Noem: ‘There’s Validity’ to Charges Qatar Is Behind Anti-Israel Sentiment on Campus, But There Are Many Influences
On Thursday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “The Story,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem reacted to allegations from Consul General of Israel in New York Ofir Akunis that Qatar is responsible for anti-Israel propaganda on campuses by stating that while she isn’t an expert on the issue, “there’s validity to what he has said, but I also think that we’ve got a lot of influences here and we’ve got a lot of people that have facilitated this that have a different agenda.”
Host Gillian Turner asked, “Israel’s Consul General here in New York joined our air a short while ago. He really hammered home his case, which is that he says the Qataris are at fault here, they are the ones exporting anti-Israel thought and rot to colleges across the United States. How do you see that? What’s your reaction to that?”
Noem responded, “I think it was very interesting to listen to the Israeli ambassador to the U.N. this morning, as well, that was doing several interviews, where he talked about he felt like a lot of the antisemitism that we saw across the country in the last year or two started on these college campuses, and I really do believe that what these colleges have done by facilitating an environment that allows this kind of hatred to grow and to spread and misinformation to continue to be proliferated among these students is wrong and it’s created a situation now where we have racism and violence and assaults happening and this student program was intended for students who wanted to come here and learn in America, appreciated the wonderful opportunity that it provided and it’s morphed into this terrible situation where people are really victims, victims of the system. So, we’re bringing the oversight that the last administration did not bring and we’re going to make sure that this student exchange program provides an environment where students can learn and not be discriminated against.”
Turner followed up, “But do you believe, Madam Secretary, that the Qataris, in particular, are behind a lot of the antisemitism you just described, are they providing fuel that creates this fire?”
Noem answered, “I’m not an expert in this area. I think that there’s validity to what he has said, but I also think that we’ve got a lot of influences here and we’ve got a lot of people that have facilitated this that have a different agenda. Some of these universities have even barred law enforcement officers from coming on campus and haven’t even allowed there to be basic law and order on the areas that they’re responsible for. So, we’re going to continue to do our investigations and make sure that what the Department of Homeland Security is responsible for, it will be done with integrity for the way that Congress laid out that programs should work and the opportunities that we have to allow people to come into this country, learn, and to be a part of a country that promotes freedom and liberty and that everybody is equal. That’s not what Harvard is doing, and that’s not what we’re seeing in some of these college campuses.”
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