CAIR calls on Biden to demand Israel release Ahed Tamimi
CAIR and its members have been at the center of a host of different controversies regarding antisemitism.
The Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy group, has called on US President Joe Biden to pressure the Israeli government to release Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi.
Tamimi, 22, was arrested by Israel on Monday after she posted on Instagram that Palestinians would slaughter Israeli “settlers.”
“Come on settlers, we will slaughter you. We are waiting for you in all the cities of the West Bank. What Hitler did to you was a picnic. We will drink your blood and eat your skulls,” the post read in both Arabic and Hebrew.
Tamimi rose to international prominence as a Palestinian activist after videos surfaced of her assaulting IDF soldiers in Nabi Saleh, her hometown.
CAIR calls on Biden to demand Tamimi's release
“The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called on the Biden administration to demand the Israeli government release Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi and end the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank by government-backed settlers,” CAIR wrote in a press release.
Figures in CAIR’s leadership have been at the center of controversies and have faced charges of antisemitism many times in the past.
For instance, at the 2021 American Muslims for Palestine's Annual Convention, CAIR San Francisco Bay Area Executive Director Zahra Billoo accused Jewish organizations such as “Zionist synagogues” and campus Hillel chapters of being enemies of Muslims.
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She has also accused Zionists of being a primary driver of Islamophobia and, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), has expressed support for Hamas’s firing of rockets at Israel, among other controversies.
“If prominent Palestinian figures like Ahed Tamimi and her father are not safe from the Israeli government's escalating attacks in the West Bank, no Palestinian is safe. [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu's openly racist, far-right ministers are completely out of control,” CAIR Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said. “The Biden administration must call for the immediate release of Ahed Tamimi and demand an end to the Israeli government's escalating attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank.”
Mitchell, on October 7, immediately following Hamas’s genocidal slaughter of Israelis and others in Israel’s South, reposted several posts on X (formerly Twitter), including one from CAIR’s official account—which, in addition to not mentioning Hamas’s attack, denounced Israel as a racist, oppressive, occupying power.
We join @USCMO and the American Muslim community in reaffirming our support for the Palestinian people's right to freedom and calling for an end to the Israeli occupation, which kills hundreds of Palestinian civilians every year, subjects millions of Palestinians to racist… pic.twitter.com/eW4waBJGc2
— CAIR National (@CAIRNational) October 7, 2023
Additionally, the CAIR deputy director later reposted X posts parroting the debunked claim that Israel hit the Al-Ahli Hospital.
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