Esmat Elhalaby
Overview
Esmat Elhalaby has expressed support for Hamas terrorist war crimes, equated Israel with Nazi Germany, glorified terrorists and spread hatred of Israel.Elhalaby is a supporter of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
As of March 2024, Elhalaby served on the steering committee of the “Hearing Palestine” initiative at the University of Toronto (U of T). The initiative’s mission is to “Provide an intellectual hub for the study of Palestine.”
In 2023, Elhalaby was affiliated with the anti-Israel Faculty for Palestine group at the University of Toronto Scarborough (UTSC).
As of March 13, 2024, Elhalaby was listed on the UTSC website as assistant professor of transnational history in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies.
Also as of March 13, 2024, Elhalaby was listed as having received a PhD in history from Rice University (Rice) in 2019. Rice is located in Houston, Texas.
As of March 24, 2024, Elhalaby’s LinkedIn profile said he was located in Toronto, Ontario.
Also as of March 24, 2024, Elhalaby used the handle “@thaqafatalhind” on Twitter.
Support for Hamas Terrorist War Crimes
On October 27, 2023, Elhalaby published an article titled “Our Siege Is Long,” where he wrote about the Hamas October 7, 2023 terror attacks: “Moments of decolonization, in relation to the recalcitrant Palestinian case, have been occasions for jubilation.”On Saturday, October 7, 2023, approximately 2,900 heavily armed Hamas terrorists breached Israel’s border with Gaza. They executed numerous war crimes on civilians, including mass murder, beheadings of children, rape of men and women, torture, kidnappings and mutilation.
In the same article, which was published on the website Public Books, Elhalaby also wrote about the naval blockade of Gaza: “How do you break a siege? How do you escape from prison? How do you get back your land? Palestinians have faced these questions, like most colonized people, for generations…
The United Nations approved [pp. 39–41] the Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza in 2011 as a security measure to stop Hamas from acquiring sophisticated rockets. Multiple flotillas have attempted to breach the blockade, with at least one flotilla initiating a violent confrontation with Israeli forces.
Elhalaby further stated in the Public Books article with regard to October 7, 2023: “For the Palestinians who crossed the threshold between their prison and the land beyond, they were exiting hell. If partisans of Hamas and other Palestinians in Gaza ‘opened the gates of hell’ at dawn on October 7, they did so to leave the hell that Israel made for them and which the world tacitly approved.”
In the same article, Elhalaby also wrote: “Conditions of siege are not limited to Gaza. During the first and second Intifadas—and in the interim between and the period since—whole Palestinian cities and towns were restricted in their movement.”
The term “intifada,” which translates from Arabic as “uprising” or “insurrection,” carries the connotation of violence. Palestinian intifadas waged against Israel have been marked since 1987 by hundreds of hijackings, shootings, stabbings, bombings and suicide missions.
On October 11, 2023, Elhalaby posted on Twitter an excerpt from a 2001 article by anti-Israel professor Edward Said concerning the second intifada.
The excerpt said: “With every Palestinian act of resistance, [then-Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon’s] forces ratchet up the pressure a notch higher, tightening the siege…making life more intolerable for the victims of the occupation…with the sole aim of ‘preventing terrorism.’”
Anti-Israel activists use the term “resistance” to refer to violence and terror perpetrated against Israeli civilians and their allies. It is used to glorify and encourage anti-Israel and anti-Semitic violence. Anti-Israel activists chant slogans such as: “Resistance by any means necessary!” and “Resistance is justified when people are occupied!” in response to terror attacks.
Equating Israel with Nazi Germany
In his October 27, 2023 article titled “Our Siege Is Long,” Elhalaby wrote: “[The poet Muin] Bseiso wrote that the Israeli assault on Gaza ‘had the aim of burning the history of Palestine, its culture, and even its topography’—eerily akin, Bseiso identified, to the Nazis [sic] aim to eliminate Jews from Europe.”Elhalaby also quoted Bseiso as saying: “The program of annihilating the Palestinian Red Indians in the new concentration camps in the Gaza Strip supervised by UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] didn’t follow the old traditional methods of genocide.”
Anti-Israel activists refer to Gaza as a “concentration camp” because of the United Nations-approved [pp. 39–41], Israeli-Egyptian blockade of Gaza. The blockade was implemented in 2011 to stop Hamas from acquiring more sophisticated rockets.
The United Nations Relief Works Agency (UNRWA) has hired Hamas members as teachers in its schools and provided arms to the terror group. Dozens of UNRWA staff participated in the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack on Israel, and many kept hostages for Hamas in their homes.
In the same article, Elhalaby also accused “European Zionist settlers” of “the colonization of Palestine.”
One way that anti-Israel activists spread anti-Semitism is by claiming that Jews have no connection to the Land of Israel.
Zionism is the belief that Jews have the right to self-determination in their own national home, and the right to develop their national culture.
On September 26, 2023, Elhalaby published an article titled: “A Dying Postcolonialism,” in which he quoted Edward Said as saying: “[Jewish] soldiers and politicians…are now engaged in visiting upon non-Jews many of the same evil practices anti-Semites waged against Holocaust victims who are ancestors and relatives of present-day Israelis.”
In 2021, Elhalaby published an article for the Arab Studies Journal titled: “A Global People.” In the article, Elhalaby quoted a poet, Benjamin Zephaniah, who wrote about Gaza: “it reminded me of pictures I have seen of Nazi concentration camps…the large fences, people being marched off, etc.” Elhalaby commented: “The situation today, more than seventy years since Gaza’s initial enclosure, has only worsened.”
Glorifying Terrorists
On May 2, 2023, Elhalaby tweeted a photo of terrorist Khader Adnan painted on a wall with a padlock over his mouth. Elhalaby wrote: “Peace to Khader Adnan (1978 – 2023)...How many more Palestinian prisoners will be killed in Israeli prisons before the bars are broken and the cells (some as old the British Mandate) are razed?”Khader Adnan was a senior member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organization. A 2007 YouTube video showed Adnan praising and encouraging suicide bombings: "Who among you will carry the next explosive belt? Who among you will fire the next bullets? Who among you will have his body parts blown all over?” In May 2023, Adnan died in prison after refusing medical treatment during a hunger strike.
On November 29, 2023, Elhalaby tweeted a Dutch-Arabic graphic depicting Palestinians with rifles attacking a monster figure labeled “Zionisme [Zionsim].” The Dutch caption said: “Support the struggle of the Palestinian people.”
On February 6, 2024, Elhalaby tweeted the audio of an event from November 2015 promoting intifada, which was hosted in Jenin by Basel Al Araj.
Basel Al Araj was killed on March 6, 2017, in a shoot-out with Israeli troops during an arrest raid. He had been suspected of belonging to a terror cell planning to carry out attacks on Israeli targets. Two M-16 assault rifles and an improvised Carlo-style submachine gun were found inside his home.
Hatred of Israel
“From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free” is a chant used [00:02:47] to call for the elimination of the State of Israel. It has also been employed by Hamas leader Khaled Mashal to call for the replacement of Israel with an Islamic state. In April 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning the chant as antisemitic.
The primer claimed [p. 17] that while the phrase “does not meet the requisite thresholds for inciting or promoting hate,” to interpret its use in protests according to Hamas’s “eliminationist” meaning of the phrase [pp. 15-16] “runs the risk of evoking anti-Palestinian racism.” The primer also promoted [p. 8] the Palestinian “right of return.”
The “right of return” is a Palestinian demand discredited as a means to eliminate Israel. International law mandates no absolute right of return and UN Resolution 194, which defined principles for “refugees wishing to return to their homes,” was unanimously rejected by Arab nations following the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.
On December 4, 2023, Elhalaby tweeted: “‘war between Israel and Hamas’ ? the Israeli state may frame things in these terms, but to reach the bare minimum of accuracy (if you are avoiding ‘genocide’) the present should be described as an Israeli war on Palestinians.”
On November 28, 2023, Elhalaby tweeted: “university of toronto campus…” His tweet featured photos of signs on campus that said: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “Viva Palestina” and “Free Palestine from the river to the sea.”
On November 24, 2023, Elhalaby tweeted: “...Every Palestinian prisoner must be liberated from every Israeli dungeon. Thereafter, all the prisons razed. Then, an end to land robbery and political domination. When any and every Palestinian can live in any and every part of Palestine, that’s the start.”
In his September 26, 2023 article, “A Dying Postcolonialism,” Elhalaby accused Israel of a “daily practice of abuse and murder” and claimed that Palestinians were murdered every day by Israel “for stepping out into the street or opening their lips.” He also accused Israel of an “insidious role in the Arab world or across the three continents.”
In the same article, Elhalaby wrote, referring to Zionism: “The transplantation of a racial ideology that pitted ‘Arab’ against ‘Jew’ was a European Zionist project.”
On May 21, 2021, speaking on the “Time To Say Goodbye” podcast, Elhalaby said [00:19:24] in reference to Israel’s Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW) against Hamas: “I would frame it as, you know, another Israeli massacre in Gaza, right, another Israeli bombing campaign on a besieged people.”
In May 2021, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorists fired over 4,300 rockets from Gaza at major population centers in Israel. Israel responded by launching OGW, carrying out targeted military strikes in Gaza.
In the same podcast, Elhalaby called [00:20:11] Hamas “a specter of Muslim terrorism” and claimed [00:20:52] that “civilians or Hamas and human shields” were “bulls**t they peddle.” He further claimed [00:23:55] Israel was “bombing these people indiscriminately,” adding [00:24:36]: “This is intentional terror.”
During Operation Guardian of the Walls (OGW) in May 2021, Hamas used civilians as human shields to defend against Israeli counterstrikes. Hamas launched rockets from densely populated civilian areas, stockpiling weapons in private homes and situating key operations facilities in civilian apartment buildings and near mosques, hospitals, schools and kindergartens. During Operation Protective Edge (OPE) in 2014, Hamas also encouraged Gazans to act as human shields to frustrate Israeli efforts to avoid civilian casualties.
On May 9, 2023, Elhalaby accused Israel on Twitter of “the routinized murder of a demonized people.”
BDS
The Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement was founded by Omar Barghouti in 2005 to challenge “international support for Israeli apartheid and settler-colonialism.” BDS is an allegedly “Palestinian-led movement,” although leading BDS activists have admitted [00:01:01] this is not true.
One of the demands of BDS includes [point 3] what is generally known as the “right of return,” a demand discredited as a way to eliminate Israel. Barghouti said the “right of return” is a means to “end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.”
Barghouti has said that BDS “aims to turn Israel into a pariah state, as South Africa once was.”
In his activism, Barghouti has also said [00:05:55] regarding Israel: “Definitely, most definitely, we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No…rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine.”
The movement has been linked to numerous terrorist organizations and received a public endorsement from Hamas in 2017.
BDS initiatives include calling on institutions and individuals to divest from Israeli-affiliated companies, promoting academic and cultural boycotts of Israel, and organizing anti-Israel rallies, protests and campaigns.
The movement’s most notable achievement has been the infiltration of university campuses through lobbying for “BDS resolutions.” In these cases, student governments and student groups, backed by their own anti-Israel members and affiliates, have proposed resolutions on some form of boycott of, or divestment from, Israel and Israeli-affiliated entities.
Boycott resolutions, although non-binding, have been passed by student governments on numerous North American campuses.
BDS activity is often aggressive and disruptive. It has been noted that universities that pass BDS resolutions see a marked increase in anti-Semitic incidents on campus. On one campus, when the student government debated a BDS resolution, reports emerged of violent threats against those opposing it.
Social Media and Weblinks
Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/esmat.elhalabyTwitter:https://twitter.com/thaqafatalhind
LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/esmat-elhalaby-737641283/
Personal Website:https://esmatelhalaby.com/
Personal Blog:https://pastandfuturepresents.blogspot.com/
University Website:https://www.utsc.utoronto.ca/hcs/esmat-elhalaby
Bluesky:https://bsky.app/profile/esmat.bsky.social
Extra Audio
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