CAIR Joins Antisemitic Palestinian Advocacy Groups to Protest New Jersey BDS Bill: John Rossomando, Algemeiner, July 18, 2019
With CAIR’s Backing, Rep. Ilhan Omar Targets FBI Terror Database: Patrick Goodenough, CNS News, July 1, 2019
Never Forget: CAIR’s Dirty Deeds: Michelle Malkin, Rasmussen Reports, Mar. 20, 2019
Rashida Tlaib: National Security Risk?: Carl Horowitz, Townhall, July 21, 2019
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CAIR Joins Antisemitic Palestinian Advocacy Groups to Protest New Jersey BDS Bill
John Rossomando
Algemeiner, July 18, 2019
A proposed New Jersey bill banning anti-Israel rhetoric and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activities on college campuses and in public schools unfairly links such activities with antisemitism, officials with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) say. CAIR’s partners protesting the legislation include American Muslims for Palestine of New Jersey (AMP), Jewish Voice for Peace of Northern NJ, and the Al-Awda NY: The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, among others.
“The falsely-titled Prohibits anti-Semitism in public schools and institutions of higher education [legislation] would only create confusion between what are real and punishable anti-Semitic hate crimes and the protected free speech rights of American students and faculty members,” CAIR-NJ Executive Director Jim Sues said last week in a statement.
But evidence from college campuses across the country shows that anti-Zionist activities against Israel lead to antisemitic actions against pro-Israel Jews. According to the bill’s text, antisemitism includes:
Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jewish people or the power of Jewish people as a collective;
Accusing Jewish people as a whole or the State of Israel of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust;
Accusing Jewish people of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jewish people worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations.
It would bar demonizing Israel by using the symbols and images associated with classic antisemitism to characterize Israel or Israeli people, drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis, or blaming Israel for all inter-religious or political tensions.
Much of the language is taken verbatim from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s definition of antisemitism. It has been adopted by nearly 20 countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and, most recently, Canada. Like the IHRA definition, the New Jersey bill explicitly states, “Criticism of Israel that is similar to criticism toward any other country may not be regarded as anti-Semitic.”
So, if CAIR’s actual objection is to Israeli policies, then why protest this legislation? CAIR and many of its partner groups have long histories of antisemitism, particularly American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and Al-Awda.
CAIR New Jersey Communications Director Abdul-Alim Mubarak Rowe’s own rhetoric would be considered antisemitic based on the bill’s definition. Jewish fighters who fought for Israel’s creation with the Haganah were akin to ISIS members, Rowe charged last year in a Facebook post. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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With CAIR’s Backing, Rep. Ilhan Omar Targets FBI Terror Database
Patrick Goodenough
CNS News, July 1, 2019
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and ten other House Democrats have written to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, requesting information about how information from the FBI-administered terrorist watchlist is shared with foreign governments – including governments with poor human rights records. In doing so, she pointed to the support of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a sometimes controversial group that has mounted legal challenges against the watchlist, formally known as the Terrorist Screening Database (TSDB).
In a release Friday about the letter to Pompeo, Omar quoted CAIR national Executive Director Nihad Awad, who said the TSDB was “dangerous enough” in itself, but even more so when shared with “tyrannical regimes.”
Other signatories of Omar’s letter include Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). The two freshmen are the first Muslim women to be elected to the U.S. Congress. Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio), one of the more than two dozen Democrats running for their party’s 2020 presidential nomination, also signed. “In our oversight role as Members of Congress, we are entitled to information as to which countries receive this sensitive and classified information about American citizens, many of whom have never been charged, arrested, or convicted of a crime,” the lawmakers wrote.
They believe that the TSDB has been shared with more than 60 foreign countries, well beyond the 38 Visa Waiver Program (VWP) countries. They said other countries with information-sharing arrangements were believed to include Albania, Slovenia, India, Brazil, Mexico, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Tunisia, and Israel, they wrote. (Slovenia is in fact a VWP country.)
Omar and her colleagues voiced particular concern “that the federal government is sharing watchlist information with countries with dubious human rights records, including Saudi Arabia and China.”
“It is unacceptable for U.S. resources to contribute to the brutal repression of political dissidents abroad,” they charged.
The 11 House Democrats asked Pompeo to provide, within 90 days, specific information about the TSDB, including which countries get the data; what standards exist to determine whether the data is shared with foreign governments; whether foreign counties’ human rights records are taken into account when making decisions on sharing; and how and whether a data-sharing agreement can be rescinded once reached.
‘Second class citizens’
In her release, Omar quoted CAIR’s Awad as saying, “It is dangerous enough that the federal government keeps a secret watchlist of more than one million people, almost all of whom are Muslim, and treats these Muslims like second class citizens.”
“The danger, however, increases exponentially when this watchlist is shared with tyrannical regimes all across the world,” Awad continued. “Congress and the public ought to know which foreign governments receive the watchlist and what has been done to people targeted by a watchlisting system that now spans the globe. CAIR applauds this oversight.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Never Forget: CAIR’s Dirty Deeds
Michelle Malkin
Rasmussen Reports, Mar. 20, 2019
The Council on American-Islamic Relations is having a banner month. The militant Muslim group never lets a crisis go to waste. That means Americans should beware. When unappeasable CAIR is ascendant, our free speech rights, religious liberty, and national security are at risk.
Following the horrible massacre at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, CAIR flacks were out in full force decrying “Islamophobia” and calling for crackdowns on “hate speech” (by which they mean any and all negative thoughts or words about CAIR or Islam). CAIR executive director Nihad Awad was first out of the gate to blame President Donald Trump; target Fox Newshosts Jeanine Pirro and Tucker Carlson, whom the left wants to silence; and renew opposition to White House efforts to tighten our immigration and entrance policies, including the travel ban affecting terror-sponsoring countries upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.
One of the most vocal critics of policies to guard American sovereignty is radical Somali-born Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. CAIR leaders and members poured thousands of dollars into her campaign. This weekend, the America-bashing, Israel-deriding congresswoman will headline a sold-out fund-raising banquet in Southern California. It will be a triumphant celebration, no doubt, of Rep. Omar’s escape from Democratic leadership sanctions (with an invaluable assist from the CAIR lobby) for her nasty swipes at Republicans, Jews, and, of course, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump, Trump.
While they drape themselves in the mantle of “civility,” the CAIR brigade speaks viciously and cavalierly about their enemies. Omar says Trump is not “human.” On an Arab-American talk show, she mocked a college professor who treated terrorist organizations al-Qaida and Hezbollah with gravity. She cackled at how he named them with a sternness in his voice and questioned why the words “Army” and “America” are not uttered with equal contempt. I can hear the ululations of agreement at the CAIR banquet now.
Let’s not kid ourselves about these exploiters and sowers of division. They thrive on violence whether Muslims are the victims or the perpetrators. CAIR operatives are first to claim systematic oppression and fear of a “backlash” if bloodthirsty Islamic jihadists slay innocent Americans. It’s always our fault and it’s always our responsibility — to curtail our speech, give up our gun rights, undergo sensitivity training, accept inflated statistics about “hate crimes” and apologize for everything. CAIR wants to shut up its critics in the name of “stopping the hate” because it doesn’t want us talking about its dirty, dangerous deeds.
Never forget: The federal government designated CAIR an un-indicted terror co-conspirator in 2007 in the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation and others for providing support to violent Hamas jihadists. Investigators tied CAIR’s founders to the Islamic Association for Palestine, founded by a senior Hamas jihadist to serve as the terrorist group’s public relations and recruitment arm in America. The Holy Land Foundation, a terror-financing charity, provided seed money for CAIR’s Beltway office. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Rashida Tlaib: National Security Risk?
Carl Horowitz
Townhall, July 21, 2019
Lost amid the uproar over President Trump’s rebuke of four radical “women of color” in the House of Representatives is the possibility that he was entirely justified. For months, these freshmen lawmakers, hyped by the media, have used their office to undermine enforcement of our nation’s laws, especially those related to immigration, labeling anyone who disagrees with them as a “racist.” One of these pugilists, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., stands out as an especially nasty piece of work.
A lawyer by training, Tlaib, born in 1976, occupies the Detroit-area congressional seat held for decades by John Conyers. Like the other three members of her vapid, publicity-hungry “squad” – Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) – she makes no secret of her loathing for America’s identity and laws. Indeed, as a Muslim born to Palestinian parents, Tlaib proudly identifies with their foreign identity. “I’m more Palestinian in the halls of Congress than I am anywhere in the country, in the world,” she declared before the Michigan Coalition for Human Rights this April. Ironically, she’s quick to hurl the charge of “dual loyalty” at Capitol Hill colleagues, Jewish or otherwise, who express support for Israel. She has been especially supportive of Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions (BDS), a worldwide movement whose aim is the economic isolation and destruction of Israel.
Rep. Tlaib’s intense identification with Palestine, a fictitious political entity whose leaders from the start have sought to wipe Israel from the map – a goal clearly expressed in Article 19 of the Palestine National Charter of 1968 – is troubling enough. Worse, she has an affinity with terrorist pitchmen who seek that result. Present at her swearing-in ceremony and a subsequent private dinner in January, was Abbas Hamideh, co-founder and executive director of Al-Awda (“right of return”). “Criminal Zionism will eventually die just like Nazism,” Hamideh tweeted on January 13. “No racist and supremacist political ideology should maintain itself.” In August 2016, he tweeted birthday greetings to Hassan Nasrallah, leader of the Iran-backed, Lebanon-based terror group Hezbollah. His appearance with Rep. Tlaib during her first day on the job was no coincidence.
Tlaib’s association with the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group, also invites alarm. Founded in 1994, CAIR serves as a virtual mouthpiece for Hamas, a Gaza-based Sunni Muslim organization whose main specialty, aside from corruption and extortion, appears to be launching rockets into Israeli territory. Back in 2007, the U.S. Department of Justice listed CAIR as among the well over 200 unindicted co-conspirators it suspected of funneling money to Hamas via a Dallas-area “charity,” the Holy Land Foundation. That case culminated in the jury conviction of all defendants and the sentencing of Holy Land’s founders to lengthy prison terms for laundering about $12 million. More recently, United Arab Emirates, though officially Islamic, in 2014 listed CAIR a terrorist organization alongside al-Qaeda, ISIS and dozens of other groups.
Tlaib and the Council on American-Islamic Relations form a mutual admiration society of sorts. As keynote speaker at the group’s annual banquet in Chicago this February, the congresswoman greeted attendees in Arabic and buoyantly declared: “You know we’ve always said, ‘The Muslims are coming.’ Well, guess what? I think they’re here.” Tlaib then congratulated CAIR as a civil rights organization united against “hate” and “racism.” A month later, she was guest speaker at CAIR-Michigan’s annual banquet. CAIR reciprocates with money. According to Islamist Watch, CAIR members provided more than half of the $56,853 in donations raised during June 25, 2008-March 30, 2019 for her various political campaigns (including those for the Michigan legislature). … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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On Topic Links:
Video: Hundreds Turn Out to Hear Rep. Ilhan Omar at CAIR-WA Banquet: YouTube, May 26, 2019
CAIR in a Nutshell: The Investigative Project on Terrorism, July 2019— CAIR’s roots in a Muslim Brotherhood-created, Hamas-support network called the Palestine Committee are documented by the committee’s own records seized by the FBI and entered into evidence in a 2008 federal terror-financing trial.
The Muslim Brotherhood’s Ties to ISIS and Al-Qaeda: Counter Extremism Project, May 2019. — Before ascending to the highest positions of ISIS and al-Qaeda, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Osama bin Laden, and Ayman al-Zawahiri belonged to a common ideological precursor, the Muslim Brotherhood.
FEATURED: Jamal Khashoggi Was Working Together With US CAIR Leader Nihad Awad: The Global Muslim Brotherhood Daily Watch, Oct. 22, 2018 — Kurdish media has dropped a bit of a bombshell, revealing in an interview with US Muslim Brotherhood leader Nihad Awad that Awad was working together with Jamal Khashoggi’s on the late Khashoggi’s “Islamic Democracy” promotion project.
