(Ed. The Arab saw on our campuses has been to suggest israel is seeking genocide against Arabs in the Middle East. Israel is a democracy akin to the US and respects the rights of all religions and groups. The article below by Steve Plaut illustrates how close to US universities Israeli ones really are.).

Read on:

Anti-Jewish Apartheid Comes to Israeli Academia
Steven Plaut

It is now official. Yesterday the Israeli Council on Higher Education
decided to make Jews second class citizens within Israeli universities.
Yes, after 1300 years in which Jews were discriminated against in the
Middle East and discrimination in favor of Arabs took place, the
semi-governmental Council on Higher Education has decided that Israeli
universities must discriminate in favor of Arabs and against Jews.
To put this into context, let us note that the decision to discriminate in
favor of Arabs and effectively remove all entrance requirements and
standards for admissions of Arab students into Israel universities comes
as a de facto reward for the radicalization and nazification of most (but
not all) Arab students at Israeli universities in recent years. The Arab
student organizations are without exceptions bastions of extremism.
Islamist fundamentalists are regularly hosted by them
on campus.

A group of Arab students at Haifa University, which has the largest Arab
student population, recently called openly for the destruction of the
country. Arab students at the universities routinely prance about campus
with PLO flags, and with sweatshirts with the face of Nasser, the gent
that planned to send missiles with poison gas to annihilate the Jews. The
standard slogan at their rallies is "I am a Proud Palestinian," and so far
no campus authorities have suggested that these proud Palestinians be
transferred to schools in Nablus and Ramallah. Arab student rallies often
turn violent. Rumors have it that Arab students sometimes hold dorm
parties to celebrate suicide murders of Jews.

Arab students already enjoy special preferences under the existing system.
Unlike Jews, who serve three years in the military thanks to the Arab
aggression against Israel supported by most Israeli Arab students, the
Arab students generally do not serve their country in any way, with some
Druse and Bedouin exceptions. Arabs already get preferences for cheap
scarce dorm rooms, on the grounds that they live further away. The
government has long kept tuition at Israeli universities close to zero, in
part so that Arabs would not "suffer" when army veterans would get vet
benefits in the form of tuition vouchers. The nearly free tuition amounts
to granting Arab students vet benefits without their being inconvenienced
by serving their country. In other words, Israel already has a system in
place whereby Jews are often treated as second-class citizens.

The problem is that as long as Israeli universities operate their
admissions policy on the basis of ANY measure of scholastic aptitude,
achievement or potential, Arabs will be under-represented among the
students (and also among the faculty). This has long upset the Caring
Left. And the Caring Left holds hegemony over all Israeli universities.

The Council of Higher Education is the Supreme Soviet of the Israeli
university system. It is the Ivory Cartel. It is a gang of reps
from the universities who divvy up the loot, the budgets handed over to
them without controls by the Knesset and the Finance Ministry.
Universities with more political clout have more power on the Council and
so get more funds. There are NO real objective criteria in the division
of the loot among institutions. Well, ok, the Council says there ARE, but
they are just SECRET!!

As part of its mission, the Council has long acted to PREVENT competition
in higher education, to prevent the development of the countrys' small and
unfunded community  colleges, and to prevent overseas institutions from
opening in
Israel. As an example, overseas institutions are prohibited from offering
courses to students in Israel that are not taught in Hebrew (universities
MAY offer such courses), and may not hire Israeli profs to teach in their
programs. We are talking about simply OPERATING programs in Israel, not
getting any government funds!! The Council for years prevented openings of
new programs in professions with high demand, like law and business. Its
main goal is to protect the turfs of the existing universities.

Over the past few months, the current Education Czarina Limor Livnat has
taken on the Ivory Cartel and threatened to restructure it, to restructure
university management, to change the funding system, and to channel more
funds to the non-university colleges. The howls of outrage from the Cartel
were deafening. Heaven knows no fury like a special interest scorned.
Livnat is smart enough to realize that the Universities are bastions of
the Left and so her people stand to lose nothing politically by upsetting
the Tenured Reds, whereas the non-University colleges are crawling with
non-leftists.

The Cartel has been paying for lurid ads in the press with taxpayer money,
accusing Livnat of trying to "politicize" higher education. This from the
very same people who have maintained intense politicalization of the
universities for decades.

Nevertheless, the "representativeness" of Arabs among the student
population was too small by leftist standards. The universities introduced
de facto discrimination in the name of "affirmative action" in favor of
Arabs, but still their numbers were too small, except at Haifa University.

Then the Ivory Cartel appointed a committee composed of seven Arab
professors and four Jewish professors to study the "problem". You will not
be surprised to hear that they did not propose that all Arab students at
Israeli universities be required to take a loyalty oath to the State and
to denounce PLO terror, nor to perform 3 years of community service before
admission.

The committee made a series of recommendations that effectively amount to
allowing Arabs into universities with no admissions standards at all and
to turn Jewish students into second class students. Arab students would be
granted an extra 15 minutes on all university exams automatically. The
college boards or the "psychometric exams" (like SATS) would be done away
with because
- strangely - Arab students do worse on them on average than Jews. The
admissions criteria for Jews would remain knowledge and aptitude in math
and science and English. For Arabs it would be enough that they can read
Arabic, and they would be given an "entrance exam" on Arab literature or
similar material.

Arab students would also get automatic preferences in things like dorms
and scholarships, meaning that Jewish students would bear an automatic
veterans penalty for having served their country. Arabs would also get
preferences in pre-admissions remedial prep programs.

If you are like me, you expected that the Council would laugh itself silly
at these suggestions by this Intifada Committee, especially in the very
days when Arab students make a point of letting everyone know how openly
they identify with PLO terrorism and atrocities against Jews.

Yesterday the Council on Higher Education voted unanimously to approve the
recommendations of the Academic Intifada Committee. Let me repeat.
Unanimously.