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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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Hamas Warns Against Cooperation with US Relief Efforts In Bid to Restore Grip on Gaza

Hamas terrorists carry grenade launchers at the funeral of Marwan Issa, a senior Hamas deputy military commander who was killed in an Israeli airstrike during the conflict between Israel and Hamas, in the central Gaza Strip, Feb. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed
The Hamas-run Interior Ministry in Gaza has warned residents not to cooperate with the US- and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, as the terror group seeks to reassert its grip on the enclave amid mounting international pressure to accept a US-brokered ceasefire.
“It is strictly forbidden to deal with, work for, or provide any form of assistance or cover to the American organization (GHF) or its local or foreign agents,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement Thursday.
“Legal action will be taken against anyone proven to be involved in cooperation with this organization, including the imposition of the maximum penalties stipulated in the applicable national laws,” the statement warns.
The GHF released a statement in response to Hamas’ warnings, saying the organization has delivered millions of meals “safely and without interference.”
“This statement from the Hamas-controlled Interior Ministry confirms what we’ve known all along: Hamas is losing control,” the GHF said.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza in late May, implementing a new aid delivery model aimed at preventing the diversion of supplies by Hamas, as Israel continues its defensive military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group.
The initiative has drawn criticism from the UN and international organizations, some of which have claimed that Jerusalem is causing starvation in the war-torn enclave.
Israel has vehemently denied such accusations, noting that, until its recently imposed blockade, it had provided significant humanitarian aid in the enclave throughout the war.
Israeli officials have also said much of the aid that flows into Gaza is stolen by Hamas, which uses it for terrorist operations and sells the rest at high prices to Gazan civilians.
According to their reports, the organization has delivered over 56 million meals to Palestinians in just one month.
Hamas’s latest threat comes amid growing international pressure to accept a US-backed ceasefire plan proposed by President Donald Trump, which sets a 60-day timeline to finalize the details leading to a full resolution of the conflict.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump announced that Israel has agreed to the “necessary conditions” to finalize a 60-day ceasefire in Gaza, though Israel has not confirmed this claim.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is expected to meet with Trump next week in Washington, DC — his third visit in less than six months — as they work to finalize the terms of the ceasefire agreement.
Even though Trump hasn’t provided details on the proposed truce, he said Washington would “work with all parties to end the war” during the 60-day period.
“I hope, for the good of the Middle East, that Hamas takes this Deal, because it will not get better — IT WILL ONLY GET WORSE,” he wrote in a social media post.
Since the start of the war, ceasefire talks between Jerusalem and Hamas have repeatedly failed to yield enduring results.
Israeli officials have previously said they will only agree to end the war if Hamas surrenders, disarms, and goes into exile — a demand the terror group has firmly rejected.
“I am telling you — there will be no Hamas,” Netanyahu said during a speech Wednesday.
For its part, Hamas has said it is willing to release the remaining 50 hostages — fewer than half of whom are believed to be alive — in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and an end to the war.
While the terrorist group said it is “ready and serious” to reach a deal that would end the war, it has yet to accept this latest proposal.
In a statement, the group said it aims to reach an agreement that “guarantees an end to the aggression, the withdrawal [of Israeli forces], and urgent relief for our people in the Gaza Strip.”
According to media reports, the proposed 60-day ceasefire would include a partial Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, a surge in humanitarian aid, and the release of the remaining hostages held by Hamas, with US and mediator assurances on advancing talks to end the war — though it remains unclear how many hostages would be freed.
For Israel, the key to any deal is the release of most, if not all, hostages still held in Gaza, as well as the disarmament of Hamas, while the terror group is seeking assurances to end the war as it tries to reassert control over the war-torn enclave.
The post Hamas Warns Against Cooperation with US Relief Efforts In Bid to Restore Grip on Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UK Lawmakers Move to Designate Palestine Action as Terrorist Group Following RAF Vandalism Protest

Police block a street as pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather to protest British Home Secretary Yvette Cooper’s plans to proscribe the “Palestine Action” group in the coming weeks, in London, Britain, June 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
British lawmakers voted Wednesday to designate Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, following the group’s recent vandalizing of two military aircraft at a Royal Air Force base in protest of the government’s support for Israel.
Last month, members of the UK-based anti-Israel group Palestine Action broke into RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, a county west of London, and vandalized two Voyager aircraft used for military transport and refueling — the latest in a series of destructive acts carried out by the organization.
Palestine Action has regularly targeted British sites connected to Israeli defense firm Elbit Systems as well as other companies in Britain linked to Israel since the start of the conflict in Gaza in 2023.
Under British law, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has the authority to ban an organization if it is believed to commit, promote, or otherwise be involved in acts of terrorism.
Passed overwhelmingly by a vote of 385 to 26 in the lower chamber — the House of Commons — the measure is now set to be reviewed by the upper chamber, the House of Lords, on Thursday.
If approved, the ban would take effect within days, making it a crime to belong to or support Palestine Action and placing the group on the same legal footing as Al Qaeda, Hamas, and the Islamic State under UK law.
Palestine Action, which claims that Britain is an “active participant” in the Gaza conflict due to its military support for Israel, condemned the ban as “an unhinged reaction” and announced plans to challenge it in court — similar to the legal challenges currently being mounted by Hamas.
Under the Terrorism Act 2000, belonging to a proscribed group is a criminal offense punishable by up to 14 years in prison or a fine, while wearing clothing or displaying items supporting such a group can lead to up to six months in prison and/or a fine of up to £5,000.
Palestine Action claimed responsibility for the recent attack, in which two of its activists sprayed red paint into the turbine engines of two Airbus Voyager aircraft and used crowbars to inflict additional damage.
According to the group, the red paint — also sprayed across the runway — was meant to symbolize “Palestinian bloodshed.” A Palestine Liberation Organization flag was also left at the scene.
On Thursday, local authorities arrested four members of the group, aged between 22 and 35, who were charged with conspiracy to enter a prohibited place knowingly for a purpose prejudicial to the safety or interests of the UK, as well as conspiracy to commit criminal damage.
Palestine Action said this latest attack was carried out as a protest against the planes’ role in supporting what the group called Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza.
At the time of the attack, Cooper condemned the group’s actions, stating that their behavior had grown increasingly aggressive and resulted in millions of pounds in damages.
“The disgraceful attack on Brize Norton … is the latest in a long history of unacceptable criminal damage committed by Palestine Action,” Cooper said in a written statement.
“The UK’s defense enterprise is vital to the nation’s national security and this government will not tolerate those that put that security at risk,” she continued.
The post UK Lawmakers Move to Designate Palestine Action as Terrorist Group Following RAF Vandalism Protest first appeared on Algemeiner.com.