2020 was certainly a challenging year for many of us. However, the news of the vaccine gives one hope that 2021 will bring us light at the end of the tunnel. We at EMET did not rest for one moment during this period, and have been conducting Zoom meetings with congressional staffers almost every day throughout the pandemic. Additionally, every week we have brought an array of renowned experts in the field to our Zoom webinar series. All of this has been offered free and open to the public, because we believe, as Socrates said, “If you know the good you will do it.” We firmly believe that a well-educated public ultimately influences our legislatures and in turn, has an impact on American foreign policy.
Many of you might not realize that without EMET there would be no office in the Department of Justice exclusively for the pursuit of justice for American victims of foreign terrorism. We worked incredibly hard to pass the Koby Mandell Act, named for the son of my friends, Sherry and Seth Mandell who was brutally killed by Palestinian terrorists, in May of 2001. Prior to its passage, the entire issue was handled by the State Department, who tended to look at American victims of Palestinian terrorism as disposable pawns in some giant chessboard. Their ultimate goal was to have some sort of agreement with the Palestinians, with an impressive White House lawn signing ceremony, irrespective of what Palestinian’s true aspirations are (which by now all of you are aware of). Prior to that the State Department viewed American victims of Palestinian terrorism as a nuisance, something that might shatter the illusion that the Palestinian intentions were genuine, noble, and peaceful.
Additionally, many of you might not realize that without EMET there might not be a Taylor Force Act, named for a West Point graduate who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He came back from those tours totally unscathed, only to be fatally stabbed by a Palestinian terrorist as he was walking along the beach in Tel Aviv. The Palestinian Authority has a “martyr’s fund” and a “prisoner’s pension fund” that rewards the families of terrorists, or if alive, the terrorists themselves with generous sums of money. The terrorist’s families are paid monthly pensions equal to several times the average Palestinian’s salary. The Taylor Force Act restricts U.S. funding to the Palestinian Authority unless they stop this system of rewarding terrorist and incentivizing terrorism. EMET worked very hard on this, educating congressional staffers about this heinous system of incentivizing further acts of terrorism. President Trump signed the law in August of 2018, and has since been withholding money from the Palestinian Authority. However, the Biden administration seeks to restore that aid, and recently there was an amendment that passed which was put forth by retiring Congresswoman Nita Lower to restore aid to the Palestinians.
Many of you do not realize that without EMET there would be no amendments to Title VI of the Higher Education Act, which calls for a “diversity of perspectives and wide range of viewpoints.” The entire field of Middle East Studies Departments has been imbued with anti-Colonialism, anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism since 1978, when Edward Said came out with his treatise “Orientalism” which argued that no-one who is not a native of the Middle East could be considered a genuine scholar of the region. Therefore, wonderful scholars like Bernard Lewis and Efraim Karsh were largely ignored, and have been replaced by professors such as Rashid Khalidi of Columbia, Hatem Bazian of Berkeley and scores of other radicals, even convicted terrorist and airline hijacker Leila Khaled, has been invited to speak at San Francisco State. We have worked with the Department of Education to try to ensure that the legislative intent of our 2008 amendment to Title VI of the Higher Education Act is actually making a difference. In fact, because of EMET’s work, the Middle East Studies Departments now have to write an essay depicting how they satisfy the requirement for a “diversity of perspectives and a wide range of viewports.” The Department of Education used our amendments to chastise the University of North Carolina and Duke University who held a symposium that was so blatantly one-sided and filled with bias, including having a rap singer who made overt statements praising anti-Semitism. However, these biases are ubiquitous throughout our nation’s Middle East Studies Departments, and there is still much to be done on this issue.
We continue to work on issues of grave importance every single day, but these are just three of our past successes, and even these successes require oversight and vigilance. That is why one congressional staffer recently told us, “You guys are the best-informed people we know about Israel and the Middle East. That is why I come to you for information.” You can rest assured that irrespective of which party occupies the White House, and which party takes control of the Senate or the House, EMET will away have certain impenetrable red lines, when it comes to the security the United States, and of Israel and the Jewish people.
All of this, plus our weekly webinars costs us a great deal of money, and we depend on each one of you for your support. If you want to see EMET continue to survive and to thrive, we ask you to make an end-of-year investment in EMET.
Invest in the Truth. Invest in EMET.
And we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.
Wishing you a happy and a healthy 2021,
Sarah Stern
President and Founder of EMET
