Israel is the greatest #14b : Harvard Hosts destroy Israel conference

On March 3-4 Harvard will host a two-day conference at the Kennedy School of Government focused, in effect, on dismantling the Jewish state of Israel. A number of student groups and others associated with Harvard are sponsoring "One State Conference: Israel/Palestine and the One State Solution."

Those who promote a one-state "solution" advocate creating an entity which would, through its merger with the Palestinian Arab population of the West Bank and Gaza and a potential influx of Palestinians from neighboring states, lose its Jewish majority and its Jewish character. In effect, the right to Jewish self-determination would be nullified.

Conference speakers and organizers include extreme anti-Israel academics, the founder of Electronic Intifada, members of the radical Jewish Voice for Peace and an ex-PLO spokesperson. No one even remotely sympathetic to Israel appears to be affiliated with the conference.

The Kennedy School's own notorious Stephen Walt, author of The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, a work discredited for its shoddy scholarship and bigoted charges against American supporters of Israel, joins other Harvard figures, including law school professor Duncan Kennedy, in lending the event the imprimatur of the institution.

According to the working definition of anti-Semitism developed by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), and recognized by the United States Department of State, the One State Conference, in implicitly "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" is an exercise in anti-Semitism.

The One State Conference website boasts the logo of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and has been in the planning for a year. According to The Jewish Advocate, Kennedy School Dean David T. Ellwood released a statement, saying:

I want to emphasize once again that Harvard University and the Harvard Kennedy School in no way endorses or supports the apparent position of these student organizers or any participants they include. We hope that the final shape of the conference will be significantly more balanced.

Furthermore, the university is quoted saying that the event is being at least partially underwritten by "modest" funds set aside for student activities. According to Melodie Jackson, Associate Dean for Communications, also quoted inThe Jewish Advocate, "Generally administrators try to be supportive of student ideas for events that they are planning."

Increasingly, assaults on Israel's legitimacy and survival are promoted by academics, including at the nation's most prestigious universities. The public has a vital role to play in voicing its outrage at the use of these institutions by anti-Israel propagandists and at the often minimal response by university officials.