Hebrew University offers scholarships to Palestinians in the ‘occupied Palestinian territories’

New program offers Palestinian PhD students scholarships to Israeli university in Jerusalem, with the university referring to Judea and Samaria as the “Occupied Palestinian Territories.”

By World Israel News Staff

The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is offering scholarships to Palestinian Arab students, as part of a program which refers to Judea and Samaria as “the Occupied Palestinian Territories,” an activist group revealed Tuesday.

The Lach Yerushalayim organization, a part of the Im Tirtzu Zionist activist movement, released a copy of an English document reportedly circulated by the Hebrew University advertising the school’s Yad-Haandiv” doctoral scholarship program.

In it, Hebrew University encourages Palestinian Arabs living in Gaza, Judea, or Samaria and who hold masters degrees in relevant fields to apply for a five-year PhD fellowship, offering a 480,000-shekel ($125,887) scholarship.

The fellowship is available only to Palestinian Arabs living in what the school calls “the Occupied Palestinian Territories” – referring to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza – while excluding Arabs living in eastern Jerusalem.

Lach Yerushalayim and the Im Tirtzu movement slammed the Hebrew University over the Palestinian scholarship program, as well as its use of the term “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” and urged the Education Minister, Yoav Kisch (Likud) to intervene.

“A public institution, which receives a huge amount of its budget from the taxpayers, operates in a post-Zionist manner and defines areas under the control of the PA as ‘occupied,’” Im Tirtzu and Lach Yerushalayim said in a joint statement Tuesday.

“As if the work in the academic preparatory program was not enough, students who support terrorism and who struck from their studies during Operation Guardians of the Wall were accepted, now the university is opening its doors to students who come from an education for hatred of Israel and the murder of Jews, as has been shown in the textbooks of the Palestinian Authority. This is a disaster for Israeli academia, the Minister of Education must intervene!”