Thread by @derJamesJackson

I spent months digging into Ahmad Mansour, visiting Tira, spoke to classmates, family, and his college. Much of his backstory is an exaggeration or a fabrication. He was never a Muslim Brother, the Imam wasn’t an Imam, he didn’t study psych @ Tel Aviv Uni
hyphenonline.com/2023/07/03/cri…

The story told by Mansour about radicalisation by a bushy-eyebrowed Imam didn’t match what contemporaries said about Mahmoud Mansour, a religion & arabic teacher who wasn’t an official Imam, 3 people who knew him said

Mansour contradicts himself a lot. In this video by @RashadAlhindi (German with Arab subs) he claims both that the Imam offered him a scholarship to study in Tel Aviv as well as saying the Imam was against it ???

@RashadAlhindi Where/what did Mansour study? In German interviews and his books, he claims the prestigious uni of Tel Aviv. But contemporaries remember him studying at the Academic College of Tel Aviv Yaffo. The college confirmed to me that he graduated with a BA in Behavioural studies in 2000

@RashadAlhindi In Hebrew interviews like this ^ with Haaretz, or this old Ynet op-ed different claims emerge.

We also couldn’t find a record of his Thesis from Hunboldt. Sadly @AhmadMansour__ refused to comment about where he studied & graduated, though we reached out multiple times.

@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ Mansour started as an expert in extremism, with his FOR PROFIT consultancy receiving nearly a million euros from the Bavarian gov alone. Since then he now talks on antisemitism (which he blames for the ME conflict), mental health, integration and now even France.

@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ But his credibility has been questioned for a while, insulting Moroccan football players with Islamophobic psychobabble and this “expert in racism” saying ACAB is racist

@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ Contradictions from his Imam uni story summarized here

@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ One aspect that’s clear from his books - Mansour’s frustration and ambition. He was jealous of older boys with a full schedule (very German). A voice that didn’t make it into the final piece was Mansour’s cousin, who told me “Ahmad was always an opportunist”

@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ Mansour led a major investigation into antisemitism at DW - 7 arab journalists were fired as a result, though most of them have since won court cases. His report was heavily criticized by a real antisemitism expert in @RashadAlhindi’s report for Arab48

@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ I need to thank my fantastic editors @pagreenwood & Dave Stelfox who helped shape this investigation and made sure we had a balance of voices with dif opinions on issues like Israel

@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ @pagreenwood Mr Mansour has posted a photo of his Humboldt Diploma (which we didn’t question in the article btw). No response as yet as to his education in Israel, why his Humboldt thesis isn’t online, and why he didn’t respond to our repeated requests for comment

@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ @pagreenwood Mansour has now defamed me & Hyphen as Antisemites as an excusenfor not answering our requests for comment. The same guy who wrote in 2002 that “the Jews in Israel are the most insolent people in the history of mankind”.

@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ @pagreenwood Mansour is claiming that info about his studies at Tel Aviv Yaffo has been on his website “for years”.

There’s a big problem here: last year there was nothing about TAY college. It appears he changed the website after I requested comment.

Ahmad, stop digging!

@RashadAlhindi @AhmadMansour__ @pagreenwood An older version of his homepage says very clearly that he studied at Tel Aviv University. Not Academic College of TA Yaffo