A consultation with an Islamist organization whose leader celebrated the Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 led to one legislator’s decision to boycott a congressional speech by Israel’s leader, The Washington Free Beacon reports.
Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) told CNN that a meeting on Wednesday with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) alongside Palestinian groups had persuaded her not to attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to a joint session of Congress.
Dean said the anti-Israel groups were “baffled” by his appearance in Washington. She asked, “How could he in the face of the inhumanity that is going on in Gaza and in the West Bank, how could he be here in this politically fraught moment?”
CAIR expressed credit for Dean’s decision in a post on X.
Last week, Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, advanced a conspiracy theory that Israel was secretly behind reports of an Iranian plot to assassinate former President Donald Trump on July 13.
