Tag Archive for: Salam al-Marayati

FBI Director Met With Hamas Supporters Asking Him to Lock Up Jews

The FBI has gone from fighting Islamic terrorists to taking orders from them.


Islamic pro-terror groups reacted to the Hamas terror attacks of Oct 7 not only with riots and public pressure campaigns aimed at politicians, but also by privately meeting with top federal and state law enforcement officials to demand that they lock up Jewish political opponents.

The David Horowitz Freedom Center’s investigative arm exclusively reported last month that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an Islamist group whose leader had celebrated Oct 7, had been meeting with attorney generals around the country trying to convince them to arrest journalists and activists who had been investigating and exposing Hamas supporters.

Based on our past history with CAIR, the Freedom Center could be one of their targets.

Now, the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), has been caught meeting with Attorney General Merrick Garland and senior Department of Justice (DOJ) officials, including FBI Director Christopher Wray and Associate Attorney General Lisa Monaco, to also discuss targeting Jews.

The meeting, originally reported by Militant Islam Monitor, represents another part of what appears to be a larger effort by Islamist groups to weaponize prosecutors against their critics.

On May 22nd, top Department of Justice officials and the FBI Director met with Arab American Institute boss James Zogby and MPAC founder Salam al-Marayati. Both men had been accused of supporting terrorism , including Hamas, in accusations going back decades.

Zogby, a Lebanese Arab activist, had described Hezbollah, which was responsible for the murder of hundreds of Americans, as “the Lebanese armed resistance”.

“By criminalizing attempts to send money to Hezbollah or to support it, the FBI is confusing and alienating people here who could be allies in the war on terrorism,” he had warned the FBI.

Hezbollah’s crimes included the torture and murder of Colonel William R. Higgins, whose castrated body was found near a mosque with the”skin on his face partially removed.”

When Hezbollah terrorists hijacked TWA Flight 847, they tortured Robert Stethem, a Navy diver, by “jumping in the air and landing full force on his body. He must have had all his ribs broken.”

“They put the mic up to his face so his screams could be heard by the outside world,” a stewardess described.

But rather than expelling or arresting terrorist supporters, the FBI was meeting with them.

Salam al-Marayati had defended Hamas, blamed Israel for 9/11 and claimed that Hezbollah was not engaged in terrorism, but “ legitimate resistance… that could be called liberation movement.” When Hezbollah bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut killing 241 military personnel, he argued that “tt was a military operation, producing no civilian casualties.”

(Al-Marayati was not telling the truth. The attack also killed Lebanese employees in the area.)

“Yesterday’s terrorists in the Middle East are today’s leaders,” he had argued and “Hamas in terms of its social and educational operations is doing exactly what the PLO was doing 35 years ago, as well as its quote unquote military operations.”

MPAC, the organization Al-Marayati had co-founded, had issued policy papers calling for the removal of Hamas and Hezbollah from the list of terror groups. At a meeting of the Palestine Committee’ of Hamas supporters in America, MPAC had been described as a “sympathetic” group that could be used as “an entry point to use them to pressure Congress and the decision-makers in America.” Was that what MPAC was doing here?

Normally, the FBI should have been interrogating MPAC, but instead MPAC was interrogating it.

Salam al-Marayati filmed a video outside the Attorney General’s office in which he falsely claimed that the Hamas campus encampments had been “peaceful” and that the violence had come from the police, and urged an investigation to “hold law enforcement accountable”.

But at the meeting arranged by Zogby, Al-Marayati, based on MPAC’s account of events, went even further off the rails and claimed that Muslims were under attack by Jewish “terrorists” allied with the “Proud Boys” and demanded that the FBI do something about them.

This bizarre screed should have ended the meeting, but instead the DOJ and the FBI took it seriously. And that is every bit as troubling as meeting with terrorist apologists in the first place.

Al-Marayati’s only example of Jews fighting back against Hamas supporters occurred at UCLA when after a Jewish female student had been knocked unconscious and multiple Jewish community members had been assaulted, with no response from the university, campus police or the LAPD, some young Jewish men showed up and took on the terrorist encampment.

Nevertheless, according to the MPAC account, FBI Director Christopher Wray said that he would pass on the case to the FBI Los Angeles field office. This is troubling because a previous exclusive Freedom Center investigation found that the FBI LA office had treated assaults against Muslims and by Muslims against Jews very differently.  Any FBI investigation of UCLA prompted by Islamists to focus not on Muslim antisemitic violence, but only on the response to that violence by a small handful of young Jewish men, would be a civil rights violation.

Attorney General Garland and the DOJ leadership should be fighting Islamic terrorism. Instead they’re meeting with groups like MPAC that have a history of defending Islamic terrorism. And not only are they meeting with them, they’re taking cues about investigations from them.

The DOJ and the FBI have gone from fighting Islamic terrorists to taking orders from them.

CAIR’s efforts to influence state attorney generals and MPAC’s attempt to manipulate the United States Attorney General and the FBI to target political and religious opponents, especially Jews, is in line with Islamist supremacist groups who, in their own home countries like Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, routinely lock up opponents and repress non-Muslims. But that should have no place in America. The Biden administration has opened the doors of the federal government to the worst possible extremists in the hopes of winning another term in office.

Had Al-Marayati not filmed his video, we might never have known what the Biden administration was doing. Instead, a private meeting has gone public and the investigative arm of the David Horowitz Freedom Center will continue monitoring the secret alliance between Islamists and government officials, exposing their events and holding them accountable.

Even as the Biden administration promises that it is fighting antisemitism, it’s holding covert meetings with antisemites who demand that the FBI go after the Jews.

AUTHOR

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ADL smears foes of jihad violence against Israel as ‘Islamophobes,’ gets canceled as ‘anti-Muslim’ anyway

Jonathan Greenblatt is discovering that any dissent, no matter how small and qualified, from the far-Left agenda — which is increasingly open in its hostility to Israel — will get you defamed as an “Islamophobe,” no matter how much you pander, no matter how much you desperately try to stay in the good graces of those who set the tune to which the rest of us must dance. The sinister Salam al-Marayati of MPAC has smeared ADL as “anti-Muslim” for supporting Israel, and Greenblatt is dismayed, saying that “the allegation that ADL falls along the same side of Islamophobes is patently false.”

Of course it is. The ADL has repeatedly done to foes of jihad violence against Israel and other states, and foes of Sharia oppression of women and others, exactly what Salam al-Marayati is doing to him now. Greenblatt could have used this as an occasion to wake up and realize how he is being played, and how the entire “Islamophobia” enterprise is a scam designed to intimidate people into fearing to oppose jihad terror, for fear of falling prey to what al-Marayati is doing to him now. But instead of having an original thought for the first time in his life, Greenblatt is doubling down, pleading with al-Marayati to accept him. Will it work? Almost certainly not, but it will likely lead the ADL to become even more anti-Israel than it is now.

“ADL: We’re proud of our record defending Jews — and Muslims,” by Jonathan A. Greenblatt, Forward, December 16, 2020:

As one of the oldest civil-rights organizations in the Jewish community, we’re not unaccustomed to criticism, even in the pages of one of America’s oldest Jewish news outlets. But the OpEd by Salam Al-Marayati, president of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which the Forward published on Tuesday morning, was illuminating about how certain quarters in our society desperately try to employ cancel culture to silence others. In this case, the author is trying to marginalize ADL and make support for the State of Israel disqualifying in pursuing civil rights for all Americans, including the Muslim-American community.

Al-Marayati argues that ADL is a source of “anti-Muslim” rhetoric and cannot be fully trusted as an ally in the fight for civil rights because of our support of the Jewish state. It is an argument taken from the playbook of a fringe smear campaign being run against ADL that, to its credit, MPAC has not signed his name to, but which he still chose to directly quote in his piece. Still, their campaign is wrong and without merit on a number of levels. It is also dangerous, creating a space where we as a Jewish organization are judged more for what we do or do not say about Israel than for all of the advocacy work we do here in the U.S. and abroad fighting for marginalized communities.

This is a common tactic in a smear campaign – narrow down a broader argument (in this case, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict) into a singular, unfounded allegation (in this case, that ADL is Islamophobic because of our support for the Jewish State). But the allegation that ADL falls along the same side of Islamophobes is patently false….

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Egypt Declares Muslim Brotherhood a Terrorist Organization! Will the US follow?

After a powerful devastating suicide bombing that tore apart a police station in Mansoura, Egypt on Tuesday Egypt’s interim government Wednesday declared the Muslim Brotherhood (MB),  a terrorist organization.  An Al Qaeda affiliated group that claimed responsibility for the Mansoura bombing suggested  further retribution would befall Egyptian military who did not desert. The MB has reverted to violence that it had forsworn before the in June 2012 election of former President Mohammed Morsi. Morsi, along with hundreds of other MB leaders were jailed following the July 3, 2013 ouster by the Egyptian interim government. They are being brought to trial on charges of conspiracy and incitement to commit violence.

The AP report, “Egypt names Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group” noted the background that led to Egypt’s declaration  Wednesday:

Egypt’s military-backed interim government on Wednesday declared the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist group, criminalizing all its activities, its financing and even membership to the group from which the country’s ousted president hails.

The announcement is aimed at crippling the Brotherhood and poses a dramatic escalation of the fight between the government and group, which has waged near-daily protests since the July 3 popularly backed military coup that toppled President Mohammed Morsi.

Hossam Eissa, the Minister of Higher Education… said that the decision was in response to Tuesday’s deadly bombing targeting a police headquarters in a Nile Delta city which killed 16 people and wounded more than 100. The Brotherhood has denied being responsible for Mansoura attack and an al-Qaida inspired group on Wednesday has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing.

“Egypt was horrified from north to south by the hideous crime committed by the Muslim Brotherhood group,” Eissa said. “It’s not possible for Egypt, the state, nor Egyptian people to submit to the Muslim Brotherhood terrorism,” he added.

[…]

The decision comes after a sweeping decision Tuesday aimed at draining the Brotherhood’s finances by freezing funds of more than 1,000 non-government organizations with links to the group and putting more than 100 schools run by the group under government supervision. That directly attacks the grassroots strength of the Brotherhood, where it has much of its power in Egyptian life.

Earlier Wednesday, Ansar Beit al-Maqdis, or the Champions of Jerusalem, said in an online statement that it carried out the attack Tuesday on the Mansoura police headquarters. The attack  was  to avenge the “shedding of innocent Muslim blood” at the hands of Egypt’s “apostate regime” — a reference to the security forces’ crackdown on Islamists following the July coup.

To any who knows the violent history of the MB since its founding in Ismailia in 1928 by Hassan al Banna, this comes as no surprise. A supporter of Hitler and the Nazis, al Banna established a virtual underground army trained and equipped with arms, and  its own intelligence service . The MB supported Haj Amin al Husseini during the 1930’s Arab Riots in the pre-state of Israel British Mandatory Palestine. When Egyptian Prime Minister Mahmoud an-Nukrashi Pasha “disbanded the group in December 1948 — seizing its assets and incarcerating many of its members he was assassinated by a member of the Brotherhood.” Al Banna was assassinated by agents of the Egyptian government in February 1949 following the murder of Premier Pasha. Later Egyptian President Nasser had members of the MB jailed after an assassination attempt on his life in 1954. Nasser brought to trial and executed Sayyid Qtub, an MB extremist whose violent anti-Western and infidel ideology provided the foundation of the Jihad doctrine of al Qaeda.

What is surprising is the US has supported the MB initiative in both Egypt and here.  Right now, it is back to the future in Cairo.

What prevents the Administration from following the example of the Egyptian interim government here in the US?  It could begin by sacking those agents of the MB who have penetrated our government starting with Mohamed Elibiary who  is  on the US Department of Homeland Security (USDHS) Advisory Panel.  Elibiary has visibly demonstrated support for the MB. Note this excerpt from a Bare Naked Islam  post in September 2013:

R4BIA symbolPerhaps the most distinctive feature of Elibiary’s Twitter profile photo is the black four-finger salute on yellow background located on the lower right.

The MB adopted the logo to symbolize the Aug. 14 “martyrdom” of pro-Morsi demonstrators in Cairo, according to FrontPage Magazine.

If his sympathies were still in doubt, on Sept. 6, Elibiary re-tweeted a photo “with love” depicting a Cairo pro-Motherhood Brotherhood rally as it made its way on a bridge crossing the Nile.

According to Steve Emerson’s Investigative Project on Terrorism there are five others who are allied the MB in America that have been granted positions in the Administration. They include:  Arif Alikhan, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development at USDHS, Rashad Hussein, former White House Deputy Counsel and now Special Envoy to the Saudi – backed Organization of Islamic Cooperation, Salam al-Maryati of MPACT, Islamic Society of North America President Mohamed Magid and Eboo Patel on the President’s Advisory Council on Faith-Based Neighborhood Partnerships. Given what occurred in Cairo Wednesday, perhaps Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security can conduct long delayed investigative hearings about MB penetration of our government.

EDITORS NOTE: This column originally appeared on The New English Review.