Pennsylvania officials attend events with anti-Israel CAIR representatives
By JERUSALEM POST STAFFUS Senator Bob Casey(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Several state and local officials in Pennsylvania participated in recent days in events hosted by members of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is known for spreading antisemitic messages.US Senator Bob Casey organized a town hall meeting at Dickinson College, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT), and invited CAIR local board member Aaysha Noor to moderate.CAIR-PA (CAIR-Pennsylvania) later also co-hosted a town hall meeting in Carlisle, PA which included state representatives Movita Johnson-Harrell and Patty Kim.CAIR-PA's Executive Director Jacob Bender has been quoted calling Israeli treatment of Palestinians during protests along the Gaza border a "massacre." He additionally claimed that "Israelis and their supporters in the US are almost euphoric at the number of Arabs dead."Bender also equated Israel to jihadists groups in a letter he wrote in 2014 in which he stated that CAIR denounces injustice and violence, "whether it is ISIS beheading American journalists in Iraq, or Israeli troops killing hundreds of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, or the Taliban murdering over 150 school children in Pakistan."CAIR has been involved in the past in attempts to devalue the problem of antisemitism, such as when the organization tried to stifle an "Antisemitism Awareness" bill that would have directed the US Department of Education to adopt a widely-accepted working definition of antisemitism.CAIR Los Angeles leader Hussam Ayloush, for example, called the US embassy move to Jerusalem "offensive." He also called Zionists "Zionazis," as well as openly called for the termination of the State of Israel.
