Summary points:

• Many of the internships are highly political and generally provide the participants with a Palestinian narrative.
• The academic content of the internships is thin, in contrast to the political content.
• The program involves subterfuge, with lying to the Israeli government and violation of security regulations.
• The lecture and tour program had a distinct anti-Israeli bias, focused, as noted in the program itinerary (attached), “on various developments following the expansion of Israeli Jerusalem after the Six Day War, in 1967.” The Israeli perspective on events before or after 1967 was given little emphasis.

1. Overview of Program and Placements

George Mason University (GMU) offers a summer internship program in “Israel & Palestine ” through its Center for Global Education which places students with highly politicized non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and for which the participants can receive academic credit. The 2008 program, advertised as “Israel & Palestine: An Applied Workshop on History, Politics and Peacemaking,” sent approximately 30 participants to Israel and the Palestinian Authority from June 1^st to July 30^th (for a fee of $6,895 to $6,945).[1] The 2008 summer internship placements were made with the following organizations:

A. Palestinian NGOs

1. The Joint Advocacy Initiative, a joint project of the YMCA of East Jerusalem and the YWCA, and focusing on anti-Israel campaigning

2. Center for Holy Land Studies– Beit Sahour

3. The Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation – Bethlehem

4. Anera: American Near East Refugee Aid – Al Bireh

5. Al Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center – Bethlehem

6. Panorama – Ramallah

7. The Wi’am Center – Bethlehem

8. Palestine-Israel Journal – Jerusalem (quasi-academic)

B. Israeli NGOs

9. Mossawa Center – The Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel – Haifa

10. Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA) – Nazareth

11. Jawlan – Golan for Development of the Arab Villages – Golan Heights

12. The Arab Cultural Association – Nazareth

13. Towns Association for Environmental Quality – Sakhnin

14. The League for the Arabs of Jaffa – Jaffa

15. The Legal Forum for the Land of Israel – Jerusalem

16. The Peres Center for Peace – Tel Aviv

17. Green Action – Tel Aviv

18. Amnesty International – Israel Section – Tel Aviv

19. Rabbis for Human Rights – Jerusalem

20. The Abraham Fund Initiatives – Neve Ilan

C. Governmental and Academic Institutions

21. Palestinian Authority Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Ramallah

22. Palestinian Legislative Council – Ramallah

23. The Knesset – Jerusalem

24. The Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies at Tel Aviv University – Tel Aviv

D. Other Placements

25. Neve Shalom – Wahat Al-Salam (Oasis of Peace)

26. Tamir Fishman Asset Management – Tel Aviv (reflecting the focus of program co-director Professor Oretskin)

27. The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow-New Discourse – Jerusalem

28. The Israel Policy Center – Jerusalem

29. The Regional Council for the Unrecognized Villages in the Negev – Be’er-Sheva

2. Analysis of Selected Placements

• The Joint Advocacy Initiative (JAI) – involved in anti-Israeli campaigning and “apartheid” rhetoric, organizes demonstrations, and promotes the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) campaign. The JAI is a project of the East Jerusalem YMCA, which played a central role in the November 24, 2008 statement of the General Secretary of the World YMCA on the occasion of the International Day in Solidarity with the Palestinian People. The statement referred to the “apartheid wall” and criticized Israel while erasing the context of deliberate Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians.
• The Mossawa Center – engages in political and legal campaigns that delegitimize Israel as a Jewish state with charges of racism and other pejoratives. In its November 2008 report, Mossawa claims that Israel’s Arab minority faces “discriminatory laws, institutional racism, attacks on the freedom of religion, racial profiling and violence that has taken the lives of dozens of Arab citizens.” Among the report’s recommendations is “[e]nding the killing of and the violence against Arab citizens by Israeli security forces.”
• The Center for Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation – a Palestinian NGO based in Bethlehem claims to “cherish the values of peace, reconciliation, forgiveness, respect and hope”. However, many activities are inconsistent with these goals, such as calls for boycott of Israeli academics or Israeli academic institutions that support the occupation (“for more than 50 years”, i.e. referring to Israel’s existence as “occupation”). CCRR also promotes the claim of a “right of return,” and “the establishment of an autonomous state with Jerusalem as its capital.” The founder and director, Noah Salameh, uses “apartheid” and “Naqba” rhetoric.
• The Arab Cultural Association in Nazareth – member of the Ittijah umbrella organization. Ittijah exploits human rights terminology, accusing Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide.” Ittijah is a leader in the anti-Israel boycott and sanctions movement and is a signatory of the Palestinian Civil Society’s Strategic Position Paper for the 2009 Durban Review Conference. This position paper claims “Israel’s regime is the expression of a racist ideology”; cites to a pseudo-academic article comparing Israel to Nazi Germany; and seeks “legal strategies whereby Zionist organizations, foreign companies and governments that collaborate with Israel’s regime can be held accountable in court.”
• Arab Association for Human Rights (HRA) -a member of Ittijah, and active in propaganda in the UN and elsewhere; HRA has accused Israel of “war crimes, massacres and blatant breaches of international law” in Lebanon and Gaza.
• Al Rowwad Cultural and Theatre Training Center in Bethlehem – uses theater to impart anti-Israel messages to children; cooperates with the radical Palestinian NGO known as Badil ; partnered with the ISM to act as “human shields ” during anti-terror operations in Bethlehem in 2002; in 2008, produced play entitled “We are the Children of the Camp ” – one song, “1948,” from the play begins with the words “You have seen what happened The country is / swallowed by destruction / The tents filled the country Time shall take revenge / from the occupier.”
• The Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow-New Discourse – based in Jerusalem. Although the organization addresses issues of social polarization in Israeli society, it also utilizes “apartheid” rhetoric and articles posted on the website claim that “Israel’s Ashkenazi ‘post-Zionist’ professors, brandishing their progressive politics as they use Mizrahim and Palestinians for grantsmanship and as career advancement tools, are just the cynical tip of this apartheid iceberg.”

3. Program Structure

Dr. Yehuda Lukacs (director of the GMU Center for Global Education, Associate Provost for Global Education, and listed as instructor of international relations and history at GMU) is the director of the internship program. Nancy Oretskin, Dr. Lukacs’s partner and co-director, is an associate professor in the College of Business at New Mexico State University. She has also been involved with the internship program since its inception in 2005.

The summer internship program is under the purview of the Center for Global Education (referred to by GMU as a “program of distinction ”). The students in 2008 came from GMU, New Mexico State University, the American University in Washington DC, and two students from George Washington University. (In theory, the program was also open to non-students.)

In addition, Haifa University provided a letter of invitation addressed to Dr. Lukacs. A participating student reported[2] that the program directors instructed the students to tell Israeli authorities at the airport that their program was tied to the University of Haifa, although there were no visits or lectures from the faculty. Similarly, upon the group’s departure from Israel, the program directors instructed the participants not to tell the Israeli authorities that they had visited the West Bank and particularly warned them to avoid mentioning that some of them had accommodations there. They were also instructed to remove documents indicating otherwise from their luggage. In addition to its deceit, this behavior has important security implications.

Students were awarded 9 undergraduate credits or 6 graduate credits upon their successful completion of the program. They were graded on the basis of: (a) keeping a journal during the period of their internships, (b) three short essays, (c) making a twenty-minute presentation at the end of the program, (d) participating in discussions, and (e) writing a long research paper.

The information on the 2009 program lists academic units which provide credit for the internships:

• the department of History and Art History ;
• the Global Affairs interdisciplinary program within in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences ;
• the department of Public and International Affairs ;
• the Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution.

3. Program Activities in addition to the Internships

The first 10 days after arrival in Israel consisted of a “Core Seminar” including tours, meetings, and talks.[3] The group stayed at the Christmas Hotel in east Jerusalem, and one part of this seminar focused on Jerusalem, including Mount Scopus, Mount of Olives, Temple Mount and Old City, Abu Dis, and Jewish neighborhoods beyond the 1949 armistice line, such as Gilo, reflecting the Arab narratives. The Jewish history of Jerusalem was largely erased in this program, as can be seen in the portion of the itinerary which focused “on various developments following the expansion of Israeli Jerusalem after the Six Day War, in 1967”[4] without referring to the history of Jerusalem before 1967, as well as other factors.

On another day, the group was taken to Ramallah, where they met with a number of PA officials, some of them high-ranking. (In contrast, they met with only one Israeli official – a diplomat in the Foreign Ministry – during the entire seminar.) The group made a pilgrimage to Yasser Arafat’s grave, where they participated in a ceremony and placed a wreath in the name of GMU. They were taken to the West Bank, including Jewish settlements, by Dror Etkes, a well-known activist formerly with the Israeli political group, Peace Now, who is now a leader of the controversial NGO known as Yesh Din. This organization’s main activities consist of soliciting reports from Palestinians regarding alleged “criminal behavior by Israeli civilians”, and publishing reports on these topics. In these reports, many of the claims are subjective and cannot be verified.

The lecture program was also highly biased, and included politicized NGO spokespeople such as:

• Dr. Yousef Jabareen, an Israeli-Arab civil rights lawyer and the legal and strategic consultant with the Mossawa Center (discussed above).
• Dr. Jamal Atamneh, an official of an NGO called the Arab Education Committee in Support of Local Councils, who is listed in the program itinerary as a project officer with Oxfam and is cited on several radical anti-Israeli websites including Golan 67 and the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs. According to a student participant,[5] Atamneh told the group that the role of Palestinian civil society is to “challenge” the “enemy” (Israel).
• An official of the Nazareth YMCA, who claimed that Israeli-Arabs are second-class citizens, that the principle of equality is not written into Israeli law, and that the Arabs’ socio-economic woes are caused by discriminatory laws.[6]
• Hava Schwartz, who works closely with Ir Amim, an NGO which opposes Israeli policy in Jerusalem.

4. Structural Bias

The participants were presented with the Palestinian narrative and ideas first, and the Israeli position was reflected in a secondary manner. Furthermore, a participant noted[7] a pattern in which the Palestinians invited to address the group were generally of a higher quality than the Israeli speakers. For example, whereas Dror Etkes of Yesh Din was an excellent guide and speaker, the settler representative who addressed the group afterwards was not a skilled communicator and left a poor impression, if any, on the group.

According to a participant, the program presented Israel as if “there is no Israeli existence of any sort that’s not about the Palestinians.”[8] In other words, the strong tendency of the program was not to show aspects of Israel which would allow the participants to understand the complexity of this society and its history. (One exception was a walking tour of Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus architecture.).

In addition, this student reported that the program directors failed to provide important explanations to the group. During the visit to the Alamari Palestinian refugee camp, they were shown the terrible living conditions, but were not exposed to the background or Israeli narrative, including the history of terrorism and rejectionism.[9]

As noted, during the visit to Yasser Arafat’s grave, the group laid a wreath in the name of GMU (in contrast, American and most European officials who visit Ramallah decline to participate in this ceremony). Afterwards, the group also visited Yitzkhak Rabin’s grave, where there was no ceremony or official presence of any kind.[10]

5. Telling Anecdotes

Anecdotes and email exchanges by the participants demonstrate that many of them displayed a “very persistent focus” on demonizing Israel. “Nothing outside of that focus registered.”[11]

• During the group’s trip to Yad Vashem, one participant compared the plight of the Palestinians to the Holocaust when he remarked that the Holocaust was terrible, to be sure, but its victims were already dead, whereas the Palestinians’ suffering was ongoing.
• At the time of the first fatal Palestinian bulldozer terrorist attack in Jerusalem, (July 2, 2008) while the group was in Israel, and in which a number of Israeli civilians were killed and injured, one participant sent a message on the program’s listserv to check that no one had been hurt. In response, another recalled the Jewish murderers Baruch Goldstein (responsible for the 1994 massacre in Hebron) and the Eden Natan Zada (responsible for killing of four Israeli-Arabs on a bus near Shfaram in 2005) and commented: “[a]ny talk about demolishing their families’ houses? I don’t recall any.”
• One student asked the program directors for permission to participate in a demonstration in Bil’in against the construction of the security barrier. Dr. Lukacs denied this request.

6. Conclusion

The GMU summer internship program emphasizes pro-Palestinian political activism, and the academic content is minimal. In addition, the educational tours, meetings, and other activities organized by the program directors are structured to promote the Palestinian narrative, rather than expose participants to the full complexity of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

[1] This fee covered academic credit, all travel and lodging costs, and some other minor costs. In 2009, the cost will increase to $8,485.

[2] Interviews conducted with a student participant in the 2008 program, July 20, and December 3, 2008.

[3] See program description p. 4 and the 2008 program itinerary (attached).

[4] See program itinerary, p.1 (attached).

[5] Interviews, supra note 3.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.