Sam Markstein, national political director and spokesman for the Republican Jewish Coalition, told JNS on Thursday that being blacklisted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations is a “badge of honor.”
CAIR, which blamed Israel for being attacked shortly after Oct. 7 and which the Biden administration initially listed as part of its national strategy on fighting Jew-hatred but later evicted it, designated the coalition and Jewish American Summit as “anti-Muslim extremist organizations.”
The antisemitic group announced the designations on Thursday, accusing both Jewish groups of platforming speakers who have criticized Islam and Muslims.
Markstein told JNS that “federal prosecutors named CAIR an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case, the largest terrorism-financing prosecution in American history.”
“It ended in guilty verdicts on 108 counts against a network built to funnel money to Hamas,” he said. “The FBI then cut off all formal contact with CAIR, citing evidence of a relationship between CAIR and Hamas. In 2014, the United Arab Emirates—an Arab, Muslim-majority ally of the United States—put CAIR on its terror list.”
Shortly after Oct. 7, “mere weeks after the deadliest day for the Jewish people since the Holocaust, CAIR’s founder and national executive director, Nihad Awad, told the American Muslims for Palestine conference that he was ‘happy to see’ the monstrous attack,” Markstein told JNS. “Even the Biden White House condemned Awad’s ‘shocking, antisemitic statements in the strongest terms.’”
“That is the organization grading the moral standing of the Republican Jewish Coalition,” he said. “It’s laughable.”
Markstein told JNS that the RJC Summit, held earlier this week in Las Vegas, “brought together the top leaders in the Republican party—cabinet secretaries, members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, governors, key opinion leaders and 1,000 of the most active and influential Jewish Americans.”
“We will never cower to vile groups like CAIR,” he said.
