KUALA LUMPUR – When US investor Balaji Srinivasan established his “Network School” in Malaysia earlier this year, he did not advertise that Israeli nationals were among its participants. When Malaysian authorities discovered they were, the school was shut down, its Israeli attendees were deported, and the United States government summoned Malaysia’s ambassador to Washington to register its displeasure.
Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim registered his own.
“That will not deter us,” Anwar said Thursday, responding directly to American pressure on Malaysia to reverse its longstanding entry ban on Israeli citizens. “They may issue threats, but I will firmly defend the rights of the Malaysian people.”
The State Department’s summons, confirmed by officials in both capitals on Thursday, came after eight members of the United States Congress demanded a review of economic and security ties with Malaysia, including a threat to cut the country’s access to the International Military Education and Training program – a US-funded initiative that trains foreign military officers – unless Kuala Lumpur reversed its Israel entry ban within fifteen days.
Malaysia has not recognized Israel as a state since 1967, a position Kuala Lumpur maintains in direct connection with the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory and, most recently, Israel’s killing campaign in Gaza – a genocide that Anwar’s government has consistently named as such, using the same language as the UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk, reelected this week over US and Israeli opposition. The entry ban on Israeli nationals is a long-standing extension of that non-recognition policy, not a new restriction introduced in response to the Gaza campaign.
Foreign Minister Mohamad Hasan was measured but equally firm in his response. “It has always been Malaysia’s policy,” he said. “This has long been our position.”
The Network School sits at the center of a peculiar diplomatic incident. Srinivasan, a cryptocurrency advocate and former partner at Andreessen Horowitz, established the school in Malaysia as an experiment in internationally mobile professional education. His decision to include Israeli participants in a country that bars Israeli nationals from entry triggered a routine investigation by Malaysian immigration authorities. The school’s closure this week and the deportation of those holding Israeli passports followed that process. According to Al Jazeera, Malaysian authorities also investigated whether the school violated the terms of its operating license.
Malaysia’s Israel entry ban had gone largely uncontested internationally for decades, applied routinely without attracting diplomatic objections from Washington. The congressional letter and the State Department summons are specifically indexed to the Srinivasan school, reflecting a broader shift under the Trump administration toward more direct enforcement of Israeli interests in countries whose immigration and recognition policies conflict with them.
Malaysia is not the first Muslim-majority nation to face American pressure over its Palestine stance in the current political environment. The Netherlands, Ireland, and several other Western countries that recognized Palestinian statehood in 2024 and 2025 received diplomatic objections. But the threat to cut military education funding from a sovereign Southeast Asian partner – with a fifteen-day ultimatum – represents a notably harder edge than Washington has typically applied to a country that cooperates with the United States on maritime security in the South China Sea and participates in joint military exercises.
Anwar has built his foreign policy identity around Malaysia’s refusal to separate the question of Palestinian rights from its international relationships. He has spoken at the United Nations General Assembly about the genocide in Gaza, received Palestinian officials in Kuala Lumpur, and positioned Malaysia as one of the most publicly assertive defenders of Palestinian rights in Southeast Asia. The Gaza genocide accountability proceedings at The Hague – including the ICC’s removal of its own chief prosecutor amid a politically charged vote – have only sharpened Malaysia’s posture.
What the fifteen-day ultimatum produces is unclear. The State Department did not confirm independently whether the congressional demand had been formally endorsed by the executive branch, and the IMET program is a relatively modest channel in the broader US-Malaysia security relationship. Malaysia purchases American military equipment and has been a participant in multiple US-led exercises in the region.
None of that cooperation was mentioned in Thursday’s congressional letter. Whether it is affected by the current impasse depends on decisions that have not yet been made – including, most importantly, whether the State Department itself shares the congressional view that Malaysia’s decades-old Israel policy constitutes a new violation requiring a new response.
Anwar’s public statement Friday was the clearest indication of where Malaysia stands: holding its position, without the diplomatic hedging that other regional capitals might reach for first.
