ZOA National President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
Monday, March 17, 2025 The Department of Homeland Security issued a simple statement of the “commonsense security” considerations that led to the deportation of Brown University Division of Kidney Disease nephrologist, Dr. Rasha Alawieh:
“Last month, Rasha Alawieh traveled to Beirut, Lebanon, to attend the funeral of Hassan Nasrallah—a brutal terrorist who led Hezbollah, responsible for killing hundreds of Americans over a four-decade terror spree. Alawieh openly admitted to this to CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) officers, as well as her support of Nasrallah. A visa is a privilege not a right—glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be denied. This is commonsense security.”
Multiple media outlets (here; here; here; here) who were given access to Dr. Alawieh’s immigration proceedings documents have elaborated on her fawning admiration of jihad Hezbollah terrorist, Hasan Nasrallah, as a “spiritual” leader.” Alawieh, a Shiite Muslim, reportedly declared, “…if you listen to one of his (Nasrallah’s) sermons, you would know what I mean. He is a religious, spiritual person…His teachings are about spirituality and morality.”
Dr. Andrew Bostom, is an internationally accomplished researcher who worked for almost 20-years in the Brown University Division of Kidney Disease. He is also a renowned scholar of jihadism and Islamic Antisemitism. Dr. Bostom has studied Nasrallah’s alleged, “spiritualty and morality,” and found it wanting.
Invoking Antisemitic references from the Qur’an, Nasrallah characterized Jews as “apes and pigs,” (Qur’an 5:60) and as “Allah’s most cowardly and greedy creatures.” (Qur’an 2:96; 4:53; 59:13–14). He elaborated these themes into an annihilationist animus against all Jews, not merely Israelis.
Anyone who reads the Qur’an and the holy writings of the monotheistic religions sees what they did to the prophets, and what acts of madness and slaughter the Jews carried out throughout history…Anyone who reads these texts cannot think of co-existence with them, of peace with them, or about accepting their presence, not only in Palestine of 1948 but even in a small village in Palestine, because they are a cancer which is liable to spread again at any moment…There is no solution to the conflict in this region except with the disappearance of Israel….If we searched the entire world for a person more cowardly, despicable, weak and feeble in psyche, mind, ideology and religion, we would not find anyone like the Jew. Notice, I do not say the Israeli…[I]f they [the Jews] all gather in Israel, it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.
Hasan Nasrallah’s funeral—which Dr. Alawieh attended, in reverence—was punctuated by mass cries of “Death to America,” and “Death to Israel.”
The Department of Homeland Security acted appropriately in deporting Rasha Alawieh, and we wholeheartedly endorse that decision. Particularly as a non-citizen visa holder, there is no place for Dr. Alawieh’s support of a vicious advocate of jihad terror, and mass-murdering Jew-hatred, in the U.S., let alone in U.S. medicine.
We further denounce those feckless, morally blind medical “academics” who are seeking Dr. Alawieh’s return to the U.S., and reinstatement at Brown University’s Division of Kidney Diseases.