When the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was founded on June 24, 1994, the spy thriller “True Lies” was raking in money at the box office, but many felt it portrayed Arabs in a bad light. As a result, CAIR’s mission of opposing such stereotypes went mainstream.
After the 9/11 attacks, the group’s profile as a civil rights and advocacy group soared as the organization declared war on a wave of Islamophobia that never actually occurred. Today, CAIR has leveraged its claims of Islamophobia brilliantly, using it to silence any and all truths that might prompt a skeptical examination of Arab or Muslim malfeasance.
Hamas’s barbaric Oct. 7 massacre exposed CAIR’s double game and gave new meaning to the term “true lies.” To CAIR, everything about the Palestinian cause is defensible, however murderous its adherents might be. CAIR relentlessly promotes the lies that Israel is brutally killing Gaza’s civilians and seeking to commit a “genocide” that is not happening and will not happen.
Nonetheless, CAIR has succeeded in playing a prominent role in the ongoing antisemitic “protest” movement that demonizes Israel and Jews, supports Hamas and seeks to justify terrorism and crimes against humanity.
Recently, CAIR published a full-page newspaper advertisement that identified a small group of Palestinians, including children, who were tragic casualties of the war against Hamas. Such loss of life is painful for all involved, but CAIR’s ad shamelessly exploited these deaths to push a narrative that fuels antisemitic violence and whitewashes genocidal terrorism.
The ad’s message also ignored any and all information that might cast doubt on CAIR’s preferred narrative, such as:
- Hamas is sworn to destroy Israel and annihilate the Jewish people as a whole.
- The Hamas massacre left behind a killing field strewn with beheadings, people burned alive, rape and the mass murder of more than 1,400 innocent civilians.
- Hamas has killed Gazans who heeded Israeli warnings to move south for their safety. Thankfully, more than one million Palestinians have braved Hamas’s violence and vacated northern Gaza.
- Hamas has built a massive web of tunnels underneath Gaza for the terror group’s exclusive use. They are located under hospitals, kindergartens, recreation centers and other civilian infrastructure.
- Hamas has hoarded gas, power, food and water at the expense of Gaza’s civilians.
- Hamas, Hezbollah and other proxies of Iran target not only Israel, but the U.S. and all Western countries in pursuit of a Muslim supremacist empire.
- An explosion at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza was caused by an errant Islamic Jihad rocket, not Israel, as Hamas and its supporters claimed.
- An ambulance destroyed by Israel was being used to transport Hamas combatants.
- Numerous innocent Israelis, including babies and toddlers, have been kidnapped and held hostage by Hamas.
“True lies” indeed.
Of course, if CAIR really wanted to save Gaza’s civilians rather than rescue Hamas, it would be calling on the terror group to unconditionally surrender. Only such a surrender will give Gazans an opportunity for a better future.
CAIR and its mission of protecting Arab and Muslim civil rights would be better served if it understood this truth: “If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there will be no more war. If Israel lays down its weapons, there will be no more Israel.”
Until CAIR admits as much, the world will have to learn from Ecclesiastes 3:8, “There is a time for war and a time for peace.” Sadly, this is a time for war. Hopefully, once Israel achieves victory, people of all faiths and ethnicities will enjoy a more peaceful world. Perhaps it will resemble the only democratic, diverse and multicultural space in the Middle East, which is called Israel.
