Dr. Sawsan Abdulrahim, a fellow at Harvard’s FXB Center, has used her academic and public health platform to promote a deeply politicized agenda aligned with anti-Israel narratives. Rather than advocating universal health equity, her work selectively frames the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through a lens of structural victimhood and settler-colonial ideology, while omitting or minimizing the role of terrorist organizations like Hamas in perpetuating the suffering of Palestinian civilians.
Faculty Endorsement of Extremist Narratives
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Signed multiple open letters following Hamas’s October 7, 2023 terror attack that condemned alleged intimidation of pro-Palestinian students—but made no mention of the massacre of 1,200 Israelis, nor of the sexual violence, kidnappings, and war crimes committed by Hamas.
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Co-signed a January 2024 FSJP statement establishing a formal Harvard chapter for Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine—a group known for promoting boycott and divestment tactics against Israel and defending disruptive campus activism.
Promoting Biased, One-Sided Discourse
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Regularly appears at political panels and webinars that label Israel as a settler-colonial regime and claim its military actions amount to “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.”
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Participated in events such as:
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“The destruction of healthcare in Gaza: A scientific assessment of settler-colonial violence” (June 2024)
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“Palestine is a Feminist and Decolonial Issue” (May 2021)
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“Gaza, Israel, Palestine and the Toll of War” (Feb 2024)
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These events uniformly portray Israel as an aggressor, deny the complexity of the conflict, and completely erase the context of terrorism, Hamas aggression, and Israeli civilian trauma.
Weaponizing Public Health
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Abdulrahim’s research focuses extensively on Palestinian refugee populations, but her framing consistently suggests that Israel’s existence and military defense are the root causes of health disparities—without accounting for factors such as Hamas’s militarization of civilian spaces or regional neglect of Palestinian refugees in Arab states.
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Published articles include:
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“Realising health justice in Palestine: beyond humanitarian voices” (Feb 2025)
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“Are hospitals collateral damage?” (Oct 2024), which implies Israeli intent to target medical facilities despite clear evidence of Hamas’s use of hospitals as military shields.
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Silence on Terrorism, Focus on Delegitimizing Israel
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Tweeted on October 7, 2023, providing “context” rather than condemning Hamas’s massacre—an act that reflects a pattern of moral deflection and justification for terrorism under the guise of resistance.
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Endorses groups and materials that frame terrorism as “armed resistance” and portray Israel’s self-defense measures as systemic oppression.
Conclusion
Sawsan Abdulrahim has chosen to use her prestigious position at Harvard not to pursue impartial human rights advocacy, but to advance a politicized and selective narrative that erases terrorism, promotes hostility toward Israel, and emboldens anti-Israel activism on campus. Her involvement with Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine and repeated endorsement of radical rhetoric contribute to an environment where Jewish students and faculty increasingly feel unsafe and unheard.
Academic freedom should never be a shield for ideological extremism.
