UC San Diego Student Paper Denounces Study Abroad Program in Israel

UC San Diego has announced a study abroad program this winter in Israel and Jordan. The university’s Anthropology Department is its sponsor. A student journalist at UC/SD with a deep anti-Israel animus rails against the program, claiming it helps legitimize the colonial-settler apartheid genocidal state. More on his hate-filled screed can be found here: “Israel Sees Momentum in Latin America After Argentina’s Milei Officially Launches Isaac Accords,” by Ailin Vilches Arguello, Algemeiner, December 1, 2025:

Following the announcement of the UC San Diego study abroad program in Israel and Jordan this winter, some students — including UCSD Guardian senior staff writer Jaechan Preston Lee — expressed outrage at the Anthropology department’s decision to host the trip.

The critical article that Lee published in the university paper last month parades misinformation as truth, and exacerbates the already fragile climate on campus.

His article conveys Israel as a militaristic, vengeful, malevolent, and hateful state. And his argument promotes exclusion and discourages students from gaining a comprehensive understanding of perspectives they may not agree with.

Accepting Lee’s call to cancel the trip would undermine our school’s commitment to academic freedom, further demonize pro-Israel and Jewish community members, and allow his deeply distorted worldview to continue bullying its way into wider acceptance.

On Oct. 5, the UCSD Anthropology Department sent an email to all undergraduate students offering the opportunity to learn about the region’s “ancient and recent past” by “meeting people of very different religious and ethnic backgrounds.”

Two weeks later, Lee argued that the trip is “unethical and reckless” because it is “a form of American and Israeli soft power influence on the West’s perception of land rights and indigeneity in the Middle East.” He justifies his position in a number of ways, all of which collapse under even modest scrutiny.

First, it’s important to address his false claims. The characterization of Israel as an “apartheid state” and the current conflict with the Palestinians as a “genocide” are easily disproven….

Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel enjoy full and equal rights. They serve in every single level of society — from the Supreme Court and Knesset to all levels of civil life — and policies regarding the disputed territories are either temporary or a response to constant terror threats.

It’s not only that Arabs serve on Israel’s Supreme Court and sit in the Knesset. They also go abroad as diplomats. Until recently the head of Israel’s largest bank, Bank Leumi, was an Arab. Jews and Arabs are treated in the same hospitals, by the same Jewish and Arab medical personnel. Jews and Arabs work in the same offices and factories. Jews and Arabs play on the same sports teams and in the same orchestras. Jews and Arabs start businesses together, everything from restaurants to high-tech start-ups.

The genocide accusation is equally false. First, there was no intention to commit genocide — which is legally and morally required for the term to ever apply. Israel was fighting a war of self defense after the Oct. 7 massacre. Second, any arguments about population decline in Gaza cannot be proven — because the death tolls released by the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry have been falsified and also debunked….

Genocide requires intent. There has been no intent to wipe out the Palestinians. Instead, the IDF has made tremendous efforts to save the lives of civilians in Gaza. In order to minimize such casualties, the IDF has dropped millions of leaflets, sent millions of text messages, and made millions of robocalls, all to warn civilians away from areas, and buildings, about to be targeted. The leading scholar of urban warfare, West Point professor John Spencer, having studied the war in Gaza, has concluded that “Israel has done more and implemented more measures to prevent civilian harm than any military in the history of urban warfare.”

One revealing argument targets Israel’s archaeological work, which Lee portrays as a means for the state to exert control over disputed land. By acknowledging Jewish artifacts beneath the soil, he implicitly affirms the deep historical Jewish roots in the region, yet dismisses that history as irrelevant to Jewish claims to the land. He also overlooks concerns that, under full Palestinian control, many of these sites and artifacts would risk neglect or destruction. The very existence of this debate underscores the importance of students seeing Israel’s archaeological realities firsthand.

Archeologists find the proof of the Jews’ 3500-year history in the land at 20,000 sites, and this is what so enrages Jaechan Lee. He wants the world to ignore the evidence of that Jewish presence; at the same time, he has to admit that such evidence exists. He fails to mention that the Palestinian Arabs have been systematically looting and destroying archeological sites in places under their control, and if they were to have a “state of Palestine” the would be even more able to carry on this work of deliberate obliteration of the Jewish past in the Land of Israel.

Jaechan Lee believes that UCSD students must not be exposed to Israel through this study abroad program. They might find out too much that Mr. Lee would like to remain hidden. What if In Israel they were to discover that there is no apartheid in the country? What if they found out about the IDF’s tremendous efforts to warn civilians in Gaza away from areas about to be targeted? What if those students were to discover that the Israelis turn out not to be the monsters Mr. Lee paints them, as but perfectly reasonable people who have been forced, many times, to fight for their country’s survival? That’s worrisome. Better to shut down that just-announced program before it gets off the ground. Jaechan Lee wants us to follow the slogan from Orwell’s 1984: “Ignorance is strength.” There is no need to weaken anyone’s anti-Israel resolve by actually letting them visit Israel.