A Stanford University student and two American scholars critical of Israel are among the victims of a rough new tactic in the fight over public opinion on the Middle East: a fake news release that attributes to them inflammatory criticisms of Iran and a long list of Arab nations.
The fake news release falsely depicts the student and scholars as leaders of a campaign to boycott Iran and the Arab world. Although obviously fraudulent to anyone who knows them and their views, it was reprinted and characterized as real on the Web site of the Palestinian News Network, a journalistic organization, which took it down last week after being alerted by The Chronicle that it was a hoax.
The release “is playing with peoples’ lives, and it is really reckless,” said Persis M. Karim, coordinator of the Middle East studies program at San Jose State University, who is falsely quoted in it as delivering harsh denunciations of the governments of Iran and several Arab nations and of the militant Palestinian group Hamas. She said she worries the hoax could put her in the sights of “extremists in the world, and in our own country, who can do physical harm to people they disagree with.”
Among the other targets of the hoax, Joshua D. Schott, a Stanford University junior who is co-president of the campus group Students for Palestinian Equal Rights, is quoted in the fake news release as pleading with Israel to invade Iran and Syria and “wipe out” their ruling classes.
John J. Mearsheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who has argued that an “Israel lobby” distorts U.S. foreign policy by pushing an agenda at odds with American interests, is not quoted in the fake news release but is falsely listed at the end as a media contact. Mr. Mearsheimer said the release “is patently ridiculous, and therefore it is not worth paying it much attention.”
The release is very similar in its wording to fake news releases distributed in New Zealand last year and in Britain in 2011.
The origin of the fake news releases has not been established. All three purport to come from boycott campaigns that in fact do not exist, and all falsely attribute to critics of Israel harsh condemnations of Arab nations and Iran. All three claim that the boycott campaigns have the support of long lists of activists and organizations previously known as critical of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians.
‘Harass and Intimidate’
Mr. Schott, the Stanford student, said he was alarmed by a line in the latest one saying it was being distributed “to 450,000 media, government, and NGO activists around the world via Internet, Twitter, Facebook, My Space [sic].”
“I don’t want people thinking I actually said or did those things,” Mr. Schott said on Friday.
Ms. Karim, who also is a professor of English and comparative literature at San Jose State, said she had asked the campus police to investigate but had been told that tracing the source would be difficult.
The release first appeared on the Palestinian News Network site on April 19, the same day Ms. Karim was holding a workshop on teaching the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that some pro-Israel activists criticized for what they said was a biased list of speakers. A new version of the news release surfaced last week as the controversy over the workshop continued, with San Jose State fielding an open-records request asking for documents and correspondence related to the workshop and its financing.
The Middle East Studies Association of North America and its Committee on Academic Freedom last week sent San Jose State’s president, Mohammad H. Qayoumi, a letter expressing concern that the attacks on Ms. Karim pose a threat to her academic freedom. The letter also says the group is concerned that the information produced by the university in response to the open-records request about the workshop “could be used to harass and intimidate individuals involved in the workshop, whether as organizers or as participants.”
The letter urges President Qayoumi “to issue a strong and clear public statement expressing the university’s support for academic freedom in general and that of Professor Karim in particular, and its firm condemnation of the smear campaign being waged against her.”
Patricia Lopes Harris, a San Jose State spokeswoman, said on Friday that the university is “very supportive of academic freedom” but does not plan to issue the letter of support for Ms. Karim requested by the scholarly association. “Our concern,” she said, “is that no matter what we put in that letter, it will be perceived as taking a political position.”
