NPR Podcast Is Pulled After Northwestern University Professor Dismisses Reports That Hamas Murdered Babies and Raped Women as ‘All Lies, Baseless and Fabricated’

Boston University’s radio station, WBUR, has pulled an episode of its program “On Point” after a Northwestern University professor denied on the broadcast that women and children died in the October 7 Hamas terror attack in Israel. An Islamic Studies professor at Northwestern’s Qatar campus, Khaled Hroub, dismissed the widespread reports of women and children dying as coming from unreliable “Israeli state media.”Following Mr. Hroub’s comments, editors of “On Point,” which airs on National Public Radio and is distributed as an NPR podcast, pulled the episode from NPR’s podcast lineup. The editors said in a statement that Mr. Hroub, “was on the program to provide a factual history of the Islamist group.” However, the editors noted, “in an environment where disinformation is both rampant and dangerous … we felt compelled to pull this hour of our programming from national distribution after its initial broadcast.” During his appearance on the program “On Point,” Mr. Hroub was asked about Hamas’s strategy in the terror attack on Israelis. He claimed that there is no compelling proof that women and children were killed, and he denied reports that children had been beheaded, as Israeli authorities and multiple news outlets have reported.Mr. Hroub went on to defend Hamas’s actions as being much larger than anticipated, claiming that the terrorist group “was stunned by the easiness of their success,” which is why it “decided to expand from one settlement to another.” Mr. Hroub incorrectly referred to Israeli kibbutzim — farming communes in Israel where liberal Jewish families live and farm together — as “settlements,” which is the term for residential communities established by Orthodox Jews in Israel’s West Bank and Golan Heights. Mr. Hroub also denied that Hamas had planned the October 7 massacre.Mr. Hroub was also asked by the host of “On Point,” Meghna Chakrabarti, about Hamas’s charter statement praising suicide bombing. Mr. Hroub explained that Hamas leaders need to be “understood within context” of “merely rhetorical purposes.” When pressed by Ms. Chakrabarti, Mr. Hroub claimed that the language promoting suicide bombings was not reflective of Hamas, but, rather, part and parcel of a type of rhetorical doublespeak also present in the language of American and Israeli leaders. In a statement to the Sun, Mr. Hroub doubled down on his earlier comments. “The sources of all the stories about Hamas beheading 40 babies and raping women were mostly Israeli, then spread to become the dominant narrative,” Mr. Hroub explained. “These stories proved to be all lies, baseless and fabricated — no evidence was provided whatsoever.“Ms. Chakrabarti has not responded to the Sun’s request for comment. In addition, neither Northwestern University nor its Qatar affiliate have responded to the Sun’s request for comment. Mr. Hroub’s employer, Northwestern University in Qatar, is an official offshoot of the prestigious American university, whose main campus is at Evanston, Illinois. Several other leading American universities, such as Georgetown and Carnegie Mellon, also have Qatar campuses, which provide a reliable source of revenue from the wealthy Gulf state. Northwestern’s Qatar campus is funded by the Qatar Foundation, which has donated more than $600 million to Northwestern since the campus’s inception in 2007, according to the National Association of Scholars. The Qatar Foundation’s chief executive is Sheikha Hind bint Hamas Al Thani, the sister of the Qatari emir. In response to the recent Hamas terror attacks, Ms. Aal Thani released a statement of “unreserved solidarity with Gaza.” Without addressing the terror attacks in Israel, Ms. Aal Thani declared the “Qatar Foundation always has and always will stand with Palestine.”

NPR Podcast Is Pulled After Northwestern University Professor Dismisses Reports That Hamas Murdered Babies and Raped Women as ‘All Lies, Baseless and Fabricated’

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