Over the last several weeks, the Harvard Pakistani Students Association (PSA) has been raising money in response to the record-breaking flooding afflicting millions of Pakistani people and their land. PSA has requested Venmo donations from Harvard students and faculty, seeking financial aid for Pakistani flood victims. In a shared Google Doc, PSA explains they direct donations towards one of five Pakistani organizations, including the Women Democratic Front (WDF) and Health and Nutrition Development Society (HANDS) Pakistan, emphasizing the charities’ contributions to the relief effort. However, the student body has not received the full picture of these charities’ ideologies. While PSA emphasizes the contributions of the charities, they do not extrapolate on the organizations’ views towards a number of minority groups, including Indian and Israeli people.
PSA ought not to ask students to donate to charities who hold dear what is anathema to most Harvard students. So donate—but not to charities that discriminate.
The WDF released a May 2021 Statement in response to increased tensions between Israel and Hamas. In the statement, WDF expressed their support for those “people fighting against the Israel’s colonial[ism].” They continued by criticizing the United States’ “imperialist and oppressive forces” for suppporting “Israeli Zionist Forces.”
By treating Israel and “Zionists”—a dog-whistle term for Jews—as colonialists, WDF’s statement denies a right to Jewish self-determination in our historical homeland. Further, in their statement, WDF extends “deepest solidarities to the people fighting against the Israel’s colonial expansionism.” The people fighting against “the Israel” are those same people launching the rocket attacks targeting highly populated civilian areas that characterized the May 2021 violence.
The Israeli/Arab conflict is so controversial on our campus, and Harvard students express diverse opinions toward the Jewish state. As a result, students ought to be made explicitly aware that what they believe to be a donation for flood relief may very well be supporting a political message they find abhorrent. Supporting humanitarian relief for these floods is a mitzvah. Supporting those who admit they tacitly support rockets targeting civilians is not.
HANDS Pakistan has expressed similar disdain for the Jewish state, among other groups. In a signed 2020 Memorandum of Understanding between HANDS and Pakistan’s government, HANDS pledges not to employ anybody of “Indian or Israeli nationality/origin.” HANDS and the Pakistani government extend an ideological hatred beyond the political entity of Israel or India, but rather, to an ideological hatred of an “origin” of these nationalities or ethnicities.
Such generalizations directly contradict the equality promoted in these targeted countries, as well as our own. The United States’ civil rights laws state “discrimination based on race, color, or national origin … is prohibited.” Israel, according to a US State Department report, similarly protects against discrimination based on “race, origin, religion, nationality, and gender.” India, too, protects “race, gender, disability, language, place of birth” according to the same report.
As Harvard students, sitting on American soil, it is our responsibility to protect against discrimination, too, fighting the reoccurring patterns of discrimination that contradict the natural rights America is built on. Further, we should recognize that these targeted countries also work to resist such hate. WDF and HANDS represent third parties that exemplify discriminatory values and therefore should remain out of our student body’s financial activism.
I urge you to donate to help those affected by this natural disaster. However, when you do so, be mindful of the beneficiary organizations’ other goals, aside from disaster relief. Perhaps consider donating through the Red Cross or the United Nations, which do not have explicit agendas or statements targeting minority groups and countries.
Alex Bernat ’25 (alexbernat@college.harvard.edu) wants you to donate to humanitarian relief efforts.