Maher Bitar

Overview

Maher Bitar is a senior U.S. intelligence official who spread hatred of Israel and promoted a policy that would result in Israel’s destruction. He was also a leader of the anti-Israel campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Georgetown University (Georgetown) in 2006, where he promoted [p. 119] the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

As of March 3, 2024, Bitar had been serving in the White House as special assistant to the U.S. president and senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council (NSC) since January 2021.

According to the United States Government Manual, the NSC “advises and assists the President, in conjunction with the National Economic Council, with the integration of all aspects of national security policy—domestic, economic, foreign, intelligence, and military—that affects the United States.”

Bitar also served as NSC’s “director for Israeli-Palestinian affairs” under former U.S. president Barack Obama, and as “general counsel for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence in the U.S. Congress” from 2017 to 2021.

As of March 14, 2024, Bitar’s LinkedIn profile said he had interned in 2007 with the terror-affiliated United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), reportedly in Jerusalem.

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 2005, Bitar worked [p. 2] as an intern for the anti-Israel organization Foundation for Middle East Peace (FMEP). FMEP has provided grants to multiple anti-Israel groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and IfNotNow (INN).

Bitar, who also goes by Maher Brian Samir Bitar, received a JD from the Georgetown University Law Center in 2012 and was a member of the Maryland State Bar Association.

As of March 2024, Bitar’s since-deleted LinkedIn bio said he was a PhD candidate. However, his LinkedIn Education section said he received a PhD in international relations from Oxford University (Oxford) in 2012.

Hatred of Israel

Bitar’s January 2008 master’s thesis, titled: “Unprotected Among Brothers: Palestinians in the Arab World,” aimed [p. 3] to “trace the political and legal ripple effects of the Nakbah...”

The term “Nakba” is generally translated as “catastrophe” in Arabic, referring to the outcome of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. It is a term used to delegitimize the creation of the State of Israel by drawing a comparison to the Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah, meaning “catastrophe.”

Bitar’s thesis claimed [p. 5] that Israel’s “existence as a state is the cause for Palestinian dispossession and statelessness - of ultimate responsibility toward the refugees. Israel’s rejection of their right to return remains the main obstacle to finding a durable solution.”

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.

Anti-Israel Activism (SJP, PSM, BDS)

In January 2006, Bitar was reportedly an executive board member of SJP at Georgetown and “one of the principal organizers” of the fifth annual Palestine Solidarity Movement (PSM) conference, hosted by SJP on the Georgetown campus from February 17 to 19, 2006. PSM is a pro-BDS organization that reportedly calls for Israel’s destruction.

The Georgetown website said that the conference would “consider” addressing issues such as “Palestine solidarity and divestment of stock of companies doing business in Israel.”

Conference speakers reportedly included Sue Blackwell, a British professor who helped lead a boycott of Israeli universities in 2005, and Huwaida Arraf, co-founder of the anti-Israel International Solidarity Movement (ISM). At the time of the conference, Arraf had already allied with terrorists and expressed support for terrorism during the second intifada.

Bitar appeared [p. 119] in a photo at the conference wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh and dancing in front of a banner that read: “DIVEST FROM ISRAEL APARTHEID.”

In December 2007, Bitar wrote an article published by the Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights (BADIL), titled: “Building a Diaspora Body Politic: North American Palestinian Students taking the Initiative.”

In the article, Bitar discussed a Palestinian Student Society (PSS) summit address by professor Joseph Massad, who in 2005 was the subject of an anti-Semitism investigation.

Bitar also endorsed the PSS mission statement, which read: “We are students in North America who actively identify as Palestinian…We strive to provide an institutional structure for participation in the greater Palestinian national movement for self-determination. As members of the Palestinian diaspora, we assert our right and responsibility to involvement in the determination of the future of Palestinian nationhood.”

In October 2009, Bitar led [pp. 2, 3, 5] two workshops at the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center (Sabeel) conference in Washington, D.C. Speakers at the conference included anti-Israel activists Josh Ruebner and Noura Erakat, as well as Rebecca Vilkomerson, who was JVP’s national director at the time.

SJP

SJP is a student organization engaged in anti-Israel activity on North American college and university campuses.

The first chapter of SJP was founded in 2001 at the University of California at Berkeley by Professor Hatem Bazian. Bazian has spread classic anti-Semitism, reportedly promoted religious anti-Semitism and defended the Hamas terror group. In 2004, Bazian called for “intifada” in America.

SJP organizes anti-Israel campaigns, including running annual Israel Apartheid Weeks, often in collaboration with Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) and Muslim Students Association (MSA) campus chapters.

SJP has been a major force in pushing the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses. Chapters have initiated dozens of BDS resolutions in student governments, which have been proposed on or around Jewish holidays, a time when many Jewish students are off-campus.

SJP activists have reportedly physically assaulted, intimidated and harassed Jewish students, disrupted pro-Israel campus events and demonized pro-Israel campus organizations.

Chapters have often endorsed and campaigned for numerous terrorists and whitewashed terrorism.

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.