IsraelNN.com

A U.S. State Depart­ment-fund­ed Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia pro­gram which pro­vides busi­ness train­ing for res­i­dents of the Mid­dle East specif­i­cal­ly exclud­ed Israeli Jews — until Jew­ish jour­nal­ists protest­ed.

The Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia has now altered the pro­gram’s eli­gi­bil­i­ty require­ment that ini­tial­ly barred Israeli Jews. The turn­around in pol­i­cy also may have saved the State Depart­ment, whose Mid­dle East Part­ner­ship Ini­tia­tive (MEPI) finances the pro­gram, from hav­ing to pro­vide an embar­rass­ing expla­na­tion. MEPI also selects the par­tic­i­pants.

Jerusalem-based mar­ket­ing spe­cial­ist and busi­ness­woman Miri­am Schwab uncov­ered the bias last week when she checked into apply­ing to the uni­ver­si­ty’s San Diego branch Beyster Insti­tute pro­gram for Mid­dle East Entre­pre­neur Train­ing (MEET). She dis­cov­ered that the pro­gram was open to cit­i­zens of “Alge­ria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Israel (lim­it­ed to Israeli Arab cit­i­zens), Jor­dan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Moroc­co, Oman, Qatar, Sau­di Ara­bia, Tunisia, the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates, West Bank/Gaza and Yemen.”

The Beyster Insti­tute, which man­ages the pro­gram, offers three 10-day sem­i­nars, each one with 20 eli­gi­ble par­tic­i­pants. The pro­gram includes pro­fes­sion­al coach­ing and offers oppor­tu­ni­ties to make new con­tacts and “to help promis­ing lead­ers real­ize their aspi­ra­tions to build suc­cess­ful [busi­ness­es]... The par­tic­i­pa­tion of women is high­ly encour­aged.”

The Cana­di­an-born Schwab, who moved to Israel 10 years ago, said she was inter­est­ed in the pro­gram because she employs two women in her Illu­minea com­pa­ny in Jerusalem. “This pro­gram sound­ed real­ly inter­est­ing until I got to the part about eli­gi­bil­i­ty for appli­ca­tion,” she wrote on an e‑mail list.%ad%

The MEET pro­gram osten­si­bly “does not dis­crim­i­nate on the basis of sex, race, col­or, age, reli­gion, nation­al ori­gin, or hand­i­cap.”

In response to an IsraelNationalNews.com ques­tion for con­fir­ma­tion of the restric­tion in Israel, pro­gram man­ag­er Mona Yous­ry ver­i­fied, “It is only for Arab Israelis.” A sub­se­quent ques­tion as to why Israeli Jews are not eli­gi­ble for the pro­gram elicit­ed the fol­low­ing reply from the Insti­tute’s Direc­tor of Entre­pre­neur­ial Pro­grams, Rob Fuller: “I’m sor­ry for the unfor­tu­nate mis­un­der­stand­ing about eli­gi­bil­i­ty for the new MEET pro­gram. To be clear, for the pro­grams for which we are now recruit­ing to be held in 2008, ALL Israeli cit­i­zens are eli­gi­ble to par­tic­i­pate. Sor­ry for any con­fu­sion we may have inad­ver­tent­ly caused.”

Israeli Jews orig­i­nal­ly were exclud­ed despite the program’s stat­ed advan­tage as “an impor­tant cul­tur­al exchange.” Fuller did not explain the ini­tial “con­fu­sion” in bar­ring Israeli Jews.

The pro­grams are to be held in Jor­dan, Egypt and Moroc­co, all of which have rela­tions with Israel.

Fol­low­ing the e‑mail com­plaints to Beyster, the US Embassy of Yemen online doc­u­ment which announces the pro­gram was down for more than a day until the words “lim­it­ed to Israeli Arab cit­i­zens” were delet­ed. [View the doc­u­ment announc­ing the pro­gram by click­ing here. When prompt­ed with “Do you want to open or save this file,” click on “Open.”]

The US offi­cial who made the online edit, how­ev­er, repost­ed the sto­ry in “track changes” for­mat so that the doc­u­ment dis­plays in the left mar­gin, at the time of this writ­ing, the words: “Delet­ed: Lim­it­ed to Israeli Arab cit­i­zens.”