Georgetown Grad Student Is Daughter of Senior Hamas Adviser
A graduate student at Georgetown University has been revealed as the daughter of a senior Hamas adviser.
The graduate student, Mapheze Saleh, is the daughter of Ahmed Yousef, who served as a senior adviser to Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, according to CAMERA. Saleh has worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the Gaza Strip, the Qatari embassy in New Delhi and has written for Al Jazeera and Middle East Monitor, according to her biography on the Georgetown website. “In social media posts archived by CAMERA and published in the National Review, Saleh reportedly expressed support for the Oct. 7 terror attack, shared video of Israeli hostages being dragged in front of crowds and showed disdain for the United States,” The Daily Mail reported. Saleh is a first-year student in Georgetown’s Master of Arts in Arab Studies program.
Massachusetts Teacher’s Union Head Grilled Over Union’s Antisemitic Materials
Massachusetts Teacher Association (MTA) President Max Page was grilled during a Feb. 11 hearing in front of the state legislature over the union’s antisemitic material.
Democratic State Rep. Simon Cataldo asked Page if an image of a dollar bill folded into a Star of David with text about U.S. aid to Israel was antisemitic. Page demurred, stating, ‘We provide imagery, we provide resources for our members to consider in their own intelligent, professional way.’” The Free Press noted that the dollar bill image “is referenced in materials recently made available to Massachusetts educators for teaching about the Middle East. Entitled ‘Resources on Israel and Occupied Palestine,’ the union’s Training and Professional Learning Division developed the framework ‘for learning about the history and current events in Israel and Occupied Palestine, for MTA members to use with each other and their students.’” The commission also questioned Page about posters featured in MTA materials that included George Habash, who founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group, and another with the words “Unity in Confronting Zionism” underneath a snake, which The Free Press said evoked Nazi-era tropes.
Additionally, Page was asked about MTA material featuring a children’s book titled “Handala’s Return” that refers to Zionists as “bullies” who stole “our land” and urges readers to raise funds for Palestinian causes and chant slogans at anti-Israel protests. Page said at the hearing that he understands “the historical virulence of antisemitism, I understand the newly resurgent strains of antisemitism, and I’m too old and too confident in my experience and views to be lectured about the dangers of antisemitism,” reported The Free Press.
House Education Committee Chair Accuses Columbia of Failing “to Uphold Its Commitments” to Combat Antisemitism on Campus
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, wrote in a Feb. 13 letter to Columbia University that the university “has failed to uphold its commitments” in combating antisemitism and campus, The Washington Free Beacon reported.
Walberg noted that this academic year, Israel protesters have blocked the entrance to campus, disrupted an Israeli professor’s history class, clogged toilets with cement and smeared red paint on the business school. These incidents are evidence of the university failing “to uphold its commitments, both because the disciplinary process has failed and because the campus administration has refused to enforce its pre-existing rules.” He then demanded that the university provide all documents on the disciplinary processes involved in these incidents in two weeks.
Wake Forest Cancels Former IDF Soldier’s Speaking Event
Wake Forest University canceled a Feb. 11 speaking event featuring a former Israel Defense Forces soldier following criticism from professors and students.
The American former IDF member, Sam Fried, had been invited by the university’s Center for Jewish Life to discuss his experience in the IDF. University Chaplain Chris Donald told The Old Gold & Black student newspaper that event was aimed at facilitating “meaningful dialogue on the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, after careful consideration of recent discussions and the online interactions, it was determined that this event would not meet those objectives.” In a Jan. 31 op-ed, three professors objected to Fried’s talk, contending that it was inappropriate to hold the event on the anniversary of Israeli forces striking Rafah. “We are especially concerned about how a Jewish Life-sponsored event will affect our students and colleagues who remain traumatized by the war in Gaza,” they wrote. “We emphatically reject this assumption and stress that support for genocidal violence cannot and must not be conflated with Jewish identity or scholarship.”
Chabad Student President Isabelle Laxer told the Gold & Black that Fried’s talk was part of an effort to create a space to provide different perspectives for students to reach their own conclusions. She added that “there’s a lot of misinformation and blatant lies being made about [Fried].”
