US Muslim Brotherhood Group meets with State Department Officials, Protests US Findings on Death of Palestinian Journalist

The US Coun­cil of Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions (USCMO) has issued a state­ment say­ing its rep­re­sen­ta­tives had recent­ly met with State Depart­ment offi­cials, press­ing them in an “intense” dis­cus­sion about the Department’s find­ings on the killed Mid­dle East reporter Shireen Abu Akleh. Accord­ing to the state­ment:

July 7, 2022 The US Coun­cil of Mus­lim Orga­ni­za­tions (USCMO), the largest umbrel­la for Mus­lim Amer­i­can orga­ni­za­tions, strong­ly rejects as “unjust, unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic, and unac­cept­able” the U.S. State Depart­ment find­ings on the Israeli killing of Al Jazeera jour­nal­ist and Amer­i­can cit­i­zen Shireen Abu Akleh, issued Mon­day, July 4th. Coun­cil rep­re­sen­ta­tives in their recent meet­ing with US State Depart­ment offi­cials pressed them in an “intense” 2‑hour dis­cus­sion on the Israeli tar­get­ed killing of the renowned Mid­dle East reporter, and oth­er sys­tem­at­ic human rights abus­es by the Israeli gov­ern­ment of the Palestinians.

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As part of the state­ment, USCMO Pres­i­dent Ous­sama Jam­mal alleged that US politi­cians com­pelled the nation to “kneel in humil­i­a­tion, again and again, before this anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic Israeli apartheid human des­e­cra­tion and killing machine.” The USCMO also said it planned to deliv­er a let­ter to Pres­i­dent Biden before his July 2022 trip to the region, lay­ing out pol­i­cy con­cerns of Amer­i­can Mus­lims regard­ing Israel and Palestinians.

On 4 July 2022, the State Depart­ment pub­lished a state­ment sum­ma­riz­ing Israeli and Pales­tin­ian inves­ti­ga­tions in which it said it could not reach a defin­i­tive con­clu­sion regard­ing the ori­gin of the bul­let that killed the promi­nent Pales­tin­ian-Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist, while it con­clud­ed that gun­fire from Israeli posi­tions was “like­ly respon­si­ble” for her death. Abu Akleh was shot while cov­er­ing an Israeli army oper­a­tion in the West Bank on 11 May 2022, lead­ing to wide­spread protests against the Israeli gov­ern­ment. A few hours after her death, Israel’s Prime Min­is­ter Naf­tali Ben­nett ini­tial­ly claimed that there was a chance that “armed Pales­tini­ans, who fired wild­ly,” were respon­si­ble. At the same time, the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty blamed the Israeli military.

The USCMO is com­prised almost sole­ly of ele­ments of the US Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. USCMO Sec­re­tary-Gen­er­al Ous­sama Jam­mal has long been a leader of the Bridgeview Mosque and its Mosque Foun­da­tion, the focus of a 2004 Chica­go Tri­bune inves­ti­ga­tion. The inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that as much as $1 mil­lion a year had been raised from mosque mem­bers and sent to over­seas Mus­lim char­i­ties, prin­ci­pal­ly in sup­port of Hamas. The arti­cle also detailed the mosque’s ties to the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. In Octo­ber 2020, we report­ed that the USCMO host­ed a meet­ing of dozens of West­ern Mus­lim Broth­er­hood-linked organizations.

In May 2021, the Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) report­ed that the USCMO had issued a state­ment express­ing its “deep dis­may” with the Biden admin­is­tra­tion over its stance on the vio­lence in Israel and Gaza and which accused Israel of a series of heinous crimes, includ­ing “mass slaugh­ter of Pales­tin­ian babies, chil­dren, the elder­ly, women, entire fam­i­lies, and men.”

Oppo­si­tion to Israel and anti-Semi­tism have long char­ac­ter­ized much of the Glob­al Mus­lim Brotherhood.