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The faculty of Middle East Studies at Brown, like most universities in the country, is comprised of the usual suspects. Typically brandishing PhDs from Georgetown, Columbia, or Berkeley, they engage in nonstop caterwauling about Israel. Settler colonialism, apartheid, occupation, Jews have no connection to, or place in, the region and the always popular comparison of Israel to Nazis are a few of the mantras they chant by rote. All are are yawn-inducing for any educated adult, but all are poisoning the college students they purport to “educate”.
Brown, however, is entirely unlike, and far worse, than any other university in the country that traffics in this field. Brown president Christina Paxson’s condemnation of the ongoing Hamas barbarity: “horrific and devastating terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel” without any details and noting the impact on “civilians in both Israel and Gaza” was surprisingly lukewarm. But perhaps most troubling was her suggestion that “the issues that underpin the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are complex”, notwithstanding the fact that absolutely nothing about Hamas’ savagery was at all complex, and that Brown has academics able to deal expertly with those “complex” issues. Undoubtedly she was referring in part to Brown’s Middle East Studies faculty. Suggesting that the Middle East Studies faculty at Brown, particularly its leadership, could help anyone understand the barbarism of Hamas is akin to suggesting that expert advice on combatting anti-Semitism is available from Louis Farrakhan. Why is that the case? It is, among other reasons, because of the presence on the Brown faculty of Beshara Doumani, the Mahmoud Darwish Professor of Palestinian Studies, an endowed chair and about whom I have written previously. But the world is a very different place than it was at the time of my previous posts. The danger Doumani presents is no longer hypothetical - it is very real, can no longer be ignored and his embarrassing affiliation with Brown has to end.
In 2021, Brown made the incomprehensible decision to grant Doumani a two-year leave to serve as president of terrorist haven Birzeit University in Israel’s West Bank and to return to Brown after his Birzeit term ended. Doumani has now returned to Brown. If Brown thought that some good might come from agreeing to let Doumani run Birzeit for two years, that naive notion was demolished on October 7.
Doumani’s Birzeit is not even arguably a normal institution. As recently as late last month, eight Birzeit “students” were arrested for planning a terror attack in Israel using weapons provided by Hamas. On October 11, the Birzeit University Union of Professors and Employees outlined what can fairly be described as the Birzeit credo. Cutting through familiar jargon about oppression, stolen land, colonial fascism and the like, it is clear that Birzeit is dedicated to the elimination of the Jewish state of Israel, and its Jews, by any means necessary. Thus, “Zionism is a genocidal settler project in Palestine that is built on false mythology and sustains itself on perpetual and endless violence against the native people in Palestine - it should be seen and dealt with as such. Talk of freedom - political, academic, or social - falls on deaf ears unless or until the true criminals are called such and dealt with as such.” Needless to say, American complicity, American “impositions” and American “colonials” are called out for criticism signaling perhaps that we are next on the Hamas hit list.
But that statement of purpose from Birzeit is mild compared to the positions of Hamas, the proud architects of the war against Israel. At Birzeit, Hamas is the most influential, and perhaps largest “student” organization. As the entire civilized world now knows, Hamas is a martyrdom-seeking death cult of Jew-hating religious fanatics numbering thousands of murderers, rapists, beheaders of children and hostage takers and their enablers and apologists like Doumani.
Now that Doumani has returned to his safe space on the Brown faculty, what does he have to say about his two years running Birzeit and the atrocities now being committed by Hamas? For example, what does he have to say about the Hamas Charter of 1988? Does he have a position as to the Charter’s preamble that “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as others before it”? Or as to the stated goal of Hamas “to raise the banner of Allah over every inch of Palestine”(Article 8) or that “the Liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Moslem wherever he may be” (Article 13)? Or that “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad” (Article 13) “in the face of the Jews’ usurpation”(Article 15)? What does he think about the grotesque anti-Semitism that appears throughout the document, for example, Article 7: “The Day of Judgment will not come until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees and the rocks and trees will cry out ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.” Or “Zionism scheming has no end…Their scheme has been laid out in the ‘Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (Article 32)?
After October 7, does Doumani expect the entire Brown community to think the Hamas Charter is just words? Or that everyone at Birzeit - the Hamas Club members, the Birzeit faculty and administration - believes the Charter is just meaningless academic revolutionary double-talk and that no one should pay it any mind notwithstanding October 7? Maybe Doumani thinks the Hamas students of Birzeit are just kids - forget about their Hamas-supplied weapons. Perhaps he believes that quoting excerpts from the Hamas Charter “out of context” lacks the necessary nuance to have the words be fairly understood. If he has any of those positions, he must be called upon to say so and defend them. And not in the echo-chamber of Brown faculty meetings, the Brown Faculty Club, or in some closed to the public classroom at Brown. Let him have the courage of his convictions and say publicly, to adults, exactly what he thinks of the Charter and how it relates to what are now everyday atrocities committed by its supporters.
Of course, he is unlikely to respond, or to say or do any of the foregoing. He was scheduled to speak on October 16 on “Running a University under Conditions of Settler Colonialism: Personal Reflections by Beshara Doumani, former President of Birzeit University”. That his “reflections” are bottomed on “settler colonialism” of course foreshadows exactly what he will say. I am 100% confident that I could write his “reflections” in 90 minutes or less. But what will he be reflecting on when he gives his now postponed presentation that is relevant to the only issues that matter in the real world today?
Recognizing the obvious inappropriateness, if not ghoulishness, of Doumani delivering his personal reflections on running Birzeit nine days after the Hamas-initiated carnage got underway and while bodies of dead Israelis were still being found, a few days ago Brown decided to postpone his presentation. Someone at Brown had the common decency to do the right thing but only in the short term. Merely deferring the Doumani presentation does not come close to resolving the problem of the Doumani/Birzeit/Brown connection.
Doumani and other Middle East Studies faculty at Brown and their sycophants in other university departments, and such faculty and sycophants at so many other institutions relentlessly publish and republish the same hair-on-fire, bitter, ahistorical nonsense about Israel without ever having the the courage to be confronted with other points of view. It should therefore surprise absolutely no one that sheep relentlessly fed such narratives feverishly waved signs saying “Kill the Jews” at the October 13 “Global Day of Jihad”. In Australia they reportedly went even farther by calling for the return of the gas chambers. Academics like Doumani peddling nonstop theories that have no basis in fact and who brook no dissent and students chanting kill the Jews were just engaging in “resistance”. Said otherwise, Berlin 1933 redux.
This is by no means a free speech/academic freedom issue. It cannot seriously be argued that Doumani had the right to run an institution supporting people who want to kill Jews, much less to return to Brown after having done so. The principles of free speech and academic freedom just do not extend that far. Nor can those principles be stretched to allow Doumani while a Brown professor to support anti-Semitism by justifying/explaining/contextualizing to any degree whatsoever what Hamas has visited upon the world. Would Brown provide a platform to a university president overseeing a large and influential student group openly expressing its desire to kill as many Blacks, or LGBTQ+ individuals, or Asians as possible? Of course not. Doumani ran Birzeit for two years. Through silence or by way of a wink and nod or perhaps through active encouragement he gave comfort to Hamas terrorists, their perverse value system as reflected in the Hamas Charter, and to their enablers and apologists. Brown’s reaction? Let him return to his endowed chair with the privilege of speaking sympathetically about Birzeit while ignoring its fomenting of anti-Semitism. What in the world is Doumani doing still teaching at Brown, an institution with a supposed commitment to social justice?
And spare me the argument that somehow one can be virulently anti-Zionist and yet not be anti-Semitic. That argument is entirely baseless as a general proposition. But to make it in defense of Doumani given his Birzeit credentials is obscene.
Ironically, in the days and weeks to come as the IDF conducts its ground war in Gaza to entirely eliminate the Hamas infrastructure and to entirely eliminate the Hamas leadership, Doumani will likely be among the first to bemoan the Israeli “disproportionate” response. He will demand that the UN immediately conduct an investigation into supposed Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity etc etc, and serve as the head cheerleader for such views among his faculty pals at Brown and elsewhere. Once again the unbridled hypocrisy of a Goebbels-quality narrative will be trotted out and accepted with nodding heads and silence and, of course, with bleating sheep again taking to the streets.
Of course the “disproportionate ” Israeli response is an old and tired story. This time, however, its fundamental absurdity has been underscored by the bottomless pit of Hamas depravity. Gazans reportedly have left the Gaza in huge numbers over the objection of Hamas. Of course Hamas objected - how could the terrorists replenish their stockpile of human shields if civilians flee to safety? The UN, always prostrate before Palestinian terrorists, agrees with Hamas. Every single civilian death in Gaza, every man, woman and child killed or who will be killed because Hamas decided to fulfill its obligations under its Charter, is directly attributable to Hamas. And every “resister” who chants “Kill the Jews” or other anti-Semitic hate speech because of what is happening in Israel and Gaza, and who one day may act or encourage others to act on her/his twisted beliefs, is directly attributable to those in academia and elsewhere who, like Doumani, long ago abandoned any pretense of scholarship, pedagogy or the fundamental principles of civil, informed and rational discourse.
Willis J. Goldsmith, Brown Class of 1969.
Hello, Willis,
It’s Gordon Strauss, from the Class of ‘69. I was in 302 Mead and you and Larry (?) were in the last or second to last room in Jameson, across from Ira. I see that you’re active and trust that you are well. Anyway, My brother Geoff, Class of ‘71, sent me your post from 10-15. I agree and subscribed, I think. I suppose you feel like a modern Cassandra, but you’re right.
Best wishes, Gordon
We need the clarity and common decency that your writing presents in this essay. As I've written elsewhere, mass murder is not the opening gambit to dialogue; it is the end of discussion, the end of "two sides to every issue"; two sides there yet may be, but they are two sides in war: The October hamas attacks on Israel were a declaration of war. The full throated celebrations of hamas after 10/7 on college campuses and other venues across America are not demonstrations of free speech, they are endorsements of open hunting season on Jews; that our major institutions could not bring themselves to censure or stop such demonstrations speaks to our lack of moral leadership in America and Europe. I would like to hear loving and apologetic and conciliatory declarations from the Muslim world. I've got a bad feeling about all this ... DQ