[Lillie_Steins]

In the meantime.......

Things change in a hurry in the Middle East.

Just last week, The Jewish Week reported that New York University’s plan to open a campus in Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates, was “being welcomed by NYU’s Israeli and Jewish faculty.”

Then, this week, the Middle East MENA Report (May 5), published by Al Bawaba, a media and technology group in Jordan and London, reports that Israeli businessman Lev Leviev, a major Chabad philanthropist, won’t be allowed to open his jewelry stores in Dubai, the second-largest city in the United Arab Emirates, because his company had a hand in “settlement construction in the Israeli-occupied West Bank,” including East Jerusalem.

According to Gulf News, a UAE paper, Leviev is accused of supporting Israeli charities that use “strong-arm tactics” and of “profiteering from building Jewish colonies on occupied Palestinian land, illegal under international law.”

Gulf News reported that Ali Ebrahim, a Dubai executive, said Israeli citizens were not allowed to operate in Dubai, even through non-Israeli partners; “there are no loopholes.” Lawrence Schiffman, an Orthodox Jew and chairman of NYU’s Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies, told The Jewish Week, “NYU would not go there without the right to have Israelis come to the campus.”

But in New York magazine (April 13), the local UAE leaders seemed more defiant than Schiffman let on. “NYU was aware of our local culture and rules and guidelines, and our policies on Israelis or homosexuality were clearly not a concern for them,” said Mubarak Al Shamesi, of the Abu Dhabi Education Council.

Schiffman told The Jewish Week, after the news on Leviev, “NYU negotiated for its rights on campus,” not beyond. “I have to admit,” said Schiffman, “we took a minimalist view.”