The leader of a national Zionist organization has criticized the University over an essay written by a senior fellow at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies.The essay, penned by senior fellow Khalil Shikaki and published by the center, appears to have gone mostly unnoticed on campus.

But Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, seized upon the essay as further proof that donors should reconsider their financial support for the University. Referring to Shikaki's call for the release of former Fatah party leader Marwan Barghouti-who in 2004 was convicted of murder in Israel-Klein wrote in a press release last month that it "simply reinforces ZOA's outstanding call that donors to Brandeis should reconsider giving money" to the University.

Shikaki could not be reached for comment, but Crown Center director Shai Feldman, defended the essay, "With Hamas in Power: Impact of Palestinian Domestic Developments on Options for the Peace Process," in which Shikaki argues in favor of increased American and Israeli engagement with the radical Hamas party in order to encourage law and order in the Middle East.

In the essay, Shikaki called for Barghouti's release in an effort to overcome divisions within the moderate Fatah group.

Calling Barghouti "a Palestinian Arab murderer of Jews," Klein stated "it is clear that Brandeis University is failing to address the widespread concerns about the direction its Crown Center has taken."

It is not the first time Klein and the right-leaning ZOA have criticized Brandeis, or even Shikaki, in recent years. The New York Sun reported in Jan. 2006 that Shikaki has alleged ties to a Palestinian terrorist group-charges he has denied-and Klein called on donors to boycott the University. He and the ZOA have previously criticized the University for its partnership with a Palestinian university, as well as its decision to bestow an honorary degree last year on Tony Kushner, a playwright who Klein said has made anti-Israel remarks.

Shikaki's brother Fatih, from whom the Brandeis fellow has said he is estranged, is a founder of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which claimed responsibility for a 1995 suicide bombing in the Gaza Strip that killed eight, including Alisa Flatow '96.

Despite Klein's outrage, many student members of campus Middle Eastern advocacy groups said they were unfamiliar with Shikaki's essay.

"I have not seen the paper," Joshua Koppel '08 of the Brandeis Zionist Alliance said. Anna Benhamou '09 of the Arab-Jewish Dialogue Club also said she had not read it.

Farrah Bdour '07, co-president of the Arab Culture Club, said she had not read the paper, but added that she had gained "a positive impression" of Shikaki when she took one of his classes, "Conflict and Peacemaking in the Middle East" in 2005.

Feldman, who said he reads every paper published by the Crown Center, stressed that it holds its publications to high standards.

"I wouldn't let anything get out of the mill here and get published as a Crown Center paper had I not thought that it is of high quality," he said.

Feldman further defended Shikaki and said it was a "very easy task" to accept the validity of his essay.

"This is a man who is considered all over the world as one of the prime analysts of Palestinian domestic affairs," he said, adding he considers him "second to none."

He also said it is the Crown Center's policy not to comment on issues raised in its essays "because that is the sole prerogative of the researcher that wrote the paper.