CAIR NY Board Member Advocates “War of Liberation” Against Israel

An Israeli NGO that trans­lates for­eign media is report­ing that, at an April 2022 pro-Pales­tin­ian ral­ly in New York City, Coun­cil on Amer­i­can-Islam­ic Rela­tions (CAIR) – New York board mem­ber Lamis Deek advo­cat­ed vio­lence against Israel, call­ing Hamas and oth­er Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tions, as well as the Iran­ian Al-Quds Forces,  “free­dom fight­ers.” Accord­ing to the MEMRI trans­la­tion, Deek told the crowd:

April 29, 2022 We declare unequiv­o­cal­ly that all Pales­tini­ans are free­dom fight­ers. That those who fight for jus­tice and the oth­er like Hamas, like Jab­hat, like Islam­ic Jihad, like Iran­ian Al-Quds Forces, like the PFLP, are all free­dom fight­ers who fight not just for the defense and lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine, they fight for the safe­ty and the pro­tec­tion of all peo­ple to whom Israel, is apartheid is a glob­al threat.

Read the rest here.

The arti­cle fur­ther states that Deek char­ac­ter­ized Israel as a “mobi­liz­er” of an oppres­sive glob­al machine and announced that a “war of lib­er­a­tion” was coming.

In addi­tion to her work with CAIR, Deek is a civ­il rights attor­ney who has been active in oth­er con­tro­ver­sial pro-Pales­tin­ian ini­tia­tives. She co-found­ed the US Pales­tin­ian Com­mu­ni­ty Net­work, a net­work of Amer­i­can Pales­tini­ans who work to pro­mote Pales­tin­ian inde­pen­dence and con­sid­er Israel an occu­py­ing force in the Arab world. Her web­site reports Deek has also rep­re­sent­ed “par­tic­i­pants in the June 2010  Gaza Flotil­la involved in a vio­lent alter­ca­tion with Israeli naval forces.

CAIR reg­u­lar­ly cam­paigns against laws restrict­ing state busi­ness with com­pa­nies that boy­cott Israel and its lead­ers have a his­to­ry of defend­ing indi­vid­u­als accused of ter­ror­ism by the US gov­ern­ment, often label­ing such pros­e­cu­tions a “war on Islam.” In April 2022, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that CAIR was part of a coali­tion of US Glob­al Mus­lim Broth­er­hood groups con­demn­ing US insur­ance com­pa­ny GEICO for abrupt­ly can­cel­ing a diver­si­ty event. The event was to have been head­lined by con­tro­ver­sial Mus­lim activist Lin­da Sar­sour, who has been accused of anti-Semi­tism. In Jan­u­ary 2022, the GIOR report­ed that, at a Novem­ber 2021 Pales­tine con­ven­tion in Chica­go, CAIR San Fran­cis­co Exec­u­tive Direc­tor Zahra Bil­loo made a series of incen­di­ary alle­ga­tions, essen­tial­ly des­ig­nat­ing large por­tions of the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty in the US as “ene­mies” who are plot­ting and schem­ing to harm Muslims.

CAIR describes itself as “a grass­roots civ­il rights and advo­ca­cy group and as “America’s largest Islam­ic civ­il lib­er­ties group.” It was found­ed in 1994 by three offi­cers of the Islam­ic Asso­ci­a­tion of Pales­tine, part of the US Hamas infra­struc­ture at that time. Doc­u­ments dis­cov­ered dur­ing the ter­ror­ism tri­al of the Holy Land Foun­da­tion con­firmed that the founders and cur­rent lead­ers of CAIR were part of the Pales­tine Com­mit­tee of the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood and that CAIR itself is part of the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. The orga­ni­za­tion is led by Nihad Awad, its long­stand­ing Exec­u­tive Direc­tor and one of the three founders. Recent­ly, CAIR has been gen­er­al­ly por­trayed in the media as a Mus­lim civ­il rights group.

For more on CAIR, go here.