvard, and the University of Michigan respectively. He has received Ford Foundation funds, and has taught in France, Britain, Israel and Egypt.[4]

Beinin and his wife Miriam support the Jewish Voice for Peace,[5] a Bay area group and reported Palestinian front.[6] The professor appears regularly on radical Radio Pacifica,[7] although he refuses many local invitations to legitimate debate.[8] Beinin blames the United States for major problems facing the Middle East, and he attributes U.S. actions to aggression and ill will. Just a few examples of his most outrageous actions include:

Before the 2003 Iraq war, Beinin appeared on Al-Jazeera to condemn U.S. “imperial” policy in the Arab world. President Bush, he informed his Middle Eastern audience, planned to establish “a puppet regime” in Baghdad to benefit U.S. oil interests and force what he called “Israeli dictates” on the Palestinians.[9]

After the war began, Beinin accused Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and other U.S. policymakers of collusion with “Israel’s Likud Party”[10] and asserted that the U.S. and Israel had collaborated with Arab regimes to block “democracy and economic development in the Arab world.”[11] Beinin insisted that the U.S. was bent on showing “the overwhelming military power of the US–to make and unmake regimes and guarantee access to oil.”[12] American conservatives, in his opinion, wanted to ensure that “Islamist forces would forsake legal political action and engage in armed struggle.”[13]

Beinin rejects critical thought regarding terror, and with it any opportunity to sensibly evaluate the current U.S. war. He mocks this effort as “terrorology.” A year after 9/11, he actually congratulated fellow MESA academics for their “great wisdom” in refusing to examine terrorism, much less address what nearly all agree is the gravest national security threat to the United States.[14]

Pro-Palestinian Apologist

Beinin’s antagonism toward Israel pervades his commentary concerning the Jewish state. He maintains that exodus of Jews from Arab lands after 1948 resulted not from their forced expulsion by Arab governments but from “provocative actions by Israeli agents.”[15] Despite the fact that Israel offered Jews a haven from mass murder in Europe, and atrocities and mass expulsion from Muslim lands,[16] Beinin holds that “Modern Zionism is a revolution against traditional Judaism, not its fulfillment.”[17] (He shares this view, ironically, with a tiny minority of anti-Zionist ultra-Orthodox Jews.)

The violence of the first intifada (1988-92) was, in Beinin’s view, actually a “strike for peace.” With Hamas-like rhetoric, he has praised “the first martyr of the uprising,” and excused the”small number of violent incidents” against Israelis[18] (overlooking that they led to 160 murders).[19]

After September 11, 2001, Beinin ignored Osama bin Laden’s explicit calls for jihad; instead, he pointed to “Israel’s disproportionate use of force” against Palestinians.[20] This ignores the obvious fact that Al-Qaeda opposes Israel’s very existence, rendering irrelevant the level of force it deploys.

In spite of overwhelming evidence, Beinin refuses to acknowledge the threat that Islamic terrorism poses to civilians. In March 2002, a Hamas terrorist entered a hotel in Netanya, Israel, and killed 30 civilians, including children, as they celebrated the Passover holiday.[21] The following day, Beinin addressed an anti-Israel demonstration and did not even mention this atrocity.[22] Instead, he insouciantly denied that Palestinian terrorism “posed an existential threat to Israel.”[23]

As for American involvement in the Arab-Israeli conflict, despite staggering diplomatic efforts and vast sums of money given to the Palestinian Authority, Beinin can see only a “consistent [U.S.] denial of independence and self-determination” for the Palestinians.[24]

Whitewashing Egyptian Anti-Semitism

Beinin’s specializes in Egyptian history. Here, too, his work bears an anti-Zionist tone and frequent contradicts the facts of history. In opposition to “the Zionist project,” [25] he instead favors “Levantinism,” an Israel-replacement ideology that calls for revitalizing the “fruitful compromise” of cultures he believes existed in the past.[26]

Scholars and Jewish refugees from Muslim lands both maintain that such idyllic harmony never existed, [27] but Beinin romanticizes and politicizes their history.[28] He also dismisses bona fide work on Arab and Muslim attitudes toward Jews by such writers as Yehoshafat Harkabi and Bat Ye’or, calling this perspective a “neo-lachrymose interpretation” [29] that inexcusably has “distracted attention from Palestinian claims.”[30]

It appears that Beinin delves into history only to support his own preconceived theories. He ignores facts that contradict his ideas, sweeping certain events aside as if they never occurred. In his 1998 book on the fate of the Egyptian Jewish community, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, Beinin ignores the 1730s riots that destroyed Cairo’s Jewish quarter, killing 5,000 to 10,000, at least half its population.[31] He makes no mention of the 1901 blood libel leveled at a Cairo Jewish woman.[32] He condescendingly informs a former Jewish resident that the harat al-yahud was “not a ghetto,”[33] when in fact it was. He minimizes Egypt’s 1929 Nationality Law,[34] which blocked citizenship for Jews and many Christians, making some 40,000 Jews apatrides, stateless.[35] He downplays the 1947 Company Law that made it nearly impossible for minorities to work in Egypt.[36] He insultingly twists Egypt’s Jews into “Arabized” nationalists who would have been happier without Israel’s existence. [37]

Beinin even neglects Egypt’s state-sponsored publication of hateful tracts like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an edition of which was issued by Gamal Abdel Nasser’s brother Shawki.[38] He denies the inherently anti-Semitic nature of arrests of Egyptian Jews during the 1940s and 1950s on trumped-up charges.[39] He asserts that Nazi officials in Egypt’s government[40] cannot be traced — and anyway, that they had no political influence — ignoring a well-documented record of Nazis having moved to Nasser’s Egypt and their significant impact there.[41]

In 1956 and during 1967-70, Jewish males over 19 were imprisoned in the Abu Za’bal and Tura camps.[42] They were tortured, forced to walk barefoot on broken glass and recite “I am a coward Jew. I am a Jewish donkey.”[43] Beinin makes no mention of these camps.

In Egypt, leaders of Jewish communities were forced to publicly denounce Zionism. Incredibly, Beinin takes these denunciations at face value.[44] In fact, these Jews were Zionists; Cairo’s Jews fasted for Israel’s safety in 1967 and then massively resettled there. [45]

Teaching Bias

To the chagrin of Stanford students and their fee-paying parents, Beinin uses the classroom to promote his wacky revisionism.[46] So notorious is he for biased teaching that the Stanford Review, a campus newspaper, has run an item called “Beinin Watch” to inform readers of his antics. The editor likens Beinin’s courses at Stanford to “expensive training for the Marxist press corps.”[47] When students rejected his request to attend an antiwar rally instead of his own class, Beinin trumped them by holding his lecture at the rally itself.[48]

At AllLearn, a joint online venture of Oxford, Stanford and Yale universities,[49] Beinin teaches a course on “Palestine, Zionism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” and his lessons are fraught with conspiracy theories.[50] The “Zionist lobby” in Washington, he informs students, has the power to induce Washington to adopt an “uncritically pro-Israel foreign policy.”[51] For “serious” reading, he recommends Egypt’s state-run Al-Ahram,[52] a newspaper that routinely features anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial, likens Israeli leaders to Nazis,[53] and praises suicide bombings.[54] Al-Ahram’s editor Ibrahim Nafie was actually sued in France for a piece claiming that Jewish rituals require the use of Christian children’s blood.[55] Jonathan Leffell, a student of Beinin’s online class, informed AllLearn that the course was a “miserable hate fest.”[56]

And yet, through his positions as a professor and writer, Beinin claims many converts. Last June, a former Stanford student confessed to fellow radicals training with the International Solidarity Movement, “I used to support Israel until I took some classes with Joel Beinin, who set me straight.”[57] Beinin reaches an audience broader than Stanford’s student body. Last spring, he sounded off against the war in Iraq in The Nation.[58] His works are often cited by groups like anti-American touring companies like the Wheels of Justice, [59] or reproduced in books.[60]

As MESA’s president, Beinin influenced the education of middle and high school students through the Teachers’ Curriculum Institute (TCI), according to Frontpage contributing editor Lee Kaplan. TCI writes textbook entries and social studies curricula to meet standards in 20 states, including California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.[61] Beinin filled its Middle East committee with such ideologues as Betsy Barlow (a U.S. coordinator for the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center),[62] Glenn Perry (of Indiana State) and Kamran Aghaie and Abraham Marcus (both of the University of Texas).[63] One high school handout gives Hamas greater political significance than Israel’s Labor and Likud parties.[64] TCI high school textbooks include class “exercises” that pit students in roles of “advantaged” Jews against others posing as “disadvantaged” Palestinian Arabs. Playing the role of a world power, teachers are instructed to unfairly oppose the “Arabs.” [65]

Getting It Wrong

Through the years, real life has disproved Beinin’s theories and predictions. In 1991, Beinin dismissed U.S. concerns over Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait as “patently ridiculous,” insisting that the real American goal was to maintain weak, unstable “mini-states,” thereby assuring cheap oil and generating demand for U.S. weapons.[66] To this day, Beinin never acknowledged that his expectation was entirely off base. (The U.S. left Saddam in power precisely out of fear of Iraq breaking into mini-states).[67]

In 2002, Beinin initiated a petition that charged Israel with plotting the “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians under cover of the approaching war in Iraq.[68] He predicted that Ariel Sharon would use the war as an opportunity “to push the Palestinians into Jordan.” [69] As Martin Kramer has noted, Beinin thus condemned Israel “in advance for something it had no intention of doing”[70] , and did not do. In this matter, too, Beinin refuses to concede that he was wrong.

The U.S. government “has given Israel nearly one trillion dollars,”[71] according to Beinin. This is a completely fictional sum;[72] total aid to Israel since 1949 has actually come to just over $90 billion, including $15 billion in loans.[73] Informed of his whopper, Beinin insisted, “The basic point still stands.”[74]

Joel Beinin’s career as a voice of academic authority parallels the unscholarly behavior common in academia in general, and in Middle East Studies and MESA in particular. We must continue to shine the light of scrutiny on their pro-terrorist indoctrination tactics, or they will become more insulated from criticism — and more pose a larger threat to innocent civilians around the world.

Alyssa A. Lappen undertook this research for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, to review and critique Middle East Studies in North America with the aim of improving them.

ENDNOTES:
[1] Beinin, Joel, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, (1998), pp. Library of Congress Cataloguing Data, 25, 27; Wall, Alexandra J., “Outspoken Stanford prof supports 2-state-solution,” Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, Mar. 15, 2002.
[2] Beinin, Joel, Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, pp. 25-28; Wall, Alexandra J., “Outspoken Stanford prof supports 2-state-solution,” Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, Mar. 15, 2002; interviews with former Beinin students and associates.
[3] Kurtz, Stanley, “The More Things Stay the Same,” National Review, July 22, 2002, http://www.nationalreview.com/kurtz/kurtz072202.asp; former associates, interviews.
[4] Beinin, Joel, Stanford University Department of History Faculty profile, http://history.stanford.edu/faculty/beinin; < “2004-03-14T13:45” > Beinin, “Egyptian Jewish identities,” http://www.hsje.org/beinin.htm.
[5] Not in My Name ad, http://www.nimn.org/gushad/publishedAd1.pdf.
[6] Kaplan, Lee, “Purge at San Francisco State,” FrontPageMagazine.com, Feb. 26, 2004, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=12354.
[7] Stanford University professors; Bernstein, Dennis, “Flashpoints Radio,” Jan. 25, 2002, http://www.flashpoints.net/index-2002-01-24to29.html; “Democracy NOW! in exile,” Pacifica news, Nov. 26, 2001; “Palestine/Israel discussed at Petaluma festival,” Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Nov. 2001, http://www.wrmea.com/archives/november01/0111063.html.
[8] Bernstein, Ralph, email invitation to debate in Palo Alto, Sept. 9, 2002; Beinin, Joel, email refusal of invitation, Sept. 9, 2002; interviews with associates and former students.
[9] Beinin, Joel, interview with Ahmed Mansour, Al Jazeera, Feb. 10, 2003, http://www.aljazeera.net/programs/no_limits/articles/2003/2/2-10-1.htm #L6
[10] Beinin, Joel, “Pro-Israel hawks and the Second Gulf War,” Middle East Report Online, Apr. 6, 2003, http://www.merip.org/mero/mero040603.html.
[11] Beinin, Joel, “Pro-Israel hawks and the Second Gulf War,” Middle East Report Online, Apr. 6, 2003.
[12] Beinin, Joel, “Pro-Israel hawks and the Second Gulf War,” Middle East Report Online, Apr. 6, 2003, http://www.merip.org/mero/mero040603.html; Freedland, Jonathan, “That is a Racist Slur,” The Guardian, May 7, 2003, http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,950536,00.html
[13] Beinin, Joel, “Pro-Israel hawks and the Second Gulf War,” Middle East Report Online, Apr. 6, 2003.
[14] Beinin, Joel, “Why do they Hate Us,” Peninsula Peace and Justice Center speech, Sept. 17, 2001, for Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Palo Alto; “Middle East Studies After Sept. 11,” MESA 2002 Presidential address, Nov. 23, 2002, http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/Bulletin/Pres%20Addresses/Beinin.htm
[15] Beinin, Joel, AllLearn online chat< “2004-03-12T11:26” > with Joel Beinin, Dec. 3, 2002.
[16]< “2004-03-12T18:07” > Abdel Wahed, Joseph, “Exodus today,” National Review, Apr. 17, 2003.
[17] Beinin, Joel, ibid, online chat with Joel Beinin, Oct. 24, 2002.
[18] Beinin, Joel, “From Land Day to Peace Day and Beyond,” Intifada: The Palestinian Uprising Against the Israeli Occupation (1989, Beinin, ed with Lochman, Zachary), pp. 205-216.
[19] www.terrorvictims.com
[20] Beinin, Joel, “Why do they Hate Us,” Peninsula Peace and Justice Center speech, Sept. 17, 2001, for Peninsula Peace and Justice Center, Palo Alto, http://www.peaceandjustice.org/nowar/1beinin.html; reprinted, Jordan Times, Oct. 23 2001.
[21] http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/go.asp?MFAH0le00 http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110002948
[22] Beinin, Joel, “Another Bloody Passover,” Mar. 27, 2002, AlterNet, http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12711; and “Suspend military aid to Israel,” Jewish Voice for Peace, Mar. 28, 2002, http://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/about/past_actions/passover_speach. html;
[23] Beinin, ibid.
[24] Beinin, Joel, “Origins of the Gulf War,” University of Wisconsin, Nov. 30, 1990, reproduced in Open Pamphlet Series, Feb. 19, 1991.
[25] Beinin, Joel, The Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry: Culture, Politics and the Formation of a Modern Diaspora, (1998), pp. 25-28, 140-51, 263-4; Wall, Alexandra J., “Outspoken Stanford prof supports 2-state-solution,” Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, Mar. 15, 2002.
[26] Beinin, Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, pp. 54-59, 207-248; Alcalay, Ammiel, After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture (1992).
[27]Goitein, S.D., “Evidence on the Non-Muslim Poll Tax from Non-Muslim Sources,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 6, 1963, pp. 278-79; Margoliouth, David S., “The Status of the Tolerated Cults: Lecture IV,” The Early Development of Mohammedanism (1914), pp. 99-134; Sarshar, Houman, ed. Esther’s Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews (2002), pp. 95-136; Interviews with Egyptian Jewish refugees; Author communication with Bat Ye’or.
[28] Ibid; Murad al-Qudsi, Just for the Record in the History of the Karaite Jews of Egypt in Modern Times (2002), pp. 202-230.
[29] Beinin, Joel, Dispersion, pp. 14-19; expression first used in Cohen, Mark, Under Crescent and Cross (1994).
[30] Beinin, Joel, Dispersion, pp. 14-19.
[31] Landau, Jacob M., “The Decline of the Jewish Community in Eighteenth-Century Cairo: A New Interpretation in the Light of Two Iberian Chronicles,” in Shamir, Shimon, ed., The Jews of Egypt: A Mediterranean Society in Modern Times (1987), pp. 15-27.
[32] Al-Qudsi, Murad, Just for the Record in the History of the Karaite Jews of Egypt in Modern Times, Wilprint, 2002, p. 228.
[33] Beinin, Joel, letter to Murad al-Qudsi, June 11, 1997, Just for the Record (2002), pp. 212.
[34] Beinin, Dispersion of Egyptian Jewry, pp. 18, 37-38.
[35] Shamir, Shimon, “The Evolution of the Egyptian Nationality Laws and their Application to the Jews in the Monarchy Period,” Shamir, ed., Jews of Egypt, pp. 33-67.
[36] Beinin, Dispersion, p. 38; Shamir, ibid.
[37] Beinin, Joel, Dispersion, pp. 2-4, 20-24, 38-44, 72-76, 179-203.
[38] Beinin, ibid, pp. 90-100; Bat Ye’or, Juifes ibid; Harkabi, Yehoshafat, Arab Attitudes to Israel (1972), pp. 229-237.
[39] Beinin, ibid, pp. 103-5; interviews with Egyptian Jewish refugees.
[40] Bat Ye’or, Les Juifes en Egypte (1971), Annex I and II pp. 66-69, citing Frankfurter Illustrierte Aug 25, 1957, “Patterns of Prejudice” (Institute of Jewish Affairs, London), May-June 1967; separately she cites Yad Vashem; Tatu, Michel, interview with Simon Wiesenthal, Le Monde, Jun. 9, 1967; Amoni, M.S. Le Nationalisme Arabe et les Nazis (1970); “Tableau des nazis devenus conseillers des pays arabes,” Les dossiers du Lien, No. 204, Mar. 2003, after Falligot, Roger and Kauffer, Remi, Le croissant et la croix gammee (Albin Michel, pp. 165-7); [41] Harkabi, ibid.
[42] Beinin, ibid.; Al-Qudsi, Murad, ibid, pp. 202-230; Al-Qudsi letter to Beinin, April 1997, pp. 218-219; Al-Qudsi, ibid, Ovaida, David, President, Karaite Jews of America, pp. 215-219; interviews with Karaite community, Blumenzweig, Jacques, interview June 21, 1999, http://www.hsje.org/NASSER’S%20JEWS%201_2.htm
[43] Review of Dispersion, by zz2122 from Ashdod, Israel, Jul. 2, 2003.
[44] Beinin, ibid. pp. 34; Al-Qudsi, ibid; Ovaida, ibid; Interviews with Karaite community.
[45] Al-Qudsi, ibid; Ovaida, ibid; interviews with Karaite community.
[46] Multiple interviews with former Beinin students, Beinin colleagues and Beinin research subjects.
[47] Hudson, William, The Stanford Review, Feb. 26, 2003.
[48] Fairbanks, Joe, “Beinin Watch,” Stanford Review, Vol. XXX, No. 3, Mar. 13, 2003, http://www.stanfordreview.org/Archive/Volume_XXX/Issue_3/Beinin_Watch/ index.shtml.
[49] http://www.allianceforlifelonglearning.org/
[50] Beinin, Joel, Palestine Zionism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, Introduction and Lectures 1-10, videotape and transcripts, online discussion transcripts Oct. 13-Dec. 18, 2002, AllLearn, Fall 2002.
[51] Beinin, Joel, AllLearn Session 9, Palestine Zionism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, fall 2002.
[52] AllLearn Syllabus; Ha`aretz, Cairo al-Ahram Weekly; “Government shoots Itself in Foot with Printing Ban in Cairo’s Free Zone,” Cairo Times, Apr. 16, 1998, Vol. 2, No. 4.

Of 29 required readings on his AllLearn syllabus, 19 have a distinctly anti-Israel outlook. AllLearn Syllabus. Interviews with current and former Stanford professors, students and AllLearn students. Required Reading, Books, Cohen, Michael, The Origins and Evolution of the Arab-Zionist Conflict (1987); Khalidi, Rashid, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness (1997); Laqueur, Walter and Rubin, Barry, eds, The Israel-Arab Reader: A Documentary History of the Middle East Conflict (2001, 6^th ed.); Smith, Charles, Palestine and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (2001, 4^th ed.); Chapters and Articles, “Balfour Memorandum of 1919,” From Haven to Conquest, ed., Kalidi, Walid, (Institute for Palestine Studies, 1971), 201-10; “Camp David and After: An Exchange,” New York Review of Books, Jun. 13, 2002, 42-49; “Exchange: Camp David and After–Continued,” New York Review of Books, Jun. 27, 2002, 47-49; “Final Report of the Israeli Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut” and “Arab Reaction to the Kahan Report,” Journal of Palestine Studies, 12 (no. 3, 1983): 89-116, 198-201; Begin, Menachem, The Revolt (1977 out of print), 60-85, 100-102, 214-28; Beinin, Joel, “Palestine and Israel: Perils of a Neoliberal, Repressive Pax Americana,” Social Justice 25 (no. 4, 1998): 20-39; Benvenisti, Meron, Sacred Landscape: The Buried History of the Holy Land since 1948, (2000), 101-110, 114-17, 144-92; Cobban, Helena. The Palestinian Liberation Organization, (1984), 3-18; Elon, Amos, The Israelis: Founders and Sons (1981, out of print), 41-56, 106-86; Finkelstein, Norman G., Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict (1995), 123-49; Friedman, Robert I. Zealots for Zion: Inside Israel’s West Bank Settlement Movement (1992), 3-42, maps preceding cont.; HaCohen, David, “Excerpt from a speech to the secretariat of the Mapai,” Ha-Aretz, Nov. 15, 1969; Halper, Jeff, “The 94 Percent Solution: A Matrix of Control,” Middle East Report 216 (Fall 2000):14-19; Lockman, Zachary, Comrades and Enemies, (1996) 21-57; Malley, Robert, and Hussein Agha, “Camp David: The Tragedy of Errors,” New York Review of Books, Aug. 9, 2001, 59-65; Masalha, Nur, “A Critique of Benny Morris,” Journal of Palestine Studies 21 (no. 1, Autumn 1991), 90-97; Morris, Benny, “Revisiting the Palestinian Exodus of 1948,” War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948 (2001, ed. Rogan, Eugene and Shlaim, Avi), 37-59; Rishmawi, Elias, “On the Beit Sahour Tax Revolt,” Homeland: Oral Histories of Palestine and Palestinians (1994, ed. Lynd, Staughton, Bahour, Sam and Lynd, Alice), 271-81; Shapira, Anita, “Politics and Collective Memory: The Debate over the ‘New Historians’ in Israel,” History & Memory 7 (no. 1 Spring/Summer 1995): 9-34; Shlaim, Avi, “The Oslo Agreement,” Journal of Palestine Studies 23, no. 3 (Spring 1994): 24-40; Stork, Joe, “U.S. Policy and the Palestinian Question,” The United States and the Middle East: A Search for New Perspectives (1992, ed., Amirahmadi, Hooshang), 125-48; Swedenburg, Ted, “The Role of the Palestinian Peasantry in the Great Revolt (1936-1939),” Islam, Politics, and Social Movements (1998, ed. Burke III, Edmund. and Lapidis, Ira), 168-203; Usher, Graham, “What kind of Nation–The Rise of Hamas in the Occupied Territories,” Political Islam: Essays from Middle East Report, (1997, ed. Beinin, Joel and Stork), 339-54.
[53] “Anti-Semitism in the Egyptian Media, parts I, II and III,” Memri.org, Mar. 16, 17 and 20, 2000.
[54] “PA Mufti of Jerusalem and Palestine, discusses the Intifada,” citing Oct. 28, 2000 Al Ahram, memri.org, Nov. 9, 2000; Howeidy, Amira, “Crossing to martyrdom,” Al-Ahram, Apr. 25-May 1, 2002; “Wafa Idris: celebration of first Palestinian female suicide bomber, Part II,” citing Feb. 2, 2002 Al Ahram, memri.org, Feb. 13, 2002; “Egyptian government daily praises the martyrdom attack on Jerusalem cafe: ‘a heroic operation’,” Memri.org, Mar. 15, 2002; “The Arab leadership and media on Powell’s Middle East Trip,” citing Al-Ahram, Apr. 16, 2002, Memri.org, Apr. 26, 2002; Cook, Jonathan, “The ‘engineer’,” Al-Ahram Weekly, Apr. 18-24, 2002; Naffa, Hassan, “Knights and dragons,” Al-Ahram, Aug. 23-Sept. 3, 2003.
[55] “Leading Egyptian Newspaper raises Blood Libel,” Memri.org, Nov. 6, 2000; “Egypt’s Response to accusations of Arab Media anti-Semitism,” Memri.org, Jan. 3, 2003; “French Legal Authorities Investigating Editor of Major Egyptian Daily,” Memri.org, Sept. 6, 2002; Wistrich, Robert, “Muslim Anti-Semitism: A Clear and Present Danger,” American Jewish Committee, http://www.ajc.org/InTheMedia/PublicationsPrint.asp?did=503; Cooper, Abraham and Brackman, Harold, “The Fight Against Holocaust Denial,” Midstream, Apr. 2001, http://midstream.port5.com/0401/feature.html; Klinghoffer, Judith Apter, “Blood Libel,” History News Network, Apr. 8, 2002, http://hnn.us/articles/printfriendly/664.html; “Anti-Semitism in the Official Egyptian Press,” Spring 1998-1999, Jewish Virtual Library, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Peace/egpress99.html
[56] Leffell, Jonathan, letter to Kristen Kim, AllLearn, Mar.19, 2003.
[57] Kaplan, Lee, “Solidarity with Terror,” FrontPageMagazine.com, Jul. 2, 2004; http://www.frontpagemag.com/articles/printable.asp?ID=14064.
[58] Beinin, Joel, “The Good War,” The Nation, May 14, 2004, http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?I=20040531&s=beinin.
[59] http://www.justicewheels.org/mission.html; Alcalay, Ammiel, After Jews and Arabs: Remaking Levantine Culture (1992); Kushner Tony, et al, Wrestling with Zion: Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003); Alcalay, Ammiel, “Stop-time in the Levant,” The Nation, Dec. 1999; Beinin, Joel, “The Good War,” The Nation, May 14, 2004, http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?I=20040531&s=beinin.
[60] Kushner Tony, et al, Wrestling with Zion: Wrestling with Zion: Progressive Jewish-American Responses to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (2003); Alcalay, Ammiel, “Stop-time in the Levant,” The Nation, Dec. 1999; Beinin, Joel, “The Good War,” The Nation, May 14, 2004, http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?I=20040531&s=beinin.
[61] http://www.teachtci.com/services/contact.asp; http://www.historyalive.com/Administrator/correlate.asp.
[62] Interview with Lee Kaplan, Mar. 12, 2004; http://www.fosna.org/; http://web.pdx.edu/~riadt/work/fosna/index.php?display=chapters; http://www.sabeel.org/old/news/ifos_enews/issue1.htm.
[63] Interview with Lee Kaplan, Mar. 12, 2004; Indiana State University, http://www.indstate.edu/polisci/faculty/perry.htm; http://fp.arizona.edu/mesassoc/Directory/Texas.htm.
[64] Interviews with Bay area parents; High school Middle East study unit.
[65] Kaplan, Lee, “Textbooks for Jihad,” FrontPageMagazine.com, Mar. 19, 2004; Wall, Alexandra, “Complaint of bias against Israel prompts high school text rewrite,” Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, Feb. 13, 2004; http://schoolpropaganda.us/TCI_Errors.htm.
[66] Beinin, Joel, “Origins of the Gulf War,” University of Wisconsin, Nov. 30, 1990, reproduced in Open Pamphlet Series, Feb. 19, 1991.
[67] Kedourie, Elie, “Iraq: The Mystery of American Policy,” Commentary, Vol. 91, No. 6, June 1991.
[68] Beinin, Joel, “Letter Against Expulsion of the Palestinians,” Dec. 2002, http://www.electronicintifada.net/v2/article989.shtml, (originally at http://www.professorsofconscience.org/); see also Blecher, Robert, “Living on the Edge: The Threat of ‘Transfer’ in Israel and Palestine,” Middle East Report, Winter, 2002, http://www.merip.org/mer/mer225/225_blecher.html
[69] Beinin, Joel, quoted in “Middle East Expert Discusses Issues in US/Israeli Relations< “2004-03-12T13:53″ >,” Megan Groth, The Student Life, Nov. 28, 2002.
[70] Beinin, ibid. Kramer, Martin, “Profs condemn Israel in Advance,” and “The Expulsion that Never Was,” Sandstorm, Dec. 20, 2002 and Apr. 25, 2003, www.MartinKramer.org.
[71] Beinin, Joel, Session 9, Palestine Zionism and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, AllLearn, Fall, 2002.
[72] Spiegel, Stephen L., “U.S. Relations with Israel: The Military Benefits,” Sandstorm (1993), pp. 309-344; Organski, A.F.K. The $36 billion Bargain (1991).
[73] Congressional Research Service, U. S. Foreign Assistance: Israel, IB85066.
[74] Beinin, Joel, email to Jonathan Leffell, Jan. 14, 2003.

Alyssa A. Lappen

Alyssa A. Lappen is a U.S.-based investigative journalist. She is the former Managing Editor at the Leeb Group (2012-2017); a former Senior Fellow of the American Center for Democracy (2005-2008); and a former Senior Editor of Institutional Investor (1993-1999), Working Woman (1991-1993) and Corporate Finance (1991). She served six of her 12 years at Forbes (1978-1990) as an Associate Editor. Ms. Lappen was also a staff reporter at The New Haven Register (1975-1977). During a decade as a freelance, her work appeared in Big Peace, Pajamas Media, Front Page Magazine, American Thinker, Right Side News, Family Security Matters, the Washington Times and many other Internet and print journals. Ms. Lappen also contributed to the Terror Finance Blog, among others. She supports the right of journalists worldwide to write without fear or restriction on politics, governments, international affairs, terrorism, terror financing and religious support for terrorism, among other subjects. Ms. Lappen is also an accomplished poet. Her first full-length collection, The Minstrel's Song, was published by Cross-Cultural Communications in April 2015. Her poems have been published in the 2nd 2007 edition of Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust and both 2007 issues of Wales' award-winning Seventh Quarry: Swansea Poetry Magazine. Dozens of her poems have appeared in print and online literary journals and books. She won the 2000 annual Ruah: A Journal of Spiritual Poetry chapbook award and has received a Harvard Summer Poetry Prize and several honorable mentions.