The board president of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Zead Ramadan, has announced his candidacy for District 7 City Council and has already raised $47,000. He is a Palestinian that was born in Kuwait but came to the U.S. as a child. In December 2011, he refused to answer a question about whether he’d condemn Hamas.
In May 2012, Ramadan appeared on Iran’s state-controlled PressTV and said “the comments that are being made against [American] Muslims are very eerily echoing the comments that were being made against Jews by Nazis.” Another quote shed some light on why the Iranian regime booked him:
“[W]henever you think that America, the land of the free, is going to grow up and go beyond it [racism], more intolerant, extremist voices come out.”
CAIR was labeled an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism-financing trial in U.S. history in 2007. The government listed CAIR among entities that “who and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee and/or its organizations.” The Palestine Committee was a secret Brotherhood group set up to support Hamas. In 2009, a federal judge upheld the labeling of CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator because of “ample” evidence tying it to Hamas.
In a 2007 court filing in the case of convicted terrorist Sabri Bekhala, federal prosecutors state: “From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists…the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”
CAIR was founded by members of the pro-Hamas Islamic Association for Palestine. A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo identifies IAP as one of “our organizations and the organizations of our friends.” The memo explicitly states that its “work in America is a kind of grand jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”
Ramadan served alongside Cyrus McGoldrick, the CAIR-NY leader, who left the organization on January 7. As we reported in December, McGoldrick sent out a flurry pro-Hamas tweets during the latest round of fighting with Israel. But not a word of condemnation was heard by Ramadan.
Steven Emerson, the executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, is suing Cyrus McGoldrick, the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations—New York (CAIR-NY), for defamation of character. McGoldrick has a history of making inflammatory statements, including supporting Hamas’s violence and the elimination of the state of Israel.
The lawsuit was sparked by a tweet posted by McGoldrick that states, “Steve Emerson is an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest child pornography case in US history.”
The tweet was mocking the often-mentioned fact that organization McGoldrick serves, CAIR, is designated as an unindicted co-conspirator in the largest terrorism financing trial in U.S. history. Emerson’s complaint states that it “accuses [him] of having committed a vile crime and constitutes libel per se.”
Emerson’s complaint continued, “Although CAIR describes itself as a Muslim civil liberties advocacy organization, members of Congress, various law enforcement agencies and the FBI have described CAIR as participating in funneling millions of dollars to Hamas. An FBI agent has testified that CAIR is a front group for Hamas.”
McGoldrick is one of CAIR’s most radical voices. During the latest round of fighting between Israel and Hamas, he openly supported Hamas’s acts of terrorism. On November 15, he tweeted, “Palestine is a land occupied by foreign settlers. They have the right to resist, to defend themselves ‘by any means necessary.’ ”
On November 16, he tweeted, “Sign of the times: bloodthirsty Zionists trend #HAMASbumperstickers, then erupt when I acknowledge Palestinian right to resist occupation.”
On November 29, he retweeted a quote from Hamas leader Khaled Meshal: “Meshal: Anyone who is bothered by our rockets is welcome to provide us with accurate weapons to fight the enemy.”
McGoldrick supports Hamas’s goal of wiping Israel off the map.
Cyrus McGoldrick
On November 29, he tweeted, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free. Insha’Allah.” That same day, he retweeted a post making it clear that he rejects a two-state solution. “What is urgent and overdue for Palestinians is not a ‘state’ but their rights; ending Zionist colonial rule, and return of refugees.”
He also stood by the side of the Muslim Brotherhood Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi when his power grab sparked massive protests, suggesting that the opposition was a puppet of the West and Israel: “Can’t shake the feeling that all this anti-Morsi energy is a last stand by old pro-West/Mubarak/Israel crowd to keep power in judiciary. No?” he tweeted.
Like CAIR as a whole, McGoldrick casts law enforcement as oppressive, bigoted and inhumane. He wrote these two tweets on December 15:
“Maybe I listened to too much Dead Prez growing up, but I can’t accept the liberal ‘ban all guns’ platform. If the cops have ‘em, I want ‘em.”
“Watching and filming the police is one of the few ways we have to defend ourselves. Start a #CopWatch team in your hood!”
McGoldrick has appeared on Iran’s state-controlled propaganda “news” network, Press TV, multiple times. It’s easy to see why the Iranian regime would book him as a guest. Rather than forcefully defend the U.S. and Western values, he blames anti-American terrorism on America’s foreign policy.
It’s the latest in a series of clashes since Morsi, a longtime Brotherhood official, issued a Nov. 22 decree effectively placing himself above judicial oversight. He has said he will nullify it if voters approve a Dec. 15 referendum ratifying a controversial new draft constitution rammed through an Islamist-dominated assembly early Friday.
Although the document declares a right to freedom of speech, it also includes a prohibition on “insults” to “religious prophets.” Another provision would require government authorization to operate a website.
Wednesday’s clashes targeted several hundred anti-Morsi protesters who had camped out near the presidential palace.
Demonstrators say they will do everything possible to defeat the referendum. “Our marches are against tyranny … and we won’t retract our position,” Hussein Abdel Ghany, a spokesman for the protesters, said Tuesday. Eleven newspapers shut themselves down Tuesday to protest Morsi’s “dictatorship,” and banks said they would close three hours early in solidarity with the protesters.
The New York Timesreported that Morsi’s Freedom and Justice Party warned three former presidential candidates, among them Amr Moussa and Mohammed ElBaradei, that they would be held accountable for any violence that occurred.
Egyptian riot police fired tear gas at demonstrators near the presidential palace in Cairo on Tuesday. Officials in Morsi’s office said the Islamist leader fled the palace as protesters broke through police lines.
While Egyptians take to the streets to oppose what they claim is a nascent tyranny, Morsi and his Islamist government can count on support from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). For example, CAIR-Los Angeles boss Hussam Ayloush praised Morsi for assuming more power in order to prevent “corrupt judges” from the “undermining and undoing of every democratic step.”
In a Facebook post, Ayloush blamed Egypt’s internal strife on the secular opposition: “Much of the Egyptian opposition seem to be more interested in opposing Morsi and the MB than actually helping Egypt become a stable and institutional democracy,”
CAIR-New York’s Cyrus McGoldrick disparaged criticism of Morsi as “a last stand by old pro-West/Mubarak/Israel crowd to keep power in judiciary.”
CAIR-San Francisco chief Zahra Billoo dismissed American concerns that the Islamist-backed draft constitution wouldn’t protect human rights. “Why do we care about what the Egyptian Constitution says about indefinite detention, when it is being practiced by the U.S. government?” she wrote in a Twitter post Monday.
Several oceans away in Tahrir Square, Egyptian women see things very differently. They charge that the Brotherhood is “paying gangs to go out and rape women and beat men” protesting Morsi’s policies.
Female protesters in Tahrir Square provided harrowing accounts of sexual assaults they say were carried out by thugs on the Islamist group’s payroll.
Anti-American violence throughout the Muslim world, ostensibly over a cheap Internet film denigrating the Muslim prophet Muhammad, may be misguided, but it’s a result of “the lack of dignity, the lack of respect that they’re being shown.” And it’s up to America to change policies to calm things.
That’s the message a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) official brought to a television interview Sunday.
And that’s not the worst thing about Cyrus McGoldrick‘s comments.
McGoldrick’s interview was on Press TV, an Iranian government-controlled English-language news outlet. He never condemned the violence outright, saying “We’re very sensitive to the loss of life” and “people’s lives are always to be mourned.” The angry mobs show “no real understanding of nuance” because the American government neither financed the film nor had anything to do with its distribution.
Few protestors likely even saw the video, said McGoldrick, civil rights director for CAIR’s New York chapter. “And I don’t think it’s about the film at all, really, I think that people are tired. People have had enough of what is seen by them, what looks to them like America’s war on Islam. And this is one of the symptoms of that.”
That “war on Islam” narrative is acknowledged to be among the most effective messages in radicalizing Muslims. Even the White House acknowledges this. In the past week, a federal judge sentenced a 29-year-old to 30 years in prison after he plotted to detonate a suicide bomb inside the United States Capitol and arrested an 18-year-old in Chicago who thought he was detonating a car bomb outside a bar.
McGoldrick could have told his Iranian network interviewer that such a perception is not only wrong, but dangerous. He could have pointed out that Muslims in America, especially Shia, are freer to practice their faith than in most Sunni Muslim nations.
But he didn’t. Instead, he raised doubt over the most fundamental American freedom.
Americans enjoy “allegedly a freedom of speech, a freedom of expression –political expression and religious expression,” he explained. “And of course, that comes with it some rights, but also, of course, some responsibilities.”
The recent violence, including the attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi, Libya which killed Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans, might have be seen as “the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms of Muslims’ patience with American and Western intervention,” McGoldrick said.
That puts the onus on the United States “to very critically think about how much more weight will we put on the Muslim world? How many more attacks? How many more drone strikes? How many more coups … until we realize that we need to take a principled stand, and a just stand, to make sure that we respect human rights, sovereignty and dignity all over the world.”
McGoldrick is among a number of CAIR officials who routinely appear on Press TV, usually to denigrate American politics or policy.
But McGoldrick’s affinity with the Iranian regime runs deeper. He promoted the August 17 “al-Quds Day” rally in New York, advertising and marketing virulent anti-Israel rhetoric at the Iranian-inspired event.
Quds Day is a creation of the Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini and a frequent vehicle for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to call for Israel’s elimination and to publicly delegitimize the West. Its organizers have adapted resolutions that endorse Hamas, and dismiss Palestinian terrorism as simple “side issues.”
McGoldrick promoted the al-Quds New York rally through twitter posts and even the CAIR-NY website.
Claims of Jewish control of the media and American politics and alleged war-mongering by Israel and America dominated speeches Friday at an Iranian-inspired rally in Washington, D.C.
“If you love America, you love lying, you love rape, you love murder, you love killing,” said Abdul Alim Musa, imam of Washington D.C.’s Masjid Al-Islam and head of a separatist movement called As-Sabiqun. “And then, the Zionist, diabolical, sinister Israeli. Nobody in history, they cry about some Holocaust, we had five or ten people get killed.”
Similar rallies were held in New York, Chicago, Detroit and other cities. The rallies were promoted by American University’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, and through personal Twitter posts by Cyrus McGoldrick, advocacy director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) New York chapter.
Resolutions adapted by Quds Day organizers endorse Hamas rule and call for a “one-state solution” to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The “one-state” idea is a non-violent means of eliminating Israel, because the greater number of Palestinians would eliminate Israel as a Jewish state. “We support a peaceful dismantling of the Zionist State and a referendum with participation from the Christians, Jews and Muslims within the present day borders of the Zionist State, as well as participation from Palestinians within the occupied territories and refugee camps scattered across the region in deciding their fate,” a resolution reads.
The resolutions dismiss Palestinian terrorism as “side issues.”
The crowd at Washington’s Dupont Circle was reminded that Quds Day is the creation of Iranian Ayatollah Khomeini. In Iran, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad used the day to call for Israel’s elimination, calling it “a cancerous tumor.”
“Many of the problems facing the Muslim world are due to the existence of the Zionist regime,” Ahmadinejad said.
Ahmadinejad’s statements were condemned as “outrageous and hateful” in a rebuke from European Union foreign affairs director Catherine Ashton. “Israel’s right to exist must not be called into question,” she said.
But Ahmadinejad made similar statements earlier this month, blaming 400 years of problems on “the horrendous Zionist clan” dominating global politics, media and economics. “Any freedom lover and justice seeker in the world must do its best for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the path for the establishment of justice and freedom in the world,” he said.
Iran’s Lebanese-based terrorist proxy issued more specific threats Friday, boasting the capability to inflict mass casualties on Israeli civilians.
“Hitting these targets with a small number of rockets will turn … the lives of hundreds of thousands of Zionists to real hell, and we can talk about tens of thousands of dead,” said Hizballah chief Hassan Nasrallah.
Unlike previous Quds Day rallies in Washington, this year’s event featured softer rhetoric and no Hizballah flags. But speakers still pushed anti-Semitic theories and strident anti-Israeli and anti-American rhetoric. A compilation of examples appears below.
“The reality is in this country, the Zionist thugs who manipulate politics and the media as well, they often want us to hide to keep the message of support for the Palestinian people only off to the side,” said Eugene Puryear of the leftist ANSWER Coalition. “And I think it’s very important to note that we will not hide anymore.”
Though Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria continues to slaughter civilians, no speaker mentioned the plight of Syrian citizens. Rather, it is Israel that is responsible for “one of the greatest crimes going on in the world today,” Puryear said. “It is “the most divisive force, really one of the most divisive force (sic), along with the U.S. imperialist government, who are their allies, and the entire world, in sowing strife and destruction, everywhere they go.”
American politics is held hostage by candidates to Jewish interests, said Code Pink’s Medea Benjamin. She said there was no difference between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney on dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian issue or on whether to attack Iran to stop its nuclear weapons program. That’s because “both of them [are] pandering for the votes of a very small minority of people in the United States and [are] really looking for money for their campaigns.”
Mauri Saalakhan, a writer and conspiracy theorist, discussed a poster showing Muslims either imprisoned for terrorism-related convictions or killed in U.S. drone strikes to argue that “the devastation that is taking place in Muslim lands, in occupied Philistine, or as it is commonly known today – Palestine, in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Yemen, in Pakistan and many of these other countries in the international community – It is also taking place here in America.”
poster showing Muslims either imprisoned for terrorism-related convictions or killed in U.S. drone strikes
Defense attorney Lynn Stewart, who was convicted of helping her client, blind Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman send messages to other terrorists, is imprisoned “because she was willing to represent Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman a little too effectively,” Saalakhan claimed. Abdel-Rahman is considered the spiritual leader behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and was convicted in a subsequent plot to bomb New York City tunnels and landmarks.
CAIR’s Cyrus McGoldrick supports leader of Palestinian terrorist group
Republican Candidate for Congress Joe Kaufman defended the New York Police Department (NYPD), during a live spirited debate with the New York representative of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Cyrus McGoldrick, on South Florida’s 880AM ‘Let’s Talk About It.’ They were on the show to discuss the controversy regarding the NYPD surveillance program, which targets a radical segment of the New York area Muslim community. Kaufman took the side of the police, while McGoldrick has been leading the fight against them.
Kaufman pulled no punches, as he identified CAIR’s ties to Hamas and defended the NYPD’s vigilance, reminding us that New York was the target of a number of attacks – including the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, the September 11th attacks, and the failed Times Square bombing – and still is.
Kaufman boldly made an example of CAIR’s McGoldrick himself, exposing the fact that McGoldrick has stated on the web his support for Khader Adnan, a West Bank leader of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a group that Kaufman revealed conducts suicide bombings against Israeli civilians.
Kaufman stated, “[I]f an individual is posting online their support and prayers for a senior member of Palestinian Islamic Jihad… they should be watched 24/7 by the NYPD.” McGoldrick replied, “I probably am. I probably am.”
Kaufman is running for U.S. Congress in Florida’s District 23. The seat is currently held by the head of the Democratic National Committee, Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
