Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein released the following statement:
CAIR (the Council on American-Islamic Relations) has a long history of being a vicious antisemitic Israel-hating group, with links to Hamas. Just as the Hamas charter and Hamas leaders and Fatah leaders and Iran leaders openly call for Israel’s destruction and replacement with an Islamic state, and Hamas calls for the murder of every Jew (Article 7), a top CAIR official has just called for genocide against and destruction of the Jewish state of Israel. Outrageously, in a tweet on Sunday (Nov. 25), senior CAIR official and Democratic Party delegate Hussam Ayloush called for “termination” of the Jewish state, and equated Israel to the world’s largest sponsor of terrorism, Iran CAIR-Los Angeles Executive Director Ayloush wrote: “Iran’s regime calling Israel a ‘cancerous tumor’ is like the pot calling the kettle black. All the people of that region will be better off once both murderous regimes are terminated.”
Calling for termination of the Jewish state is simply a Nazi-like blood-curdling outrage. After the antisemitic massacre at the Pittsburgh Tree of Life Synagogue, we dare not tolerate calls for genocide against the Jewish nation.
ZOA thus calls on CAIR to immediately fire radical Islamist murder-inciting Hussam Ayloush and for the Democratic party to immediately remove Ayloush’s delegate credentials.
ZOA also urges every Jewish and civil rights organization and Rabbis, priests, Imams, politicians and Democratic party officials to join ZOA in demanding Ayloush’s termination from his CAIR and Democratic Party posts. We specifically call on Minority leader Chuck Schumer, Cong. Nancy Pelosi, Majority leader Mitch McConnell, and Cong. Paul Ryan to speak out strongly and clearly. No more incitement to murdering Jews! We dare not remain silent!
Moreover, Ayloush’s call for Israel’s complete destruction follows his long history of vile antisemitic, anti-Israel statements. For instance, in a 2002 email, Ayloush called Israelis “zionazis.” And at an April 2018 “Challenging Islamophobia with My Vote” event at the Islamic Institute of Orange County, California, Ayloush falsely accused American IDF (Israel Defense Forces) soldiers of joining “an army committing war crimes,” called the IDF the “Israeli occupation army,” and absurdly demanded that the U.S. government Countering Violent Extremism program should target American IDF soldiers!
As the Investigative Project on Terrorism (IPT)/JNS explained, Ayloush’s statements are “anti-Semitic, according to the U.S. State Department’s definition established in 2010. Demonizing Israel by “[d]rawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis“ and “denying Israel the right to exist” are among the behaviors which constitute anti-Semitism.” (See “CAIR Official Calls for the End of the Jewish Nation,” IPT/JNS, Nov. 27, 2018.)