The Islamic Bloc is so proud of Birzeit's list of terrorist alumni that it featured many of them in a 2022 article on its website for their
"jihad work." Notable mentions include Ayman Halawa, which the group credits for killing 23 Israelis at a Tel Aviv night club, and Yahya Ayyash, nicknamed
"the Engineer," for revamping the production of suicide bombs and helping kill nearly 100 Israeli civilians.
The group honored Ayyash in a reception for new students, titled
"Ayyash's Army," on November 24, 2022, hosted the day after terrorists detonated bombs at a bus stop, killing two Israelis.
Current students have also been arrested for terrorism, including student government president Abdulmajid Hassan, and seven other students who were arrested by the IDF and accused of planning a terror attack to which some of the suspects confessed, according to the Times of Israel.
The director of a Harvard University public health program heading to Birzeit this summer with students condemned the raid, claiming it violated
"the right of Palestinians to education, freedom of speech, and freedom of association," the Daily Wire previously reported.
A Harvard representative downplayed the Birzeit elections and their impact on their summer program at the time, claiming they are
"not germane to and have not affected the FXB Center's work with the scholars and students at Birzeit's Institute of Community and Public Health."
According to Schanzer campus elections are a barometer of the political sentiments held by Palestinians in the West Bank considering elections have not been held in many years and its president, Mahmoud Abbas is entering the 19th year of his 4-year term.
"U.S. universities should be concerned about partnering with Birzeit while Hamas is in control of its student body and there are open displays of radicalism on campus," Schanzer said.
"This should be a sign that perhaps it's not the best time to be sending students to Birzeit."
In April, a mob of Birzeit students attacked the German ambassador to Israel on campus with stones, forcing him to flee, i24 News reported. In June, students called on Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah to burn Kiryat Shmona, an Israeli town near the Lebanon border that has been evacuated and faces near-daily rocket attacks.
Birzeit students were caught helping launder money for terrorist attacks from Gaza to Hamas members in Turkey in 2022, The Jerusalem Post reported. More than 140 students and 4 staff members were in prison in April, Birzeit posted to X.
In 2022, the school's sports education club hosted an athletic competition named after one of its many prominent terrorist alumni, Marwan Barghouti, who is considered a leader of the First and Second Intifada and was convicted of killing five people.
Birzeit University Ties With U.S. Universities And Students
While Schanzer said all U.S. universities should reconsider partnering with Birzeit, he stressed that Harvard should pay extra caution due to the Congressional Education and the Workforce Committee revealing its former Antisemitism Advisory Council noting pro-terrorist influence on campus.
"We know from the internal deliberations that they are worried about the influence of Hamas at Harvard," he said.
"But the Harvard administration has already shown it's more eager to appease the woke masses than they are concerned about antisemitism, Hamas influence or the potential danger of exposing students to radicals abroad."
Rutgers University caved to anti-Israel student protesters in May, saying it would
"revisit and follow-up" on its relationship with Birzeit University, which was created in 2022. Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-PA) asked Rutgers University president Jonathan Holloway if Birzeit is
"really an institution Rutgers should be partnering with" before a Congressional hearing in May.
"The information you just shared with me is new to me sir, and I will commit to reading it," Holloway said after Smucker informed him of Birzeit's terrorist sympathies.
In 2001, UC Davis joined a consortium of Arab region universities - that includes Birzeit - and consists of
"collaborative research and training projects."
Other schools draw upon Birzeit professors to educate their own students, represented by a 2021 conference co-organized with the UC Santa Barbara and Birzeit University. MIT co-hosted an April 2023 conference at Birzeit on
"Education Innovation in Palestine Academia." Georgetown enlisted Birzeit Associate Professor of History Rana Barakat for a
"Gaza in Context Teach-In Series" in June.
Student groups have taken trips to Birzeit, including 43 UC Berkeley students in 2019 who met with BDS Movement co-founder Omar Barghouti. In a Birzeit blog post, the university says it met with students from the University of Michigan, University of Virginia, New York University, and Harvard University in March 2023.
As Birzeit creates ties with new schools, it also appears to boast outdated relationships with U.S. schools from nearly 30 years ago. Its website features a map of eight
"international partners" including Illinois State University, Kent State University, California State University San Bernardino, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Harvard, University of California, William Paterson University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A spokesman for Cal State San Bernardino told The Daily Wire they have not had a relationship with Birzeit since 1995. Kent State told The Daily Wire it has not had a relationship with Birzeit for
"several years," Illinois State said their relationship ended in 2015, and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville said their relationship is not active. The University of California Office of the President said they have no relationship with Birzeit, but did not comment on if its universities do.
Schanzer believes that apart from the radicalism on Birzeit's campus, visiting the West Bank is not safe for American students.
"Israelis have arrested more than 4,000 terrorists in the West Bank since October 7 and have disrupted many plots and confiscated thousands of weapons smuggled through Jordan," he said.
"All of this is part of a plan enacted by Hamas and its key patrons in Tehran to ignite a third front in this war."
"We're five minutes away from a massive confrontation in the West Bank and we have Harvard sending students," he added.
"This is the wrong time."
Harvard University, MIT, William Paterson University, Georgetown University, UC Santa Barbara, Rutgers University, and Birzeit University did not respond to a request for comment.
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