Shalem College takes off

Ask Martin Kramer if spearheading the country's first liberal arts college isn't a daunting - maybe unachievable - goal in these hard times, and he invokes the name of his old friend Prof. Zvi Yavetz.

The venerable historian, Kramer tells me, was part of a small group of scholars who helped to found Tel Aviv University, ex nihilo, in the 1950s. They gave their lectures in makeshift classrooms in Abu Kabir. As Kramer heard it, the vision of creating a world-class university, on a par with the already-existing Hebrew University of Jerusalem, that would teach everything from music to physics was hashed out by Yavetz and his contemporaries as they worked away "in miserable shacks." Kramer quotes Yavetz: "Students who were later to become great professors sat on first graders' chairs."

Relative to Yavetz, Kramer has certain advantages. All he is trying to do is bring to fruition a small liberal arts college that, if everything goes according to plan, will one day have an enrollment of 1,000 students. And he is doing it at the behest of Jerusalem's powerhouse Shalem Center.

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Some day, Yale's prince will come

One of the most disturbing aspects of the Danish cartoons scandal at Yale University Press is the role of the university administration.

When author Jytte Klausen was summoned by John Donatich, director of the press, to hear that it wouldn't publish the cartoons in her book about them, Donatich had company. Also present were the chair of Yale's Mideast center, Marcia Inhorn, and Linda Lorimer, Yale vice president and secretary of the Yale Corporation.

Klausen now asserts that the university effectively forced the hand of press, by collecting almost "unanimous" opinions of "experts" warning that violence would erupt if the images were republished.

Klausen: "Once the university had decided to collect these alarmist reports about the consequences [of including the pictures], there was very little the press could do. That is why I agreed to go ahead with it, [although] I disagree with it."

The press has confirmed reaching its decision "after receiving the outside advice collected by the university." And that advice was collected from on high. Islamic art historian Sheila Blair, one of the outside experts (who recommended in favor of publication), says she was approached by an assistant in the office of Yale president Richard Levin.

What prompted the Yale administration to intervene? Roger Kimball and Diana West have already suggested that Yale University is foraging for funding from oil-soaked Arab sources.

Yale's administration intervened not to prevent violence, but to prevent damage to its fundraising prospects in Araby.

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Fear-mongering at Yale

Flash back to 2006. Professor Marcia Inhorn, a medical anthropologist and director of the Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies at the University of Michigan, is invited to lecture in Teheran on her field of expertise, infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in Muslim countries. On her return, she seeks to dispel misconceptions about the Middle East. Because of the "American daily diet of fearsome media discourses about the Middle East, particularly Iran," she complains, "it was difficult to convince relatives, including my 80-year-old mother, that it was safe for me, a mother of two young children, to travel to that part of the world." Landing in Detroit, she finds the same bias:

When the customs official at the Detroit International Airport asked me why I had been 'over there,' I told him it was for an academic conference. Then he asked, 'And they didn't behead you?,' to which I replied, 'No, they served me delicious food.' He retorted, 'But you never know what was in it (i.e., the food),' to which I responded, perhaps too flippantly, 'Probably uranium.' Fortunately, he returned my passport and let me proceed to baggage claim, where I retrieved my two gorgeous Persian carpets."

I would argue that such fear-mongering is very unwise. It is leading to closed minds, closed embassies, restricted visas, travel bans and demeaning airport luggage searches for those of us who overcome these travel restrictions."

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Kissed to death by America

People in and around the Obama administration are taking the position that his low key on Iran is carefully calculated. It's not that he doesn't sympathize with the protesters, he just doesn't want their cause to be identified with the United States. That would be a kiss of death. I'm not persuaded, and as I've suggested already, his real problem with Iran's turmoil is that it's just so inconvenient to a Palestine-first approach.

Laura Rozen at her blog The Cable quoted an "Iran hand in touch with the administration" as saying that Obama "is dedicated to diplomacy in a manner that is almost ideological," that he's already decided what he wants to do in the Middle East "over the next eight years" (bit of presumption there), and that he doesn't want to be "distracted" from the "larger strategic objective" or "let himself get shaken by stuff like this" - "stuff" referring to the reality in the streets of Iran and the Middle East more generally. If this spectacular hubris isn't a formula for failure in the Middle East, what is?

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Sweeping Khalidi under Obama's rug

The Washington Post ran an article Saturday, exploring the origins of President Obama's heels-dug-in stance on Israeli settlements. White House officials described Obama's position to the Post as "years old and not the product of recent events or discussions." The Post then traced it way back to some of Obama's Jewish friends from Chicago days. The earliest influence named in the piece is the late Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf of Hyde Park, whose synagogue was across from Obama's home (and whom Marty Peretz memorably described as "one of those remaining nudnik Reform clergy who is always pained that, given the distress of the Palestinians, life is too good for the Israelis").

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Chas Freeman and preemptive cringe

Charles "Chas" Freeman, the former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia who is slated to become chair of the National Intelligence Council (NIC), is being praised by his supporters as a brilliantly "contrarian" analyst. But has anyone gone back to examine the analyses? Here is an example from June 2002:
"I'm a very practical man, and my concern is simply this: that there are movements, like Hamas, like Hizbullah, that in recent decades have not done anything against the United States or Americans, even though the United States supports their enemy, Israel. By openly stating and taking action to make them - to declare that we are their enemy, we invite them to extend their operations in the United States or against Americans abroad. There's an old adage which says you should pick your friends carefully. I would add: you should be even more careful when designating your enemies, lest they act in that manner."

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Did Hamas really win in Gaza?

One way to approach this question is to ask whether Hamas has achieved the objectives for which it escalated the crisis, by its refusal to extend the cease-fire. Musa Abu Marzuq, number two in the Damascus office, explained the primary Hamas objective in a very straightforward way: "The tahdiyeh had become 'a ceasefire [in exchange for another] ceasefire,' with no connection either to the crossings and [the goods] transported through them, or to the siege. Terminating it was [thus] a logical move." So Hamas gambled, escalated, and now finds itself, once again, in a "cease-fire for a cease-fire." Israel's primary objective was to compel a cease-fire by means of deterrence alone, without opening the crossings, thus serving its long-term strategy of containing and undercutting Hamas. This it has achieved, so far.

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The return of George Mitchell

As early as today, according to reliable reports, President Obama will appoint former Senator George Mitchell as his special Middle East envoy. Mitchell, it will be recalled, led a commission to investigate the causes of Israeli-Palestinian violence back in 2001. (Details and some takes here.)

I had the chance to spend some time with Mitchell last month, when he and I attended a conference at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. I don't think he'd spent much time in the region since his earlier mission, and he was clearly collecting information on all that had happened in the interim. During a twenty-minute taxi ride, he peppered me with questions about Hamas and Gaza - the new twist that will make his mission that much more difficult. I hope I set him straight.

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A plan for surrender

Israeli Yossi Alpher publishesd a piece in the International Herald Tribune, under the headline "Stop Starving the Gazans." Alpher claims that the economic sanctions imposed on Gaza after the Hamas power grab in mid-2007 (what he calls "the economic-warfare strategy") have failed totally; indeed, they have "produced no political or strategic benefit." "There is not a shred of evidence," he adds, that economic punishment or incentives toward Palestinians have ever worked. The "blockade" should be abandoned unconditionally - which, by the way, is precisely the main demand of Hamas.

Sanctioning 'resistance'

Israel's war against Hamas, now in its third week, is probably closer to its end than to its beginning. Israel has said that the "operation" - there is an official aversion to the term "war" - is close to achieving its stated goal of securing sustained quiet for the south of Israel. Quiet refers to a cessation of rocket fire, and sustainability alludes to an end to weapons smuggling into Gaza from Egypt. These are the two elements that Israel seeks in a cease-fire.

But there is also an unstated goal of the war. It is the humiliation and degradation of Hamas, to such an extent that its continued rule over Gaza will be undermined. As long as Hamas remains in power, it will continue to indoctrinate and prepare for "resistance" - its term for violent jihad-style attacks on Israel. This is the Iran-inspired alternative to acceptance of compromise with Israel, and it is the doctrine that animates Hezbollah as well. Discrediting and delegitimating "resistance" is a prime Israeli objective - one shared by the United States, and presumably by all supporters of any Israeli-Palestinian "peace process," however configured.

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