• Israel Academia Monitor

October, 2007

'Israel Academia Monitor' website acts as ‘Big Brother’, by tracking professors’ and researchers’ publications and views on Israel. The idea behind it is to warn students and potential donors of anti-Israel professors and courses at Israeli universities. Sadly, many professors don’t hesitate to weave comments showing “the evil” side of Zionism into their lectures, actively spread pro- Palestinian propaganda, work against government policies and openly preach against Israel’s definition as a Jewish state. Israel’s senior professors do not approve of this growing trend of younger professors politicizing academia by inserting anti-Israel agendas into Israeli institutions. Consequently, the "Israeli Academia Monitor" website was launched in order to warn student of such professors. Posted on the "Israeli Academia Monitor" homepage was a message saying, "Israeli Universities are crawling with extremist staff members, many of whom hate their country, encourage their country’s enemies, and collaborate with international anti-Israel organizations, sometimes even with declared anti-Semites."

Dana Barnet, who runs the website along with Professor Steven Plaut, said that their goal was to expose what was going at universities with the publics’ funding. "We noticed a lot of Israeli academics, who receive their salary from the state, use it for their own private anti-state ideology," Barnet explained, "They spread lies about Israel and there are many people in the world who are happy to hear it."

MCF sees itself as an important partner with this organization in helping the effort to fight anti-Israeli rhetoric on our campuses.

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