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Afif Aqrabawi

Overview

Afif Aqrabawi has spread antisemitism, denied Hamas war crimes and equated Israel with Nazi Germany. He has also expressed support for terrorism and spread hatred of Israel and Israelis.

On March 8, 2024, the U.S. House Committee on Education and the Workforce cited Aqrabawi’s social media posts as examples of antisemitism at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in a letter sent to senior MIT officials. The 12-page letter summarized the committee’s findings from its investigation into the “inadequacy of MIT’s response to antisemitism on its campus” and “its failure to protect Jewish students.”

On November 23, 2024, Aqrabawi posted on X: “Yesterday during a lab meeting, my mentor informed me that I may no longer progress in my career due to my so-called 'infamy.' I was told that I was to blame for the challenges I've been facing in publishing my work—that my 'negative' political activism might be provoking the particularly unusual hostility of peer reviewers. Apparently, several 'respectable' figures in the scientific community have contacted him to voice their disapproval and even urged him to terminate my employment.”

Aqrabawi’s social media posts took place after a series of Hamas terror attacks and war crimes against Israeli civilians, including mass murder, torture, rape, beheadings and kidnappings, which were executed on October 7, 2023. The terror attacks left over 1,200 Israelis dead, hundreds kidnapped and thousands wounded. Israel retaliated with a war called “Swords of Iron.”

Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., Canada, European Union, Israel and other countries. Founded in 1987, it has killed thousands of Israeli civilians through mass shootings and suicide bombings. Hamas has also kidnapped children, families and the elderly and held them hostage in Gaza. It has desecrated [slide 7] dead bodies and launched numerous rocket attacks against Israeli civilians.

As of November 2024, Aqrabawi was listed online as a postdoctoral associate at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT.

As of the same date, Aqrabawi was listed online as a postdoctoral associate in the lab of Professor Susumu Tonegawa, the director of the RIKEN-MIT Center for Neural Circuit Genetics, an independent research institution supported by the Japanese government, which is part of the Picower Institute.

As of the same date, Aqrabawi was listed online as having received a PhD in cell and systems biology from the University of Toronto (UofT) in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in 2019.

Also as of November 2024, Aqrabawi’s X page said he was located in Boston, Massachusetts.

Afif Aqrabawi
Afif Aqrabawi
Professor
Massachusetts
N/A
MIT