U.S. President Joe Biden announced on Monday that he plans to renominate Anton Hajjar as a member of the board of the U.S. Postal Service.
Hajjar, who has received two awards from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, “was previously confirmed by the U.S. Senate via voice vote, and sworn into office as a governor of the United States Postal Service on May 28, 2021,” per the White House.
The self-identified “assimilated third-generation Arab-American” was previously the general counsel of the American Postal Workers Union.
In 2023, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee gave Hajjar its lifetime achievement award, 11 years after it gave him its pro bono attorney of the year award. The ADC has a long anti-Israel history, including accusing the Jewish state of “genocide.”
On Dec. 13, it referred to the “Zionist history of stealing land.”
It asked on Oct. 25, “Will we wait decades for an American president to apologize for supporting genocide and apartheid against the Palestinians? If Biden truly believed in supporting the rights of indigenous people, he would impose an arms embargo now against Israel, a colonial-settler state.”
Four days after Hamas-led terrorist attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the ADC wrote that “we are witnessing the slow rollout of a genocide, with the green light from American officials” and that “the Israelis are currently converting Gaza from an open-air prison to an open-air grave full of innocent lives lost.”
When Hajjar was nominated in 2021, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told The Washington Free Beacon that “we are seeing a disgusting rise in antisemitism across the globe, including in our own communities.” (The Free Beacon noted in its reporting that Hajjar has donated to Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., who is one of the most anti-Israel members of Congress.)
“Any nominee associated with an anti-Israel group raises serious concerns and deserves increased scrutiny,” Rubio said at the time. “Anti-Israel policies and activities give cover to antisemitism, and we have to call it for what it is.”
“Hajjar has been namechecked as a ‘longtime’ ADC member, according to recordings of the group’s past events,” per the Free Beacon report from 2021. “He also serves as a legal adviser to Safa Rifka, the chair of the organization’s board, according to LinkedIn. Rifka is closely aligned with embattled Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, as well as his former ambassador in Washington, D.C., Imad Moustapha.”