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Georgetown University Qatar Campus to Host Hamas Member for Talk on ‘Reimagining Palestine’
Wadah Khanfar. Photo: Screenshot
The Qatar campus of Georgetown University has invited a senior member of the Hamas terrorist organization to a campus conference, according to reports.
Georgetown University in Qatar will host the “Reimagining Palestine” conference from Sept. 20-22. The event will “engage scholars, experts, and the public in timely and relevant dialogues on globally significant issues,” according to a description of the gathering.
“Some of the world’s leading academics and practitioners will gather for a thought-provoking exploration of such pressing, forward-looking questions as the future of Gaza and how to make it livable again, to pathways toward a viable Palestinian political future, and the regional implications of the current moment,” the university’s website reads. “This conference aims to advance academic discourse on Palestine, meaningfully engaging participants in dialogue that challenges the status quo, and envisions new possibilities for justice and peace.”
Wadah Khanfar is set to speak at the conference. According to the Raya Media Network, a Palestinian outlet, Khanfar “was active in the Hamas movement and was one of its most prominent leaders in the movement’s office in Sudan.”
“Wadah Khanfar is considered one of the senior political leaders of the Islamic Resistance Movement [Hamas],” the Raya Media Network previously reported. “He held the position of head of Hamas’s Political Office for [South and North Africa] in the South African city of Johannesburg, where he operated under the name ‘The African Middle East Center for Studies and Research.’”
Mohamed Fahmy, a former bureau chief for the Qatar-based news network Al Jazeera, in 2015 wrote that Khanfar was “described on the Muslim Brotherhood’s own website in 2007 as having been ‘one of the most prominent leaders in the Hamas Office in Sudan.’”
Khanfar also gave an eulogy for prominent Muslim Brotherhood leader Yusuf al-Qaradawi after his death in 2022. Members of Hamas were reportedly present for the funeral service as well.
Georgetown University in Qatar also hosted Khanfar in March of this year for a conference titled “On Palestine.” Mehdi Hasan, a progressive journalist and prominent critic of Israel, interviewed Khanfar.
In the months following Oct. 7, the campus has hosted a variety of seemingly anti-Israel events. In February, the school hosted pro-Palestinian historian Tareq Baconi for an event titled “Israel’s War on Palestinians: Gaza as Epicenter.” That same month, the university hosted Daniel Brumberg, an associate professor in government at the university’s US campus, for a lecture titled “Hamas’s Al-Aqsa Flood and Iran’s Axis of Resistance Narrative.” Al-Aqsa Flood is Hamas’s name for its Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, where the Palestinian terrorist group massacred 1,200 people and kidnapped at least 250 hostages.
The presence of American universities in Qatar has long been controversial, with critics pointing out that the Qatari government has helped fund Hamas. Qatar also hosts several high-ranking Hamas leaders, who often live in luxury outside of Gaza. Some critics argue that the Islamic country severely curtails academic freedom of American universities.
“Liberal arts schools face particular challenges in settings where freedom of thought and association is restricted,” Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute, wrote in 2015. “With the reassertion of authoritarian control after the Arab Spring, branch campuses may struggle to balance the surge of interest in the region against local (and funder) sensitivities.”
Alongside Georgetown, Carnegie Mellon University, Weill Cornell Medical College, and Northwestern University operate campuses in the Middle Eastern country. Texas A&M announced plans to shutter its Qatar campus in February.
Georgetown’s main campus in Washington, DC has been rocked by anti-Israel protests in the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Students have accused the Jewish state of committing a “genocide” and “apartheid” and even rallied across campus to demand the university cut all financial ties to Israel.
The post Georgetown University Qatar Campus to Host Hamas Member for Talk on ‘Reimagining Palestine’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish US House Democrats Slam Tucker Carlson for Hosting Holocaust ‘Revisionist’ on Podcast
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024 during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
Every Jewish Democrat in the US House of Representatives issued a joint statement on Monday condemning conservative commentator Tucker Carlson for platforming a Holocaust revisionist.
In the statement, the 24 House members wrote that they were “appalled” that Carlson “hosted and promoted Nazi apologist and Holocaust denier Darryl Cooper on his podcast.” The lawmakers argued that Cooper downplayed the Holocaust by stating that “Jews in concentration camps ‘ended up dead’ only because the Nazis did not have the resources to care for them.”
“This revisionist and morally repugnant retelling of history is an insult to the six million Jews who were methodically murdered at the hands of the Nazi regime and is especially dangerous now as antisemitism is on the rise globally,” the representatives wrote.
“The normalization of Nazism is unacceptable and dangerous, and must be forcefully condemned,” they continued. “Americans deserve to know that their leaders will rebuke the cancers of antisemitism and Nazism whenever and wherever they appear.”
Carlson hosted popular historian Cooper on his podcast last Monday for a wide-ranging discussion on topics ranging from World War II to the Jonestown cult. During the conversation, Cooper appeared to downplay the Holocaust and argued that the US was on the “wrong side” of the war. He also asserted that Winston Churchill, the former prime minister of the United Kingdom, “was the chief villain of World War II.” Cooper also suggested that the slaughter of six million Jews in concentration camps was “humane” because the Nazis did not have food to feed the “prisoners of war.”
The interview drew widespread backlash from both sides of the political aisle. Conservative commentator Ben Domenech called Carlson’s interview “extremely disappointing.” Former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney (WY) accused Carlson of spreading “pro-Nazi propaganda.” Political analyst Francois Valentin wrote that the interview between Carlson and Cooper “feels like a skit from ‘Succession,’” referencing the popular HBO show. Jewish US Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) called Cooper’s Holocaust revisionism “deeply disturbing.”
The White House also issued a statement blasting Carlson, saying that “giving a microphone to a Holocaust denier who spreads Nazi propaganda is a disgusting and sadistic insult to all Americans, to the memory of the over 6 million Jews who were genocidally murdered by Adolf Hitler, to the service of the millions of Americans who fought to defeat Nazism, and to every subsequent victim of antisemitism.”
The post Jewish US House Democrats Slam Tucker Carlson for Hosting Holocaust ‘Revisionist’ on Podcast first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Doc Featuring Netanyahu Interrogation Tapes Premieres at Film Festival Despite Court Motion to Block Screening
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem, Sept. 2, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
A documentary that features never-before-seen interrogation footage with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin “Bibi” Netanyahu related to his corruption investigation made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) on Monday night and will screen again on Tuesday night after facing failed attempts by Netanyahu’s government to prevent the screenings.
“The Bibi Files” also includes interrogation footage with Netanyahu’s wife and son, as well as new interviews with key figures who have knowledge of the corruption investigation, including former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Netanyahu’s former spokesman Nir Hefetz, and former Shin Bet leader Ami Ayalon. The anti-Netanyahu documentary details the prime minister’s corruption indictment and the charges of fraud, breach of trus,t and bribery that he faced in 2019. It also details how he has stayed in power despite the three corruption cases brought against him and the postponement of his corruption trial.
“The Bibi Files” is directed by Alexis Bloom and produced by Oscar-winning documentarian Alex Gibney, who is also a winner of a Emmy Lifetime Achievement Award. The film, which was being edited until days before TIFF began, is featured in the film festival as a work-in-progress and is in search of distribution.
A source reportedly approached Gibney last year with the leaked interrogation tapes of Netanyahu. A privacy law in Israel blocks the footage from being shown publicly in the country; however, Netanyahu’s lawyer Amit Hadad requested the judge in his corruption trial block the TIFF screening of “The Bibi Files,” arguing that the film is still bound internationally by the statute of the Israeli privacy law, The Jerusalem Post reported. On Monday, Judge Oded Shaham rejected the request to block the film’s two screenings at TIFF.
After the screening of “The Bibi Files” at TIFF on Monday night, roughly a dozen audience members held signs calling for a ceasefire and hostage deal to end the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that has raged for almost a year, according to The Hollywood Reporter. On the street outside the theater before the screening, protesters chanted in Hebrew for new parliamentary elections in Israel, as well as a ceasefire and hostage deal.
“People are dying every day, and we wanted to make a statement with this film,” Gibny told the audience after Monday night’s screening, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “For a lot of Americans, the war goes on and on and on. And a lot of people are wondering ‘why does it continue?’ And I think one of the reasons for taking this film on is to explain a lot of the events that we now see through the corruption, the moral corruption, of this one individual.”
Netanyahu has denied wrongdoing and characterized the corruption probe as a politicized witch hunt.
The post Doc Featuring Netanyahu Interrogation Tapes Premieres at Film Festival Despite Court Motion to Block Screening first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish groups tell Toronto’s police board how they want to see protests handled
Hundreds of organizations and citizens, including members of the Jewish community, have told Toronto’s police board how they think the force should manage protests, demonstrations and occupations. The call for input on demonstrations by the public body that oversees the Toronto Police Service comes amid an increase in anti-Israel protests that have, for many Jewish […]
The post Jewish groups tell Toronto’s police board how they want to see protests handled appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.