In a May 19 open letter to Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Hussam Ayloush, Executive Director of the Los Angeles branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), along with an “interfaith” group of partners, condemned the Mayor’s “endorsement of the unilateral decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.”
As reported by NBC, the Los Angeles Times, and many others, the letter demanded Garcetti apologize, and declared that “the status of Jerusalem is a matter for negotiations between the government of Israel and representatives of the Palestinian people.” Speaking with NBC 4, Ayloush added: “We do not bypass the peace processes. We do not bypass international law.”
And yet, in 2018, Ayloush called for Israel to be “terminated.”
Terminating an entire nation and its people hardly seems in keeping with appeals to the sanctity of peace processes and international law.
CAIR’s letter further stated that endorsement of the embassy-move “supports the racist intentions of the Netanyahu government and its supporters who would ethnically cleanse the Palestinian people from their homes in Jerusalem.”
It so happens that one of the letter’s co-signatories is Ahmed Sobah, a former CAIR official who now serves as chairman of the Islamic Shura Council of Southern California. As with Ayloush, Sobah offers contradictory messages. Writing on his Facebook account in 2014, Sobah himself called for ethnic cleansing – demanding that Israelis be placed on “ships” back to “Europe, Russia, US, Ethiopia.”
As for “racist intentions,” Sobah’s other posts include claims that Israel is “one of the worst political entities ever to exist” which was “literally established and sustained by murdering others and stealing their lands and properties.” Democratic Israel and lunatic ISIS, he suggests, are one and the same. And in fact, such “wackos” in Iraq and Syria are, says Sobah, evidently supported by the Jewish state.
Yet another signatory, Rashad Al-Dabbagh, who serves as Executive Director of the Arab American Civic Council, has promoted claims on social media that the Obama White House kowtowed to Israeli-American donors, and that “Zionist billionaires” are working to counter the anti-Israel boycott movement, which “stands for justice and equality, against apartheid, war, and ethnic cleansing.”
The media has reported CAIR’s criticism of Garcetti as the concerns of simple community groups, dedicated to peaceful resolution and interfaith harmony. Just the smallest bit of investigative work – or even just a cursory google search – could have led to a rare glimpse of good journalism. It is perfectly acceptable that the media so loudly reports Islamist demands; but, while doing so, could it not also spare a moment to report their agendas as well?
