Harris’ head of Arab-American outreach: ‘Zionists’ are ‘controlling a lot’ of American politics

The Democrat party has normalized and mainstreamed hatred of Jews, while claiming to stand against antisemitism from the “far right.”

“Kamala Harris’s New Arab Outreach Director Said ‘Zionists’ Are ‘Controlling’ American Politics,” by Adam Kredo, Washington Free Beacon, August 29, 2024:

Kamala Harris’s newly appointed head of Arab-American outreach once accused Zionists of “controlling” American politics, echoing an anti-Semitic trope that suggests Jews nefariously manipulate global affairs.

“The Zionists have a strong voice in American politics,” Brenda Abdelall, an Egyptian-American lawyer and former Department of Homeland Security official, said in a 2002 interview with the New York Sun while attending the American Muslim Council’s annual convention. “I would say they’re controlling a lot of it.”

Abdelall, whom Harris tapped earlier this week to help galvanize Arab voters, made the remarks after a speaker at the event, anti-Israel professor Jamil Fayez, said that “Zionists are destroying America.” Responding to his remarks, Abdelall said that while “‘destroying’ is a harsh word,” supporters of the Jewish state do control American politics.

The American Muslim Council’s 2002 confab also provided attendees with a chance to meet anti-Semitic former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D., Ga.), who famously blamed Jews for the 9/11 terror attack and attended a 2009 Holocaust-denial gathering in London. Her father similarly blamed Jews when she lost her congressional seat shortly after the 2002 conference. “Jews have bought everybody. Jews. J-E-W-S,” he said.

Abdelall’s appointment comes as Harris works to appease members of her party’s liberal flank who want her to more aggressively confront the Jewish state and undermine its war on Hamas, including by cutting off arms sales. Harris has praised pro-Hamas campus protesters as “showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza.” In March, she accused Israel of stoking “humanitarian catastrophe.”

Abdelall joins several other Harris campaign advisers who have a history of pressuring Israel and advocating increased relations with Iran. They include Harris’s national security adviser, Phil Gordon, who is the subject of a congressional probe into his ties to a member of an Iranian government influence network. Ilan Goldenberg, Harris’s liaison to the Jewish community, has faced scrutiny for his ties to the anti-Israel group J Street, as well as championing closer ties to Tehran….

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