[wvns] US University Snubs UAE Over Israel
US University Snubs UAE Over Israel
IslamOnline.net & Newspapers
"We have put this project on the back burner," said Nichols
CAIRO — A major US university has shelved plans to open a satellite
campus in the United Arab Emirates in protest of the Gulf state's
boycott of Israel, drawing rebukes for mixing education with politics.
"We have put this project on the back burner," Peter Nichols, the
provost of the University of Connecticut, told the Gulf News on
Monday, May 7.
"We are not actively working on it now."
The university, founded in 1881, froze plans to establish a satellite
campus in Dubai that would issue the same degrees awarded by the
campus in the US.
It said the move was taken in protest of the UAE's boycott of Israel.
"If the (concerns) are not addressed, I will absolutely work to block
such a partnership," said Connecticut legislator Andrew Fleischmann.
He vowed to press for obstructing the plans until the UAE "changed the
way it deals with Israel."
Israeli nationals are not allowed into the UAE in line with the
country's policy of non-normalization of ties with Israel until the
Arab-Israeli conflict is resolved.
Fleischmann said many Israeli students and faculty members would not
be able to benefit from the program if the UAE continued to deny them
entry.
There are only eight Israeli students in the University of
Connecticut, making up 0.03% of the 28,000 students on its six campuses.
There is no Israeli national among the faculty members.
In April, Arab leaders revived a plan offering Israel normal ties if
it pulls out from land seized in the 1967 war, allows the creation of
a Palestinian state and allows the return of Palestinian refugees.
Israel snubbed the plan as it did when it was first tabled in 2002.
Racism
The university decision has immediately provoked diatribe for mixing
academic issues with politics.
"It's obvious that the ignorance (about Arabs) that prevails among the
American public has crept into academics," said political science
professor Dr Abdul Khaleq Abdullah.
His colleague Dr Ebtisam Al-Kitby also blasted the university's
decision as double standards.
"If they're so concerned about human rights why don't we see them
protesting Israel's human rights violations against the Palestinians,"
she asked.
Torture of thousands of Palestinian detainees in Israeli jails is an
entrenched part of the system and there is a devised list of 14 ways
to do that, two Israeli human rights groups concluded in a joint
report released on Sunday, May 6.
"These measures are defined as torture under international law," said
the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied
Territories (B'Tselem) and the HaMoked Centre for the Defense of the
Individual.
A 6.8-billion-dollar deal reached between the US administration and
Dubai Ports World to operate six major American ports was brought to a
halt over fierce opposition from politicians and right-wing media outlets.
At the time, the Anti -Defamation League, a Jewish pressure group,
campaigned to scrap the deal in protest of the UAE's economic boycott
of Israel.
Despite that, said Dr Al-Kitby, Arab states continue to "send money to
the United States".
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