Education on the Hamas War Against Israel By Francesca Albanese and Brown
The Brown Daily Herald Reports That Brown’s Center for Middle East Studies Is Not Related to Brown
Francesca Albanese’s Hamas defense seminar got off to an interesting start. Albanese, a UN bigshot who has traveled the world for years condemning Israel, making anti-Semitic comments, and enabling Islamic terrorism had a “visa issue” the day before she was supposed to speak at Brown. This “visa issue” supposedly precluded her in-person appearance last Monday. That claim was hardly credible. But a webinar, as opposed to a live appearance, gave Albanese a pass on having to answer anything other than curated-by-her-supporters questions. That may have been what Brown’s Center for Middle East Studies (“CMES”) had in mind from the start; the Watson Institute (“Watson”) and Brown evidently were fine with that game plan.
Albanese’s introduction by two of her acolytes, Elias Muhanna, Director of CMES, and Fulvio Domini, a Professor in the Department of Cognitive Linguistic and Psychological Sciences, set the tone. At the outset, Muhanna pretended that Albanese’s presentation was part of an ongoing series about Israel, Palestinians and Hamas, implying that there was a continuing education basis for her appearance. That suggestion is belied by the facts. What CMES, Watson and Brown have provided about the Hamas-initiated war against Israel, and for long before the war, is an entirely one-sided, relentless propaganda initiative in support of the Palestinian/Hamas narrative. Even a cursory review of CMES/Watson speakers and topics on the issues makes that clear.
Further gaslighting the webinar attendees, Muhanna mentioned two outside speakers to support his false claim about this mythical speaker series - Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO and National Director of the Anti-Defamation League (“ADL”), who spoke at Brown on February 22, and Einat Wilf, a former member of Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, set to speak this coming Monday, September 23.
Greenblatt’s appearance was sponsored by Brown’s Office for Institutional Equity and Diversity - not CMES or Watson. Indeed, Muhanna expressed concern over the Greenblatt visit given the ADL’s easily defensible position that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. According to the Brown Daily Herald (“BDH”), Muhanna said he was “a little bit worried about how [Greenblatt’s visit]…is translating into the atmosphere that we’re living in right now.” According to the BDH, Muhanna did nevertheless affirm “the importance of debate and discussion in a University setting”. But given the absence of any statement from Muhanna in support of that reporting and the general unreliability of the BDH when it comes to Israel/Palestinians, what Muhanna’s actual position was as to the Greenblatt visit is unclear, at best.
Even more dishonestly, Muhanna suggested that the presentation by Wilf was part of this same imaginary speaker series. In fact, Watson reluctantly agreed to Wilf’s appearance only after being put under enormous pressure by nearly 2500 Jewish alumni who were outraged that Brown was giving an anti-Semite like Albanese a platform.
Muhanna’s comments were followed by Domini’s fawning introduction of Albanese. Domini was described by Muhanna as Albanese’s “faculty sponsor” without explaining how that came to be. While Domini seems to have no background in any of the relevant issues, from the Hamas perspective he was a great choice to follow Muhanna. Domini seemingly believes every statistic Hamas cooks up, including apparently that every Gazan killed in the war is an innocent civilian, believes himself competent to project future casualties as Hamas continues to reject one ceasefire proposal after another, and thought mentioning October 7 was unnecessary (even Albanese thought October 7 merited brief mention). Demonstrating how untethered from reality he is, Domini cited Albanese’s invitations by Harvard, Princeton, Georgetown and Columbia as evidence of her supposed acceptability to speak at Brown. Can he possibly believe that aligning Brown with those institutions supported the proposition that the Albanese visit was an educational undertaking? Is he unaware that all four institutions have been severely criticized for turning away from, rather than confronting and dealing with, the anti-Semitism on their campuses since October 7 and before? Does he actually think it is good for Brown to be linked to those places on this issue? (Domini citing Georgetown was particularly laughable. Through, e.g., its Prince Alaweed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding and its professor John Esposito, Georgetown has a cadre of faculty who have been justifying and excusing Islamic terrorism since before, and after, 9/11. Not surprisingly, Georgetown is where Brown professor Beshara Doumani received his PhD. Among much other evidence of his pronounced biases, Doumani famously took a two-year leave of absence from Brown to serve as president of Hamas stronghold Birzeit University.) In short, Muhanna and Domini were the perfect warm up acts for Albanese, the main event.
Albanese’s 35 minutes of comments were, in essence, a stream of consciousness, run on sentence that endorsed every imaginable Hamas talking point. There was, for example, her rote incantation of the usual fact-free/responsible legal analysis-free gibberish about Israeli genocide and apartheid, to be sure popular notions among Brown faculty and students. Also very popular among the many unthinking Brown faculty and students is the politically driven but non-existent “equivalence” between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia - another Albanese talking point. At Brown, as at so many places, it is an article of faith that the former cannot be mentioned without also intoning the latter - the once unacceptable position that “all lives matter”. Albanese went beyond even her standard inversion spiel, i.e., that Israelis are today’s Nazis. She claimed that Israel was teaching Jewish children to hate Palestinians. Perhaps Albanese has photos of thousands of Jewish Israeli five-year olds dressed up in military uniforms, carrying miniature assault weapons and shouting kill the Muslims in the same way that five-year old Palestinian kids are schooled to hate and kill Jews. If so, let her show the photos (while recognizing that Palestinians have for decades relied on doctored photos to advance their political/PR initiatives.)
With respect to supposed Islamophobia, the tragic shooting of Brown student Hisham Awartani in Burlington, VT last November became Exhibit A. Brown professor Doumani raced to Vermont and immediately kicked the Islamophobia machinery into high gear. Why wait for the facts? Within days of the shooting the facts strongly suggested that it was highly unlikely that the shooting was a hate crime. The obviously troubled shooter, Jason Eaton, has made multiple court appearances since March. On August 2 the court denied his request to have the court provide him with new lawyers; he has asked to be permitted to represent himself; he remains charged with three attempted murders but has not been charged with a hate crime. His next scheduled court appearance is November 12. Awartani’s shooting was certainly tragic. But it was no more or less tragic than any shooting that happens, for example, every weekend in Chicago.
After Albanese delivered her monologue, moderator Muhanna took over. He fed Albanese softball questions allowing her to underscore her defense of Hamas, put Hamas’s barbarism in the “occupation” context, and whitewash some of her anti-Semitic comments. Her whole performance was far more suitable for being delivered to her buddies from a bar stool in a pub where facts never get in the way of a good story.
The only point Albanese definitively established is that having a law degree doesn’t make one a lawyer. Working to gather the facts as they are, as opposed to what a lawyer may want them to be and the willingness and ability to rigorously engage in critical thinking are among the qualities real lawyers have in abundance and Albanese plainly lacks.
It would take countless pages to address each and every one of Albanese’s lies and bogus arguments. Rather than attempt to do so, attached below is a rough transcript of the webinar. It’s quite an extraordinary testament not only to her one-sided view of the facts and highly questionable understanding of the applicable law, but also as to Brown’s willingness to put both on full display.
Two additional points need be made. First, in a form letter responding to those who opposed the Albanese appearance, Brown president Paxson made several unavailing arguments. She noted, among other things, that Brown’s “core values…include a commitment to independent thought, free inquiry and open exchange of ideas.” As evidenced in the transcript below, predictably, none of those claimed “core values” were demonstrated either by the invitation to, or the comments of, Albanese. Her very public positions on Israel/Palestinians, including her anti-Semitism and rationalization and embrace of Palestinian terrorism as “resistance”, have long been well known and long criticized.
Paxson added that it is part of Brown’s “mission that members should host debates and discussions where speakers with varying and opposing perspectives confront many of the most difficult issues facing society today.” When Brown’s Simmons Center for Slavery and Justice invites the head of the Proud Boys to get his views on affirmative action and diversity, those words will have meaning. Until that happens, or something analogous to that happens - and there is not the slightest chance that it will, or should, happen - Paxson’s words are meaningless cant. The only exception to otherwise impermissible bigotry and hate speech at Brown in the context of presenting “speakers with varying and opposing perspectives” is when the subject is Israel and/or Jews.
Finally, one can count on the BDH to cover Israel/Palestinians issues on campus, including the ongoing Hamas-initiated war, as the Providence bureau of Al Jazeera. But this time the adolescent journalists have outdone themselves on the absurdity scale. In covering the Albanese appearance on September 16, Senior Staff Writer Sophia Wotman’s reported, to which Owen Dahlkamp “contributed reporting”, the following “Correction” appeared:
“A previous version of this story stated that some students had expressed concern of ‘the University’s decision’ to invite Albanese to speak on campus. The invitation was made by the Center for Middle East Studies. The Herald regrets the error.”
Notably, the BDH found it necessary to fact check a student, something the newspaper never does when the student is a Hamas supporter mouthing fact-free inanities. Gross incompetence on the part of Wotman, Dahlkamp and the BDH editors is one possible explanation for the BDH’s ludicrous “correction”. Another is that at CMES’s request, or perhaps at the request of someone in the Brown administration, distance had to be put between the university and the Albanese fiasco. To point out the obvious, the extent to which CMES and Brown are inextricably connected is overwhelming. For example, in the upper left hand corner of the CMES website, CMES prominently displays the Brown seal with “WATSON INSTITUTE/International & Public Affairs/BROWN UNIVERSITY” immediately to the right; the CMES website is “https://cmes.watson.brown.edu. Not that any additional evidence is needed, but the second sentence of Paxson’s form letter referred to above begins with “Brown’s Center for Middle East Studies…” This, of course, begs the question of exactly what game was the BDH playing with its “correction”? And at whose behest?
Willis J. Goldsmith, Brown Class of 1969
In fairness to my alma matter, as was the case at Brown, Albanese was not invited by Columbia University. Instead she was invited by the Center for Palestine Studies in October, 2022. And the panel was as one sided as that at Brown. Prof. Katharine Franke whose anti-Israel views are so unhinged that Israel took the unprecedented step of barring her entry to the country - an incident about which she was less than truthful in the press accounts - served as moderator.
On the other hand, Albanese fell for an offer from everyone’s favorite Chief Rabbi of Gaza.
https://m.jpost.com/omg/article-800762
Given Albanese’s problems with honoraria, I wonder whether her “visa trouble” was a pretext for not having to travel because she would no longer be profiting from the trip.