Harvard Gave Students 10 Minutes To Protest Anti-Hamas Speaker

Harvard University students hosting anti-Hamas speaker Mosab Hassan Yousef for a lecture last week were required to read a university-issued statement, informing the audience that protesters would be allowed up to 10 minutes to disrupt the event before being removed.

“Speech is privileged in the University community,” the Harvard student hosting the event read. There are obligations of civility and respect for others that underlie rational discourse. “If any disruption occurs that prohibits speech the disrupters will be allowed for up to 10 minutes.”

Yousef, known as the “Green Prince,” is a former Palestinian militant who defected to Israel in 1997. He worked with the Israeli intelligence agency Shin Bet, helping to prevent terrorist attacks, including suicide bombings. His father, Sheikh Hassan Yousef, is a co-founder of Hamas.

At the 5-minute mark protesters will be issued a warning and asked to stop, and after five more minutes they will be removed if their disruptive behavior “prevents the audience from adequately hearing or seeing the speakers,” the statement said.

The policy comes as Harvard grapples with how to deal with the anti-Israel protesters on its campus who have created encampments, harassed Jewish students, and disrupted graduation ceremonies. Yousef’s event was hosted by The Harvard Salient, Harvard’s only conservative student publication, which has been gaining momentum since its 2021 relaunch.

A Harvard student who helps run student organizations but wishes to remain anonymous for fear of retribution from classmates told The Daily Wire that “the school has allowed for the heckler’s veto for a while, but the reading of the statement is new.”

No protesters disrupted Yousef’s event. However, an anti-Israel vigil was held simultaneously, with participants honoring the victims of what they described as “one year of genocide.”

“After a year of genocide, we must honor the over 42,000 martyrs lost in this genocide,” an anti-Israel Harvard student group wrote on Instagram.

Shabbos Kestanbaum, a recent Harvard Divinity School graduate suing the school for enabling anti-Semitism, slammed the 10-minute policy, claiming it is the school allowing “temper tantrums.”

“Rather than live up to its unfounded reputation of academic excellence, Harvard University instead sanctions temper tantrums, allowing students and professors to impede others’ free speech and educational opportunities,” Kestenbaum told The Daily Wire. “This is yet another example of Harvard acquiescing to the demands of the mob.”

Mosab Hassan Yousef (Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images)

During his talk, Yousef attempted to diagnose the anti-Israel radicalism expressed by many Harvard students since Hamas’ October 7 massacre, raping, and kidnapping of Israelis in southern Israel.

“Hamas has been up to something really bad, but people are in denial, and they do not want to face the truth,” Yousef said. “We don’t only see it on the streets of Gaza. We see it in London, we see it in Paris, we see it in New York, and we saw it on this campus.”

Yousef fled to the United States and applied for political asylum in 2007, which was granted in 2010 after his Israeli intelligence handler Gonen Ben Itzhak testified to his story and the risks to his life if he returned. Yousef says he has lost his family and his feeling of security after making it his life’s mission to speak against Hamas and terrorism.

“And truly many of us have been shocked because this is Harvard,” he added. “People assume that the students have high IQ and are very smart and they kind of fall into the trap of delusion. But now, the students of Harvard, at least some of them, proved the opposite of all expectations.”

Yousef said he is not surprised by what is happening on college campuses in the United States, citing the story of Yaha Ayyash, an electric engineering graduate of Birzeit University, the top university in the West Bank. Ayyash — nicknamed “the Engineer” — is known for revamping Hamas’s suicide bomb production, and is credited with helping kill nearly 100 Israeli civilians in the 1990s.

“Look up Hamas leaders, most of them are doctors and engineers.” Yousef said. “There’s a big difference between education and intelligence. You can be well-educated, but without being anchored in certain truths or having a moral compass, then automatically you can be swayed by any ideology, and then all of a sudden you believe that blowing up buses is part of the resistance.”

Harvard University has an active relationship with Birzeit University, whose students elected a Hamas-affiliated student bloc to run its student government, The Daily Wire previously reported. This same group honored Ayyash in a reception for new students, titled “Ayyash’s Army” on November 24, 2022 — the day after terrorists detonated bombs at a bus stop, killing two Israelis.

Yousef said he does not have a problem with anti-war students, but believes they must be pro-peace instead of just attempting to delegitimize Israel.

“Palestine is nothing but a colonial power created by the British that lasted approximately 25 years. And today, millions around the world want to bring the colonial entity back to life at the expense of a well-established and a really liberal country, the only democracy in the region that has all ethnic groups in it: Muslims, Arabs, Jews, Druze, Christians all living in harmony as equal citizens.”

Yousef added that educational institutions should do a better job telling the story of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, because students are confused and “driven by very strong emotions when they see the bloodshed on social media, even though many are fabricated by Hamas and Hamas’s strategy has been to sacrifice civilians.”

“If the anti-war activists don’t like what we are seeing, then they must work against Hamas who have been using human shields,” he said. “How can you advocate on behalf of the children and then validate the Hamas and the Palestinian ideology that is nothing but a false narrative?”

He added that he thinks those who are advocating for a “Free Palestine” or chant “from the river to the sea” do not understand the implications of eliminating Israel.

“Here in the West, they don’t realize the crime that they are committing because when they say free Palestine. Who is supposed to do the job? Free Palestine or ‘from the river to the sea’…means that someone has to go on a suicidal fight with Israel to remove Israel from the land as a condition to establish Palestine,” he said.

“Me, the children in Gaza, the children in the West Bank, are supposed to actually fight on behalf of the egomaniacs playing the savior so they can make a point for their movements to become successful? This is not acceptable,” he added.

Harvard University did not respond to a request for comment.