Report: Harvard Awards Fellowships to Four Anti-Israel Activists

Harvard University in the U.S. will award fellowships this year worth $90,000 annually to four anti-Israel activists. That was revealed today (Wednesday) by the American website "Free Beacon." They include a filmmaker focused on the "Nakba," a "journalist" for a Qatari-owned newspaper, an English professor at a Gaza university linked to Hamas who accused Israel of "scholasticide," and a professor who described Israel as an "eco-fascist state."

According to the report, they will serve as "Radcliffe Institute Fellows" during the 2026-2027 academic year. In addition to the fellowship, they will receive expenses and housing stipends, and there could be tens of thousands of additional dollars for child care, health care services, and relocation costs, along with access to Harvard’s libraries and athletic facilities, office space, and the use of Harvard undergraduates as paid research assistants.

The new fellows are: Mahdi Fleifel, the Dubai-born writer-director of London-based Nakba FilmWorks. In 2018, Nakba FilmWorks expressed support for the movement to boycott Israel, divest from it, and impose sanctions. In an interview published in July 2025 with the World Socialist Web Site, Fleifel appeared to justify the October 7, 2023 terror attack against Israel: "The events of October 7? You leave Palestinians to rot and die in a cage, what do you expect to happen? Are they going to send Christmas cards?" He also agreed with an interviewer who argued that dignity and freedom for Palestinians "require turning everything upside down," replying, "Exactly."

The second is Ibtisam Azem, whose LinkedIn profile has described her since 2014 as a "journalist and writer" living in New York and working for the Qatari-owned company Alaraby Aljadeed Ltd. In July 2025, she conducted an interview with Mahmoud Khalil, an anti-Israel activist at Columbia University whom the U.S. government is trying to deport.

Her introduction to the interview described "the genocide in Palestine - a genocide supported by the administration of President Donald Trump." She also publicly supports a boycott of Israel; in a 2020 interview with the "Asia Times," she said, "There is no agreement to translate the novel into Hebrew. Any such translation must be in accordance with the principles of BDS." In that interview, she described Israel and the U.S. as "settler-colonial states."

The third is Ahmed Kamal Junina, a New Zealand citizen and English professor at Gaza-based Al-Aqsa University. In 2016, the Palestinian Authority-controlled Ministry of Education reportedly stopped recognizing degrees from Al-Aqsa amid a dispute over the influence of the Hamas terror group there. Al-Aqsa University Vice President Fayek Al-Nouq was a Hamas leader who was photographed at Hamas events promoting armed resistance against Israel, according to an article in JewishOnliner. Junina’s articles for European media outlets such as The Guardian and The Independent defame Israel.

The last is Irus Braverman, a professor at the University at Buffalo who described Israel as an "eco-fascist state." "The eco-fascist dream is not just that of a Jewish ethno-state but also of a green state," she wrote in a 2025 article. In a 2024 article, she accuses Israel of "domicide - the deliberate and widespread destruction of homes and structures in order to make a place uninhabitable." Harvard says she "will continue a project on ecopastoralism in Palestine-Israel." Braverman contributes short videos to an Israel-demonization project with academic colleagues, with TikTok-ready titles such as "Israel uses parks to seize land" and "Sheepwashing: How settlers use sheep to settle Palestine."