Sisters
in Hate: Sarsour and Billoo Team Up in Fundraiser
by John Rossomando
IPT News
July 23, 2018
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 Two of the American
Muslim community's most notable anti-Semites recently teamed up for an online
fundraiser benefiting the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) San
Francisco chapter and a group called MPower Change.
Despite claiming to be advocates for the Palestinian cause, Sarsour and
Billoo stake out extreme positions on Israel, those who support it, and
even their own allies who engage in dialogue with pro-Zionist people.
The CAIR chapter is run by Zahra Billoo, who has defended
Hamas rocket attacks against Israel and whose chapter's website posted a graphic telling Muslims to build a
"wall of resistance" to the FBI.
MPower Change co-founder Linda Sarsour famously tweeted "nothing is creepier than
Zionism," the idea of a homeland for Jews.
They are listed as co-sponsors of last month's
"#StandWithMuslims to Declare #NoMuslimBanEver" fundraiser that
launched the day the U.S. Supreme Court upheld President Trump's travel
ban.
MPower Change – launched by Sarsour in 2015 – is an online effort to organize the Muslim community modeled
on MoveOn.org.
Billoo claimed that, as of July 13, $44,121 of the $50,0000
goal had been raised.
Billoo and Sarsour Defend Terrorists
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Linda Sarsour greets
Rasmieh Odeh in 2017, before Odeh's deportation.
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Sarsour also embraced deported Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP) terrorist Rasmieh Odeh.
Odeh was a principal plotter in a 1969 Jerusalem grocery
store bombing that killed two college students, yet Sarsour gushed that she felt "honored and privileged"
to be with her onstage.
Billoo also is comfortable dismissing terrorist attacks if the target is
Israel. "Blaming Hamas for firing rockets at [Apartheid] Israel is
like blaming a woman for punching her rapist. #FreePalestine
v @KathlynGadd,"
she tweeted in 2014.
She also regularly compares Americans who join the Israel Defense Forces
(IDF) with ISIS terrorists.
"...[W]hen we're talking about Palestinian activists and those who
who (sic) support them, call Israel an apartheid state, compare IDF forces
to ISIS members, name the reality that 'the only democracy in the Middle
East' continues to steal land and kill babies," Billoo wrote last month.
Back in June 2015, Billoo wrote that she worried more "about
police, the FBI, and the [Apartheid] Israeli Defense Forces recruiting
youth to engage in violence & impunity than ISIS."
When someone dares call Billoo out on her hate speech, she doubles down.
"We urge you to take the time to research Billoo on social
media," Rabbis Melanie Aron and Dana Magat wrote July 9 in the San Francisco Chronicle.
"You will find admirable expressions of support for human rights of
Muslim Americans, Palestinians and immigrants. And then you will find
vitriol against Israel — not opposition to policies or officials, but
extreme accusations of racism and terrorism. It is an absolutist landscape
in which there is no possibility of moving toward a peace beneficial to
both peoples."
That same day, Billoo fired off a series of tweets blasting Israel. The last one seemed to prove the rabbis'
point: "JUST IN CASE THE ZIONISTS DIDN'T HEAR ME: Israel is an
apartheid, racist state, which engages in terrorism against
Palestinians."
Sarsour also defends Hamas from critics. "More What defenders of
massacre don't tell u re: Hamas is they dropped call 4 destruction of
Israel from manifesto http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/jan/12/israel
... #2006," Sarsour said in an August 2014 tweet toward the end of that
year's Gaza war.
Sarsour's comment was pure propaganda.
While the document's language changed, Hamas's ultimate objective has
not, Hamas Politburo member Mahmoud al-Zahhar said in May 2017.
"If we liberate Palestine though the resistance until the 1967
borders, we will go directly to liberate the rest of Palestine and the
territories of 1948, and there will be no negotiations," al-Zahhar
said.
"If Hamas liberated 99.9% of the land of Palestine, it will not
give up on the rest," al-Zahhar continued. "We cannot
religiously, morally or nationally give up on one inch of the land of
Palestine."
"Gone is the time in which Hamas discussed recognition of Israel.
The discussion now is about when we will wipe out Israel," Hamas
leader Yahya Sinwar said last October.
Sarsour and Billoo Back BDS
Both Sarsour and Billoo support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS)
movement that only targets Israel.
Critics consider BDS inherently
anti-Semitic because so many of its advocates have called for Israel's
destruction and because it targets all things Israeli and pro-Israel
regardless of their views on Israeli policy. Its advocates single out the
world's only Jewish state while ignoring human rights abuses of far greater magnitude
in other countries, especially in Muslim-majority states.
BDS aims to pressure nations, corporations and civil society
institutions to boycott Israeli goods and services. It began with a 2005
declaration of dozens of Palestinian groups including the Council of
National and Islamic Forces in Palestine.
That group developed during the Second Intifada, and it includes
representatives from Hamas, Fatah, the PFLP, the Democratic Front for the
Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. All of these
groups are mentioned in
the February 2001 document announcing the new group's creation.
Sarsour has done more than write about her support for BDS efforts. She
spoke at several events either sponsored or co-sponsored by the U.S.
Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR), which tax records indicate as the Palestinian BDS National Committee's
U.S. financial agent.
Sarsour's MPower Change launched a petition against an anti-BDS bill in Congress.
"I'm also a very staunch supporter of the Boycott, Divestment,
Sanctions movement," Sarsour said during
a panel discussion on anti-Semitism last November at the New School in New
York. "Now, you can tell me if I'm crazy, what other way am I supposed
to be as a Palestinian American? What other positions do people expect me
to have as a Palestinian American who's a daughter of immigrants who lived
under military occupation and still has family in Palestine who live under
military occupation? I should be expected to have the views that I
hold."
Sarsour and Billoo Condemn Muslims Who Talk with Pro-Israel Groups
MPower Change denounced Muslim activist Wajahat Ali on Facebook last
month for meeting with pro-Israel activists. CNN lists
Ali as among the 25 most influential Muslims in America, and he served as a
State Department consultant.
Sarsour's organization linked to an article critical of Ali, promoting it with
the quote, "He is free to undermine the BDS movement and to speak
about this issue in ways that undermine the Palestinian struggle - and
community groups and organisations are also free to distance themselves
from him, to refuse to feature him, and to even call him out for it."
Similarly, in May, Billoo attacked Muslims who engage in interfaith relations
with the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The ADL opposes BDS, she wrote, and
supported the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), a group whose
leaders were convicted in 2008 of funding Hamas.
"This is the new ADL CEO, who offered to register as a Muslim if
there were ever a Muslim registry, partying with the Trump administration
as they open the new apartheid Israeli embassy in Jerusalem. Not far from
there, Palestinians are being murdered in cold blood," Billoo wrote.
"In a world of finite resources, I do not need or want the ADL as
an interfaith partner. And if there is ever a Muslim registry, Jonathan
Greenblatt isn't welcome on my list or in my camps."
Sarsour and Billoo Backing of the Nation of Islam and Louis Farrakhan
Sarsour and Billoo also support American anti-Semites including
Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. They took no step to distance
themselves or criticize Farrakhan's repeated sermons about "the
Satanic Jew," and his anti-Semitic conspiracy
theories that "there were many Israelis and Zionist Jews in key
roles in the 9/11 attacks.
In 2009, Billoo thought her Twitter followers should
know that she was at the gym, "watching a Farrakhan church
speech."
 Sarsour has deleted
a 2015 Instagram post in which she gushed that Farrakhan "does not
age, God bless him." Sarsour also has called the Nation of Islam an "integral" part
of the history of Islam in America and spoke
at the Nation of Islam sponsored Million Man March 20th
Anniversary in 2015.
"The liberation of the Palestinian people is bound up with the
liberation of black people in America," Sarsour said at the march.
Whatever other causes Sarsour and Billoo may advocate, and whatever
positive message they may try to offer, it is clear they are not mere
critics of Israeli policy. They loathe Zionism, Zionists, and wish to see
Israel eliminated. That's something to remember.
Research Analyst Teri Blumenfeld contributed to this report.
Related Topics: John
Rossomando, Linda
Sarsour, Zahra
Billoo, fundraising,
MPower
Change, CAIR,
travel
ban, Rasmieh
Odeh, anti-Semitism,
IDF,
Melanie
Aron, Dana
Magat, Hamas
charter, Mahmoud
al-Zahhar, Yahya
Sinwar, BDS,
USCPR,
Louis
Farrakhan
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