Hamas-linked CAIR’s consistent antisemitism gets a pass from the establishment media

Once again, the establishment media shows its true colors. CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.) CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented and has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. CAIR’s Hussam Ayloush in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government. CAIR’s national outreach manager is an open supporter of Hamas.

CAIR’s Antisemitism Fails to Draw Media Scrutiny

by Steven Emerson, Algemeiner, December 8, 2021:

As war raged in Gaza last May, and Hamas terrorists fired rockets toward Israeli civilians, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported about the Biden administration’s position. Some Muslim advocacy groups, she noted, were boycotting a traditional White House event marking the end of Ramadan “to protest the White House’s support for Israel.”

After Mitchell’s set up, viewers then saw Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), saying President Biden was “the only leader in the world that we believe that can stop this” fighting.

Awad was quoted in Politico two days earlier, calling on Biden “to stand on the side of the victims and not the victimizer.”

But neither story mentioned Awad and his organization’s deep connections to a Hamas support network in the United States, let alone his 1994 public pronouncement that he “used to support the PLO,” but switched to “support of the Hamas movement.”

This information has been in the public domain for years. It’s the kind of detail an audience might want to know, but rarely receives.

In fact, Politico needed only to look at its own archives. A 2009 story, for example, reported on the FBI’s decision to cut “formal contacts” with CAIR until it determined “whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas.”

And this ongoing failure by the media to fully inform readers and viewers about CAIR’s history is a key reason why it is considered a legitimate Muslim advocacy organization. In addition, Awad and other CAIR officials have amassed a lengthy record of antisemitic rhetoric that draws no mention.

Until now.

The Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT) will spotlight CAIR’s bigoted statements in a forthcoming book.

Awad is a soft-spoken man and careful not to use blatantly antisemitic language. But his consistent message in 27 years as CAIR’s only executive director meets the definition of antisemitism accepted by the US State Department in 2016. Criticizing the Israeli government or its policies is not antisemitic. But insinuations that American Jews are more loyal to Israel than to the United States are. So are “demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews, or the power of Jews as a collective” and “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination.”

Awad is guilty of all these things, and CAIR and its leaders cross these lines repeatedly. They falsely smear Israel as an apartheid state, call for a Palestinian state “from the river to the sea,” thus wiping Israel off the map, and have called the Jewish state and its supporters “Zionazis.” Other officials equate Israel to ISIS and the Taliban.

Last month, Awad made clear he does not believe Israel should exist, when he called its most populous city, Tel Aviv, “occupied” and prayed “it will be free later.”

As the IPT book will show, such bigotry has been echoed by CAIR representatives throughout the country. But the message begins with Awad, one of CAIR’s original founders.

“Look at their names,” Awad said during a 1998 speech at Georgetown University, insinuating that Jews in the Clinton administration were “pushing the United States to go to war on behalf of a third party.”

A decade later, Awad said that US policy toward Israel comes “at the expense of American interests.” In 2014, as ISIS established a caliphate and Hamas terrorism instigated war in Gaza, Awad called Israel “the biggest threat to world peace and security.”

To understand why CAIR, which touts itself as “a grassroots civil rights and advocacy group,” spends so much of its time and resources opposing the world’s only Jewish state, you have to understand why the organization was created.

“In 1987,” prosecutors wrote in advance of the Hamas-financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, “the governing body of the International Muslim Brotherhood decided to focus its mission on the Palestinian issue, and directed that Palestine Committees be formed in countries throughout the world. In the United States, the Palestine Committee was comprised of active Muslim Brotherhood members of Palestinian origin.”…