ZOA Criticizes CAIR/ADC
For Opposing Pipes
The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) has praised the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia for inviting testimony to its February 14 open hearing, ‘Next Steps in the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process,’ from renowned Middle East scholar Daniel Pipes. Pipes, the Director of the Middle East Forum (Philadelphia) will be testifying before the Subcommittee, along with David Makovsky, Director, Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and Martin Indyk, Director, Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Two anti-Israel groups, the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) and the Saudi-backed Islamist lobby, the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) have criticized the House Subcommittee for inviting testimony from Pipes. CAIR issued a statement calling on the Subcommittee to “invite experts from both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to speak” (CAIR statement, February 12) while the ADC has claimed that “experts in conflict resolution and state building” should have been invited. Both have also smeared Pipes as a racist and warmonger.
CAIR claims to be a civil rights group, a Muslim version of the NAACP, but is in fact a Saudi-funded organization whose founder is on record praising suicide bombers and saying he would like the Quran to be the highest authority in America, and whose personnel have been implicated in crimes consistent with these positions. CAIR has alleged a wave of anti-Muslim hate crimes in recent years but its record of such incidents have turned out to be based largely on false or fabricated complaints and distortion of incidents that were not motivated by racism. For example, CAIR has defended the veracity of individuals like Mirza Akram and Amjad Abunar falsely alleging anti-Muslim hate crimes, then fallen silent when investigations revealed that both men had in fact fabricated the incidents of which they complained. The ADC, too, has cited anti-Muslim incidents on university campuses which turned out to be invented or devoid of hateful motive. Also, recent FBI figures show that 67.8% of hate crimes in America were committed against Jews, while only 12.7% were committed against Muslims.
ZOA National President Morton A. Klein said, “The House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia is to be commended for inviting Daniel Pipes to testify. Daniel Pipes has an impressive record of being right when it comes to the Middle East, whether predicting that the Oslo peace process and the Gaza withdrawal were both mistakes, or warning long before September 11 that Islamists like Osama Bin Laden would launch attacks upon American soil. His skepticism about Palestinian Arab peaceful intentions was fully vindicated by the course of events and that makes his voice an important one for our lawmakers to hear.
“The fact that both ADC and CAIR have criticized the decision to invite Pipes is very telling, because it shows that they are afraid of the Subcommittee hearing the truth. This is but another effort in the long-running campaign of both groups to stifle debate by smearing those like Pipes who expose their extremist agenda.
“It is also nonsense for these groups to claim that other experts are needed to provide balance to the Subcommittee. Pipes, Makovsky and Indyk have very different views on the Middle East, which encompass a wide spectrum of opinion. CAIR’s words about all three representing the ‘Israel apartheid lobby’ exposes its agenda to delegitimize the democratic state of Israel by comparing it to the racist regime that once ruled South Africa. Both ADC and CAIR have used specious arguments to further their agenda, as they are doing now by smearing Daniel Pipes and demanding that other ‘experts’ provide testimony to the Subcommittee. They should be seen for the extremist organizations that they are, and ignored.”