Thursday, October 23, 2008

Sari Nusseibeh and his Al-Quds Dukkan. Every person I know who taught at Al-Quds University has a story to tell. And they all complain about not being paid. One professor told me this story: he flunked this student in his class. The next day, this person called him. He said: I am Tayyib `Abdur-Rahim, and how dare you flunk that student? Don't you know that she works in Arafat's office. The professor did not know who this Tayyib was (we know him from his more thuggish days, when he ran Arafat's thuggish Force 17 in Lebanon, which was the enforcer for Arafat, although it was founded as Arafat's security detail). The professor did not react. The next day, the president of the University, Sari Nusseibeh, called the professor and exclaimed: Don't you know who `Abdur-Rahim is? Flunking that student is going to cause us problems.