RSS
PLO Official Equated Released Palestinian Teen Terrorists with Israeli Child Hostages
Mia Leimberg, a hostage who was abducted by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, holds her dog Bella while she and others are handed over by Hamas terrorists to members of the International Committee of the Red Cross, as part of a hostages-prisoners swap deal between Hamas and Israel amid a temporary truce, in an unknown location in Gaza, in this screengrab taken from video released Nov. 28, 2023. Photo: Hamas Military Wing/Handout via REUTERS
In the recent exchange deal between Israel and Hamas, Israel initially agreed to release 150 terrorist prisoners — among them teen terrorists — in return for 50 Israeli female and child hostages captured by Hamas during its terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7.
Palestinians and others abroad have shockingly compared the innocent Israeli civilian hostages to the Palestinian terrorists imprisoned for terror attacks.
Thus, PLO Ambassador to the UK, Husam Zomlot, referred to Palestinian terrorist prisoners and Israeli civilian captives as one and the same thing — “hostages”:
PLO Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot: “It is good news that hostages will be released from both sides, and while the world is hailing the release of 50 Israeli hostages — good for them — nobody is talking about the hundreds of Palestinian children that will be released, that have been taken hostage by Israel even before the 7th of October …
So this is an opportunity to expose the rotten, corrupted system of racial domination that Israel has erected in the entire occupied Palestinian territories.” [emphasis added]
[PLO Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot, X (Twitter) account, Nov. 23, 2023]
An interviewer with CNN challenged Zomlot’s equating Palestinian terrorist prisoners with Israeli civilian hostages:
CNN interviewer: “When we look at the pictures of how those [Israeli] people [who] were kidnapped, elderly women thrown over motorbikes screaming, taken over the border, shoved down tunnels, kept in dark — there is a quantitative and qualitative difference in the mode of detention between the two.” [emphasis added]
[CNN Arabic, X (Twitter) account, Nov. 25, 2023]
Zomlot answered by denying any responsibility by terror organization Hamas, belittling the brutal kidnappings of Israelis of all ages, and claiming they were “done by individuals” whereas the Palestinian terrorist “hostages” were “kidnapped” by “a state”:
Husam Zomlot: “I’ll tell you what’s the difference. I’ll really tell you what’s the difference. The difference is the first is done by individuals [sic., by Hamas], but the second is done by a state, by a state that sponsored an army …
It is disgraceful to even draw any equity between a state that is a member of the UN, that is Israel and its responsibility under international law, and between individuals [sic., Hamas], so in fact the lack of equity is to focus on ‘responsible’ – between parentheses – actors, that they should perform in full accordance of international law.” [emphasis added]
[CNN Arabic, X (Twitter) account, Nov. 25, 2023]
Asked about Israel’s definition of the released prisoners as “terrorists,” Zomlot responded that to Israel, “every Palestinian is a terrorist,” and every person siding with “Palestine” is too:
Sky News interviewer: “The Israelis say that some of the people, some of the women and children in that group, are terrorists. How do you react and respond to that?”
Husam Zomlot: “Well, for the Israelis every Palestinian is a terrorist. For the Israelis every human being who supports our rights, everybody who calls for the end of the occupation is an antisemite.
For the Israelis every Jewish person who supports our rights is a self-hating Jew.” [emphasis added]
[PLO Ambassador to the UK Husam Zomlot, X (Twitter) account, Nov. 23, 2023]
One such teen terrorist who Zomlot refers to as an innocent child “hostage” was Yazan Al-Hasanat, a 17-year-old member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terror organization, who was held under administrative detention from June 22, 2023, until his release in the deal.
Upon his release, Al-Hasanat praised Hamas’ “achievements” that led to his and other terrorists’ release:
Released terrorist prisoner Yazan Al-Hasanat: “We will empty the prisons. The prisoners’ situation requires resistance [i.e., terror] that will release them … The resistance is with blood, with weapons.
The prisoners do not want peaceful resistance. They want resistance that will fight so they will triumph. All the prisoners are in favor of the resistance … We are very proud of the resistance [i.e., Hamas], of the resistance’s achievements, and satisfied with what is happening in the Gaza Strip, with the abductions, the abduction of the captives [i.e., Israeli hostages].” [emphasis added]
[Quds News Network, Twitter account, Nov. 26, 2023]
At the time of the prisoner exchange for Israeli hostages, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor, Mahmoud Al-Habbash, also referred to all imprisoned Palestinian terrorists as “hostages” who have a “right to breathe free air”:
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash: “It is the right of these brothers, sisters, and sons to breathe free air. We think that it is the right of every Palestinian to achieve his freedom and leave the Israeli prisons, because they are hostages in the hands of the occupation state ]i.e., Israel], and without a doubt it is their right to be released and their families’ right to rejoice.”
[Facebook, Nov. 24, 2023]
The author is a senior analyst at Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article was originally published.
The post PLO Official Equated Released Palestinian Teen Terrorists with Israeli Child Hostages first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
‘Pro-Hamas Terror Ties’: US Sen. Tom Cotton Warns of CAIR’s Push Into Philadelphia Schools

CAIR officials give press conference on the Israel-Hamas war. Photo: Kyle Mazza / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) has warned in a letter to the Department of Education that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a nonprofit advocacy group long accused of having ties to terrorist organizations including Hamas, is seeking to infiltrate the city of Philadelphia’s public education system.
The letter was dated Tuesday, about two weeks after the Philadelphia chapter of CAIR announced that it was partnering with local schools.
“CAIR-Philadelphia is partnering with schools this year to make sure every student feels seen, safe, and supported,” the group said in an Instagram post. “Invite the CAIR Philly staff for a training to educators and staff on cultural competency, anti-bullying, and inclusive practices.”
“The CAIR Philadelphia staff works not only with staff and administration, but also directly with students!” the post continued. “We can visit classrooms as guest facilitators to lead student-centered discussions.”
Given CAIR’s controversial history, the federal government should act to prevent such a program from becoming reality, according to Cotton.
“It is well documented that CAIR has deep ties to pro-Hamas terrorist organizations and publicly supports Hamas’s terrorist activities,” Cotton wrote in the letter to US Education Secretary Linda McMahon. “As I noted in a previous letter, the Department of Justice listed CAIR as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee in the largest terrorism-financing case in US history. Further, CAIR-Philadelphia’s executive director, Ahmet Selim Tekelioglu, stated that Israeli ‘occupation’ was the reason for the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel.”
Cotton’s letter cited materials which CAIR distributes across the city and promotes in its programming — notably its “American Jews and Political Power” course — and other attempts to revise the history of Sharia law, which severely restricts the rights of women and is opposed to other core features of liberal societies.
One of CAIR’s most controversial documents demands that teachers omit key facts about the 9/11 terrorist attacks which, in addition to destroying the World Trade Centers and severely damaging the Pentagon, claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 Americans.
“Avoid using language that validates the claims of the 9/11 attackers by associating their acts of mass murder with Islam and Muslims,” CAIR insists in the material. “For example, avoid using inaccurate and inflammatory terms such as ‘Islamic terrorists,’ ‘jihadists,’ or ‘radical Islamic terrorists.’”
Additionally, since the Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, CAIR-Philadelphia has lobbied the state government to enact anti-Israel policies and accused Gov. Josh Shapiro of ignoring the plight of Palestinians.
In a 2023 speech following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, CAIR’s national executive director, Nihad Awad, said he was “happy to see” Palestinians “breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.”
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, despite government trial exhibits indicating its founders participated in meetings with Hamas supporters in Philadelphia. The organization has asserted that it “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.’”
“Such an organization should never have access to our nation’s children,” Cotton wrote in his letter, urging the Education Department to “ensure” that CAIR is not able to push its ideology on American schoolchildren.
“Sen. Cotton’s comments bring much needed scrutiny to the alarming trend of unchecked outside groups influencing public school curricula. CAIR, with their ties to Hamas, should have no involvement with the Philadelphia School District,” said Steve Rosenberg, Philadelphia Regional Director for the North American Values Institute (NAVI). “This raises serious concerns about balance, transparency, and educational integrity, not to mention basic decision making. Parents and taxpayers deserve assurance that their children aren’t being exposed to ideologically driven lessons — especially from groups with dangerous political affiliations.”
CAIR’s pushing into K-12 education comes at a time of rising antisemitism in public schools.
In August, for example, the Education Department promptly opened an investigation into allegations of antisemitism in Baltimore City Public Schools (BCPS) following the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) filing a complaint regarding the matter.
Jewish students allegedly experienced relentless bullying in BCPS, where students pantomimed Nazi salutes, treated campuses as a canvas for Nazi-inspired and antisemitic graffiti, and sent text messages threatening that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas will be summoned to kill Jewish students the bullies do not like, the ADL complaint said, noting that teachers behaved even worse than students. At Bard High School, an English teacher allegedly performed the Nazi salute three times and later admitted to administrative officials that he did so intentionally to harm “the sole Jewish student” enrolled in his class. Following the incident, he suggested that the student unregister for his class because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be discussed in it.
“The allegations that Baltimore City Public Schools tolerate virulent Nazi-inspired antisemitic harassment of its Jewish students is at once appalling and infuriating. When a teacher allegedly directs a Nazi salute toward a Jewish student, or non-Jewish students harass their Jewish contemporaries by saying ‘all Jews should die,’ we are not simply talking about contemptible bullying; we are talking about a shocking abdication of educator responsibility that constitutes unlawful antisemitic harassment under Title VI,” Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights, said in a statement announcing the lawsuit.
Last month, The Algemeiner reported that the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California, which stands accused of refusing to address antisemitism, ruled that a teacher who allegedly showed her students antisemitic, discriminatory, and biased content violated policy when she screened an offensive video about the Holocaust in her classroom.
The move came without the prompting of the US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, with which two Jewish civil rights groups, StandWithUs (SWU) and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC), filed a complaint against the district in April.
Among other things, SWU and BAJC alleged that an SCUSD employee, Wilcox High School teacher Kauser Adenwala, screened a documentary produced in Turkey which compared the war in Gaza to the Holocaust. The graphic film at one point “displays a picture of a young Jewish child who was branded with a number by the Nazis during World War II and then suddenly shows an untraceable image of children with Arabic writing on their arms,” according to the complaint, which alleged the teacher’s conduct violated numerous district policies and potentially state law.
She remains employed by the district to this day.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
RSS
UN in Geneva Opens Exhibit on How Nazis Weaponized Soccer to Spread Hatred, Persecute Jewish Athletes

The Nuremberg rally in 1929 that the Nazi Party Congress held in Nuremberg, Germany on August 1–4. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
An exhibition that opened at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, this week spotlights how the Nazis during World War II used sports, especially soccer, to spread their hateful ideology, underscore their power, and persecute Jewish athletes.
The exhibit, titled “Sports. Crowds. Power. Football under the Nazis,” opened on Monday at the Palais des Nations. It was created by the German non-profit What Matters and the Berlin Sports Museum, which hosted the exhibit last year from May 24-Aug. 15, and presented in cooperation with the World Jewish Congress. It was created in honor of the UEFA EURO 2024 in Germany and was shown at the Olympiapark in Berlin.
“Visitors might assume that it is an exhibition about football. I would say that through the lens of football and sports, you learn a great deal about the history of National Socialism,” said Andreas Kahrs from What Matters.
The exhibit “explores the nefarious role of sports under National Socialism and delves into how the Nazis manipulated sports to consolidate power, the tragic impact of the Holocaust on European Jewish athletes and sporting clubs, and the contemporary role of sports in combating antisemitism.”
It highlights the playing of soccer in Nazi concentration camps and draws attention to Jewish athletes who faced antisemitism and persecution, including American soccer star and former Ajax player Eddie Hamel, who was murdered with his family in the Auschwitz concentration camp, and German track-and-field athlete Lilli Henoch, who was also murdered by the Nazis. The exhibit does not skip over the fact that some German soccer players were Nazis like SS member Otto “Tull” Harder, a multiple German championship team member and national team striker who was commander of a Nazi subcamp where thousands of people died.
“The exhibition tells of destroyed and disappeared football clubs across Europe and looks at the long shadow of National Socialism in both West and East Germany,” What Matters explained. “Lines of continuity are drawn into the present as it further explores discrimination and exclusion in today’s football.”
The exhibit is currently on tour, with the UN in Geneva as its first stop. It was showcased at the UN from Sept. 8-12 and was not open to the public. It will open to the general public on Sunday until the 19th at the Hôtel Ramada Encore, next door to the Geneva Football Stadium, for daily guided tours.
RSS
Ted Cruz Says Tucker Carlson ‘Turning Into Ilhan Omar,’ Warns of ‘Rising Antisemitism on the Right’

US Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaking at a press conference about the United States restricting weapons for Israel, at the US Capitol, Washington, DC. Photo: Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
US Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) raised alarm bells this week over what he described as “rising antisemitism” on the political right, warning that podcaster and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson is “turning into Ilhan Omar,” the far-left US lawmaker, by spreading anti-Israel and even antisemitic rhetoric.
Cruz made the remarks on Wednesday during an event at the Heritage Foundation, a prominent conservative think tank, where he also discussed his legislation to designate the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates, including Hamas, as foreign terrorist organizations.
Cruz criticized Carlson for questioning Hamas’s status as a terrorist group and for hosting guests who have minimized historical atrocities, including the Holocaust. He expressed concern that antisemitism could be emerging as a more potent political force on the right.
“I will say I am concerned about rising antisemitism on the right,” Cruz said. “In the last six months, what we’ve seen on the right has been deeply disturbing.”
The conservative lawmaker specifically pointed to Carlson, a right-wing commentator and online provocateur.
“Tucker Carlson is turning into Ilhan Omar. This is bizarre. This is ridiculous,” Cruz added.
In a June interview with Cruz, Carlson questioned the merits of the US-Israel alliance, asking why lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) shouldn’t register as foreign agents and whether the US was receiving adequate returns on its financial support to Israel. Cruz, a staunch supporter of Israel, suggested Carlson’s questions were motivated by antisemitism, leading to a heated exchange between the two.
“You’re asking, ‘Why are the Jews controlling our foreign policy?’” Cruz stated. “If you’re not an antisemite, give me another reason why the obsession is Israel.”
Omar has established herself as harsh critic of Israel who has accused the Jewish state of committing “ethnic cleansing” in Gaza and erecting an “apartheid” government in the West Bank. The lawmaker has also publicly declared support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement (BDS), an initiative which seeks to turn the Jewish state into an international pariah as a first step to its eventual destruction.
Omar further drew backlash on Thursday over her comments regarding the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk this week.
Omar strongly criticized attempts to frame Kirk purely as an advocate of civil debate, calling such portrayals “full of s**t” and a “complete rewriting of history.”
“These people are out there talking about him just wanting to have a civil debate,” Omar said. “It’s important for us to call them out while we feel anger and sadness.”
“What I do know for sure is that, you know, Charlie was someone who once said, you know, guns save lives after a school shooting. Charlie was someone who was willing to debate and downplay the death of George Floyd in the hands of Minneapolis police,” she stated.
Omar also said that Kirk inflamed racial tensions through downplaying “slavery and what Black people have gone through in this country by saying Juneteenth should never exist.”