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Qatar’s Back Door to Higher Education
Doha, Qatar. Photo: StellarD via Wikimedia Commons.
JNS.org – In an earlier column, I debunked a recent study suggesting that foreign contributions to higher education were responsible for the rise in antisemitism. In my work, I have illustrated some cases where Arab donations have had a nefarious impact, but it’s difficult to do because universities don’t report what most of the money they receive is used for. Besides demanding greater transparency, the United States and the world need to expand our investigation to trace indirect funding to “independent” institutions.
Qatar is by far the largest donor to universities. Since 1986, it has contributed more than $5 billion (billions more are undocumented) contributions since 1986. The largest gifts were for the creation and operation of Weill Cornell Medical College-Qatar in Doha, which can’t be said to cause antisemitism at the Ivy League’s main campus in Ithaca, N.Y. Because of the U.S. Department of Education’s failure to require universities to publish how they spend the foreign donations, we don’t know if any is going to professors or departments because they are pro-Qatar, anti-Israel or antisemitic, or if they adopt those policies after receiving the money. We can only surmise that universities will not want to risk losing funding by publishing anything critical of the emirate.
Meanwhile, gone largely unnoticed is Qatar’s backdoor to universities, the Arab Center Washington DC (ACW), which is affiliated with the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Doha.
The ACW describes itself as “a nonprofit, independent and nonpartisan research organization dedicated to furthering the political, economic and social understanding of the Arab world in the United States and to providing insight on U.S. policies and interests in the Middle East.”
It says it relies on tax-deductible contributions from “individual supporters, organizations, foundations and corporations.” However, according to its tax return, all but $900 of its $2,262,150 in donations came from the center in Qatar.
A hint of its orientation can be found in its two most recent events: “Gaza and the Crime of Genocide: Legal and Political Dimensions of Accountability” and “Repression of Palestine Activism Amid the War on Gaza.”
Khalil E. Jahshan, the executive director and a veteran of several Arab lobby groups, has said the “clearest political message” of Hamas’s attack on Israel was “the one addressed to the ‘Camp of Normalizers’—be they Israeli, Arab, Americans or Europeans—that their plans to forge a ‘New Middle East’ without Palestine shall not pass unopposed.”
He also tweeted: “Top #Biden adviser and confidant Brett #McGurk is obsessed with rewarding #Israel for its #genocidal war in #Gaza by furthering the #Trump-era cash-&-carry #normalization deal between #Saudi_Arabia & Israel at the expense of #Palestinian national rights.”
The center has 14 academic advisers, 13 of whom are professors from universities such as Georgetown, George Washington, Maryland and Princeton. It does not indicate whether any members are paid. Among the professors on the list are Columbia University professor Hamid Dabashi. He refers to ISIS as “murderous thugs” and says, “Their Israeli counterparts meanwhile conquered parts of Syria and declared it part of their Zionist settler colony.” Dabashi does see one difference, which suggests that he doesn’t read The New York Times, “ISIS does not have a platoon of clean shaven and well coiffured [sic] columnists at the New York Times propagating the cause of the terrorist outfit as the Zionists columnists do on a regular basis.”
While Dabashi wears his disdain for Israel on his sleeve, a more slippery example is the University of Maryland’s Shibley Telhami. An Israel critic, he is best known for producing widely quoted surveys related to Israel with questions consistently written to elicit negative responses towards the Jewish state.
Another adviser, Osama Abi-Mershed, an associate professor in the influential Walsh School of Foreign Service and Director of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) at Georgetown University, is a supporter of the antisemitic Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. He has pledged “not to collaborate on projects and events involving Israeli academic institutions.”
Abi-Mershed’s colleague, Marwa Daoudy, an assistant professor in International Relations at the Walsh School and CCAS, tweeted “Palestinians are denied the right to exist as human beings.” He also praised South Africa’s foreign minister for comparing Israeli policy to apartheid, and accused Israel of genocide and “cultural genocide.”
Another adviser is retired USC professor Laurie Brand, former president of the Middle East Studies Association (MESA) and now chair of its Committee on Academic Freedom, which devotes much of its attention to criticism of Israel and defense of antisemitic speech, as in its post-Oct. 7 letter to universities denying that anti-Zionism is antisemitic. While expressing heartbreak over the loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives, the letter has nothing to say about the Hamas massacre that created the toxic campus environment. She is indignant over the supposed silencing of Israel’s detractors while defending the boycott of Israel.
George Washington University history professor Dina Khoury is another former MESA president who supports BDS and has condemned Israel in a prior Gaza conflict for its actions to defend its citizens. Another BDS’er is Amaney Jamal, the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Politics at Princeton University.
Sheila Carapico, a professor of political science and international studies at the University of Richmond, is another BDS supporter and a consultant to Human Rights Watch. She wrote an article complaining about Saudi Arabia bullying Qatar.
‘The price we had to pay’
ACW also has 18 research fellows, including Dana El Kurd, an assistant professor at the University of Richmond who wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post assailing the normalization of relations between Israel and the Gulf states, claiming that rather than advancing peace, Israel is giving the Arab regimes tools to solidify their authoritarian rule. She claims the Palestinian issue is the “root cause of the Arab-Israeli conflict” and suggested that the Abraham Accords emboldened Israel to annex Palestinian territory, ignoring that Israel gave up a plan to exercise sovereignty to achieve the agreement with the Gulf states.
One member of the ACW board is Mohammed Abu Nimer, director of the Peacebuilding and Development Institute at American University. Hamas, he says, has “engaged in the fight against the Israeli occupation since 1987”; that is, two years after every Israeli was withdrawn. He also repeats the canard that Hamas changed its charter and no longer seeks Israel’s destruction. The man who received the 2023 Distinguished Scholar Award for his “groundbreaking work in interreligious dialogue and faith-based peacebuilding” refers to the situation in Gaza as “genocide.”
Another board member is Laurie King, an anthropology professor at Georgetown who was a co-founder of the virulently anti-Israel website Electronic Intifada. She has compared Israel to Afrikaner South Africa and called for it to be boycotted. She falsely accuses Israel of “ethnic cleansing.” Not surprisingly, she objects to antisemites being called out for antisemitism.
Predictably, I found no statements condemning Hamas for massacring 1,200 Israelis.
The creation of the ACW is not Qatar’s first effort to use a Washington think tank as part of its influence operation. In 2007, it convinced the Brookings Institution to open a center in Doha. A few years later, the emirate agreed to a $14.8 million, four-year donation to help fund the affiliate in Qatar and a project on United States relations with the Islamic world. Brookings closed the center in Doha and stopped taking money from the emirate in 2017. Previously, it listed Qatar as one of its top donors, giving more than $2 million. Brookings’s divorce came after its president, Gen. John R. Allen (Ret.), was investigated by the Justice Department for illegally lobbying for Qatar (no charges were brought).
A former visiting fellow at the Doha Center who went on to teach at the University of Queensland in Australia offered one clue to the impact of associating with Qatar. Saleem Ali told The New York Times, “If a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be aware—they are not getting the full story.” He said he had been warned during his job interview not to criticize Qatar in his published work. “There was a no-go zone when it came to criticizing the Qatari government,” said Ali. “It was unsettling for the academics there. But it was the price we had to pay.”
Qatar didn’t hide what it expected to get for its contributions. When Brookings renewed its agreement for the Doha center in 2012, the Times reported that the Qatar Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced, “the center will assume its role in reflecting the bright image of Qatar in the international media, especially the American ones.”
When Brookings finally dumped Qatar, the emirate lost the prestige of associating with a prominent think tank. Undeterred, the Qataris created their own to give an academic veneer to their influence campaign.
Evaluating the impact of Arab funding on higher education is often a chicken-and-egg proposition. Are professors on the advisory board spreading propaganda because they get paid or are they recruited by Qatar to its stable of apologists because they are anti-Israel (I’ll leave it to others to decide if they’re also antisemitic)? If there is no financial or professional benefit, why associate with Qatar?
Whatever their reasons, they have affiliated themselves with the country that supports Hamas and Islamists.
The post Qatar’s Back Door to Higher Education first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Azerbaijan, Israel Discuss Regional Developments as Bilateral Ties Grow Stronger
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Photo: Facebook.
A senior Azerbaijani official met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem this week to discuss bilateral ties and regional developments, underscoring Azerbaijan’s growing role as a strategic player in the evolving Middle East.
The high-level meeting between Hikmet Hajiyev, assistant to the president of Azerbaijan, and Netanyahu took place amid strengthening ties between the Jewish state and the predominantly Shi’ite Muslim country.
“Mr. Hajiyev conveyed the greetings of President Ilham Aliyev to Prime Minister Netanyahu,” the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tel Aviv said in a statement, adding that both sides discussed expanding bilateral cooperation and addressed key developments in the region.
Azerbaijan’s ties with Israel have long been significant, with the country serving as the Jewish state’s most vital ally in the Caucasus and Central Asia for more than three decades, fostering a partnership that spans energy security, defense, and intelligence.
As of 2019, Azerbaijan supplied over a third of the Jewish state’s oil. Meanwhile, Baku has acquired advanced Israeli defense systems, including the “Barak MX” missile system and surveillance satellites, and remains a leading buyer of Israeli military hardware, which was crucial in its 2020 war with Armenia.
Earlier this month, Israel and Azerbaijan’s state oil company, SOCAR, struck a major energy deal, marking one of the latest examples of Azerbaijan’s growing influence in the Middle East.
Azerbaijan’s strategic importance stems not only from its economic influence in the region, but also from its role at the crossroads of a growing pro-Western bloc countering the regional ambitions of Iran, with which Azerbaijan shares a long border.
The Abraham Accords reshaped regional alliances during US President Donald Trump’s first term, and his current administration could further this shift, with Azerbaijan – a country that shares hundreds of miles of border with Iran while maintaining strong ties with Israel and Turkey – playing a key role in balancing regional power blocs and advancing Trump’s goals for the Middle East.
According to Ze’ev Khanin, a professor of Eurasian geopolitics at Bar-Ilan University and a senior research fellow at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies, Azerbaijan is a key part of strategic alliances that he calls “unclosed triangles,” with Baku comprising the missing link.
“We are living in the world of so-called unclosed triangles, which is unlike what we had in the 19th century and 20th centuries – when the enemy of my enemy is my friend and the friend of my friend is also my friend,” he recently told The Algemeiner.
One prominent example is the unclosed triangle of Azerbaijan, Turkey, and Israel. Despite strained ties between Turkey and Israel, Azerbaijan continues to use Turkey as a transit point for energy exports to Israel.
“The Turks didn’t stop the stream of Azerbaijani energy through Turkey to Israel,” Khanin said, adding that Ankara was eager to position itself as a transit hub for energy exports to Europe.
The post Azerbaijan, Israel Discuss Regional Developments as Bilateral Ties Grow Stronger first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hezbollah to Bury Long-Time Terrorist Leader Nasrallah in Mass Funeral in Lebanon
People gather at a site damaged by Israeli airstrike that killed Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah during a commemoration ceremony in Beirut southern suburbs, Lebanon, Nov. 30, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani
Hezbollah will bury its former leader Hassan Nasrallah on Sunday nearly five months after he was killed in an Israeli airstrike, in a mass funeral aimed at showing political strength after the Iran-backed Lebanese terrorist group emerged badly weakened from last year’s war.
Nasrallah was killed on Sept. 27 in an Israeli airstrike as he met commanders in a bunker in Beirut’s southern suburbs, a stunning blow in the early phase of an Israeli offensive that has left the Islamist group a shadow of its former self.
Revered by Hezbollah supporters, Nasrallah led the Shi’ite Muslim group through decades of conflict with Israel, overseeing its transformation into a military force with regional sway and becoming one of the most prominent Arab figures in generations.
The funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs will also honor Hashem Safieddine, who led Hezbollah for one week after Nasrallah’s death before he was also killed by Israel, underlining how deeply Israeli intelligence had penetrated the paramilitary group. He will be buried in the south on Monday.
“The funeral is a launchpad for the next phase. A great funeral that draws hundreds of thousands is a way of telling everyone that Hezbollah still exists, that it is still the main Shi’ite actor in Lebanon,” said Mohanad Hage Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center.
Israel killed thousands of Hezbollah fighters and inflicted huge destruction in Beirut’s southern suburbs and other areas of Lebanon where its supporters live. The impact on Hezbollah was compounded by the ousting of its ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria, severing the supply route to Iran.
Its weakened stature has been reflected in Lebanon’s post-war politics, with the group unable to impose its will in the formation of a new government and language legitimizing its arsenal omitted from the new cabinet’s policy statement.
Sheikh Sadeq al-Nabulsi, a cleric close to Hezbollah, said adversaries in Lebanon and abroad believed the group had been defeated, but the funeral would be a message that this was not the case. It would be a “battle to prove Hezbollah’s existence.”
The ceremony will be held at Lebanon’s biggest sports arena – Camille Chamoun Sports City Stadium on the outskirts of the Hezbollah-controlled southern suburbs.
Nasrallah will then be buried at a dedicated site nearby.
Nasrallah’s death was a huge blow to Iran, whose Revolutionary Guards established Hezbollah in 1982. It was also a blow to allied Shi’ite militias across the region, which also held him high regard.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi will attend, an Iranian official said. An Iraqi delegation including senior Shi’ite politicians and militia commanders will fly to Beirut for the funeral on a presidential plane, two Iraqi lawmakers said. Yemen’s Houthis will send a senior delegation led by the Grand Mufti, Houthi-affiliated Al Masirah TV reported.
Iraqi Airways has added flights to Beirut to cope with extra demand from Iraqis who want to travel to Beirut for the funeral, a spokesperson for the Iraqi transportation ministry said.
Supporters remember him for standing up to Israel and defying the United States. To his foes, he was head of an internationally designated terrorist organization and a proxy for Iran’s Shi’ite Islamist theocracy in its bid for influence in the Middle East.
After he was killed, Nasrallah was buried temporarily next to his son, Hadi, who died fighting for Hezbollah in 1997.
His official funeral was scheduled to allow time for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from south Lebanon under the terms of a US-backed ceasefire which ended last year’s war.
Though Israel has largely withdrawn from the south, its troops continue to hold five hilltop positions in the area.
The conflict spiraled after Hezbollah opened fire in support of its Palestinian terrorist ally Hamas at the start of the Gaza war, on Oct. 8, 2023.
The post Hezbollah to Bury Long-Time Terrorist Leader Nasrallah in Mass Funeral in Lebanon first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Hamas Says It Is Investigating Possible Error Over Hostage Body as Israel Decries Terror Group’s ‘Cruelty’
Palestinian terrorists and members of the Red Cross gather near vehicles on the day Hamas hands over deceased hostages Oded Lifschitz, Shiri Bibas, and her two children Kfir and Ariel Bibas, seized during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack, to the Red Cross, as part of a ceasefire and hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip, Feb. 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hatem Khaled
The Palestinian terrorist group Hamas said on Friday it was investigating a possible error in identifying human remains handed to Israel under a ceasefire deal as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu threatened retaliation for failing to release the body of hostage Shiri Bibas.
Hamas was due to hand over the bodies of Shiri Bibas and her two sons Kfir and Ariel on Thursday, along with the remains of a fourth hostage under the ceasefire deal that has halted fighting in Gaza since last month.
Four bodies were delivered and the identities of the Bibas boys and the other hostage, Oded Lifshitz, were confirmed.
But Israeli specialists said the fourth body was that of an unidentified woman and not Bibas, who was kidnapped along with her sons and her husband, Yarden, during the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Basem Naim, a member of the Hamas political bureau, said “unfortunate mistakes” could occur, especially as Israeli bombing had mixed the bodies of Israeli hostages and Palestinians, thousands of whom were still buried in the rubble.
“We confirm that it is not in our values or our interest to keep any bodies or not to abide by the covenants and agreements that we sign,” he said in a statement.
Hamas said separately that it would investigate the Israeli assertions and announce the results.
The failure to hand over the body and the staged public handover of the four coffins on Thursday, caused outrage in Israel and drew a threat of retaliation from Netanyahu.
“The cruelty of the Hamas monsters knows no bounds. Not only did they kidnap the father, Yarden Bibas, the young mother, Shiri, and their two small babies. In an unspeakably cynical manner, they did not return Shiri to her little children, the little angels, and they put the body of a Gazan woman in a coffin,” Netanyahu said in a video statement.
“We will act with determination to bring Shiri home along with all our hostages – both living and dead – and ensure Hamas pays the full price for this cruel and evil violation of the agreement,” he continued, adding that “God will avenge [the deceased hostages’] blood.
Hamas said in November 2023 that the children and their mother had been killed in an Israeli air strike and Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run Gaza government media office, said Netanyahu “bears full responsibility for killing her and her children.”
But the Israeli military said intelligence assessments and forensic analysis of the bodies of the Bibas children indicated that they were deliberately killed by their captors. Chief military spokesperson Daniel Hagari said the boys were killed by the terrorists “with their bare hands,” but gave no details.
Netanyahu gave no details of a possible Israeli response, but the incident underscored the fragility of the ceasefire agreement reached with US backing and with the help of Qatari and Egyptian mediators last month.
SATURDAY EXCHANGE
Six living hostages are due for release on Saturday in exchange for 602 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, according to Hamas, and the start of negotiations for a second phase of the ceasefire is expected in the coming days.
“Hamas must return the hostages as agreed in the ceasefire – the living and the deceased,” Israeli military spokesperson Nadav Shoshani said in a statement on social media platform X. “They have to bring Shiri back, and they have to release the 6 living hostages expected tomorrow.”
Netanyahu’s office confirmed it had been officially informed of the names of the six hostages to be released, which Hamas sources said was expected at around 8.30 am (0630 GMT).
As the tension over the Gaza ceasefire rose, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to intensify operations in another Palestinian territory, the West Bank, after a number of explosions blew up buses standing empty in their depots near Tel Aviv.
No casualties were reported but the explosions were a reminder of the campaign of suicide attacks on public transport that killed hundreds of Israeli civilians during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.
‘THEY MAKE A JOKE OF US’
Both sides have repeatedly accused the other of ceasefire violations, with Hamas threatening to delay the release of hostages over what it said was Israel‘s refusal to allow housing materials and other aid into Gaza, a charge Israel denied.
“It’s like they make a joke of us,” said 75-year-old Ilana Caspi. “We are so in grief and this is even more, it’s like you make a punch again, another one and another one, it’s really terrible.”
The Red Cross told Reuters it was “concerned and unsatisfied” by the fact that the handover of the bodies had not been conducted privately and in a dignified manner.
One of the main groups representing hostage families said they were “horrified and devastated” by the news that Shiri Bibas’ body had not been returned but called for the ceasefire to continue to bring back all the 70 hostages still in Gaza.
“Save them from this nightmare,” the Hostages and Missing Families Forum said in a statement.
Despite the outrage over Shiri Bibas, there was no indication that Israel would not take part in talks over a second phase of the ceasefire deal.
The Israel Hayom newspaper reported that Israeli negotiators were considering seeking an extension of the 42-day ceasefire, to delay moving to a second phase, which would involve talks over hard-to-resolve issues including an end to the war and the future of Hamas in Gaza.
The post Hamas Says It Is Investigating Possible Error Over Hostage Body as Israel Decries Terror Group’s ‘Cruelty’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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