The Harvard Kennedy School of Government has, once again, provided a platform for Israel’s detractors.
Diana Buttu, a former Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) spokeswoman and current fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center, “delivered a lecture that purported to discuss the ‘reality’ of the Middle East peace process, but instead disseminated lies to her audience”, the media watchdog organization Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) reported.
Buttu, a Canadian-born lawyer of Palestinian descent, has drawn criticism from the pro-Israel community over the years for her various false allegations against the Jewish state.
“In her telling,” according to CAMERA, “Qassam rockets don’t have explosive heads and cause no casualties in Israel; Grad rockets were not fired into Israel in the years 2008 or 2009; Richard Goldstone hardly retracted any portion of his eponymous report; and not one Israeli was murdered by a suicide bombing in Israel from the years 1997-2000. Finally, she insisted, the idea of Israel as a Jewish state exists solely to facilitate the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the Levant.”
In response to a question posed by the audience regarding how the Arab population feels about accepting Israel as a Jewish state Buttu responded by saying, “Putting aside the issue of Jewish sovereignty because that’s not really what it’s focused on, the idea of creating a Jewish state… is to try to expel and get rid of and try to legitimate the expulsion of the indigenous population.”
In March, Harvard University hosted a “One State Conference” aimed at providing an intellectual forum to discuss the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.
The conference was organized by a number of student groups including, Students for Justice in Palestine, the Palestine Caucus, the Arab Caucus, the Progressive Caucus, and the Association for Justice in the Middle East, all of which perpetrate an ideology based on the belief that Israel is an “apartheid state,” responsible for the “ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian population.”