NEW YORK – The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has expressed its strong disappointment that the leader of a pro-terrorist American Muslim group was invited to meet with President Bush last week.

According to a press release from the pro-terrorist American Muslim Council (AMC), its chairman, Yahya Mossa Basha, met with President Bush during the president’s visit to Michigan on July 24.

AMC officials have publicly praised Hezbollah and Hamas, which are on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations. Hezbollah was responsible for the 1983 car-bomb attack in Lebanon in which 241 U.S. Marines were massacred, and many other attacks; Hamas has murdered hundreds of Israelis, as well as 32 of the 42 Americans who have been murdered in Israel since 1993.

For example, then-AMC president Abdulrahman Alamoudi said at a rally in Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. on Oct. 28, 2000: “I have been labeled by the media in New York to be a supporter of Hamas. We are ALL supporters of Hamas. I wish they added that I am also a supporter of Hezbollah.” Alamoudi served as chairman of the AMC’s “Imam Conference” in June 2003, and is president of the AMC-affiliated American Muslim Foundation. (The AMC’s membership application instructs applications to make any securities donations to the American Muslim Foundation.)

During the 2000 election campaign, both George W. Bush and U.S. Senate candidate Hillary Clinton returned $1,000 donations to their campaigns from the AMC because of the AMC’s support for terrorist groups.

When President Bush shutdown the pro-terrorist Holy Land Foundation because it was financing Hamas, the AMC denounced the move as “unjust.” (Washington Times, July 3, 2002)

In a letter to President Bush, ZOA National President Morton A. Klein, Chairman of the Board Dr. Alan Mazurek, and National Executive Committee chairman Dr. Michael Goldblatt wrote: “Extremist groups that sympathize with Hamas and Hezbollah should not be given the honor of meeting with the President of the United States. It sends a message to terrorists and their supporters that the United States is not fully committed to the war against terrorism.”