UPDATE: After the story below was covered by Jerusalem Post, Washington Examiner, Daily WIre, JNS and other publications, Islamic Relief removed Yousef Abdallah’s name from the event. Then, Jeremy Slavin, who claims to work for Rep. Omar, publicly messaged us to claim that: “This story is inaccurate. Yousef Abdallah will not be speaking or attending the event with Rep. Omar and was never scheduled to do so. Please correct.”
This is astoundingly incorrect, and appears to be a deliberate attempt to deceive. Unfortunately for Mr Slavin, we have copies of the original poster as it appeared (as recently as) this morning.
Despite battling accusations of anti-Semitism, Representative Ilhan Omar (D-Minn) is due to speak this month at a fundraising event alongside a senior charity official who has published social media posts praising the killing of Jews.
Islamic Relief USA is hosting a fundraising dinner for aid to Yemen on February 23. Rep. Ilhan Omar is due to speak alongside senior Islamic Relief USA official Yousef Abdallah, who was widely criticized in 2017 after the Middle East Forum found he had expressed violently anti-Semitic ideas on his social media accounts.
Abdallah, who serves as Islamic Relief USA’s “operations manager,” shared a “very beautiful” modernized version of a Palestinian folk story about a ‘resistance hero’ named Zharif al-Tawl, who took revenge against Jewish “gangs” - which had purportedly attacked a Palestinian village - by providing guns to “kill more than 20 jews” and “fire rockets at Tel Aviv.”
Other posts referred to Jews as “stinking,” and claim “the Jews put the outside wall of Al Aqsa [the mosque in Jerusalem] on fire.” Abdallah also ‘liked’ a comment on his Facebook post that calls on God to wreak “revenge on the damned rapists Zionists. O God they are no challenge for you . Shake the Earth beneath their feet and destroy them as you destroyed the peoples of ʿĀd, Thamud and Lot.”
And in 2014, after Republican politician Chris Christie apologized for referring to the West Bank and Gaza as “occupied,” Abdallah wrote: “Christie kneels down on his knees before the jewish lords and says ‘I am sorry’. Only money makes stuff like this happen. Mr. Christie.. Muslims should remember this very well.”
Islamic Relief USA has previously defended its senior officials’ anti-Semitism, claiming that their comments had been mistranslated. However, Islamic Relief USA refused to provide alternative translations, and refused to comment on the fact that some of the anti-Semitism was expressed plainly in English.
Founded in 1984, the Islamic Relief franchise is managed by Islamic Relief Worldwide, its headquarters in the U.K. Today, Islamic Relief is one of the largest Islamic charities in the world, but the franchise is increasingly facing questions from governments across the globe abouts its connections to extremism and terror.
Over the last few years: the United Arab Emirates designated its headquarters as a terrorist organization; UBS and HSBC shut down its bank accounts; the Bangladeshi government banned it from working directly with Rohingya refugees over reported fears about radicalization; Germany’s Federal Court of Auditors opened an investigation into Islamic Relief Germany’s use of taxpayer funds; a Swedish government report named it as a front for the Muslim Brotherhood; the U.K. Charity Commission started investigating its involvement with an extremist preacher who advocated the death penalty for homosexuals; the Tunisian government is reported to have investigated allegations that Islamic Relief was funding jihadists on the Libyan border; and Members of the U.S. Congress have launched an inquiry into a reported FBI and IRS investigation of Islamic Relief’s activities.
