“Oświadczenie Chalila al-Hajji o poświęceniu Gazy nie jest przejęzyczeniem – to zdjęcie maski z twarzy. Kiedy mówi, że Gaza “składa się w ofierze”, ma na myśli, że mieszkańcy Gazy zostali sprzedani… Wymienieni na podniesienie znaczenia w Teheranie, brawa w Dosze…” — Hamza Howidy, urodzony w Gazie obrońca pokoju i praw człowieka. Na zdjęciu: Al-Hajja przemawia w Al Dżazirze w czerwcu 2025 r. (zdjęcie: X.com/Osint613)

Palestyńczycy zabierają głos: Prawdziwy powód, dla którego Hamas chce ich “poświęcić”

Khaled Abu Toameh
Tłumaczenie: Małgorzata Koraszewska

Professor who called for Iran to strike US base removed, Georgetown says at House hearing

Andrew Bernard

Robert Groves, interim president of Georgetown University, testifies before the House Committee on Education and Workforce in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C., July 15, 2025. Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images.

Robert Groves, the interim president of Georgetown University, told members of Congress on Tuesday that the school removed a professor who called for Iran to attack U.S. military bases in the Middle East.

Speaking at the House Committee on Education and Workforce’s latest hearing on campus antisemitism, Groves said that Jonathan Brown was no longer the chair of Georgetown’s department of Arabic and Islamic studies.

“Within minutes of our learning of that tweet, the dean contacted Professor Brown. The tweet was removed,” Groves told lawmakers. “We issued a statement condemning the tweet. Professor Brown is no longer chair of his department. He’s on leave, and we’re beginning a process of reviewing the case.”

A spokesman for Georgetown told JNS that Brown retains his faculty appointment as Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Chair of Islamic Civilization at the university’s School of Foreign Service.

Shortly after the U.S. concluded airstrikes against Iran in June, Brown wrote on social media, in a since-deleted post, that he wanted Iran to retaliate.

“I hope Iran does some symbolic strike on a base, then everyone stops,” Brown wrote.

A specialist in traditional Islamic sources, Brown has attracted controversy for years over his academic views and anti-Israel advocacy. In 2017, he issued an apology for a lecture about the morality of slavery and rape.

“I don’t think it’s morally evil to own somebody, because we own lots of people all around us and were owned by people, and this obsession about thinking of slavery as property,” he said in the lecture. 

During questions from the audience, the professor cited the example of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. “He had slaves, there is no denying that,” he said. “Are you more morally mature than the prophet of God? No, you’re not.”

A convert to Islam, Brown is also the son-in-law of Sami al-Arian, who pleaded guilty in 2006 to a terrorism conspiracy charge over his support for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and was deported from the country in 2015.

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chair of the House Education and Workforce Committee, during a committee hearing about antisemitism on campus with leaders from Georgetown University, City University of New York and University of California, Berkeley, July 15, 2025. Credit: Courtesy of the House Committee on Education and Workforce.

‘Why did you give a medal?’

Tuesday’s hearing, the ninth that the education committee has held on antisemitism, also featured Félix Matos Rodríguez, chancellor of the City University of New York, and Rich Lyons, chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley.

Members of the committee were generally divided along partisan lines for the scope of their questioning; Republicans asked the university leaders about faculty and student statements about Israel, and the war in Gaza. Democrats asked about the Trump administration’s cuts to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

“This is yet another hearing to demonize Muslims and their religion, to demonize Palestinians, including those in Gaza who have undeniably faced unspeakable harms—a humanitarian crisis and human-rights crisis—and particularly, the young student activists and faculty who are determined to stand up against human rights violations,” said Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.).

“This is particularly another public opportunity for Republicans to pit Jewish Americans against Muslim Americans, Muslim against Christian, black against white,” she said.

Another focus of the hearing was foreign funding for the universities, particularly Georgetown’s relationship with Qatar, where the school has had a satellite campus for 20 years.

Rep. Mark Harris (R-N.C.) asked Groves about the university’s decision to award a humanitarian medal to Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, the mother of Qatar’s emir.

“Months prior to giving this award, Sheikha Moza had posted on social-media comments praising the Oct. 7 attack on Israel,” Harris said. “She praised the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attack, Yahya Sinwar, saying, ‘The name Yahya means the one who lives. They thought him dead, but he lives.’”

“She added, apparently referring to Israel, ‘He will live on, and they will be gone,’” Harris continued. “I have to ask: Why did you give a medal to someone who had made such antisemitic comments?”

Groves said Sheikha Moza’s post “is not consistent with Georgetown policy,” but that the school would not consider revoking the award, which was given for Sheikha Moza’s contributions to educating impoverished children around the world.

The university leaders were also confronted with anti-Israel and pro-Hamas statements and incidents from students and professors, as well as questioned about whether they had adequately rooted out Jew-hatred on their campuses.

‘You get to decide who to hire’

Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) asked Lyons, Berkeley’s chancellor, about Ussama Makdisi, professor of history and chancellor’s chair at the university.

“In the fall of 2024, you named Ussama Makdisi the inaugural chair of a newly endowed program in Palestinian Arab studies. On Oct. 7, Makdisi described the Hamas attacks against Israel as ‘resistance,’” Fine said. “I understand freedom of speech, but you get to decide who to hire. Why would you give a position to someone who said Oct. 7 was justified?”

“Professor Makdisi is a fine scholar,” Lyons replied. “He was awarded that position from his colleagues based on academic standards.”

Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), the committee chairman, stated in his closing remarks that he was “disappointed” by the responses from the witnesses.

“Berkeley admits abhorrence of the views of the professor rewarded with his own program, but won’t do anything about it, and refers to him as a fine scholar,” Walberg said. 

“That’s something I could not refer to him, when he misses the moral issue of humanity,” he said. “Georgetown couldn’t affirmatively say it wouldn’t allow a member of the KKK to come speak. CUNY severely underrepresented the number of antisemitism complaints received. So those are concerns that we still have.”

‘Fine Scholar’: UC Berkeley Chancellor Praises Professor Who Expressed Solidarity With Oct. 7 Attacks

Dion J. Pierre

University of California, Berkeley chancellor Dr. Rich Lyons, testifies at a Congressional hearing on antisemitism, in Washington, D.C., U.S., on July 15, 2025. Photo: Allison Bailey via Reuters Connect.

The chancellor of University of California, Berkeley described a professor who cheered the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre across southern Israel as a “fine scholar” during a congressional hearing held at Capitol Hill on Tuesday.

Richard K. Lyons, who assumed the chancellorship in July 2024, issued the unmitigated praise while being questioned by members of the House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, which summoned him and the chief administrators of two other major universities to interrogate their handling of the campus antisemitism crisis.

Lyons stumbled into the statement while being questioned by Rep. Lisa McClain (R-MI), who asked Lyons to describe the extent of his relationship and correspondence with Professor Ussama Makdisi, who tweeted in Feb. 2024 that he “could have been one of those who broke through the siege on October 7.”

“What do you think the professor meant,” McClain asked Lyons, to which the chancellor responded, “I believe it was a celebration of the terrorist attack on October 7.” McClain proceeded to ask if Lyons discussed the tweet with Makdisi or personally reprimanded him, prompting an exchange of remarks which concluded with Lyons saying, “He is a fine scholar.”

Lyons’s comment came after nearly three hours in which the group of university leaders — which included Dr. Robert Groves, president of Georgetown University, and Dr. Felix V. Matos Rodriguez, chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY) — offered gaffe-free, deliberately worded answers to the members’ questions to avoid eliciting the kind of public relations ordeal which prematurely ended the tenures of two Ivy League presidents in 2024 following an education committee held in Dec. 2023.

Rep. McClain later criticized Lyons on social media, calling his comment “totally disgraceful.” She added, “Faculty must be held accountable and Jewish students deserve better.”

CUNY chancellor Rodriguez also triggered a rebuke from the committee members in which he was also described as a “disgrace.”

As previously reported by The Algemeiner, CUNY campuses have been lambasted by critics as some of the most antisemitic institutions of higher education in the United States. Last year, the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) resolved half a dozen investigations of antisemitism on CUNY campuses, one of which involved Jewish students who were pressured into saying that Jews are White people who should be excluded from discussions about social justice.

During Tuesday’s hearing Rodriguez acknowledged that antisemitic incidents continue to disrupt Jewish academic life, disclosing that 84 complaints of antisemitism have been formally reported to CUNY administrators since 2024. 15 were filed in 2025 alone, but CUNY, he said, has published only 18 students for antisemitic conduct. Rodriguez went on to denounce efforts to pressure CUNY into adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, saying, “I have repudiated BDS and I have said there’s no place for BDS at the City University of New York.”

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) remarked, however, that Rodriguez has allegedly done little to address antisemitism in the CUNY faculty union, the Professional Staff Congress (PSC), which has passed several resolutions endorsing BDS and whose members, according to 2021 ruling rendered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), discriminated against Professor Jeffrey Lax by holding meetings on Shabbat to prevent him and other Jews from attending them.

“The PSC does not speak for the City University of New York,” Rodriquez protested. “We’ve been clear on our commitment against antisemitism and against BDS.”

Later, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), whose grilling of higher education officials who appear before the committee has created several viral moments, rejected Rodriguez’s responses as disingenuous.

“It’s all words, no action. You have failed the people of New York,” she told the chancellor. “You have failed Jewish students in New York State, and it is a disgrace.”

Following the hearing, The Lawfare Project, a legal nonprofit which provides legal services free of charge to Jewish victims of civil rights violations, applauded the education committee for publicizing antisemitism at CUNY.

“I am thankful for the many members of Congress who worked with us to ensure that the deeply disturbing facts about antisemitism at CUNY were brought forward in this hearing,” Lawfare Project litigation director Zipora Reich said in a press release. “While it is deeply frustrating to hear more platitudes and vague promises from CUNY’s leadership, we are encouraged to see federal lawmakers demanding accountability.”