An ally to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., runs an organization that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) says has “provided a platform for anti-Semitism.”
University of California at Berkeley instructor Hatem Bazian is a Tlaib ally and donor who is also a co-founder and professor at Muslim liberal arts school Zaytuna College. In 2006, Bazian founded a controversial, advocacy organization named American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), which has featured Tlaib at events.
Tlaib was the “guest of honor” at AMP’s annual convention in December 2019 and months earlier in July delivered a briefing organized by AMP to over 70 people. The Michigan Democrat also addressed AMP’s Palestine Advocacy Day delegates in April of 2019.
Three years earlier in October 2016, Tlaib was a headliner for the Islamic Scholarship Fund that also included controversial activist Linda Sarsour – who left the board of the Women’s March in September 2019 over accusations of anti-Semitic rhetoric – when Bazian was on the board of the organization.
AMP has been described by the left-leaning ADL as an organization that “promotes extreme anti-Israel views and has at times provided a platform for anti-Semitism under the guise of educating Americans about ‘the just cause of Palestine and the rights of self-determination.’”
Bazian also donated $500 to Tlaib’s campaign in March and gave another $500 in 2019. In addition to Tlaib, Bazian has also donated to Reps. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Barbara Lee, D-Calif.
After donating to Tlaib’s campaign, Bazian called on his Facebook friends to do the same, sharing a link to the Michigan congresswoman’s campaign website.
In March of 2013, AMP put up a billboard accusing Israel of engaging in “apartheid” against Palestinians. Both Tlaib and Omar were featured as speakers for a virtual AMP event in November 2020, and both congresswomen attended the same pro-Palestine conference as Bazian.
AMP Twitter has paid tribute to controversial figures, including Zahra Billoo, the former Women’s March board member who was kicked off the organization’s board for anti-Semitic tweets.
Billoo was kicked off the Women’s March board after previous posts deemed to be anti-Semitic resurfaced online. Billoo called Israel an “apartheid, racist state” that “engages in terrorism against Palestinians” in 2018 and tweeted in 2012 that U.S. troops are “engaged in terrorism.”
Tlaib also referred to Billoo as “sis” on Twitter while pushing the Free Palestine movement.
“They won’t silence us for speaking out against human rights violations,” Tlaib said on Twitter. “They will lie, smear our names and call us anti this and that, but we always be pro- humanity & we have the truth on our side. Stay strong, [Billoo].”
According to Canary Mission, an anti-Semitism watchdog, Bazian has retweeted multiple anti-Semitic tweets, including one that shared an image of an Orthodox Jewish man with the caption, “MOM LOOK! I IS CHOSEN! I CAN NOW KILL, RAPE, SMUGGLE ORGANS & AND STEAL THE LAND OF PALESTINIANS *YAY* ASHKE-NAZI.”
Bazian also claimed during a MAS-ICNA convention speech in 2014 that the U.S. Congress is an “Israeli-occupied territory.”
The professor also told college attendees to push the anti-Israel boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) movement on campuses.
