One Advisory Council member, UC San Diego Professor Jorge Mariscal, wrote a glowing testimonial about an anti-Israel event on that campus, which promoted the vicious lie that Israel is an apartheid state. The event, which featured Norman Finkelstein and other Israel-bashers, was entitled “Justice in Palestine Week 2010 – End the Apartheid.”  Professor Mariscal praised this anti-Israel event, commenting that “I have rarely seen a more sophisticated and tempered demonstration of student activism as the Justice in Palestine calendar of events that took place last week.”

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has opposed the Obama Administration’s announcement that it is upgrading the diplomatic status of Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority (PA) by granting its mission in Washington – which is actually a PLO mission – the same status it enjoys in most European countries: that of a PLO ‘general delegation.’ This amounts to a reward for continuing P.A. incitement against Jews and Israel, promoting hatred and violence, as well as its refusal to negotiate.  A general delegation is lower than an embassy (which normally only sovereign states enjoy in foreign countries) but has been described in the Israeli paper Haaretz as “a major step above what the PA has had until now.” The upgrade gives PA officials in Washington something they did not have before – diplomatic immunity. The U.S. has given Abbas’ PA this upgrade despite the complete absence of Palestinian action to arrest terrorists, and end incitement to hatred and murder against Israel in its controlled media, mosques, schools and youth camps.