Sir, I notice that the PSM [Palestinian Solidarity Movement] has not yet announced speakers for its conference, scheduled to take place in jost three weeks. I suggest that this is because they wish to avoid the outcry that ensued before the conference at Duke when they announced a lineup of overtly anti-Semitic speakers.

Among the speakers announced for Duke was Charles E. Carlson, whose hatred for Jews borders on psychosis. He has also written articles glorifying suicide bombers, as long as they are murdering Jews:

“Imagine taking the risk of being caught and beaten to death while trying to sneak out of Gaza, a fenced prison; then to travel alone overland to some populated area carrying a homemade pipe bomb that you know can only be detonated within a few feet of an enemy if it is not to be wasted. Imagine knowing that if you detonate the bomb too soon or in the wrong place you will kill only yourself and your friends...”

Carlson is a hardcore anti-Semite, repeating long-discredited conspiracy theories claiming Jews run the money supply and are not, in fact, Jewish. For example:

“Are There any Zionist Judeo ‘Christians’ in your Town? Do they Act in Good Faith? Does the Truth have a place in their ‘Religion/Beliefs’? Or do they Serve the ‘Alleged Authorities’? The Rulers of Romans 13. You Know the Ashkenazim/Khazar Edomite ‘Jews.’ The Class A Stockholders of the Federal Reserve: [Link] - Share the Light of the Truth with the neo-conned ‘Judeo-Christians’ and lead them into the paths of righteousness.”

Carlson is also a publisher of the pro-jihad web site We Hold These Truths. His appearance at the Duke conference was cancelled without explanation or apology after the speakers' list was announced.

Another announced speaker last year at Duke was Alison Weir from Sausalito, California. Weir pushes the "big lie" that the Nazis and Jews worked hand-in-hand during the Holocaust, among other ludicrously anti-Semitic accusations.

Fadi Kiblawi, another speaker at previous PSM conferences, expressed his desire to strap on a belt and become a suicide bomber, (Muslim journal Al-Risalah, University of Michigan, Spring Edition II, June 24, 2001). He later claimed that he was only kidding. Kiblawi also condemned the shutting down of the Global Relief Foundation and the arrest of its head manager, Rabih Haddad, for funding al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups overseas.

Other speakers verge on, well, silly. Howie Machtinger, for example, led a workshop at Duke on “An American-Jewish Anti-Occupation Perspective.” Machtinger is a comedy writer’s version of the aging activist. The man was on the barricades at Columbia University in 1968 and was one of the founders of the Weather Underground. (Which actually murdered Americans in a campaign of terror.) He co-authored a tome that stated, “At the right moment, revolutionaries within the United States were to wage a ‘people’s war’ and attack from within. The government would fall and ‘world Communism’ would eventually be instituted.” He also spoke about “how the black liberation movement is so far advanced at this point that the only thing left for white revolutionaries is to support blacks by fighting cops as a diversionary tactic.” Machtinger has been a radical for so long that he actaully does gigs at radical retrospectives - golden oldie shows for nostalgic boomers. Calling for the destruction of Israel is his current cause du jour.

Mazin Qumsiyeh, on the other hand, is a serious advocate of dispicable and anti-Semitic ideas. Last year at Duke he called the idea of a Jewish state to a nation state a "disease" and cited texts that he claimed proved "Nazi-Zionist collaboration" during the Holocaust.

I could be wrong. The PSM may have invited a line-up of speakers who recognize that the Jews have as much right to live in a Jewish nation state as the Danes have to live in a Danish nation state or the Arabs have to live in an Arab nation state. They may not have invited any notorious anti-Semites to speak at Georgetown.

But if that is so, why have they not announced the speaker schedule?