Sami Al-Arian

Sami Al-Arian is a prominent academic and radical anti-Israel activist who pled guilty to conspiring with the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group and was deported from the U.S. in 2015. He currently resides in Turkey, where he leads the Center for Islam and Global Affairs at Istanbul Zaim University. He often convenes webinars featuring prominent anti-Zionist activists. In a February 2021 post on Facebook, he signaled his support for Palestinian terror groups including Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; he has also called for Palestinians to “confront the Zionist enemy” and for Israel to be “dismantled" and said (in a November 2019 Facebook post) that Israel is guilty of “enslaving Palestinian workers.” Although a significant majority of Jews across the globe believe that Zionism or support for Israel is an integral part of their Jewish identity, in a February 2021 Facebook post Al-Arian called for “saving the Jewish religion from Zionism, (a political ideology).”