Thanksgiving weekend may have seen most give thanks for the blessing in their lives as they gear up to spread some holiday cheer, but others opted for spreading hate and anti-Semitism instead.
Pro-Palestinian advocates on Friday addressed the annual American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) conference in Chicago took turns swinging at Israel and spared no effort to challenge the legitimacy of the Jewish state.
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AMP is a radical Muslim group that rejects Israel's right to exist and some of its members have been flagged by the Israeli government over their past activity and their potential questionable associations (see the damning report here).
Among the keynote speakers in Friday's conference was Nihad Awad, co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Washington-based Muslim civil rights group that is often criticized for pursuing a radical Islamist agenda. CAIR has also been rumored to have ties with Hamas.
The United Arab Emirates has designated CAIR as a terrorist organization.
Addressing the audience, Awad – a former IAP employee – stated that his organization "fights Zionism on a daily basis," and further labeled the ideology on which the State of Israel has been predicated as "inherently hateful."
Anti-Semitic Islamist activist Linda Sarsour, who Awad praised as "one of our best examples in the [Muslim American] community," also address the conference, stating that "progressive Zionists cannot be allies."
"You tell me, 'Oh, I'm with you. You can't push me out of the movement because I'm also against white supremacy,'" Sarsour said. "Ask them this: How can you be against white supremacy in the United States of America, and the idea of living in a supremacist state based on race and class, but then support a state like Israel that is built on supremacy? That is built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else. How do you, then, not support the caging of children on the US-Mexican border, but then you support the detainment and detention of Palestinian children in Palestine? How does that work, sisters and brothers?"
Students discuss how they've dealt with anti-Palestinian sentiments on campus. #AMP19 pic.twitter.com/0Tf1AzoAhF
— American Muslims for Palestine (@AMPalestine) November 29, 2019
In that vein, US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) compared the issues facing the Palestinians to systemic oppression facing blacks in the United States.
"Every time I see ... the police going after, killing innocent people, innocent, treating African American brothers and sisters like they're disposable, I think of Palestine and what happens to our brothers and sisters in the occupation," Tlaib, whose grandmother lives in the West Bank, said.
"This othering, this dehumanization, is painful. But if we don't speak up for each other, we give each other credibility, we grow this movement into something stronger.
"So when you see these things understand how interconnected it is. Because when I'm fighting for clean water in the city of Detroit and all throughout Wayne County that I ever represent, I'm fighting for clean water in Gaza, access to water there. So all of it is so interconnected," she said.
CAIR San Francisco chapter director Zahra Billoo also negated any alliances with Zionists.
Billoo, who in the past said she does not believe Israel has a "right to exist," criticized what she called the "unfair sacrifices" required to engage in interfaith dialogue and advocated for "more polarization."
"For so long in Muslim interfaith conversations, we talked about the 'Israel litmus test.' If a Muslim shows up to an interfaith space, we need to be willing to compromise on Israel's right to exist for us to be able to participate in that conversation. I'm done with that," she stated.
"If there's anything I learned … it's that we give and we give and we give, and it's not enough. And so let me state unequivocally, that I am now applying the Palestine litmus test to any interfaith space that I am in. If you want to be in community with me, my people and the Palestinians I work in solidarity with, then let's have a conversation about how Israel, as it exists today, is an illegitimate state. I am not going to support its right to exist. And I'm not going to say that just so people feel better about it. If you want to be in community with me, if you want to work with me, where are you on Palestine?"
