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When we first exposed Dorit Na’aman here at Isracampus for her activities as a professor in Canada working to aid those out to destroy the Jewish state, Ms. Na’aman became so upset she began a campaign to get Google to block its search engine from displaying the article in Israel and Canada. Obviously, the truth hurts. … Dorit Na’aman’s “art” in her field is her promotion of her political agenda against the Jewish state and western-style democracy. That “art” always sells on the college market circuit and among groups like the International Solidarity Movement. … One thing is for certain: Dorit Na’aman is among the worst of the worst of Israeli academics abroad who will gladly work to destroy the Jewish state while claiming to speak for it as another Israeli Jew.

Queen’s University, Canada: Wannabe filmmaker and pseudo-academic Dorit Na’aman attacks Israel again

By Lee Kaplan, www.Isracampus.org.il
1/10/2009

When we first exposed Dorit Na’aman here at Isracampus for her activities as a professor in Canada working to aid those out to destroy the Jewish state, Ms. Na’aman became so upset she began a campaign to get Google to block its search engine from displaying the article in Israel and Canada. Obviously, the truth hurts. Even back when Na’aman was still a PhD candidate in 'Film Theory' over at the University of Alberta in Canada, she demonstrated she was far from a neutral academic with a genuine knowledge of history, particularly the history of the nation where she was born, Israel. What is more, she still uses her same ignorance as the basis for her theories in film! She declares herself a dual national as an Israeli and a Canadian, but don’t be fooled: Dorit Na’aman is an Israeli only as far as she can use that to lend legitimacy to the Arab crusade against the Jewish state. Now a Professor of Film Theory at Queen’s University in Canada, she furthers her career with diatribes against Israel.

Dorit Na’aman’s “art” in her field is her promotion of her political agenda against the Jewish state and western-style democracy. That “art” always sells on the college market circuit and among groups like the International Solidarity Movement. The recent publishing in Sweden by an “investigative reporter,” in reality by an ISM activist named Donald Bostrom, claiming IDF soldiers harvest the organs of dead Arabs to sell them on the open market, suddenly made Bostrom a “journalist” published in a Swedish national publication. Even blood libel can be sold. By the same token, Na’aman found her niche by being yet another “Israeli” filmmaker making Palestinian propaganda films and speaking out against Israel on the ISM’s college circuit.

Unfortunately, Dorit Na’aman has put her fortunes and her “art” at the disposal of Arab goals against Israel. As a professor in a marginal questionably-academic field, and with a politically correct receptive audience on college campuses for her to supply, she can be the proverbial big frog in the little pond of Queen’s University. Na’aman will always have a secure market among the anti-Israel forces on college campuses.

Na’aman in her own words describes one of her latest films shot in New York and it shows how much of a film theorist she really is:

“I shot some footage in Israel on my first summer visit, and when I came back I filmed the upstate NY landscape from a driving car throughout the fall and the winter. All the NY images returned from the lab upside down. It turned out that as I was breaking down 16mm film to fit on smaller spools for the electronic Bolex, I forgot to rewind the film. I had to laugh; it was such a perfect metaphor for my life at that point: hanging in the air with no ground under my feet, fretting over a cold winter.”

Na’aman’s shooting a film upside down as a metaphor for her life certainly makes sense, and her fictions about the Jewish state are every bit as topsy-turvy. She does no research on the history of the conflict or the facts relating to Israel. Furthermore, she grasps at trendy “politically correct” straws that resonate on college campuses. She also claims to make movies that have a “post-colonialist” and “feminist” perspective.

A quick perusal of the types of literary articles Na’aman writes reveals a woman who wants the world to believe the Palestinian Arabs are the only victims in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. Especially the Arab women. They are not victimized by Arab men but by Jews. Never mind that the Arabs practice the worst kind of misogyny in the world, where honor killings are ignored; it’s the Israelis who subjugate these women with the phony “occupation.” With titles and subjects in her articles such as "Brides of Palestine/Angels of Death: Media, Gender and Performance in the case of the Palestinian Female Suicide Bomber"; "The Silenced Outcry: A Feminist Point of View from the Israeli Checkpoints in Palestine" and "In The Name of the Nation: Images of Palestinian and Israeli Women Fighters" (where she makes equivalency between Israeli women who defend the state and Arab women terrorists), Na’aman panders to and deceives the Women’s Movement in the West, while shoring up the women-haters in the PA.

Her films always portray the Palestinian Arabs as victims of the Jews of Israel. One film of hers titled 'Home, Bitter Sweet Home,' allegedly details how one Palestinian family has had its home demolished four times by the Israeli government. But what she certainly does not tell her audience is how the Arabs routinely build on land that doesn’t belong to them and then tell the Media it is ancestral land. What she also doesn’t say is that she did this for the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in coordination with a tour of Canada by ISM activist Jeff Halper and his one-man anti-Israel NGO, ICHAD, the Israeli Committee against House Demolitions. ICHAD is funded by the EU to convince foreigners that Israel’s enforcing of deeds and land ownership, of building codes as found in any civilized society, is just a plot to steal Arab land. Salim Shawamreh, the Arab Na'aman focuses on in the film, actually toured with Halper as an ISM stooge. Na’aman states that Shawamreh’s house was demolished four times by Israel, as if for no reason. In fact, Shawamreh built in an agricultural zone in which construction was prohibited. Zoning codes don’t apply to the Arabs in Dorit Na’aman’s circles. They are above the law.

The truth about Dorit Na’aman shilling for the Palestinian cause never becomes clearer than in a recent letter she sent to her university supporting Israeli Apartheid Week on her campus.

In the letter, Na’aman has the audacity to accuse Israel of starting both the summer war in Lebanon in 2006 with Hizballah and the more recent war in Gaza against Hamas. Had this woman read even in the anti-Israel world press about such wars, she would know that the Hizballah War began when the Iranian-backed terror group fired mortar rounds into Israel and then killed and kidnapped Israel soldiers. These facts are unimportant to her. Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, the second war she accuses Israel of starting, was caused by eight years of missiles fired upon Israel by the Hamas in Gaza. Dorit Na’aman comfortably sat in Canada during all this.

Be sure to read Na’aman’s letter posted elsewhere here on IsraCampus for an eye-opening view as to what lengths some Israeli academics will go to in order to pander to the anti-Israel crowd overseas in order to advance their own opportunities.

According to her letter, “Sadly - and despite the appearance of the 1993 Oslo peace accord -- Israel has increased its forms of oppression of the occupied Palestinians, to the point that the occupation seems permanent, but the Palestinians have no rights to vote, move freely, obtain education or medical care, without Israel's permission.” Na’aman in the same letter cites as her source for her misinformation Rent-a-President Jimmy Carter.

Na’aman continues:

“Even the infamous "withdrawal" from Gaza in 2005 was only a dismantlement of settlements, but the Israeli army controls all the land borders, the sea and air access, and even the electricity supply. Put bluntly, this system is Apartheid and the 680km wall Israel has nearly finished erecting in the West Bank indicates that Israel is intending on keeping it as long as it can. While these facts are well known to most Israelis, when Jimmy Carter published his book in 2006 naming it Apartheid, North Americans were appalled, and the Jewish institutions up in arms to defend Israel. Since then Israel has started two vicious wars (Lebanon, 2006, and Gaza 2009) in which thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians were targeted, opening Israel to criticism by the international community. I have sadly come to the conclusion that the state of Israel does not serve even the interests of its own citizens.”

Finally, she declares herself a fighter against anti-Semitism in the fact that she encouraged her college administration to permit Israeli Apartheid Week programs on campus: “In my seven years here at Queen's I have known the different students who have made Students for Palestinian Human Rights and I can testify that the group's anti-oppression work extends to fighting all forms of oppression, including anti-Semitism. I am hoping that should criticism of the event comes before you, you will defend the right of Israeli Apartheid Week to exist. If you would like any more information, or if I can assist in any other way, please let me know.”

One thing is for certain: Dorit Na’aman is among the worst of the worst of Israeli academics abroad who will gladly work to destroy the Jewish state while claiming to speak for it as another Israeli Jew.

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