A Harvard-affiliated center in Cambridge that provides seminars on the Middle East to Massachusetts public school teachers and students recommends materials that promote a stridently anti-Israel point of view, an Advocate investigation revealed this week

Among the materials used by Harvard's Middle East Studies Outreach Center is the Arab World Studies Notebook, a 500-page binder of curriculum materials produced by the Middle East Policy Council and Arab World and Islamic Resources. MEPC receives direct funding from the government of Saudi Arabia, and AWAIR receives funding from Aramco, the Saudi state oil company.

Critics of the notebook, including the American Jewish Committee, charge that it is riddled with inaccuracies and falsehoods. The notebook "appears largely designed to advance the anti-Israel and propagandistic view of the Notebook's sponsors," AJC said in a statement last year.

Some of the problematic passages in the book cited by the notebook's critics include:
• In a chapter on American policy in the Middle East, one of the book's contributors writes: "The questions of Jewish lobbying and its impact on Truman's decision with regard to American recognition [of Israel in 1948] – and indeed the whole question of defining American interests and concerns – is well worth exploring."
• In a chapter called "The Question of Palestine," the book asserts that before the start of the 1948 war, "armed Jewish groups had driven much of the Palestinian population from their homes, thus capturing most of the Palestinians' land through acts of sheer terror and intimidation."
• In the section on Arab culture, one chapter is devoted to Jerusalem, described as an "Arab city" surrounded by high rises "built for Israeli settlers to strengthen Israeli control over the holy city."
• Israel is missing from a map of the Middle East; a map of Palestine encompasses the pre-1948 boundaries.

Harvard's outreach center has used the notebook in department of education-sponsored teacher training institutes. The center is one of 18 Middle East centers around the country that receive federal funding under title VI of the 1958 Higher Education Act; each center receives about $500,000 a year, according to a report by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in 2005...