The head of an Israel-designated terrorist organization, a former Hamas official, and Hamas apologists are among the dozens of anti-Israel advocates scheduled to speak at a Georgetown University conference in Qatar running Friday through Sunday, a Washington Free Beacon review has found.
The speakers at the "Reimagining Palestine" event will discuss the "ideological shifts" of Zionism, "art as resistance," and "anti-colonial struggles," and will engage in "dialogue that challenges the status quo," according to the Doha event’s website. Among the nearly 70 scholars is Shawan Jabarin, a former senior member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and the general director of the Al-Haq organization, an Israeli-designated terrorist group. Another, Wadah Khanfar, was a local Hamas leader in Sudan.
As a senior PFLP operative, Jabarin was convicted in 1985 and was sentenced to 24 months in prison for recruiting for the terrorist group. In 2008, the Israeli Supreme Court described him as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" for serving with Al-Haq while moonlighting with the PFLP, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Al-Haq bills itself as a human rights group focused on violations in Gaza. Israel designated the group as a terrorist organization in 2021, labeling it "an inseparable arm" of the PFLP that operates "on its behalf and upon its instructions as part of the terror organization's struggle against Israel."
Another Al-Haq official, Wesam Ahmad, is also set to speak at the Georgetown conference in Doha. He has described Israel as "a colonial project from the very beginning."
The Muslim Brotherhood, meanwhile, described Khanfar in 2007 as "one of the most prominent leaders in the Hamas Office in Sudan," according to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Raya Media Network, a Palestinian news outlet, similarly reported that Khanfar held a local leadership position in Hamas in the 1990s.
Khanfar, who served as Al Jazeera Media Network’s director general for five years before abruptly resigning in 2011, said Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack made "great achievements at the global level." He said it "came at the perfect moment for a radical and real shift in the path of struggle and liberation," adding that the attack would be seen "as the beginning of the end, leading the Palestinian cause to something different."
Georgetown established its Qatar campus in 2005 "to extend its international presence to an important region of the world," according to university president John J. DeGioia. The project was funded and coordinated by the Qatar Foundation, a state-controlled entity tasked with promoting the country’s interests. The foundation has significant influence over the Doha campus, shaping curriculum goals and faculty recruitment.
Qatar harbors senior Hamas leaders who plotted the Oct. 7 attacks and other terrorist groups, according to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. The oil-rich Persian Gulf monarchy is also the top foreign funder of American universities with at least $4.7 billion in donations, according to a National Association of Scholars analysis of U.S. Department of Education data. Since opening its Qatar campus, Georgetown, known as a top school for America’s aspiring diplomats and foreign affairs officials, has received about $870 million from the country.
In addition to Jabarin, Ahmad, and Khanfar, Georgetown’s Sept. 20-22 conference includes pro-Hamas speakers, as well. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British-Palestinian surgeon, for example, called a Hamas leader suspected of masterminding a rabbi’s murder a "hero." He also praised a PFLP cofounder and friend who helped plan an Israeli airplane hijacking.
Others have defended Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. Hamas scholar Tareq Baconi argued just days afterward that the assault wasn’t "driven by hatred and bloodlust" but rather "inevitable" "anti-colonial violence" brought upon by Israel’s "regime of oppression." In his book, Hamas Contained: The Rise and Pacification of Palestinian Resistance, Baconi wrote that Hamas is not "a terrorist group" but instead "a multifaceted liberation organization."
Another speaker, former Palestine Liberation Organization spokeswoman Diana Buttu, refused to condemn Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities during an MSNBC interview. "It’s the natural consequence of [Israeli oppression]," she said. "I didn’t do it."
Former Palestinian information minister Mustafa Barghouti described Oct. 7 as "a glorious day of historic proportion." During an Oct. 8 CNN appearance, he refused to call the attack "terrorism" and falsely claimed Hamas did not target civilians.
A Northwestern University professor speaking at the conference, Sami Hermez, on Oct. 7, called Hamas’s terror attack "a significant moment in the psychological war." He previously compared Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah to nonviolent leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela.
Rutgers University professor Noura Erakat similarly posted on X the same day that "any condemnation of violence is vapid if it does not begin & end with a condemnation of Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, and occupation." Earlier in 2020, she appeared on a panel with Ghazi Hamad, a senior Hamas leader, according to the New York Post.
Another speaker, Issam Younis, serves as the general director of the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, which employs Hamas and PFLP members, according to NGO Monitor. In 2012, he wrote an "Open Letter to the Brothers in Hamas," declaring, "I was and will remain a defender of Hamas’s right to rule." Five years later, Younis sat on a panel alongside Hamas chairman Yahya Sinwar and PFLP Youth Activity Committee head Salah Abdel Ati.
Other speakers have refused to acknowledge that Hamas attacked civilians on Oct. 7.
Khaled Al-Hroub, a Middle Eastern studies professor at Northwestern University’s Qatar campus, said on NPR that he had not seen "any credible media reporting" indicating that Hamas had killed women and children that day. He also praised the massacre as an "immense and latent power of a people who do not surrender." Three days after the attack, he called for a third intifada, referring to violent Palestinian uprisings that resulted in the death of more than 1,000 Israelis.
At least one speaker criticized Israel for its immediate response to Hamas’s attack. Six days after Hamas terrorists infiltrated the Jewish state and slaughtered scores of civilians, Stockton University’s Raz Segal referred in an op-ed to Israel’s assault on Gaza as "a textbook case of genocide unfolding in front of our eyes." In May, as anti-Israel and anti-Semitism became rampant at colleges nationwide, Segal dismissed Jewish students’ concerns about campus safety as "baseless."
Another speaker, Nader Hashemi, has spread pro-Iran regime propaganda. The University of Denver professor falsely claimed that Israel’s secret security service, Mossad, was behind an attack on author Salman Rushdie. It was, in fact, "an act of terrorism in the name of Hezbollah," an Iran-backed terrorist group, according to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
NBC anchor Ayman Mohyeldin is scheduled to moderate three panels at the Georgetown conference. He has long reported falsehoods related to Israel. For instance, in 2015, Mohyeldin told viewers that Israeli authorities shot an unarmed Palestinian individual. The man was actually holding a knife, however, and was attempting to murder Israelis, the Free Beacon reported at the time. In 2021, Mohyeldin condemned the Jewish state for launching airstrikes on Hamas military infrastructure after the terrorist group fired thousands of rockets into Israel, saying the conflict was "not a war between equal sides."
Other Georgetown speakers are outspoken supporters of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Omar Shakir, for example, was deported from Israel in 2018 for promoting BDS, which is illegal in the country. Two days after Oct. 7, he blamed the violence on Israelis, writing on X, "So long as there’s impunity, Gaza remains an open-air prison, and Israel’s apartheid isn’t dismantled, bloodshed and repression will continue." Shakir works for Human Rights Watch, an organization known to promote anti-Israel propaganda through biased experts.
Others have backgrounds in left-wing advocacy tied to anti-Israel sentiment. Former Jewish Voice for Peace executive director Rebecca Vilkomerson and IfNotNow cofounder Simone Zimmerman are slated to speak at the Georgetown conference. Both anti-Israel groups—funded by progressive megadonor George Soros—have organized hundreds of illegal protests in the aftermath of Oct. 7.
Also speaking at the Doha conference are over a dozen Georgetown faculty members, including Fida Adely, an associate professor and director of the school’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies. She has endorsed BDS and accused Israel of "ethnic cleansing." Middle East and Islamic Studies associate professor Nader Hashemi has posted on X that he "refuse[s] to hear any critique of Hamas from supporters of fascism/neo-fascism in Israel" and requested "no more lectures about Hamas when Israeli fascists are in power."
Georgetown University did not respond to a request for comment.