Rutgers University lecturer Hamid Abdeljaber and UNRWA official Adnan Abu Hasna spoke at a Hamas-affiliated organization’s webinar on Wednesday.

The webinar, titled “UNRWA after the ban law and the arrival of Trump: Dangers and coping mechanisms,” was a discussion of the aftermath of an Israeli law banning the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, in light of some of its employees taking part in the Oct. 7 attacks and its facilities being used to attack Israel and hold hostages.

The webinar was organized by Association 302 for Palestinian Refugees, a Lebanon-based group led by Ali Hweidi, who is also a leading official for Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, a group designated by Israel as a Hamas front.

It was aired live on the Facebook page of the European Palestinian Information Center, whose chairman, Amin Abou Rashed, was arrested in the Netherlands for sending millions of Euros to Hamas.

In addition, a Hamas official in Lebanon, Ahmed Al-Hajj, was one of the speakers in the webinar.

Abdeljaber, a lecturer at Rutgers’ Center for Middle Eastern Studies, journalist and former press officer at the U.N., went by the name Abdelhamid Siyam in the webinar. 

He evoked antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish control of politics and institutions in his remarks.

“In the year 1975, when the [United Nations General Assembly] resolution was adopted that Zionism is a form of racial discrimination and racism, the Zionists decided they would first work to cancel this resolution,” Abdeljaber said. “Secondly, they would work to control the joints of the United Nations from the inside.”

“Consequently, many agencies, programs and funds inside the United Nations were controlled … converting some other organizations or programs or websites for the benefit of the Zionist entity,” he added.

Among his examples of U.N. officials corrupted by Zionists was Alice Nderitu, the rapporteur on prevention of genocide. Nderitu has said she was dismissed by the U.N. for refusing to accuse Israel of genocide, in contrast with Abdeljaber’s claim that Israel controls the institution.

Another example was Pramila Patten, the U.N. rapporteur on sexual violence, who wrote a report on Hamas’ rape of Israelis as part of the Oct. 7 attacks. At a press conference in his capacity as a reporter for Al-Quds Al-Arabi, a publication owned by Hamas sponsor Qatar, Abdeljaber accused the report of being “only a validation of the Israeli narrative.” The report was criticized in Israel for not directly linking Hamas to the sexual violence that day.

Abdeljaber also wrote a recent Al-Quds Al-Arabi article glorifying the Hamas “resistance” as having “strength, steadfastness and adherence to their dignity, even if that entails a price to be paid” and yielding positive results for the Palestinians.

Dory Devlin, assistant vice president for news and media relations at Rutgers, said in a statement to Jewish Insider on Sunday that Hamid Abdeljabar is no longer employed as a lecturer and last taught courses there in spring 2024.

“Rutgers condemns antisemitism in the strongest terms possible, and we always will do so. Our strong Jewish community is a point of pride for the university,” Devlin said.

Abu Hasna, a media advisor for UNRWA, admitted on the webinar that there was “real information” about the agency’s employees taking part in the attacks on Israel.

Yet, he claimed that “at the end of the day, we at UNRWA were one of the victims of what happened on Oct. 7.” 

Abu Hasna accused Israel of “exploiting” the attacks to retaliate against UNRWA. He accused Israel of paying $150 million to tarnish UNRWA’s image, conflating the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s planned public diplomacy budget with a recent Israel-backed international ad campaign on UNRWA’s ties to terrorism. He said that the advertisements in Times Square and European capitals put pressure on UNRWA.

The UNRWA official cited the U.S., Sweden and Switzerland cutting off funding, Italy skipping a planned payment and the Netherlands reducing its contributions to the agency as “dangerous” developments.

“There are elections in Europe. If populist right wins, the next day support for UNRWA will stop,” he warned.

Al-Hajj, a Hamas media official, also lamented the ad campaign against UNRWA, which he said turned the agency “into a problematic issue. It lost its international consensus.” 

The Hamas official noted that under the Biden administration, Europe and the U.S. had similar positions regarding Israel, while under President Donald Trump’s administration, “the American and Israeli visions are almost identical.” 

Al-Hajj called to “exploit the differences of opinion between Europe and the U.S. over the Palestinian issue to save UNRWA from being defunded and dismantled.”

This story was updated on 2/23/2025 to include comment from a Rutgers spokesperson sent after publication.

Universities across the country are scrambling to prepare for a tougher legal environment before President-elect Donald Trump returns to the White House next week, with some settling antisemitism complaints — with resolutions that have faced criticism for their perceived weaknesses — with the Biden administration’s Department of Education in its final weeks.

“We’re seeing what appears to be a rush to issue weak resolution agreements at a time when stronger treatment might be at hand,” Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and former U.S. assistant secretary of education in the Bush and Trump administrations, told Jewish Insider.  

Trump ran on a promise that, if reelected, U.S. universities would lose accreditation and federal support if they fail to stop the rising level of antisemitism that has roiled campuses nationwide since the Oct. 7 terror attacks in Israel. 

“Colleges will and must end the antisemitic propaganda or they will lose their accreditation and federal support,” Trump said in virtual remarks in September at the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas. 

While the federal government does not directly accredit universities, it plays a significant role in overseeing the organizations that give colleges accreditation. 

In a statement to JI, an Education Department spokesperson declined to address whether the recent influx of settlements were related to the incoming Trump administration. “The Office for Civil Rights works as expeditiously as possible to resolve investigations,” the spokesperson said, pointing to case resolution letters, which provide specific explanations for each case resolution. 

But Marcus noted that the Brandeis Center, which represents Jewish students in their lawsuits against universities, is “hearing from a lot of colleges and universities that are much more motivated to discuss settlement than they had been before the election.”

“That’s not a coincidence,” he told JI. “They clearly hear the footsteps of the new sheriff arriving into town and want to clean things up before President Trump and his team arrive. This is almost certainly related to the uptick in resolutions from OCR.” 

Mark Yudof, chair of the Academic Engagement Network and the former president of the University of California system, echoed that it’s “not accidental” that many universities “are trying to settle before the new administration takes place.” 

The incoming Trump administration “says that Title VI is on the table and I think that universities ought to take that seriously,” Yudof told JI. “There is some probability that there will be partial or full funding cutoffs.”

OCR has more than 120 existing cases related to discrimination based on shared ancestry or national origin under investigation, Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights, told lawmakers in September at a roundtable with congressional Democrats, adding that many more go unreported. Before seeking to revoke university funding, Lhamon said that her department must first investigate and communicate a finding that the subject of an investigation has violated civil rights law, at which point she’s required to give schools the opportunity to voluntarily come into compliance. Lhamon said that she does not have the authority to require schools to dismiss problematic faculty.

Settlements to Title VI cases reached this month include Rutgers’ agreement to implement a series of trainings to improve the campus climate. The complaint against the New Jersey public university alleged nearly 300 antisemitic incidents and nearly 150 anti-Arab and anti-Muslim incidents since the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attacks. Under the new resolution, Rutgers said it would enact several steps, including reviewing its policies and procedures around enforcing Title VI as well as providing training to employees responsible for investigating discrimination complaints. 

“They’re very much in line with what has happened over the last 60 years of Title VI, which is that not one university or school district, public or private, has had even a partial cutoff of federal funds,” said Mark Yudof, chair of the Academic Engagement Network and the former president of the University of California system. 

In its resolution with Johns Hopkins University, in which  OCR said that the Baltimore college did not apply the right legal standard when determining if an incident created a hostile environment on campus, administrators agreed to require annual training for all staff responsible for investigating complaints. They also committed to administer a climate assessment on campus, review response reports from all incidents in the allotted time frame, give training to all students and staff on discrimination and give the office all complaints of discrimination in that time frame.  

Yudof called the recent resolutions — which also includes one made in December across the University of California system campuses — “just OK.” 

“There’s nothing innovative about them,” he said. “They’re very much in line with what has happened over the last 60 years of Title VI, which is that not one university or school district, public or private, has had even a partial cutoff of federal funds.” 

Yudof called for the resolutions to include “establishing Title VI offices to monitor and enforce standards.”

“And I think there ought to be some discipline if the speech itself is not constitutionally protected,” he said. 

Miriam Elman, executive director of AEN, added that in the current climate, “campuses will need to go well beyond the bare minimum requirements delineated in OCR agreements for Jewish students to be fully protected and supported.”

“For example,” Elman said, “none of the settlements have explicitly called for universities to update their policies so that discriminatory, harassing conduct is not shielded from consequences simply by referring to ‘Zionists’ as a substitute for ‘Jews.’” 

Marcus was more critical, describing the agreements as “anodyne” and lacking “the toughness that one sees reflected in President Trump’s statements.”  

“It is common to many of the Biden team’s resolutions that they won’t discuss antisemitism as a general rule, or will also discuss Islamophobia,” Marcus said. “Typically, they’ll want to throw in anti-Arab discrimination and other forms of discrimination as well. There’s a tendency to ‘all lives matter’ antisemitism claims.” 

Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act was first expanded to include antisemitic acts in December 2019, when then-President Trump signed an executive order at his White House Hanukkah reception. 

“It’s disgraceful that in the final days of the Biden-Harris administration, the Department of Education is letting universities, including Rutgers, five University of California system campuses including UCLA, and Johns Hopkins, off the hook for their failures to address campus antisemitism,” said Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the new chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.

“The Biden team has supposedly kept the Trump Executive Order in place, and yet they don’t mention it, even in those conspicuous places where one would expect to find it,” Marcus said. “They don’t really push for anything that reflects the gravity of the moment. One doesn’t get the sense of crisis, they are more business as usual.”  

On Thursday, Rep. Tim Walberg (R-MI), the new chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, blasted the Biden administration’s Department of Education for the recent series of settlement agreements with colleges and universities over antisemitism complaints. 

“It’s disgraceful that in the final days of the Biden-Harris administration, the Department of Education is letting universities, including Rutgers, five University of California system campuses including UCLA, and Johns Hopkins, off the hook for their failures to address campus antisemitism,” Walberg, who took over leadership of the committee this year, said. “The toothless agreements shield schools from real accountability.” The statement described the agreements as “an obvious effort to shield universities from real accountability by the incoming Trump administration.”

Walberg’s statement, which was an indication that antisemitism will continue to remain a focus for the committee in the new Congress, also demanded that the Department of Education not sign any further agreements in the final days of the Biden administration. He urged the incoming Trump team to “closely examine these agreements and explore options to impose real consequences on schools, which could include giving complainants the opportunity to appeal these weak settlements.”

“Unsuccessful complainants should certainly be able to appeal,” Marcus said, pointing to the resolution at Johns Hopkins, in which the OCR dismissed complaints altogether. 

“It makes all the sense in the world why the House Education Committee would be worried that the Biden team will shut down these investigations at the last minute under terms that are very different than what the new administration would require,” said Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and former U.S. assistant secretary of education in the Bush and Trump administrations. “It’s notable that Chairman Walberg is urging the Biden team to hold off on issuing any more resolution agreements.” 

“Giving a similar opportunity to other plaintiffs is a novel idea that the Trump administration should certainly look at, but it’s different from prior practice,” Marcus continued. “What is especially troublesome right now is that the Biden administration entirely eliminated the right to appeal from Title VI and other civil rights complaints, making it difficult for people to get their fair day in court.” (The Brandeis Center has sued the Biden administration over the elimination.) 

“Everybody should have a right to be heard before their cases are dismissed, and if not they should certainly get a right to be heard afterwards,” Marcus said.

Typically, supporters of Jewish students would be urging the OCR to move as fast as possible to issue more resolution agreements. “But in this case it’s different,” Marcus said. “It makes all the sense in the world why the House Education Committee would be worried that the Biden team will shut down these investigations at the last minute under terms that are very different than what the new administration would require. It’s notable that Chairman Walberg is urging the Biden team to hold off on issuing any more resolution agreements.” 

Marcus continued, “Simply as a matter of respecting democratic decision-making, the new administration should be able to handle these cases.”

In response to a Title VI complaint filed against Rutgers University, alleging nearly 300 antisemitic incidents and nearly 150 anti-Arab and anti-Muslim incidents since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, the New Jersey public university agreed on Thursday to implement a series of trainings to improve the campus climate.

The complaint, which was filed in December 2023 with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and included all four Rutgers campuses (New Brunswick, Newark, Camden and Rutgers Biomedical Health Sciences), stated that the university received more than 400 reports alleging shared ancestry discrimination between July 2023 and June 2024. Of those reports, 293 alleged discrimination against Jewish and Israeli students and 147 reports alleged discrimination against Palestinian, Arab, South Asian and Muslim students.

Incidents targeting Jewish or Israeli students since Oct. 7 included a report that a student posted on social media, encouraging violence against an Israeli student, identifying where the Israeli student lived; as well as the reported egging of the Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life. 

Ahead of testimony on Capitol Hill in May by Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway, hundreds of Jewish Rutgers students, faculty, administrators and staff signed onto a pair of letters condemning the school’s handling of antisemitism on campus. Lawmakers, including New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, have also condemned the university’s response to the situation. 

Last academic year, Rutgers lifted the brief suspension of Students for Justice in Palestine’s chapter on its flagship New Brunswick campus and imposed a one-year probation period following an investigation into alleged disruptive behavior.

Under the new resolution, Rutgers said it would enact several steps including reviewing its policies and procedures around enforcing Title VI as well as providing training to employees responsible for investigating discrimination complaints. 

The American Jewish Committee’s New Jersey director, Rabbi David Levy, said in a statement that by entering into the agreement, “Rutgers has acknowledged Jewish students have faced a hostile learning environment across its campuses both before and since the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacre in Israel.” 

“Rutgers must now make an unequivocal commitment to meaningful reform, which can be achieved without infringing on academic freedom and the right to assemble and protest,” Levy said.

In the wake of Oct. 7, Title VI complaints have surged nationally. Currently, the OCR has about 400 complaints related to discrimination based on shared ancestry or national origin, with more than 160 of those being related to antisemitism complaints. 

Catherine Lhamon, the assistant secretary of education for civil rights, told lawmakers in September at a roundtable with congressional Democrats. Lhamon emphasized that many more cases go unreported. 

In a statement on Thursday, Lhamon said that Rutgers “has committed to resolution terms that will address serious Title VI noncompliance indicated in their records regarding different treatment of students based on stereotypes about the countries students and their families come from.” 

Ahead of testimony on Capitol Hill on Thursday by Rutgers University President Jonathan Holloway, hundreds of Jewish Rutgers students, faculty, administrators and staff signed onto a pair of letters condemning the school’s handling of antisemitism on campus.

Rutgers’ administration agreed to many of the demands put forward by anti-Israel protesters on campus, but refused to divest from companies linked to Israel or cut ties with Tel Aviv University. Lawmakers, including Gov. Phil Murphy, have condemned the university’s handling of the situation.

The more than 150 students who signed the student-led letter wrote that they “would like to share our experiences of the past academic year in the hope of conveying the hurt, pain, and isolation that many of us have suffered and suggesting ways that the entire university community might do better in the future, not just to support its Jewish students, but to create a more tolerant climate for all its members.”

The students said that anti-Israel demonstrators had “in short… taken over our university,” including by forcing the delay of final exams, taking over building and blocking events.

They said they felt “abandoned” by people they considered friends in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, some of whom defended the Hamas massacre and “quickly mobilized in support of terror, conveying to us that we would not be safe and welcome at the university many of us called home.”

The students further accused “many faculty and staff” of having “guided [protesters] in tactics of intimidation and menacing protest,” helped the students negotiate with administrators and in some cases “allowed for and perpetuated antisemitic behavior in their own classrooms.”

They said that they have “no objection” to pro-Palestinian protests, but said that student groups that have actively violated others’ rights to free expression have faced no punishment, and that the university has failed to enforce its own rules.

“​​Our desire is nothing more than for our university to once again become a place where all peoples are welcome and treated equally, in a tolerant environment where we can all pursue knowledge in a spirit of peace and empathy for others,” the letter continued.

The second letter, signed by more than 200 faculty, staff and administrators, highlights more than a dozen incidents, including celebration of the Oct. 7 attack and the use of university resources to promote anti-Israel propaganda, some of which have gone unpunished.

“The administration’s decision to accede to the demands of the encampment protesters undermines the principles of shared governance, and it elevates the voices of a radical few above those of the more reasonable whole,” they wrote. “It does a disservice not just to Jewish students, faculty, and staff, but to the entire university community.”

They said Rutgers had failed to act proactively to respond to and make clear its rules and policies with regard to demonstrations and, “As a result, the entire university community has suffered through the disruption of normal university operations and an often chaotic and intimidating environment on our campuses.”

The House Education and Workforce Committee on Wednesday requested documents from Rutgers University on its handling of antisemitism on its campuses, the sixth school and the second public college targeted under the committee’s antisemitism probe.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the committee’s chair, wrote on Wednesday to Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway, Board of Governors Chair William E. Best and the chancellors of Rutgers’ Newark, Camden and New Brunswick campuses about antisemitic incidents across the university system.

“Rutgers stands out for the intensity and pervasiveness of antisemitism on its campuses,” Foxx said. “Rutgers senior administrators, faculty, staff, academic departments and centers, and student organizations have contributed to the development of a pervasive climate of antisemitism.”

The letter highlights concerns about the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights (CSRR), which Foxx described as “notorious as a hotbed of radical antisemitic, anti-American, anti-Israel, and pro-terrorist activity,” pointing to statements by the center, its leadership and its affiliates, as well as events and speakers it has sponsored.

She also pointed to antisemitic and anti-Israel activity by other Rutgers faculty, staff and institutions, and Rutgers Students for Justice in Palestine, as well as other incidents of vandalism.

The letter accuses Rutgers SJP of “a history of violation of university rules,” and notes that the group has received significant support from the student government and was only briefly suspended on the New Brunswick campus.

The letter further blasts then-Rutgers New Brunswick Chancellor Christopher Malloy for apologizing for a statement condemning antisemitism and other forms of bigotry, and notes that Rutgers Newark’s Jewish population falls well below the state’s overall Jewish population.

Foxx requested, by April 10, documents relating to antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on Rutgers’ campuses and its responses to it; internal communications and meeting minutes from Board of Governors meetings; all documents relating to the CSRR; documents on funding for Rutgers SJP; documents relating to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions efforts at Rutgers; documents on the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs; and information on foreign donations, particularly from Qatar.

“Rutgers takes claims of antisemitism, and all forms of bias and intolerance, very seriously. The university received the committee’s letter and will respond directly to the chairwoman,” Rutgers said in a statement.

Rutgers, and the CSRR in particular, have also come under scrutiny from Republicans of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Local Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) has also raised concerns about events on Rutgers’ campuses.

This story was updated on March 27 at 4:40 p.m. to include a statement from Rutgers.

For two hours on Wednesday, lawmakers heard from a parade of Jewish students, each delivering the same message: They do not feel safe on their college campuses.

Speaking to a roundtable organized by the House Committee on Education & the Workforce, Jewish students from Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia, Rutgers, Stanford, Tulane, Cooper Union and University of California, Berkeley spoke about about the harassment, threats and violence they’ve faced on their campuses since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel.

The students’ accounts were all remarkably similar, despite coming from a range of locations and school types, including openly antisemitic taunts and harassment, angry mobs rampaging through campus and overtaking campus buildings, vandalism and in some cases threats of or actual incidents of violence, all going largely or completely unaddressed by university administrators and campus police, despite repeated and sustained pleas from the students for help and support. 

In some cases, the students said professors and administrators were complicit or actively involved in the antisemitic activity. Students said that they feared for their safety and even their lives.

The students, saying they felt abandoned by their universities and had no faith in them to act to protect them, pleaded for action from Congress. They said that they hoped their testimony could serve as a wakeup call to both Congress and the American public.

“As my friends from Harvard and UPenn can tell you, it doesn’t end simply because presidents are replaced. Systemic change is needed,” Kevin Feigelis, a Stanford student, said. “Universities have proven they have no intention of fixing themselves. It must be you, and it must be now.”

Shabbos Kestenbaum — a Harvard student who said he’d contacted the school’s antisemitism task force more than 40 times without a response and had been threatened in a video with a machete by a still-employed Harvard staff member — called Congress and the courts the students’ “last hope.”

Multiple students and lawmakers said that the current events on campus carry echoes of 1930s Germany or the pogroms in Russia.

Some suggested potential courses of action that Congress and other federal branches could take, including leveraging U.S. taxpayer funding or the schools’ tax-exempt statuses, placing third-party monitors on campus and enforcing diversity requirements in Middle East studies departments requiring them to include pro-Israel views.

Students from Harvard, Penn and MIT all said that little has changed on their campuses since last year’s blockbuster congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, which prompted the ouster of Harvard and Penn’s presidents.

Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), the committee’s chair, vowed that she and her colleagues would not stop their efforts to tackle antisemitism on campus.

“I was very emotional,” Foxx told Jewish Insider, “I’m a mother and a grandmother. I have one grandchild who went to college and I’m not sure what I would have done if he had come home to say he felt threatened on his campus like these students feel threatened. No student on a college campus, in this country, in the year 2024, should feel threatened.”

Foxx said that the committee’s antisemitism investigation is proceeding deliberately, but that the schools will be held to account. The committee has already requested documents from Harvard, Penn and Columbia and has now subpoenaed Harvard. Foxx suggested that other schools whose students had appeared Thursday could be next.