A senior official of the Council on American–Islamic Relations (CAIR) has expressed delight and applauded October 7 Hamas pogrom in Israel. According to Fox News, the CAIR official said, “Israel had no right to defend itself from Hamas attacks because it is an ‘occupying power’”.
Nihad Awad, the executive director of CAIR spoke at the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) convention in Chicago on November 24, 2023, saying that he was happy to see the people of Gaza “break the siege” on October 7. He said that the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, while Israel does not have this right.
Awad continued to say that people who feel bad for the people of Gaza “don’t understand the equation”, because the Gazans were victorious. Video from the convention was posted on the YouTube channel of AMP. Another participant in the panel session titled “Gaza in Context” was Osama Abu Irshaid, national director of AMP, reports MEMRI.
Nihad Awad went on to accuse the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) of controlling the US government.
He said, “AIPAC and its affiliates have been controlling the United States government and the United States Congress. And if someone says, ‘Oh, Nihad Awad said this about the Congress’, I tell you, ‘Yes, I say it today, and I will say it tomorrow — unless we free Congress, we will not be able to free Palestine’”.
The CAIR director also lauded the efforts of younger Democrats dissatisfied with President Biden’s continued support of Israel over Hamas.
Meanwhile, National Review in its report said, Awad is standing by remarks he made during a conference in late November justifying the atrocities committed by Palestinian terror groups after they invaded southern Israel.
Reached for comment after the video was publicized by the Middle East Media Research Institute on Thursday morning, Awad said his remarks had been taken out of context and claimed he was not referring to the Hamas terrorists who slaughtered more than 1,000 Israelis on October 7.
“The average Palestinians who briefly walked out of Gaza and set foot on their ethnically cleansed land in a symbolic act of defiance against the blockade and stopped there without engaging in violence were within their rights under international law; the extremists who went on to attack civilians in southern Israel were not. Targeting civilians is unacceptable, no matter whether they are Israeli or Palestinian or any other nationality”, Awad told National Review in an exclusive statement.
“What I actually said while discussing international law: Ukrainians, Palestinians and other occupied people have the right to defend themselves and escape occupation by just and legal means, but targeting civilians is never an acceptable means of doing so, which is why I have again and again condemned the violence against Israeli civilians on October 7th and past Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, including suicide bombings, all the way back to the 1990s—just as I have condemned the decades of violence against Palestinian civilians”, Awad added.
However, the statements Awad cited as evidence of CAIR’s supposed evenhanded condemnation of Israeli and Palestinian human-rights violations do not include explicit criticisms of Hamas terrorism and are instead mostly dedicated to scolding Israel, said National Review.
Meanwhile, Jerusalem Post in a report said, the White House issued a statement condemning comments by CAIR Executive Director Nihad Awad, in which he praised the October 7 massacre and denied Israel’s right to self-defense, according to a video of Awad’s speech at a conference.
A statement from Andrew Bates, the White House’s Deputy Press Secretary, condemned these comments in the strongest terms.
CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, uses the promotion of Islam as a means to promote justice and empowerment of American Muslims – while also calling for the destruction of Israel.
“The horrific, brutal terrorist attacks committed by Hamas on October 7th were, as President Biden said, ‘abhorrent’ and represent ‘unadulterated evil’. October 7th was the deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust”, according to a statement by the White House.
“The atrocities of that day shock the conscience, which is why we can never forget the pain Hamas has caused for so many innocent people. There are families who are in agony mourning loved ones, and there are also families in agony as they do everything in their power to free loved ones being held hostage”.
The White House urged leaders to call out antisemitism everywhere it appears.
Meanwhile, according to an investigation report, after Hamas massacred 1,400 men, women and children in Israel last month, FBI Director Christopher Wray warned that the terror group “and its allies” could inspire attacks on Americans “here on our own soil”. He also told the Senate that the FBI is conducting “multiple, ongoing investigations” into people affiliated with the US-designated terrorist group.
What Wray didn’t say is that the FBI has been investigating Hamas’ biggest ally in America for the past 30 years – without seeking any charges. Launched in 1994 as a secret front organization to support Hamas, according to declassified FBI wiretap transcripts and FBI testimony, the Council on American-Islamic Relations has, in the decades since, become an accepted member of Washington’s lobbying community. The New York Times and other influential newspapers routinely describe CAIR as a “Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization”.
Although it has not repudiated its support for Hamas – which is committed to the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people – CAIR was enlisted by the Biden administration in May to take part in a White House initiative to fight antisemitism.
The investigation report further said:
While CAIR is now a mainstay of American politics – headquartered just three blocks from the US Capitol, with 35 offices across the country – its history reveals its close connections with terror groups such as Hamas, as detailed in the 2009 book this reporter co-authored with counterterrorism expert P. David Gaubatz, “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld that’s Conspiring to Islamize America”.
The story began in the Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan in the 1960s, where Awad and a co-founder of CAIR, Omar Ahmad, were born. Both men eventually came to the United States for university studies. By 1992, Awad was a key member of the so-called Palestine Committee in America, which helped finance Hamas. According to a 1992 letter from the Gaza Strip, Hamas asked the Committee for money to buy “weapons, weapons, our brothers”.
The letter continued: “The meaning of killing a Jew for the liberation of Palestine cannot be compared to any jihad on earth”.
Around the same time, the FBI was eavesdropping on several Hamas leaders in connection with terrorist activities, which produced tapes documenting the incarnation of CAIR in 1993. At a secret meeting that October, Omar Ahmad called to order the Hamas summit in Philly at a Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Philadelphia to discuss the formation of a new front organization to support their “movement” in America. Awad also attended the meeting.
According to court testimony by FBI agent Lara Burns, who runs a major counterterrorism program for the bureau, Ahmad, Awad, and the other leaders who gathered there hatched a scheme to disguise overseas payments to Hamas terrorists and their families as charity. FBI wiretaps also recorded them stating the need to deceive Americans about the true aims of their planned American front group as Hamas launched a campaign of terror attacks on Israel known as the “Intifada”.
They compared the deception to the “head fake” in basketball, where a shooter tricks an opponent guarding him into moving in a different direction. The group, according to the wiretap transcripts, envisioned an “alternative” organization whose pro-Palestinian stripes were “not very conspicuous.” Burns testified CAIR was what they had in mind. During the talks, they tried to mislead any authorities who might be listening in by referring to Hamas as “Samah” – Hamas spelled backward.
Ahmad would co-found CAIR in 1994, hiring Awad as executive director that same year. Both men have expressed hatred toward Israel and resentment toward their adopted country for helping fund and arm the Jewish nation.
Burns testified during the 2008 terrorism trial of a charitable front for Hamas known as the Holy Land Foundation. It was the largest terror funding case in US history. As part of the court filings, the Justice Department included CAIR on a list of co-conspirators underwriting Hamas terrorism – though CAIR and its founders were never indicted in the case. The HLF, busted up as the main fundraising arm of Hamas in America, commingled funds, assets, and personnel with CAIR, according to tax records and court documents.
“CAIR has been identified by the government as a participant in an ongoing and ultimately unlawful conspiracy to support a designated terrorist organization [Hamas] – a conspiracy from which CAIR never withdrew”, said former Assistant US Attorney James Jacks, who was the lead prosecutor in the case.
A federal judge agreed. “The government has produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR with Hamas”, then-US District Judge Jorge Solis wrote in a July 2009 ruling.
A number of FBI counterterrorism agents were frustrated that CAIR’s national office and executives were never charged in the conspiracy, although the founder of CAIR’s Texas chapter was sentenced to prison. They said politics intervened. After 9/11, they said FBI headquarters viewed CAIR as a link to the Muslim community through which they might obtain tips about terror threats to the homeland. Brass even invited CAIR officials up to the executive suites located on the 7th floor of the Hoover building to discuss outreach policy.
“We said, ‘These are the bad guys, this is Hamas. What are you doing?’”, former FBI Special Agent John Guandolo said, describing how he and other agents protested the special treatment afforded CAIR.
After CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the HLF’s criminal scheme to funnel more than US$12 million to Hamas terrorists, the FBI finally disengaged from the group. The agency stopped conducting formal outreach with CAIR’s national office until, it said, it could resolve issues with Awad and other worrisome leaders.
