Featured this weekArizona University Brandeis University College of Judea and Samaria, Israel Cornell University Georgetown University Haifa University Illinois - Urbana Indiana Maryland Princeton UCSD Wisconsin | Note from the Editor With this edition, we launch a new, sharper, more reader-friendly version of the Israel Campus Beat. We will continue to cover the latest news from Israel and North American college campuses, but we've also expanded the ICB's coverage of Israel's worlds of business, science and technology, and domestic affairs.
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Best wishes for a great 2006 from the editors and publishers of the ICB!
Israel on Campus Coalition, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Additional Headlines Poll: Israelis Biggest Patriots in West Israel: Iran Funded Tel Aviv Bombing Jewish Community in Israel Now Equals U.S. | | U.S. Condemns Suicide Bombing in Israel The White House on Thursday condemned a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv and demanded the Palestinian Authority take steps to prevent such attacks. The bombing wounded at least 16 people and responsibility for it was claimed by the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad. "We condemn this atrocious attack in the strongest possible terms," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan. "We call upon the Palestinian Authority again to do everything it can to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure." (Reuters)
Humanizing Terrorism  With less than a week to go, the reality has sunk in. When Palestinians elect a parliament on January 25 for the first time in a decade, they are expected to give the Islamist movement Hamas a good proportion of seats, in a resounding protest vote against the failures of the PA and its ruling Fatah party, and against Israel. A lot of the blame can be put on PA and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas, who seems to have the right intentions, but has been unable to provide what opinion polls show matters most to Palestinians: domestic law and order. Now it is harder to blame anyone but the PA, which, to top it all, is facing a fiscal crisis entirely of its own making. (Economist-UK)
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Arizona: Students Gather in Support of Israel's Sharon
by Stephanie Hall  Students held a candlelight vigil on the UA Mall last week for peace in the Middle East and for Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, who remains comatose in a Jerusalem hospital. "In light of the recent downfall of Sharon's health, we thought it was important to show our support and solidarity for Israel," said Drew Alyeshmerni, a Judaic studies senior. (Arizona Daily Wildcat)
Brandeis University Faces Threat of Boycott Over Palestinian Scholar
by Marc Perelman  Brandeis University is facing threats of a boycott from the Zionist Organization of America which called on donors to rethink their financial support for Brandeis if the university fails to reconsider its appointment of Palestinian political scientist Khalil Shikaki. The ZOA alleges that more than a decade ago, Shikaki had ties to the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad. Shikaki and his defenders, among them pro-Israel scholars, deny that he ever had taken part in terrorist-related activities. (Forward)
| | Ariel: Arabs Studying at 'Settler' College  Despite the controversial politics of the area and hostility between settlers and Palestinians, more Arab students are studying at a college in the Jewish settlement of Ariel, 25 miles northeast of Tel Aviv. About 300 Arabs are enrolled at the College of Judea and Samaria, half from Israeli Arab towns and half from Palestinian territories. (Israel Today)
Georgetown: President DeGioia Defends Palestine Conference
by Meredith Cooke  University President John J. DeGioia defended the university's decision to allow a pro-Palestinian campus conference next month. "We believe the best response to controversial, even offensive speech, is more speech," DeGioia said. "The best approach is through dialogue, research and intellectual discovery." Richard Frankel '08 told DeGioia that the university's decision to host the conference, as well as its acceptance of a $20 million grant from Saudi Arabian Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, may create open hostility to Israeli and Jewish members of the campus community. (The Hoya)
See also Pres. DeGioia's Statement on Divestment from Israel
"I do not support divestment from Israel."
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Point-Counterpoint - What to Do about Iran?
The Evolution of Revolution
by Saul Singer - Somehow the old, pre-9/11 idea that fighting terrorism means hunting down groups like al-Qaida, rather than confronting terrorist states has crept back into the minds of even the most ardent supporters of Bush's foreign policy.
- Putting terrorist groups at the center and their state backers on the periphery is the wrong way around. The whole progress of the war, in either direction, should be measured, as the terrorists do, in the coin of states, not groups.
- Make no mistake, if the mullahs fell, it would be a major, perhaps mortal blow to al-Qaida and to militant Islam worldwide.
- This is so because terrorists depend not on military power, which they lack, but on a sense of inevitability and despair, which they hope to create.
- The fall of the Iranian regime would deal the greatest blow to Islamist terrorism, and it is the only sure way to protect against a nuclearized terror state.
- The great irony is that though Iran's aggression compounds its human rights sins, its support for terrorism has allowed it to escape the campaigns used to vanquish less-threatening dictatorships.
- Though the mullahs seem to revel in flouting the international community, it is such isolation and rejection - and their own people - that they fear most.
- The ultimate solution to the Iran problem is an old-fashioned one: revolution. (Jerusalem Post)
Containing Tehran
by David Ignatius - In crafting their Iran policy, administration officials don't want the nuclear issue to be isolated from the more basic problem of Tehran's erratic and potentially destabilizing role in the Middle East.
- A shorthand for the administration's policy aim might be: No to Ahmadinejad, yes to the Iranian people and a modern Iran.
- In the short run, the goal is to gain agreement among European allies, Russia and China that the International Atomic Energy Agency, at its meeting next month, should refer the Iranian nuclear issue to the U.N. Security Council.
- But over the longer term, the administration hopes these allies will work with Washington to change Iranian behavior on issues such as terrorism and regional stability.
- Officials don't like the Cold War term "containment," believing that it connotes a static policy, but the word suggests the strategic commitment they want on Iran.
- What has intrigued policymakers is the argument that Ahmadinejad's extremism will eventually trigger a counterreaction -- much as the Cultural Revolution in China led to the pragmatism of Deng Xiaoping. Officials see signs that some Iranian officials. (Washington Post)
| | Hold Your Horses
by Yoel Marcus - Without dismissing the seriousness of a nuclear threat from Iran, Israel's prattle on this subject seems to have crossed all bounds.
If the world were indifferent to Iranian threats to destroy Israel, we would have something to worry about. But this is not the case. Iran today is a command center for global terror, and the danger of it becoming a nuclear power also jeopardizes the Gulf states, which have more important interests than firing nuclear missiles at Israel. When sources of oil are threatened, the whole world is at risk. It is not by chance that the United States and Europe, soon to be joined by Russia, are banding together to bring the issue before the Security Council. If military action is deemed necessary, it will be a more complicated affair than the sortie of eight planes we dispatched to knock out the Iraqi reactor. The issue is not Iran against Israel, but Iran against the world. To stop Iran, let alone attack it, is out of our range. We like to talk big, but in this terrifying match, we should be sitting in the bleachers not playing on the field. Our leaders, with their threats and warnings and pompous self-importance, would be advised to hold their horses.(Ha'aretz)
Time for 'Libya-Plus' Sanctions on Iran - Intimidated, of course, is very good description both of Europe's approach toward Iran to date, and how Iran, judging by its increasingly brazen behavior, reads Europe.
- Iran knows that even a referral to the Security Council might not produce sanctions for years, and then the sanctions might be so weak that Iran is fully willing to pay the price.
- Diplomacy only has a chance if quickly translated into sanctions, and then only if the sanctions are particularly draconian.
- For a sense of the possible scope, if not the warranted speed, the Libya precedent is worth examining. But Iran is not Libya, Iraq, or North Korea. It does not consider itself a pariah state, nor is it as self-isolated from the world.
- Cutting off diplomatic ties, scientific exchanges, and the right to participate in sports events, such as the 2006 World Cup, in addition to the menu of sanctions that were imposed on Libya, would deal a devastating blow to the legitimacy of the Iranian regime.
- Iran is betting, even though it much weaker than the democracies it confronts, that the West will not have the will to stand up to its threats. (Jerusalem Post)
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