This Thursday, Nov. 21, Tigers for Israel (TFI), B’Artzeinu, and Chabad of Princeton are hosting an event headlined by Islamophobic activist Mosab Hassan Yousef, an individual who uses his platform to spread incendiary rhetoric about Muslim people. As members of the Alliance of Jewish Progressives and allies, we wholeheartedly reject Yousef’s Islamophobia and condemn the decision to bring him to campus.
Yousef is originally from the West Bank and was born the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef — one of the co-founders of Hamas. As a young man, he worked as a spy for Shin Bet, an internal intelligence and security agency of the Israeli government. He subsequently converted from Islam to Christianity and moved to California, all of which he recounts in his best-selling memoir, “Son of Hamas.”
Yousef has denied the humanity of Palestinians, calling into question the validity of Palestinian ethnic identity. In his various social media posts on X, for example, Yousef exclusively refers to the Palestinian people or state in scare quotes, as if to doubt the legitimacy of their existence. Yousef has repeatedly characterized Muslims on the whole as untrustworthy, saying he has “zero respect” for individuals who “identify as Muslim.”
He has claimed that Islam is “at the bottom rung” of human religions, and called all Muslims “INSANE.” He compared Islam to Nazism in an interview with The Jerusalem Post and argued for a “[unification] against it.” Yousef has repeatedly called for violence against Muslims as a whole, in one instance saying that “if [he had] to choose between 1.6 billion Muslims and a cow, [he would] choose the cow.”
This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Yousef’s online presence; the sheer amount of hate espoused on his X feed alone sparked our genuine disgust — as it should for anyone who rejects bigotry where they see it. This rhetoric stretches past political differences and teems over into blatant discrimination and hate speech.
Princeton is not the first university to host Yousef. Right-wing and Israel advocacy student organizations at institutions such as Harvard and Columbia have invited Yousef to their campus events despite his record of horrifying Islamophobic rhetoric.
While these groups claim Yousef is only coming to campus to depict the inner workings of Hamas and further pro-Israel advocacy, his explicit Islamphobia threathens Princeton students, faculty, and staff. Princeton cannot claim to be in “the Service of Humanity” when overtly Islamophobic speakers are being invited to a campus where Muslim students live and learn daily. By allowing speakers like Yousef on campus, Princeton is serving nothing but the perpetuation of hateful rhetoric.
Free speech is important, but so are its limitations. The day after he spoke at UC San Diego, Yousef posted on X a defamatory rant about community leader and Religious Advisor to the Muslim Students Association at UC San Diego Taha Hassane, referring to him as a “Jihadi” and asking if someone “[could] do [him] a favor and remove [Hassane] from campus so the students can focus on their education.”
In this call to action, Yousef may not have specified how he intended his audience to “remove” Taha Hassane from UC San Diego, but left his statement up to dangerous interpretation by his base of followers already influenced by his violently Islamophobic tweets. If Yousef did not hesitate to encourage attacks on a member of the UC San Diego community following his visit to campus, we should expect nothing different from his visit to Princeton. We need to draw the line for tolerating speech when it jeopardizes the safety of faculty and students.
Following his speaking event at UC San Diego, clergy and faith leaders from San Diego County signed an open letter to UC San Diego administration to express their opposition towards Yousef’s presence on campus and to call on the administration to denounce his attack on their colleague. We at Princeton must similarly denounce the decision to bring Mosab Hassan Yousef to campus.
We must underscore that two Center for Jewish Life (CJL) affiliated groups — B’Arzienu and TFI — have sponsored this speaker event. While the CJL claims that it “embraces all Jewish students” on campus, its affiliation with groups inviting a flagrantly bigoted speaker to campus says otherwise. As Jewish students, we affirm that our safety and wellbeing is intertwined with the safety and wellbeing of our Muslim peers. When institutions that claim to serve us platform an insidious Islamophobic speaker, they are breaking the trust of the communities they purport to care about.
Islamophobic rhetoric doesn’t make Jews safer, and it most certainly doesn’t make Muslims safer. Currently, Jews and Muslims face increasing threats from far-right nationalists, putting both groups in danger. Islamophobia must be met with the same condemnation as antisemitism; a speaker who calls the millions of Jews across the world “untrustworthy” and “insane” would — rightfully — not be allowed to speak on campus, no matter the topic of their talk. Why is a speaker who disseminates the same rhetoric against Muslims welcomed by parts of our community with open arms?
Jewish teachings stipulate that every life is a universe and thus there is equality of human value, captured in the principle of ‘Shivyon Erech Ha’adam.’ Even though we as Jews are not the targets of Yousef’s violent rhetoric, it is our obligation to stand up for the Muslim members of our community here at Princeton and around the world, just as we would for any community put in danger by such vitriol.
We call on members of the University community to: first, reject Yousef’s hate and boycott the event, and second, to engage with the plethora of educational opportunities on campus about the crisis in Israel-Palestine, such as this lecture from Palestinian human rights lawyer and legal scholar Rabea Eghbariah. Join us not only in condemning bigotry, but working towards safety and freedom for all.
The signatories listed signed as of 12:57 a.m. EST on November 11, 2024.
Alan Plotz ’25
Wilson Conn ’25
Katie Heinzer ’22
Jonathan Mandel GS
Kaya Nichols ’26
Andrew Zacks ’25
Dylan Shapiro ’23
Elena Milliken ’26
Leena Memon ’25
Sukaina Shivji ’26
Yahya Habib ’26
Athena Apaga ’26
Tacy Guest ’26
Dane Lester ’28
Jabari Lawrence GS
Hiba Siddiki ’25
Martin Mastnak ’25
Alison Fortenberry ’26
Alex Norbrook ’26
Raymond Yang ’27
Zoe Daly ’28
Kyrah Potter ’25
Aishah Shahid ’28
Roya Reese ’26
Jenia Marquez ’25
Patrick Jaojoco GS
Nipuna Ginige ’26
Zachariah Sippy ’23
Ricky Chen ’27
Rafay Khan ’25
Lucy Pignuola ’28
Suheyla Akman ’28
Sophie Khan ’28
Benjamin Gelman ’23
Lisa Clemans-Cope ’94
Fatima Diallo ’25
Connie Gong ’25
Victoria Koretsky ’26
Lena Vo ’28
Jack Amen ’25
Lillian Cai ’28
Andrew Duke ’25
Chloe Webster ’25
Eric Periman ’23
Kristin Nagy ’27
Givarra Azhar Abdullah ’27
August Roberts ’25
Ndeye Thioubou ’25
Narges Anzali ’28
Jo Goldman ’25
Joshua Isaacs GS
Vasanth Visweswaran ’28
Eleanor Wright ’28
Janat Ali ’28
Minna Abdella ’26
Mannix Beall-O’Brien ’28
Cade Hemond ’28
Jody Savin ’82
Charlie Yale is a first-year from Omaha, Neb., Elena Eiss is a first-year from Pittsburgh, Pa., and Emanuelle Sippy is a senior from Lexington, Ky. Yale is a contributing Opinion writer at the ‘Prince.’ All three are members of the Alliance of Jewish Progressives, with Sippy serving as president.
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