Asaf Romirowsky


Asaf Romirowsky is a political commentator, administrator of pro-Israel organizations, and Middle East historian. He is the Executive Director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Biography

Asaf Romirowsky received his PhD from King's College London. He is the executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East.
Trained as a Middle East historian he holds a PhD in Middle East and Mediterranean Studies from King's College London and has published widely on various aspects of the Arab-Israeli conflict and American foreign policy in the Middle East, as well as on Israeli and Zionist history.
Romirowsky is co-author of Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief and a contributor to The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel. Romirowsky's publicly-engaged scholarship has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The National Interest, The American Interest, The New Republic, The Times of Israel, Jerusalem Post, Ynet and Tablet'' among other online and print media outlets.
Romiriwsky is a critic of Palestinian terrorism.
In late 2007, his invitation to take part in an academic panel at the University of Delaware was rescinded by student organizers after another member of the panel, political science professor Muqtedar Khan, objected to sharing a podium with a former Israeli soldier.

UNRWA and Palestinian "refugees"

Religion, Politics, and the Origins of Palestine Refugee Relief, the 2013 book Romirowsky co-authored with Alexander H. Joffe, examines the origins of the UNRWA in the endorsement by the British authorities in Mandatory Palestine of efforts by the American Friends Service Committee to assist Arab refugees during and after the 1947–1949 Palestine war. Romirowsky and Joffe argue that the UNRWA's attitude towards Israel is rooted in the "foundational belief" of the American Friends Service Committee "in a supersessionist Christianity that could not reconcile the possibility of a rebirth of Jewish nationhood in the Land of Israel."
Romirowsky argues that because of the tendency of UNRWA schools and personnel to abet terrorism, especially in Gaza, many of its functions should be turned over to the Palestinian Authority. According to Ruth Wisse, Romirowsky argues that the "unique nature" of the UNRWA, which perpetuates the refugee status of Palestinian Arabs rather than resettle them, has had the effect of prolonging "suffering and anger" which then becomes "a weapon to encourage toward terrorism and intransigence."
Romirowsky is in favor of normalizing the definition of Palestinian refugees to conform with the usual practice of defining only persons who fled, and not their descendants, as "refugees."
Marouf Hasian Jr., who supports the inclusion of all descendants of Palestinian refugees as "refugees," accuses Romirowsky of minimizing the difficulties faced by Palestinian Arabs and the "horrors of refugee life."