Georgetown Qatar Conference Will Feature Terrorist-Linked Speakers

An upcoming conference at Georgetown University’s Qatar campus will feature several speakers linked to terrorist groups, and others with terrorist sympathies.

The “Reimagining Palestine” conference is set to take place on Sept 20 to 24, part of the university’s Hiwaraat Series of conferences on contemporary political issues. Several of the speakers have ties to Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), both of which are U.S.-designated terrorist organizations. Many others have a history of making anti-Semitic comments, including praising Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.

The event will be moderated by former MSNBC host Mehdi Hassan, who left the network after his show was canceled, following months of criticism over his anti-Israel coverage.

Qatar is the biggest foreign donor to U.S. universities, giving $4.7 billion to academic institutions between 2001 and 2021, according to a 2022 study. Georgetown University alone reportedly received $870 million in gifts and contracts from Qatar since 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Education. Critics have raised concerns that the Qatar funding is directly linked to the unprecedented rise of antisemitism. 

“Georgetown has long been under the sway of Arab state influence,” FDD Senior Vice President for Research, Jonathan Schanzer, told The Daily Wire. “The terror-sponsoring government of Qatar is a major funder, but it’s certainly not the only one. The university is reportedly one of top recipients of Arab funding in the country.”

Here are some of the speakers slated for the Georgetown event.

Wadah Khanfar

Wadah Khanfar, president of the Turkey-based Al Sharq Forum, reportedly has ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Khanfar, previously the Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network, spoke at Georgetown’s “On Palestine” conference in March.

Photo: Khaled Safi via Facebook

At a May 25 Al Jazeera Forum, Khanfar said Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack “came at the perfect moment for a radical and real shift in the path of struggle and liberation.” He added that the attack “will be recorded as the beginning of the end, leading the Palestinian cause to something different.” 

Khanfar has close ties to the late former spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who hosted a Al Jazeera show where he endorsed suicide bombings, reported Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Khanfar eulogized al-Qaradawi in 2022.

Khanfar was a close friend and acolyte of Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the longtime spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who passed away in 2022.

So close, in fact, that soon after Qardawi’s death, Khanfar gave a 10-minute eulogy of the villainous man in front of Hamas leaders such… pic.twitter.com/N7n90Qrz97

— Eitan Fischberger (@EFischberger) September 8, 2024

In 2007, Al Jazeera’s Washington Bureau Chief resigned after accusing the outlet of having an “Islamic drift” adding that “from the first day of the Wadah Khanfar era, there was a dramatic change especially because of him selecting assistants who are hardline Islamists.” The Muslim Brotherhood described Khanfar as “one of the most prominent leaders in the Hamas Office in Sudan.”

In 2011, the Palestinian Raya Media Network, said Khanfar held a position in Hamas while living in South Africa. A year later, the outlet described Khanfar as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and active in Hamas. While in South Africa, Khanfar shared an address with Al-Aqsa Foundation, an organization designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a “critical part of Hamas terrorist support infrastructure,” according  to American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Michael Rubin.

In 2017, the U.K.-based Al-Arab website wrote that Khanfar recently appeared in an interview with a Turkey-based outlet speaking as a “leader in Hamas” and said that during his time in South Africa, he represented the link between Qatar and Hamas.

Shawan Jabarin

The Georgetown University conference will also feature Shawan Jabarin, a former senior member of the PFLP who was convicted of recruiting and training members for the group in 1985. Jabarin was actively involved in the group while running a non-governmental organization called Al Haq, according to The Jerusalem Post. In 2021, Israel designated Al Haq a terrorist organization for its ties to the PFLP.

(Photo: Shawan Jabarin via X)

On October 8, 2023, Al-Haq called for sanctions and an arms embargo on Israel without mentioning the 1,200 Israelis killed during Hamas’s attack, or the hostages taken by the terror group.

The Head of Al-Haq’s Center for Applied International Law, Wesam Ahmad, will also be featured at the Georgetown conference. In 2017, Ahmad called Israel “a colonial project from the very beginning,” according to NGO Monitor.

Isaam Younis

Another troubling speaker is Isaam Younis, who employs PFLP and Hamas members at his Al Mezan Center for Human Rights. In 2017, Younis spoke on a panel with Hamas leader and October 7 mastermind, Yaya Sinwar, who is currently hiding among hostages in tunnels under Gaza and dressing as a woman to avoid detection.

Khalid Al-Hroub

Georgetown’s campus is located in Doha’s “Education City,” also home to Northwestern University’s satellite campus, where another panelist, Khalid Al-Hroub, teaches.

About a week after October 7, Al-Hroub cast doubt on the fact that children and women had been murdered and raped during the attack during an interview with WBUR. There has been extensive reporting on women being raped during the attack. The outlet later admitted the segment did not meet its editorial standards.

Al Hroub told The Daily Wire that he only expressed doubts on the specific figures publicized by Israel. 

“The figures were 1400 including 1200 civilians,” Al Hroub told The Daily Wire. “Israel later on changed and reduced these figures.”

(Photo: Khalid Al-Hroub via Birzeit University)

On October 7 Al Hroub took to Facebook to call the attack “resistance” and a show of “immense and latent power of a people who do not surrender.” On October 10, Al Hroub called for a third intifada, referring to the two violent Palestinian uprisings that used suicide bombings and other attacks, leading to the murder of more than 1,000 Israelis.

In 2019, Al Hroub appeared on a panel with PFLP member Khalida Jarrar and spoke at the same event as terrorist and hijacker Leila Khaled in 2019. 

“For me and all sane and human-concerned people the priority is the stopping the ongoing genocide war that Israel commits against the Palestinians in Gaza killing more than 42,000 civilians and destroying all aspects of life in Gaza,” Al Hroub told The Daily Wire. “Oct. 7 was covered fully and extensively in American media all the way through. A credible media should give at least 1/10 of that coverage to the ongoing crimes now.”

A spokeswoman for Northwestern University said the school “firmly supports academic freedom and freedom of expression” but condemns “any attempt to minimize or misrepresent the horrific killing of Israeli civilians by Hamas on Oct. 7.”

Other October 7 Defenders

Plastic surgeon Ghassan Abu Sittah, who praised a Hamas terrorist for killing father of six Rabbi Raziel Shevach in a 2018 drive-by shooting, will also speak at the conference, according to the Jewish Chronicle. At the time, his lawyers said he was unaware that the terrorist had killed someone. The following year, he was pictured next to Leila Khaled at a memorial for PFLP leader Maher Al-Yemani, whom he eulogized at his graveside in 2020.

Another conference speaker, Palestinian politician Mustafa Barghouti, called October 7 a “glorious day of historic proportion,” reported MEMRI.

“The resistance paid with interest for the attacks of the terrorist settlers and the attacks against the al-Aqsa mosque,” he said. “It paid with interest for those who normalize [their relations] with the occupation.”

Jehad Abusalim of the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Palestine Studies, is yet another speaker who defended Hamas. As the October 7 attack was ongoing, Abusalim posted a tweet that blamed Israel and said that it was “not surprising” but “what’s surprising is that it took this long.”

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Georgetown’s Abdullah Al-Arian, whose father pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to contribute services to or for the benefit of the U.S.-designated terror organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), will also be a speaker. Al-Arian himself faced criticism in 2014 for comparing Israel to the Islamic State on X.

Tareq Baconi, who spoke at Georgetown University in March and is slated to speak this week, called October 7 “a bloody display of anti-colonial violence,” and said “the operation cannot but be seen as a response to Israel’s relentless and interminable provocation,” according to the Washington Report on Middle Easy Affairs.

Other conference speakers include Diana Buttu, who penned an October 23 op-ed stating tat “Israel does not have the right to self-defense following the 7 October,” and Rutgers University professor Noura Erakat, who appeared on a panel with a senior Hamas leader and on October 7 tweeted “Any condemnation of [Hamas] violence is vapid if it does not begin & end with a condemnation of Israeli apartheid, settler colonialism, and occupation.”

University of Massachusetts Boston professor Leila Farsakh, who penned an op-ed two weeks after October 7 praising Hamas’s attack, will also be a speaker, according to Georgetown.

Former Birzeit University President Beshara Doumani will also be a conference speaker. The Daily Wire has extensively documented Birzeit’s ties to terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. 

More than a dozen other planned speakers have made similar anti-Israel comments.

Georgetown, Northwestern, Khanfar, Jabarin, Ahmad, Younis, Abu Sittah, and Barghouti did not respond to requests for comment.