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CAIR Slams US Intel Chief for Statement Warning of Iranian Influence in Anti-Israel Protests
Anti-Israel demonstrators rally amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, outside the White House in Washington, US, Nov. 4, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has called on US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines to “clarify” her warning from earlier this week that “actors tied to Iran’s government” have encouraged and provided financial support to anti-Israel protests that have erupted across the US during the ongoing war in Gaza.
CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell decried the US intelligence community’s statement that Iran has influenced the rampant, sometimes violent protests against Israel’s defensive military operations in Gaza, insisting that the demonstrations were organized “organically and independently.” He argued that Haines’s statement could incite hate crime attacks against Muslim and Palestinian protesters opposing the so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
“Like the Americans who protested against segregation, the Vietnam war, and the illegal invasion of Iraq, the diverse group of Americans protesting against the Gaza genocide have done so organically and independently,” Mitchell said in a statement. “Director Haines must immediately clarify her vague and potentially dangerous public claim that over the past few weeks Iranians using social media have attempted to stoke protests or give donations in support of protests.”
CAIR also penned a letter to Haines expressing similar sentiments.
On Tuesday, Haines released a statement arguing that Iran has sought to expand its “influence efforts” with the objective of sowing distrust in American institutions. According to the US intelligence chief, Iran has deployed online influencers to push narratives that advance their goals of undermining the United States and fomenting hatred against Israel.
“In recent weeks, Iranian government actors have sought to opportunistically take advantage of ongoing protests regarding the war in Gaza, using a playbook we’ve seen other actors use over the years,” Haines said. “We have observed actors tied to Iran’s government posing as activists online, seeking to encourage protests, and even providing financial support to protesters.”
In her statement, Haines said that many of the individuals participating in anti-Israel protests “may not be aware that they are interacting with or receiving support from a foreign government.” However, she noted that Iran “is becoming increasingly aggressive in their foreign influence efforts, seeking to stoke discord and undermine confidence in our democratic institutions, as we have seen them do in the past, including in prior election cycles.”
Anti-Israel protests have erupted across the United States in the months following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7. The onslaught sparked the ongoing war in Gaza, the Palestinian enclave next to Israel and ruled by Hamas.
The US intelligence community has consistently labeled the Islamist regime in Iran, the chief international backer of Hamas, as the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism. Hamas and Iranian leaders have both long declared their goal of destroying Israel.
Iran’s support for anti-Israel demonstrations in the United States is well documented. The regime’s so-called “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has repeatedly heaped praise on anti-Israel protesters on college campuses, referring to the demonstrations as a “courageous, humane resistance movement.” He has also commended the protesters as a “branch of the Resistance Front” against Israel. Flags representing Hamas and Hezbollah, another Iranian-backed terrorist group — have regularly appeared at anti-Israel demonstrations across the United States.
In April, a confidential document leak indicated that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), an internationally designated terrorist organization, has helped plan a litany of anti-Israel protests in the United States.
Still, CAIR argued that Haines’ warning was dangerous and ill-advised.
“In the absence of any detail or evidence whatsoever, Director Haines has given anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim extremists leeway to exaggerate her claim, cast suspicion on future protests, and further endanger Americans who have already been beaten stabbed, rammed with cars, and subjected to other attacks while protesting over the past eight months,” Mitchell said.
CAIR has been embroiled in controversy since Oct. 7. The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’ rampage across southern Israel.
“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago in November. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”
Awad was referring to the blockade that Israel and Egypt enforced on Gaza after Hamas took control of the Palestinian enclave in 2007, to prevent the terror group from importing weapons and other materials and equipment for attacks.
About a week later, the executive director of CAIR’s Los Angeles office, Hussam Ayloush, said that Israel “does not have the right” to defend itself from Palestinian violence. He added in his sermon at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City that for the Palestinians, “every single day” since the Jewish state’s establishment has been comparable to Hamas’ Oct. 7 onslaught.
Meanwhile, Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of CAIR, characterized the effort to convert Jews as a religious duty while speaking on May 3 at the Muslim Community Center of the San Francisco Bay Area.
“Our number one priority today is da’wa [literally ‘invitation,; with the meaning of ‘Islamic outreach/proselytism’],” he urged. “We are people all throughout this country who are hurting and who are suffering, and they need this message, they need the goodness of this Islamic nation to help them.”
Walid continued, “I looked to the left, I saw nothing, but a bunch of white Jewish people – women who we wouldn’t even think were dressed appropriately – were putting up their hands, and the Muslims said ‘amen’and these Jewish people said ‘amen.’ They need to be invited to Islam.”
CAIR has long been a controversial organization. In the 2000s, it was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that CAIR “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”
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Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students
Haredi Jewish men look at the scene of an explosion at a bus stop in Jerusalem, Israel, on Nov. 23, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Israel’s military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments.
The Supreme Court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13 percent it represents today.
Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel’s 21 percent Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve.
A statement by the military spokesperson confirmed the orders on Sunday just as local media reported legislative efforts by two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to craft a compromise.
The exemption issue has grown more contentious as Israel’s armed forces in recent years have faced strains from simultaneous engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders in Netanyahu’s brittle coalition have voiced concerns that integrating seminary students into military units alongside secular Israelis, including women, could jeopardize their religious identity.
The military statement promised to ensure conditions that respect the ultra-Orthodox way of life and to develop additional programs to support their integration into the military. It said the notices would go out this month.
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Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sharply criticized on Sunday a cabinet decision to allow some aid into Gaza as a “grave mistake” that he said would benefit the terrorist group Hamas.
Smotrich also accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to ensure that Israel’s military is following government directives in prosecuting the war against Hamas in Gaza. He said he was considering his “next steps” but stopped short of explicitly threatening to quit the coalition.
Smotrich’s comments come a day before Netanyahu is due to hold talks in Washington with President Donald Trump on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire.
“… the cabinet and the Prime Minister made a grave mistake yesterday in approving the entry of aid through a route that also benefits Hamas,” Smotrich said on X, arguing that the aid would ultimately reach the Islamist group and serve as “logistical support for the enemy during wartime”.
The Israeli government has not announced any changes to its aid policy in Gaza. Israeli media reported that the government had voted to allow additional aid to enter northern Gaza.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The military declined to comment.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation Hamas denies. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with conditions threatening to push nearly a half a million people into famine within months, according to U.N. estimates.
Israel in May partially lifted a nearly three-month blockade on aid. Two Israeli officials said on June 27 the government had temporarily stopped aid from entering north Gaza.
PRESSURE
Public pressure in Israel is mounting on Netanyahu to secure a permanent ceasefire, a move opposed by some hardline members of his right-wing coalition. An Israeli team left for Qatar on Sunday for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
Smotrich, who in January threatened to withdraw his Religious Zionism party from the government if Israel agreed to a complete end to the war before having achieved its objectives, did not mention the ceasefire in his criticism of Netanyahu.
The right-wing coalition holds a slim parliamentary majority, although some opposition lawmakers have offered to support the government from collapsing if a ceasefire is agreed.
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Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
Australian police have charged a man in connection with an alleged arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue with worshippers in the building, the latest in a series of incidents targeting the nation’s Jewish community.
There were no injuries to the 20 people inside the East Melbourne Synagogue, who fled from the fire on Friday night. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in the capital of Victoria state.
Australia has experienced several antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.
Counter-terrorism detectives late on Saturday arrested the 34-year-old resident of Sydney, capital of neighboring New South Wales, charging him with offenses including criminal damage by fire, police said.
“The man allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the building and set it on fire before fleeing the scene,” police said in a statement.
The suspect, whom the authorities declined to identify, was remanded in custody after his case was heard at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday and no application was made for bail, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
Authorities are investigating whether the synagogue fire was linked to a disturbance on Friday night at an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne, in which one person was arrested for hindering police.
The restaurant was extensively damaged, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for Australia’s Jews.
It said the fire at the synagogue, one of Melbourne’s oldest, was set as those inside sat down to Sabbath dinner.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog went on X to “condemn outright the vile arson attack targeting Jews in Melbourne’s historic and oldest synagogue on the Sabbath, and on an Israeli restaurant where people had come to enjoy a meal together”.
“This is not the first such attack in Australia in recent months. But it must be the last,” Herzog said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incidents as “severe hate crimes” that he viewed “with utmost gravity.” “The State of Israel will continue to stand alongside the Australian Jewish community,” Netanyahu said on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese late on Saturday described the alleged arson, which comes seven months after another synagogue in Melbourne was targeted by arsonists, as shocking and said those responsible should face the law’s full force.
“My Government will provide all necessary support toward this effort,” Albanese posted on X.
Homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles in Australia have been targeted by antisemitic vandalism and arson. The incidents included a fake plan by organized crime to attack a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives in order to divert police resources, police said in March.
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