There is increasing support for claims that Israeli policies are causing widespread malnutrition in Gaza.  And many of the Ivy League schools amplify these claims to fortify their beliefs that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. These anti-Israel claims are strengthened by large foreign student enrollment and Qatari-Saudi funding at these schools, as well as biased legacy media.

Part of the Gaza food problem was that the UN has refused to allow its aid to be handled through the new distribution sites Israel instituted to free them from Hamas extortion. As Seth Mandel documents, UN distribution relied on Hamas intermediaries who would syphon off much of the cargo as payment for their services.  None of the legacy media criticized the UN decision despite substantial documentation that Hamas is well integrated into their relief organization.

But most telling is how they chose to characterize the situation. As a number of media sites, the New York Times printed a photo of 18-month-old Mohammad Motawaq, whom the paper claimed was born healthy but was now wasting away.  It later emerged that he was born with cerebral palsy. What was most appalling was the paper’s decision to crop out from the photo Mohammad’s well fed slightly older sibling because it would undermine the desired narrative.

Many of the pro-Palestinian activists have little interest in any evidence that contradicts their anti-Israel stance. They rarely criticize post-October 7th Hamas actions or policies. They totally ignore the deprivation suffered by descendants of 1948 Palestinian refugees living in Lebanon and Jordan. Rula Alhroob, a former member of the Jordanian Parliament and chair of the Jordanian human rights committee, said her advocacy for extending benefits to Palestinian refugees was met with fierce opposition within the government:

When we talk about civil rights, political rights and so on, they would say “Well, we don’t want to help Israelis achieve their goals by giving those people access to all types of activities and normal living so that they could forget about their right of return.”

Critics also dismiss the dramatic improvement in the lives of the two million Arab residents of Israel and East Jerusalem. They ignore the fact that more than 20 percent of the Technion graduates are Arab citizens, enabling Nazareth to become a hi-tech hub, that Arabs comprise 30 percent of Israeli doctors with many in senior hospital positions, and that an Arab party was a partner in the ruling coalition during 2021-22.

Critics also ignore the dramatic improvements in East Jerusalem: a rail line connected it to West Jerusalem shopping, a large industrial complex that is providing Arabs hi-tech jobs, and there is a dramatic increase in attendance at Israeli universities. Indeed, recent polls find that more East Jerusalem Palestinians would rather be part of the Israeli state than any West Bank Palestinian one.

The Ivy League activists, particularly at Columbia University, are the most vocal, and those at Cornell and Harvard are not far behind. What explains why campus support for illegal activities, like tenting on campus and taking over buildings, is most pronounced at these schools?  At every Ivy League school, foreign students comprise at least 20 percent of the student body. However, it is over 25 percent at Cornell and Harvard and almost 40 percent at Columbia.

While most foreign students are not political activists, many are. Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia is not an isolated example. They give legitimacy to the mostly well-off, white students that form the backbone of the anti-Israel opposition.

Just as important at creating a hostile environment for Jewish students who support Israel’s right to exist — which is not the same as being a Zionist — has been the dramatic increase in Qatari and Saudi funding; each providing around $2 billion in university funding during the most recent four years. Harvard and Cornell rank first and second in receiving foreign donations. These funds often go to Middle East studies institutes and departments, whose faculty are often the most vocal anti-Israel individuals at their colleges.

Foreign students and foreign funding create a globalist anti-American environment, recently exemplified by the way NYC mayoral candidate Zohtan Mamdani justified his desire to eliminate Israel bonds from NYC’s pension portfolio.  He claimed that he was just following some unspecified international law. Mamdani neglected to mention that he has supported this action for many years as part of his embrace of the BDS movement: boycott, divest from, and sanction anything to do with Israel. However, most interesting, Mamdani implicitly believes that international laws trumps U.S. law, and that globalist perspective is what many of his Ivy League supporters embrace.

None of this is to say that Israeli policies are without criticism. As wars continue, the humanitarian concerns of the combatants wane, and abuses if not atrocities are more likely to occur.  And the Gaza War is no different. There are unlikely to be any military benefits from continued IDF actions. If Hamas had any concern for Gazans, it would surrender and if Israel had any concern, it would allow some international force, including the Palestinian Authority, to replace its presence there. An ending is more likely if the international community put as much pressure on Hamas as it is on Israel.  However, none of these criticisms justify many of the anti-Israel claims made by the legacy media and elite university protestors.

READ MORE from Robert Cherry:

The Hypocrisy of Zohran Mamdani’s Liberal Apologists

The ‘BBB’ Brings Accountability to the Food Stamp Program — Not Catastrophe

The Real Experience of Palestinians in the Middle East

Robert Cherry is an American Enterprise Institute affiliate and author of the soon to be released, Arab Citizens of Israel: How Far Have They Come? (Wicked Son Press, Winter 2025).