The panel was comprised of UCLA Professor of Modern Middle Eastern History James L. Gelvin and Dartmouth College professor Zeynep Turkyilmaz.
This department has been under recent attack for its anti- Israel bias.
According to a recent study by the AMCHA initiative, 93% of Israel-related events hosted by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies were anti-Israel and 75% of them contained anti-Semitic material. The report concluded:
The 28 Israel-related events examined were not only overwhelmingly biased against Israel and lacking diverse perspectives and a wide range of views, but anti-Semitic in many of their aspects, according to categories of anti-Semitic activity derived primarily from the U.S. Department of State’s definition of anti-Semitism.
An analysis of the 31 speakers chosen to speak at these events also demonstrated that the vast majority were biased against Israel and had engaged in anti-Semitic activity.Professor Gelvin began the discussion acknowledging these accusations of one-sidedness and anti-Israel classroom indoctrination, saying, “Let me start out with an apology. The Center for Near East Studies has been criticized on numerous occasions for lack of balance and, of course, one-sided programming.”
The rest of the event proved to be yet another demonstration of this.
Professor Gelvin presented a brief history of how the Islamic State was formed, the differences between the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda, and reasons for the group’s success thus far. He went on to explain that Islamic State’s infrastructure would self-destruct without any foreign intervention.
Accordingly, he concluded, “In spite of international coalition waging war against the Islamic state, it is extraordinarily fragile and will very likely collapse anyway under its own weight.
And finally, as a result of that assertion, I believe that Barack Obama is repeating George W. Bush’s mistake, inflating a minor problem into something that is an existential threat to the United States.”
The gist of the argument seemed to be: America should essentially sit back, relax, and enjoy the show as innocent American citizens are beheaded on television.
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