Iran “Curse” or Israel “Blessing” Is Netanyahu U.N. Message
Plus, an anti-Israel Harvard professor’s course is canceled
In addition to the military battles Israel is fighting on multiple fronts—Gaza, Lebanon, the West Bank, Yemen, Iran—it faces a diplomatic and public relations battle.
Prime Minister Netanyahu went on offense in that fight today in the United Nations, echoing Moses’s biblical speech to the Israelites in describing a choice that the world faces between the blessing of peace and regional cooperation between Israel, Saudi Arabia, and other neighbors, and “the curse of Iran’s unremitting aggression.”
“Nations of the world should support the brave people of Iran who want to rid themselves of this evil regime,” Netanyahu said. “For too long the world has appeased Iran.”
Netanyahu said Israel had eliminated 23 of 24 Hamas battalions in Gaza, killed or captured “more than half” of the 40,000 Hamas terrorists, and eliminated 90 percent of the Hamas rockets. He said Israel is now in the “mopping up” stage in Gaza.
“We are winning,” he said.
He said Hamas retains some power in Gaza by looting humanitarian aid. “Hamas steals the food and then they hike the prices…They sell the stolen food at exorbitant prices,” he said.
He said Hamas should have no role in postwar Gaza. “Imagine allowing the defeated Nazis in 1945 to rebuild Germany,” he said. Instead he said he wanted “a demilitarized and a deradicalized Gaza” with a local civilian administration.
He said the war in Gaza could end immediately if Hamas surrenders, lays down its arms, and releases all the hostages. “Let them go, all of them,” Netanyahu said about the hostages.
He described the conflict between Iran and the rest of the civilized world, including Israel, as a “battle between good and evil.”
He decried “moral confusion,” by which “good is portrayed as evil, and evil is portrayed as good.”
He faulted the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, for perpetuating a “pay for slay” policy that rewards murderers.
Netanyahu noted that he had first spoken at the U.N. in 1984, 40 years ago, and said the U.N.’s “singling out of the one and only jewish state” amounted to “a moral stain on the U.N.” He called the international organization a “swamp of antisemitic bile.”
He called the war crimes case against him and the Israeli defense minister a “farce.”
“The real war criminals aren’t in Israel, they are in Iran, they are in Gaza,” Netanyahu said.
“Israel seeks peace. Israel yearns for peace. Yet we face enemies who seek our annihilation,” he said. He said those enemies “seek to destroy our common civilization.”
He concluded with two quotes from the Bible, one from I Samuel: נֵ֣צַח יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל לֹ֥א יְשַׁקֵּ֖ר
“The eternity of Israel will not falter.”
And another from Deuteronomy 31:6, which he left untranslated:
חִזְק֣וּ וְאִמְצ֔וּ אַל־תִּֽירְא֥וּ וְאַל־תַּעַרְצ֖וּ מִפְּנֵיהֶ֑ם כִּ֣י
ה’ אֱלֹקיךָ ה֚וּא הַהֹלֵ֣ךְ עִמָּ֔ךְ לֹ֥א יַרְפְּךָ֖ וְלֹ֥א יַעַזְבֶֽךּ”
Be strong and resolute, be not in fear or in dread of them; for it is indeed your God who marches with you: [God] will not fail you or forsake you.
Anti-Israel Professor’s Harvard Class Is Canceled: The associate director of Harvard’s Center for Middle East Studies, Rosie Bsheer, has gone on leave, and a Fall 2024 class on “oil and empire” that she had been scheduled to teach is marked on a Harvard website with the legend, “THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN CANCELLED.”
Bsheer didn’t reply to my email asking the reason for her leave. Harvard, unlike many other universities, doesn’t routinely offer funded sabbaticals to its professors. In some cases junior faculty who are turned down for tenure are able to negotiate for time off to advance research projects or search for positions elsewhere, though it’s not clear that is what happened in Bsheer’s case.
Bsheer was a vocal public advocate of the anti-Israel student protesters who broke Harvard’s rules by setting up an “encampment” in Harvard Yard earlier this year. A Crimson article in May described her as challenging Harvard’s interim provost, John Manning:
History professor Rosie Bsheer addressed a question directly to Manning. She said students and faculty members had emailed Garber to initiate dialogue, though she did not specify if these emails were in relation to the demands currently being lodged by students in the encampment.
Bsheer voiced her frustration to Manning: “We received no response.”
The Center for Middle East Studies of which Bsheer is associate director has been a target of complaints by pro-Israel Harvard students and faculty.
In an opinion piece in today’s Crimson, a Harvard undergraduate, Charles Covit, faulted the center for “anti-Israel bias,” highlighting an October 1 event when it is scheduled to host Nasser Abu Srour, who Covit writes was convicted of murder by an Israeli court. That article was amplified, in turn, by two high-status Harvard professors. A former dean of Harvard Medical School, Jeffrey Flier, wrote, “This @thecrimson piece by @charlie_covit makes the case that an official Harvard Center (the Center for Middle East Studies) should be focused on education, not indoctrination. Hard to argue with that, which sadly isn’t the case today.”
And a former president of Harvard, Larry Summers, wrote, “Powerful student journalism here. CMES is one of several centers at Harvard that actively promotes anti Israel views, with no serious effort at balance. University leaders violate their own neutrality policies when they allow this to continue year after year and ignore thoughtful complaints. Antisemitic words and deeds are given respect and legitimacy at Harvard in a way that would be inconceivable for racism or misogyny.”
Take a hard look at the Center for Middle East Studies and a lot of the worst trends that show how Harvard lost its way are on display. The director of it from July 2013 to June 2022 wasn’t a full tenured Harvard ladder-faculty professor but was rather a “professor of the practice,” which is a subtle distinction but one that has significance. The funding is opaque but at least at one point included “Saudi Aramco.” The committee of twelve professors that oversee it include three professors (Rabb, Kane, Stilt) from a Harvard Law School program funded with a $20 million gift from a Saudi prince (click the link for a 2011 photo of Alan Garber alongside Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud.) The others include Bsheer and two other junior faculty members. Israel-apartheid-accuser Derek Penslar is on the committee. The center’s director, Cemal Kafadar, is “On leave 2024-25; unavailable to sponsor Visiting Researchers during the 2024-25 academic year.” He also didn’t immediately respond to my email asking why he’s on leave.
Kafadar signed an October 2023 Harvard faculty letter asserting that “Systemic Israeli state violence has defined Palestinian life in Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip since 1948.”
No one, least of all me, is proposing that faculty members be placed on leave for expressing silly political opinions outside of the classroom. Never mind the chilling effect on free speech; simply as a practical matter, that approach would mean there’d be hardly any professors left to teach anything.
Maybe Kafadar and Bsheer are, by sheer coincidence, simultaneously on family or medical leave, or off on some prestigious and cushy international research fellowship, totally unrelated to the antisemitism scandals that have been roiling Harvard.
Or maybe Harvard, in response to pressure from courageous students and faculty and alumni and lawsuits and Congress and competing institutions that are in better shape, is quietly but finally moving to assert some control and police the boundaries when it comes to academic quality, nondiscrimination, and the boundaries between scholarship and activism, education and indoctrination.
If so, it’d be a positive, if all-too-belated, development.
Recent work: “Step Right Up, Folks: Policy Fights for a Second Trump Term Are Starting Now,” is the headline over my latest New York Sun piece: “shares in the initial public offering in a second Trump administration are available for allocation. If you sign up now, you might, depending on what happens on Election Day, benefit from an opening day pop.”
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I accessed this site this morning specifically to recommend Charles Covit's Crimson article, but I see Ira Stoll is up even earlier than I. It is unusual that I would recommend anything from the Crimson, but this one is important. The funding of The Center for Middle East Studies is a central issue, not just for Harvard but for many other top universities.
In any case, it will be interesting to see how Harvard's behind the times pro-Hamasniks react to the wonderful news of Hassan Nasrallah's demise, along with who knows how many other top Hezbollah's leaders. I sense that Netanyahu and Israel have now broken with the effort to appease the pressures of their supposed allies and are going for broke. What has happened in Lebanon since the "Liver to the Knee" beeper caper of a few days ago seems to me a remarkable new chapter in Israeli self-defense. I hope. Look forward to hearing Ira Stoll's take on that and on Harvard's take on it.
Derek Penslar self identifies as a Zionist. Maybe not to your liking but he does. A lot of us criticize Israel as an act of intellectual integrity but also out of love for Israel.