Columbia University's 21st-Century Partnership With Tel Aviv University Revisited

In her 1954 autobiography, Many A Good Crusade: Memoirs of Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, the Dean of Barnard College of Columbia University between 1911 and 1947, Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve, wrote the following:


"…Palestine…had been inhabited for over a thousand years by Arabs…What right had Great Britain, asked the Arabs as the years went on…, to give away any part of Palestine without the consent of the inhabitants who had lived there and tilled the soil for over a thousand years?…Surely this was contrary to all the principles of democracy and self-determination...


“…That unhappy land was torn with violence…Outstanding among the horrors was the massacre of Deir Yaseen…The whole population of that Arab village…were massacred…As the news of this slaughter spread through the country hundreds of thousands of other Arabs from villages and towns fled from their homes and possessions to save their lives, expecting of course,…to return to their houses and farms when the terror had passed.


“The Israelis…filled with Jewish immigrants the homes and farms of the Arabs who had fled and whom they did not allow to return…The number of Arab refugees has been officially estimated by the United Nations' authorities as over 880,000 [as of 1954]…”


Yet as an article [https://www.aftau.org/news_item/tel-aviv-university-partners-with-columbia-university-to-launch-dual-degree-program/]posted on the American Friends of Tel Aviv University website on Dec. 5, 2019, titled “Tel Aviv University partners with Columbia University to launch dual degree program”, noted:


“Tel Aviv University (TAU), Israel’s largest…higher education institution, today announced that it will launch the Dual Degree Program with Columbia University — a first-of-its-kind partnership at TAU…`This is the first time that an Israeli university is collaborating with an elite American institution to offer a dual undergraduate program of this kind,’ said Professor Raanan Rein, Vice President of Tel Aviv University. `This program represents a milestone in Tel Aviv University’s globalization strategy…,” Professor Rein said…


“`I am especially excited about our partnership with Tel Aviv University…,’ said Professor Lisa Rosen-Metsch, Dean, Columbia University School of General Studies…The Dual Degree Program will welcome its inaugural class in the fall of 2020. For more information, visit the website https://tau.gs.columbia.edu.”


And on April 3, 2023, the Columbia University administration announced that it was going to “launch a new Columbia Global Center in Tel Aviv to build on its existing collaborations in Israel and facilitate further engagement and partnerships”, according to the Columbia News website.


But in the 21st-century universities like Tel Aviv University [TAU have, historically, been “playing a major role in enhancing Israel’s security capabilities and military edge,” according to the winter 2008/2009 issue of the Tel Aviv University Review journal. As Gil Zohar revealed in his “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article that appeared in this same issue of Tel Aviv University Review:


“In the rough and tumble reality of the Middle East, Tel Aviv University [TAU] is at the front line of the critical work to maintain Israel’s military and technological edge.


“While much of that research remains classified, several facts illuminate the role of the university. MAFAT, a Hebrew acronym meaning the R and D Directorate of the Israel Ministry of Defense is currently funding 55 projects at TAU…


“Nine other projects are being funded by DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense.


“Seven…Israel National Security Prizes have been awarded in recent years to members of TAU’s Blauntnik School of Computer Science—more than any other institution in the country. For security reasons, the recipients cannot be named.”


The results of some of the secret war research projects on Tel Aviv University’s campus have apparently been reflected in the weapons systems that have been used against Palestinian civilians in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank by the Israeli War Machine, in violation of the Nuremberg Trial Accords, the United Nations Charter and international law. But the Tel Aviv University professors involved in these campus war research projects apparently tried to hide, historically, what they were up to from any curious antiwar students or antiwar faculty members at Tel Aviv University. As the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article also observed:


“Not surprisingly, much of the defense-related research at TAU remains hush-hush, conducted in rooms and laboratories protected by barred windows, multiple locks and office safes. `There are people in this university dealing with very secret projects, and they won’t talk about it,’ matter-of-factly notes Dr. Michael Gozin, an expert in organic chemistry and explosives detection, who himself chooses words carefully to describe his work.”


According to the 2008/2009 “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article, Tel Aviv University Professor Ady Arie, who then headed TAU’s Institute for Electronic Devices, was then working with Tel Aviv University Professor Aladar Fleischman in “designing systems to protect aircraft from missiles” in partnership “with El op, part of Elbit, which makes electrical optic defense systems.”


The head of the Applied Physics Group at TAU’s School of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University Professor Abraham Katz, was then “working on a laser-based counter-measure system against shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (SAMs)…”


Tel Aviv University Professor Ron Bachrach of TAU’s Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences is doing research on “seismic waves and remote sensing technologies” that “may finally stop the flourishing underground trade between Gaza and Egypt.”


A “three-year project initiated by the IDF Intelligence Corps on how to enhance and stabilize video images shot from a long-distance” of about seven miles or more had also then been recently completed by Tel Aviv University Professor of Engineering Leonid Yaroslavsky.


Historically, the then-head of TAU’s School of Electrical Engineering, Tel Aviv University Professor Anthony Weiss, told the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article writer that “I’m not free to talk about things funded by the Ministry of Defense, naturally;” while “characteristically, MAFAT denied” Tel Aviv University Professor Michael Gozin “permission to speak in all but generalities about his research into the detection of `green explosives’—next generation munitions based on multiple nitrogen atoms in the molecules,” according to the same writer.


The then-director of TAU’s Interdisciplinary Center for Technology Analysis and Forecasting [ICTAF], Tel Aviv University Professor Yair Sharan, also was then “not free to discuss his current work with Israeli defense agencies including MAFAT, the counter-terrorism unit in the Prime Minister’s Office [MALAL], the Ministry of Defense and the police,” according to the “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article.


Ironically, although these professors on the campus of Columbia University’s Tel Aviv University partner institution were, historically, shy about fully disclosing the nature of their secret war research work in 2008-2009 to antiwar students at Tel Aviv University, at least one professor, Tel Aviv University Professor Oded Maimon, was not shy at that time about apparently violating the privacy rights of people around the globe who correspond with each other by e-mail.


As Gil Zohar revealed in his “Lifting The Veil of Secrecy” article, “with implications for intelligence gathering, Professor Oded Maimon…mines cyberspace in a project funded by the European Union, Israel’s Ministry of Science and General Motors;” and “using sophisticated algorithms,” Tel Aviv University Professor “Maimon reads millions of e-mails and identifies those that are suspicious or important.”


But, according to Tel Aviv University President Zvi Galil, people (at places like Columbia University, perhaps?) were still then “just not aware of how important university research is in general, and how much TAU contributes to Israel’s security in particular.
”

Coincidentally, then-Tel Aviv University President Galil was a former Columbia University School of Engineering and Applied Science Dean. And after moving from his Columbia University campus office in Manhattan to his Tel Aviv University president’s office in June 2007, former Columbia University Dean Galil had, historically stated:


“I look forward to continuing a dynamic, positive relationship with the American Friends of Tel Aviv University and collaborating with our friends in the United States…TAU and Columbia are separated by an ocean, but that has less meaning than at any prior time in human history.”


A former senior regional director for the AIPAC lobbying firm named Sam Witkin was the president of the tax-exempt American Friends of Tel Aviv University during the first decade of the 21st-century;; and before Witkin was replaced in 2007 by a former executive at the Zionist movement’s United Jewish Appeal office in New York City named Roni Krinsky, former American Friends of Tel Aviv University President Witkin was paid an annual salary of $248,972 [equal to around $367,000 in 2023].


According to its Form 990 financial disclosure form for 2006, between October 1, 2006 and September 30, 2007 the “non-profit” American Friends of Tel Aviv University group’s total revenues exceeded $22 million [equal to around $32.5 million in 2023], while its total expenditures were only $16 million [equal to around $23.6 million in 2023].


In addition, during this same period the “non-profit” American Friends of Tel Aviv University earned over $1.3 million [equal to around $1.9 million in 2023] in dividends from the over $21.3 million [equal to around $31.5 million in 2023] in corporate stock that it owned; while the amount of State of Israel bonds that the American Friends of Tel Aviv University also owned exceeded $1.2 million [equal to around $1.7 million in 2023].


Between Oct. 1, 2021 and Sept. 30, 2022, according to its Form 990 financial disclosure form for 2021, the American Friends of TAU’s total revenues exceeded $55.3 million, while its total expenditures were only $43.5 million; and the then-American Friends of TAU CEO, president, Jennifer Gross, was then being paid a total annual compensation of $468,000.


And, not surprisingly, the “American Friends” of the Tel Aviv University that Columbia University “partners with” in the 21st-century has included on its board of directors individuals who have also been affiliated with the AIPAC lobbying organization in recent years, like the following folks: 1. AIPAC board member Marc Abromowitz; 2. AIPAC board member Anita Friedman; 3. Former Las Vegas chapter/council of AIPAC chair Abbie Green Friedman; 4. AIPAC National Council Advisory Board member Garry A. Rayant; 5. Washington AIPAC member Harvey Rothenberg; and AIPAC National Council and Northern California AIPAC board member Luba Troyanovsky.


In addition, the American Friends of Tel Aviv University board of directors also has included in recent years Friends of Israel Defense Forces [IDF] supporter Ricki Allon and—like current Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs [SIPA] Dean Karen Yerhi-Milo—an individual who worked as an intelligence officer, historically for the IDF, named Yosi “Joe” Benlevi; who, according to the American Friends of Tel Aviv University’s website, is a former IDF Intelligence Corps Officer.