A large Palestinian flag flying from a luxury home on the Anchorage Hillside has raised eyebrows after local news outlet the Alaska Landmine identified the homeowner as Osama Abaza, a University of Alaska Anchorage professor who was born in Nablus on the West Bank and has deep ties to Palestinian academia.
Abaza, who teaches civil engineering at UAA, is a longtime figure in the civil engineering academic community both in Anchorage and in the West Bank. Before moving to Alaska at least 16 years ago, he held several high-level roles at An-Najah National University in the West Bank, serving as graduate coordinator for the transportation engineering department in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and as vice president for administrative affairs from 1999 to 2002. His career at An-Najah dates back to the 1980s, when he chaired the civil engineering department.
The massive flag, prominently displayed outside his Anchorage residence, is visible from a distance.
It’s unclear what the flag represents to Abaza. Several Palestinian organizations have been designated as terrorist groups by countries and international bodies due to their involvement in politically motivated violence. These designations do not apply to the Palestinian people as a whole, but to specific entities that represent many of them. Key terror groups include the Palestinian government, Hamas.
Hamas is the Palestinian Sunni Islamist organization that has governed the Gaza Strip since 2007. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, European Union, Canada, Israel, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom, among others, due to its history of suicide bombings, rocket attacks, and other violent acts targeting Israeli civilians and military personnel. The October 2023 attack on southern Israel, which killed nearly 1,200 people and involved hostage-taking, was widely condemned as a terrorist act attributed to Hamas.
Hamas’s 1988 charter called for the destruction of Israel, though a 2017 document moderated some language while still rejecting Israel’s legitimacy.
Palestinian Islamic Jihad is a smaller, Iran-backed group focused on armed resistance against Israel. PIJ has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, EU, Canada, and others for its rocket attacks and suicide bombings, particularly during the Second Intifada in the early 2000s.
Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine is a Marxist-Leninist group involved in terrorist attacks since the 1960s, including aircraft hijackings and bombings. It is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, EU, Canada, and others.
Other groups include the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, and the Abu Nidal Organization, which are designated as terrorist groups by various countries for historical acts of violence, including hijackings, bombings, and assassinations.
Read the professor’s biography at this UAA link.
Abaza is living in the United States, where the First Amendment protects even controversial forms of expression, including the flying of a foreign flag. The First Amendment protects unpopular speech and political dissent, and even protects symbols of anti-semitism, such as the Palestinian flag has become.
An-Najah National University, where Abaza spent much of his career, has in the past drawn scrutiny from international observers for its campus climate and political affiliations.
The Anchorage display comes at a time when the Palestinian flag represents Palestinian national resistance to some people, while for others, it evokes images of extremism and anti-Israel ideology and violent anti-semitism.
“…the First Amendment protects even controversial forms of expression, including the flying of a foreign flag. The First Amendment protects unpopular speech and political dissent…”
***Except before the totalitarian Anchorage Assembly where first amendment rights no longer apply and political dissent is squashed and stifled by Mr Constant.
And also except – if a UAA professor flew a Confederate flag at his house he would fired, tarred and feathered.
I am not surprised.
Teaches civil engineering with an extremist bent? Anyway, he’s probably just another academic with little or no practical field experience. In fact, I doubt he has any civil engineering experience in Alaska. Still, I wonder what would happen if I flew a US flag at my home in Palestine (if I had one).
This is America. He can proudly fly the flag, but try flying the American flag or Israeli Flag in Gaza… under Hamas. He may not understand what this really means. Maybe he is for complete submission of the West under Sharia law… maybe not. Flying his flag reinforces how GOOD the USA is to him…whether he understands that, cares about that or not.
The Palestinian flag is always being waved by pro-Hamas (those are the October 7, 2023 mass murderers of Israeli infants, children, women, and the aged) demonstrators, most often in and around the nation’s major universities where Palestinian and other Middle Eastern Arabs have become ensconced. Alexander Hamilton – remember him? – spoke of such things when he observed that “foreigners will generally be apt to bring with them attachments to the persons they have left behind; to the country of their nativity, and to its particular customs and manners.” He argued that “it is unlikely that they will bring with them that temperate love of liberty, so essential to real republicanism.” Theodore Roosevelt – remember him? – wrote that, “any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag.”
Hamas, from its beginning to the present day, is terrorist organization which has always been hostile to liberty and republicanism. I turn my back on professor Abaza, because his behavior demonstrates that he is not one of us Americans. To him I say, “Take your flag and be gone. Your home is elsewhere.”
Here, here.
If he wants to fly the flag of another country, I suggest that he go back to that country and forget the freedoms that he has just by being accepted here. When you go out of your way to profess another country, you do not deserve the rights of living in this country.
The recognized government (by some 140+ states) is the Palestinian Authority.
‘https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_Authority
Most of Anchorage is much more concerned with the illegal shenanigans of ICE and other federal yahoos engaged in kidnapping
Let him fly it. Because the Stars and Stripes allows him too. So kinda an oxymoron.
There are people with other country’s (including Israel) flags flying in my neighborhood. I guess I should be alarmed.
nice “swatting” move. isn’t the American dream to move here as an emigrant and enjoy the American dream. remember my grandfather recieving insults to his German ancestry in the 20’s and thirties, even during WWII as my father flew the “hump”.
america hasn’t changed much, landed on the moon, invented handheld calculators, smart cars but the human element has some catching up to do. if you took the emigrant contributions and subtracted them from history we would be now where. sort of like all the gaslighting of the women’s STEM accomplishments superceded by the male colleagues for the Noble Prizes.
im not woke but secure enough to read history, apply a tad of historical fiction and make my own conclusions and brave enough to live with my consequences
Boy has a First Amendment right to fly his flag, Hillsider or not.
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While Hillside seems notably devoid of U.S. flags, while the U.S. flag in Sitka is knowingly disrespected at least twice by federal officials, maybe there’s little room for complaint, no?
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Calling adhan five times daily could be stretching things, though..