[Peace-discuss] Worries about overpopulation at a liberal institution

[C. G. Estabrook]

	Harvard Fellow calls for genocidal measure to curb Palestinian births
	Report, The Electronic Intifada, 22 February 2010

A fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, 
Martin Kramer, has called for "the West" to take measures to curb the births of 
Palestinians, a proposal that appears to meet the international legal definition 
of a call for genocide.

Kramer, who is also a fellow at the influential Washington Institute for Near 
East Policy (WINEP), made the call early this month in a speech at Israel's 
Herzliya conference, a video of which is posted on his blog ("Superfluous young 
men," 7 February 2010).

In the speech Kramer rejected common views that Islamist "radicalization" is 
caused by US policies such as support for Israel, or propping up despotic 
dictatorships, and stated that it was inherent in the demography of Muslim 
societies such as Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan and the Israeli-occupied Gaza Strip. 
Too many children, he argued, leads to too many "superfluous young men" who then 
become violent radicals.

Kramer proposed that the number of Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip 
should be deliberately curbed, and alleged that this would "happen faster if the 
West stops providing pro-natal subsidies to Palestinians with refugee status."

Due to the Israeli blockade, the vast majority of Palestinians in Gaza are now 
dependent on UN food aid. Neither the UN, nor any other agencies, provide 
Palestinians with specifically "pro-natal subsidies." Kramer appeared to be 
equating any humanitarian assistance at all with inducement for Palestinians to 
reproduce.

He added, "Israel's present sanctions on Gaza have a political aim -- undermine 
the Hamas regime -- but if they also break Gaza's runaway population growth, and 
there is some evidence that they have, that might begin to crack the culture of 
martyrdom which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men." This, he 
claimed, would be treating the issue of Islamic radicalization "at its root."

The 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of 
Genocide, created in the wake of the Nazi holocaust, defines genocide to include 
measures "intended to prevent births within" a specific "national, ethnic, 
racial or religious group."

The Weatherhead Center at Harvard describes itself as "the largest international 
research center within Harvard University's Faculty of Arts and Sciences." In 
addition to his positions at Harvard and WINEP, Kramer is "president-designate" 
of Shalem College in Jerusalem, a far-right Zionist institution that aspires to 
be the "College of the Jewish People."

Pro-Israel speakers from the United States often participate in the the Herzliya 
conference, an influential annual gathering of Israel's political and military 
establishment. This year's conference was also addressed by The New York Times 
columnist Thomas Friedman and, in a first for a Palestinian official, by Salam 
Fayyad, appointed prime minister of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority.

Kramer's call to prevent Palestinian births reflects a long-standing Israeli and 
Zionist concern about a so-called "demographic threat" to Israel, as 
Palestinians are on the verge of outnumbering Israeli Jews within Israel, and 
the occupied Palestinian territories combined.

Such extreme racist views have been aired at the Herzliya conference in the 
past. In 2003, for example, Dr. Yitzhak Ravid, an Israeli government armaments 
expert, called on Israel to "implement a stringent policy of family planning in 
relation to its Muslim population," a reference to the 1.5 million Palestinian 
citizens of Israel.

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