Fulbright's Terrorist Tie

Jewish World Review ^ | 10-18-03 | Daniel Pipes and Asaf Romirowsky

[SJackson]

According to the Israeli government, a current Fulbright scholar from the West Bank "is known as an activist" in Hamas — one of the terror groups suspected in the Gaza roadside bombing that killed three Americans.

The Oct. 15 killing in Gaza had a bitterly ironic quality. The victims were three Americans, security personnel protecting an academic review committee en route to interview Palestinian applicants for the Fulbright program, an academic exchange funded and run by the U.S. government. The killers were Palestinian terrorists. The three, in other words, were murdered by Palestinians while on a humanitarian mission to help Palestinians.

But the irony runs deeper: According to the Israeli government, a current Fulbright scholar from the West Bank "is known as an activist" in Hamas — one of the terror groups suspected in the bombing

Mustafa Abu Sway just began teaching about Islam at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) in Jupiter, Fla. Superficially, he appears to be prime Fulbright material.

He has a Ph.D. from Boston College, is an associate professor of philosophy and Islamic studies at Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, has written two books on a medieval Muslim thinker and received an award from the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences in Berkeley.

But when we inquired about Abu Sway, the Israeli government informed us of his Hamas ties. How can a person belonging to a group that possibly killed Fulbright-related personnel himself receive a Fulbright award? Who duped the American taxpayer into funding so

meone an alleged activist in a terrorist organization? Why had no one in the Fulbright or FAU bureaucracies asked questions about Abu Sway's background?

J. William Fulbright, the Democratic senator from Arkansas, hoped that the program named for him would "bring a little more knowledge, a little more reason, and a little more compassion into world affairs and thereby to increase the chance that nations will learn at last to live in peace and friendship."

In contrast, Hamas' highest priority is to establish an Islamic Palestine "from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River" - in other words, a Palestine that does away with Israel. (Abu Sway echoes this view when he states that Palestinians need to "return to their homes from which they were uprooted in 1948.") That goal would appear to be in direct contradiction to the Fulbright program's spirit.

That the State Department both administers the Fulbright program and has listed Hamas as one of 36 Foreign Terrorist Organizations adds a surreal quality to this problem: State sponsors and pays someone accused of belonging to a group it itself has outlawed.

[yonif]

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[Salem]

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