How Qatari Money Encourages Anti-Israel Sentiment on Campus

In October, the Department of Education publicized a report based on its investigation into undisclosed donations from Qatar to Cornell, Georgetown, Harvard, Yale, and several other universities. The federal government was in part motivated to pay attention to these irregularities by research conducted by the Institute for the Study of Global Anti-Semitism and Policy (ISGAP), which had set out to trace the sources of campus anti-Israel activism. ISGAP’s director, Charles Small, writes:

Between 1986 and 2018, Middle Eastern countries donated more than $6.6 billion to U.S. universities, but reported less than $3.6 billion to the federal government as required by law. Of the roughly $5 billion donated by Qatar to various institutions, less than $2 billion was reported properly. . . .

The bulk of Middle Eastern donations coming into the United States emanates from Qatari donors (75 percent), while the Qatar Foundation accounts for virtually all of the donations from Qatar. These funds have a significant impact on universities, especially with regard to attitudes toward Israel. ISGAP’s research identified a direct correlation between the funding of universities by Qatar and the Gulf states and the active presence at those universities of groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), which foster an aggressive anti-Semitic atmosphere on campus.

In addition, the ISGAP project assessment found a correlation between funding and the ideological bent of scholarship, including anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment, at departments and institutes at some of America’s leading universities, publishing houses, and academic professional associations. There is also a disturbing connection between this funding and the silencing of institutes and publications that are critical of the prevailing ideology.

Qatar has long been an important source of funds for the Palestinian terror organization Hamas and has forged relationships with Islamist groups ranging from the Muslim Brotherhood to the Taliban.

Read more at Newsweek

More about: Israel on campus, Qatar, Students for Justice in Palestine

Donald Trump’s Plan for Gaza Is No Worse Than Anyone Else’s—and Could Be Better

Reacting to the White House’s proposal for Gaza, John Podhoretz asks the question on everyone’s mind:

Is this all a fantasy? Maybe. But are any of the other ludicrous and cockamamie ideas being floated for the future of the area any less fantastical?

A Palestinian state in the wake of October 7—and in the wake of the scenes of Gazans mobbing the Jewish hostages with bloodlust in their eyes as they were being led to the vehicles to take them back into the bosom of their people? Biden foreign-policy domos Jake Sullivan and Tony Blinken were still talking about this in the wake of their defeat in ludicrous lunchtime discussions with the Financial Times, thus reminding the world of what it means when fundamentally silly, unserious, and embarrassingly incompetent people are given the levers of power for a while. For they should know what I know and what I suspect you know too: there will be no Palestinian state if these residents of Gaza are the people who will form the political nucleus of such a state.

Some form of UN management/leadership in the wake of the hostilities? Well, that might sound good to people who have been paying no attention to the fact that United Nations officials have been, at the very best, complicit in hostage-taking and torture in facilities run by UNRWA, the agency responsible for administering Gaza.

And blubber not to me about the displacement of Gazans from their home. We’ve been told not that Gaza is their home but that it is a prison. Trump is offering Gazans a way out of prison; do they really want to stay in prison? Or does this mean it never really was a prison in the first place?

Read more at Commentary

More about: Donald Trump, Gaza Strip, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict