AOC,
Tlaib Met with AMP Members During Palestine Advocacy Day
by John Rossomando
IPT News
April 12, 2019
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U.S. Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez (center) poses with AMP members.
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Members of the rabidly anti-Israel group American Muslims for Palestine
(AMP) met this week with U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.,
and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., during the group's annual Palestine
Advocacy Day.
Ocasio-Cortez posed for a photo with AMP supporters outside her office
on Capitol Hill, an AMP newsletter posted online shows. However, nothing was posted online
saying what Ocasio-Cortez said to the AMP supporters.
Tlaib spoke to the group Monday, saying that she feels "more
Palestinian" in Congress than she does anywhere else in the world.
AMP is the successor and alter ego of a defunct Hamas front called that
formerly operated as the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP)/American
Muslim Society (AMS), a lawsuit filed in Illinois federal court claims. The
IAP/AMS acted as the propaganda arm of the Muslim Brotherhood's
Palestine Committee, a network of U.S.-based organizations established to
support Hamas politically and financially. Former Hamas political bureau
chief Moussa
Abu Marzook created several organizations that formed the Palestine
Committee and served on IAP's board of directors prior to his
deportation in the 1990s.
A federal court awarded Joyce and Stanley Boim $156 million in damages
in 2004 in connection with the murder of their son, David, an American
citizen, in a 1996 Hamas terrorist attack. IAP/AMS were among the entities
held liable. Group leaders announced they were ceasing operations not long after
that court decision.
The new lawsuit aims to hold AMP liable for the IAP/AMS's damages from
the original litigation.
Many IAP/AMS officers now work with AMP, including AMP Chairman Hatem Bazian,
a University of California, Berkeley lecturer. Bazian and other former
IAP/AMS leaders used a Yahoo! Bulletin board to discuss the
"transition" to the group that eventually became AMP in 2006, the
newer lawsuit said.
Palestine Advocacy Day included at least 500 participants from 32
states, AMP organizers claimed. They said they met with people in 191 Capitol
Hill offices. Their lobbying effort focused on fighting legislation barring
governmental support for organizations that support the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement, for a
bill supporting Palestinian children's rights, and for humanitarian aid and
rights for people living in the Gaza Strip.
AMP Executive Director Osama Abuirshaid, who served as editor of IAP's Al-Zaitounah
publication and referred
to Hamas as an "army for liberation" in 2014, introduced Tlaib.
Abuirshaid also worked as a research fellow with the United Association for Studies
and Research (UASR), one of the Palestine Committee entities established by Hamas leader Marzook.
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U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib
(second row in blazer and green dress) poses with AMP members during
"Palestine Advocacy Day."
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In videotaped remarks posted by AMP, Tlaib encouraged AMP members to
fight for immigration issues and LGBT rights on par with Palestinian
issues.
"What is AMP doing about what's happening at the border? Because to
me that's another form of what's happening in Gaza, where people are
literally ripped, children ripped apart from them but dealing with the fact
that they're being caged, and all of – the tragedy," Tlaib said. "That's what our country is doing right
here. And I say this to all of you, like, I think of [Palestine] when I see
that."
Tlaib compared BDS with the Montgomery bus boycott, asking where America
would have been without it.
"And no one should say to us that that isn't protected First
Amendment right. It absolutely is," Tlaib said, referring to anti-BDS legislation.
Ocasio-Cortez and Tlaib claim they, like fellow freshman U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., are simply critics of Israeli
actions. But in meeting with AMP, the two congresswomen bolstered the
credibility of a group that wishes to see Israel eliminated and which has clear ties to an old Hamas support network.
Related Topics: Civil
suits | John
Rossomando, politics,
American
Muslims for Palestine, lobbying,
Rashida
Tlaib, Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, Palestine
Advocacy Day, Palestine
Committee, Muslim
Brotherhood, IAP,
Moussa
Abu Marzook, David
Boim, Hatem
Bazian, Osama
Abuirshaid, BDS,
UASR
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