Tag: BDS

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Zohran Mamdani and Samar Ali Raised by Fathers Who Want to Erase Israel

What is the effect of growing up in a stew of Jew-hatred and wanting to destroy the Jew’s ancestral homeland and only Jewish majority country in the world?

Zohran Mamdani
Zohran has his father to thank for radicalizing him against all things Israel and its Jews. Zohran’s father Mahmood Mamdani “has called for the “dismantlement” of the state of Israel, compared Israelis to Nazis and spread hatred of Israel and Zionism.” To no surprise he supported the pro-Hamas college encampments.

Learning at his father’s knee, mayor-elect Mamdani has publicly endorsed the BDS campaign against Israel, has accused Israel of committing a genocide against palestinians and unrepentently throws around the “globalize the infitada” threat, which is widely understood to be a call for violence against Jews.

 As explained in the American Jewish Committee’s Translate Hate Glossary, the First Intifada (1987-early 1990s) and Second Intifada (2000-2005, aka, the Al-Aqsa Intifada), palestinian Jew-hatred included protests, demonstrations and suicide bombings in “civilian areas and passenger bus bombings.”

During the Second Intifada’s terror attacks, a palestinian blew himself up in a popular and crowded Sbarro pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem, killing 16 people including 7 children and a pregnant woman; 130 others were wounded.

During the Second Intifada, 1,137 Israeli civilians were killed and 5,676 were wounded.

Indeed, for Jews, the intifada reference is no figment of their imagination given the intentional post-October 7th violence against Jews in the U.S. and in other countries. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to connect the campus pro-Hamas demonstrations to the post October 7th pro-Hamas marches around the country including in Nashville, to the intentional slaying of the young couple outside of the DC Capital Jewish Museum or the Denver molotov cocktail attack on a public gathering in support of the hostages then being held by Hamas.

Mamdani also tosses around the “free Palestine” catchphrase, short for “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free”, meaning there would be no Israel or Jews between the Jordan River and Mediterranean. It is the popular anti-Israel war cry of the BDS crowd which includes Mamdani and his circle of like-minded comrades. Not by coincidence it is also used by rabid Jew-haters like the Denver molotov cocktail thrower.

Samar Ali
Unlike Mamdani, Samar understands the political environment in which she operates, so instead of the direct Mamdani approach, she aligns with others who do the anti-Israel work. 

Don’t underestimate the self-described “peacemaker”. In a poorly sourced and biased op-ed penned by Vanderbilt’s 2023 student body president, Samar defends Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s use of “from the river to the sea” because Tlaib didn’t “intend” for it to reflect her antisemitism. Samar’s round-about explanation and alleged sourcing of the phrase makes no mention of it’s adoption as the badge of the BDS movement whose expressed goal is the elimination of the State of Israel.

Tlaib was censured by Congress including support from twenty-two Democrats, for defending the slogan. The resolution formally condemned Tlaib for “calling for the destruction of the state of Israel”

Samar has served as Zulfat Suara’s, campaign treasurer during both of Suara’s Metro Council successful elections.

During Suara’s many years of leading the TN American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC), the organization platformed some of the most vocal and poisonous Jew-haters including Linda Sarsour and Ash-Lee Henderson to “challenge Zionism”, the movement that helped to establish the State of Israel.  Martin Luther King Jr., often cited by progressives as a symbol for social justice, understood that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. As he said, “When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You are talking anti-Semitism.”

At the same time, local Tennessee Jew-hater Drost Kokoye served for years on Suara’s board who apparently didn’t get Kokoye to either tone down her anti-Jew rhetoric or resign from the board.

Years before connecting with Suara, in 2012, Samar traveled with Jimmy Carter to witness the election of the Muslim Brotherhood’s candidate Mohamed Morsi as Egypt’s new president. That’s the same Morsi who In a 2010, video declared, “[w]e must never forget, brothers, to nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews”.

Two years later in 2014, Carter again blamed Israel for the strife in the Middle East and demanded recognition of Hamas as a “legitimate political actor” despite its designation as a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, by the U.S. government.

After Samar’s trip with Carter, her father’s foundation began donating to the Carter Center.

Closer to the Ali home, is her father Subhi’s mentorship under Hisham Sharabi, the founder and chairman of what became the Jerusalem Fund (JF). Subhi served as vice-chairman taking over as chairman in 2005, shortly before Sharabi died. 

In 2006, Samar served as the transatlantic liaison for one of the Jerusalem Fund’s projects. Her father Subhi continues to be listed as chairman of the Fund’s board.

Subhi’s mentor Sharabi was a board member of WISE(World and Islam Studies Enterprise) which was incorporated and led by Sami al-Arian who was subsequently sentenced in 2006 to prison and deported for conspiring to provide material support to the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). According to the indictment, WISE funneled payments to the PIJ martyrs through the Islamic International Arab Bank (Arab Bank).

In 2003, while Subhi was serving as vice-chair of the board, the Jerusalem Fund hosted a conference titled, “Israel’s Policy of Apartheid and Ethnic Cleansing,” reflecting the Fund’s real purpose. Sharabi who described Hamas as “the true faida’i (self-sacriaice) resistance in Palestine since the outbreak of the Palestinian intifada, ”justified a Palestinian “armed struggle” if necessary, to end Israel’s presence in the West Bank and Gaza. 

Under Samar father’s leadership, the Jerusalem Fund continued it’s anti-Israel agenda, celebrating its 40th anniversary featuring a keynote by then sitting Israeli-Arab Knesset member, Haneen Zoabi who compared Israel to Germany in the 1930s, claimed Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state and suggested that Israeli-Arab members of the Knesset should work to undermine the State of Israel from within.

Speakers hosted by the Jerusalem Fund persist in spreading the false propaganda of Israel as an apartheid state. 

Vocal antisemite Hatem Bazian, founder of the anti-israel groups Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), has been a invited speaker for the Jerusalem Fund (JF). A recent report from the Endowment for Middle East Truth, suggests stronger connections with Bazian, who, “is also a link between JF, AMP, and SJP, through his membership at Al-Shabaka: a global think tank for pro-Palestinian academics.”

According to Canary Mission, Bazian who is also a leader in the BDS campaign against Israel, he has “called for “intifada” in America, defended the Hamas terror group, expressed support for terrorists and fundraised for a Hamas-linked charity. He has politicized academic coursework, demonized Israel and Zionists, and showed support for pro-Hamas student encampments.”

Under Samar’s father’s leadership, the JF became even more vocal in pushing the BDS campaign against Israel. Yousef Munayyer, the Fund’s director and vocal BDS anti-Israel agitator, left in 2014, to take leadership of the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR). Tablet Magazine has exposed a troubling money relationship between USCPR and U.S. designated foreign terrorist organizations in the piece BDS Umbrella Group Linked to Palestinian Terrorist Organizations.

No surprise perhaps that Samar’s very close ally Metro Council member Zulfat Suara’s post-October 7th “ceasefire” resolution was “a template taken from the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) website”.

A closer look at Zulfat Suara’s alliances and activities related to Israel, Zionism and Jews, explains more perhaps about why Samar Ali has chosen to put herself in Suara’s camp, one that Samar has been raised to appreciate. Her mother immigrated to the U.S. from Syria and her father is a Palestinian who lived for a time in Ramallah, the city where Yasser Arafat, often referred to as the “father of modern terrorism” because of his “decades long involvement in terrorism“, established his Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) headquarters.

Arafat popularized the black and white keffiyeh now being paraded on college campuses by pro-Hamas idiots.

As stated in the report from the Endowment for Middle East Truth, Subhi Ali’s Jerusalem Fund “…is a prominent part of the Islamist network in the United States.”

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Rep. Tim Burchett Wants to Import More Arabs From Gaza to Tennessee

Responding to President Trump’s recent plan for the terrorist enclave called Gaza, Knoxville’s representative in Congress, Tim Burchett, says they should come to Tennessee:

“We already have Palestinians in America and some of them are the finest people that I know. They live in Knoxville, Tennessee, and they’re wonderful Americans if they want to assimilate and become Americans, but if they don’t, they wanna bring terrorism and hatred and things like that in this country. I don’t think we should, but we have a pretty good record with Palestinians at least in Tennessee, so I welcome them” https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/government/rep-burchett-welcomes-idea-of-palestinians-relocating-to-us-tn/ar-AA1yChi5

Burchett then pivots to the problem of illegal immigration suggesting that a “litmus test” of who should be taken into the U.S. would apply to the Arabs (the proper non-political designation for so-called “palestinians”) because he says we already have the Taliban and Chinese spies in our country.

Presumably he is saying that bringing in more terrorist leaning anit-Jew and anti-America agitators is not a good idea.

Burchett has a short memory. This is the same Tim Burchett that as a Tennessee state senator, sponsored a 2007 bill, now law, that was supposed to penalize transporting illegal aliens into the state. The bill was amended to let certain NGOS (Catholic Charities???) defend bringing illegal aliens into the state if it was for so-called religious purposes like mission work. Of course the amendment made little sense since the goal of the bill was to punish transporting illegal aliens into the state.

In response to the religious defense amendment, House member Stacey Campfield, also from Knoxville, questioned whether this amendment would apply to an NGO bringing in aliens to commit jihad. Legitimate question but of course not taken seriously by the bill sponsors so the bill passed with the amendment.

Laughably Burchett believes there is a “litmus test” that can somehow discern which “palestinians” want to assimilate and become good Americans which just shows how little insight Burchett has to Islamist doctrine and thinking.

Ft. Hood’s 2009 jihadist U.S. Army Major Nidal Malkik Hasan was born and raised in the U.S. by “palestinian” parents who immigrated to the U.S. from the West Bank which is politically ruled by the Hamas supporting Palestinian Authority, aka, Fatah.

The 2015 Chattanooga jihadi Muhammad Youssef Abdulazeez, who gunned down five U.S. servicemen and wounded two others, while not born in the U.S., was raised in Tennessee by parents who were reported to be Palestinian-Jordanians and who “identified themselves as Palestinians”.

Daoud Abudiab, a “palestinian” who labels his birthplace as “occupied palestine” where his parents still reside, has had leadership roles with the illegal alien supporting TIRRC and Jew-hating American Muslim Advisory Council (AMAC). 

Daoud Abudiab, was a co-founder of AMAC and its first chairman and is a fellow traveler of Israel haters. Trying hard to portray himself as an interfaither with the singular agenda of creating a positive impression of Muslims through his “Our Muslim Neighbor,” (a project of Religions for Peace USA, an organization itself tied to Muslim Brotherhood organizations), Abudiab launched his Faith and Culture Center in 2014. Then his Center joined Nashville’s leftist collective to strategize with the emerging local BLM chapter. That was the same year that BLM leaders traveled to “occupied palestine” and publicly announced their support for the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.

Coming out of the closet in his own way, Abudiab joined the Muslim Brotherhood organizations at the inaugural USCMO conference the same year the USCMO issued its “Washington Declaration”, an initiative intended to unite a globalized Islamist political force. The USCMO was founded by every major U.S.-based Jew-hating organization including CAIR, AMP (BDS leader American Muslims for Palestine), MAS – the Muslim American Society whose founder admitted that his organization was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Following his attendance at the USCMO conference, Abudiab amplified his hatred of Israel by speaking at FOSNA’s (Friends of Sabeel North America) 2015 conference. FOSNA attacks Christian Zionism, promotes the BDS campaign against Israel, and has teamed up with Black 4 Palestine to bring black churches and clergy into their Israel and Jew hate efforts.

FOSNA remains on the Anti-Defamation League’s top ten list of anti-Israel organizations in the U.S.

In the course of pretending to be focused on a “struggle for a just peace” FOSNA predictably offered a panel discussion on BDS.

Omar Barghouti, co-founder of the BDS campaign made it clear in 2010, and again, more recently, that the goal of BDS is to eliminate Israel. He expressly rejects a two-state solution and says that a palestinian right of return is the way to end Israel as a Jewish state.

Tennessean Dana Swaies a pro-palestinian Hamas supporter as far back as 2014, is so venomous that it earned her a profile on Canary Mission, which “documents individuals and organizations that promote hatred of the USA, Israel and Jews on North American college campuses and beyond. Canary Mission investigates hatred across the entire political spectrum, including the far right, far left and anti-Israel activists.”

According to Canary Mission, “[a]s of August 2020, Swaies used the alias Bateekhahead and the screen name دانا on Twitter, Some of Swaies’ posts include:

According to Canary Mission, “As of March 2021, Swaies’s LinkedIn page said she was a Scheduling Coordinator at the Murfreesboro offices of Cumberland Pediatric Dentistry and Orthodontics, in Tennessee, since November 2020.”

To round out the known who’s who of Burchett’s “finest [palestinain] people” in Tennessee, there is former UT Knoxville student Amira Sakalla who as reported by Canary Mission, “called for an Intifada, demonized Israel and spread Israel hatred online. Sakalla was the founder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at University of Tennessee (UTK)  (SJP UTK), in 2012.”

And that is just a taste of Sakalla’s Jew-hatred. Among her many Jew-hating credentials was her 2015 -2016 stint as a staff intern at the anti-Israel organization Friends of Sabeel North America (FOSNA) which is the same time period that Daoud got connected to FOSNA. Hmmm.

For anyone who has paid attention to the TN American Muslim Advisory Council during Zulfat Suara’s leadership, it was no surprise that Sakalla and her Jew-hating comrade Ash-Lee Henderson, were featured speakers at AMAC’s 2018 attack Zionism event. 

Someone in Tim Burchett’s district needs to share this information with him and strongly suggest that he reconsider expanding the community of “the finest people [he] knows”.

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Why Would TN House Republicans Vote to Denigrate Patriotic Conservative Christians?

It’s no surprise that House Democrats would vote to denigrate Tennessee conservative Christians who  love their country. But what does it say about the House Republicans who voted in agreement? 

Rep. G.A. Hardaway, a Memphis Democrat, was the Chief sponsor of HR110, a resolution to recognize Rev.Dr. William J. Barber II.

Rev.William J. Barber II

Hardway, described the honorific as embodying Barber’s five “interlocking injustices of systemic racism, systemic poverty, the war economy and militarism, ecological devastation, and the false moral narrative of Christian nationalism.”

Not included in the resolution was Barber’s 2013 participation at the Tennessee Highlander Center meeting about how to resist what the assembled group described as the “extreme agenda” being pushed by Republicans.

The resolution failed; only 28 voted yes, 35 voted no, and 20 were either too confused, uninformed, or squeamish, and simply abstained.

Predictably, all 23 Democrats present voted for the resolution; they were joined by 5 Republicans – Reps. Jeremy Faison, William Lamberth, Tandy Darby, Bob Ramsey and Kevin Vaughn.

Faison and Lamberth are part of the House leadership.

 Before the vote, when Rep. Mark Cochran (R-Englewood) questioned what was meant specifically by the term “false moral narrative of Christian nationalism” sponsor Hardaway responded that “there is a Christian nationalism Dr. Barber observes some of those narratives as not being in line with his way of thinking” and why he developed his moral budget ad his moral agenda.

Barber’s Christian nationalism explained by the academic experts

Barber has been understood to use the terms “Christian nationalism,” “religious nationalism” and “white religious nationalism” interchangeably.

Sociology professors Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry explain Christian nationalism in their book “Taking America Back for God,” and they agree with Barber that there’s a white Christian nationalism (the worst), and a Black Christian nationalism which is progressive and wants to uplift the downtrodden and marginalized in our country.

Based on the professors’ national survey questions and responses, “Christian nationalism” is a cultural framework used to refer to white Christians, particularly evangelicals, who say that the U.S. was founded on Christianity and therefore must remain a Christian nation. The authors describe “Christian nationalism” as a form of Christianity “that isn’t just about religion, but is a racialized view of America which “‘includes assumptions of nativism, white supremacy, patriarchy and heteronormativity, along with divine sanction for authoritarian control and militarism’” which dominate the political views of the subset surveyed.

But, as they explain, Black Christians get a pass because blacks haven’t been in power and as such, their version of Christian nationalism is more progressive and about a nation that has never lived up to its professing Christian identity.

The two sociologists claim that their national survey results show that people high on the Christian nationalism rating scale tend to be much more opposed to gun control, are much more xenophobic or racist and define being an American as being white and Christian. Worse still, the white version of Christian nationalism is “connected [to] and it connects all these negative ideologies.”

As used by Barber, Christian nationalism is white and its supremacist. Some of Barber’s examples of the “false moral narrative of Christian nationalism” is exemplified by Franklin Graham and Jerry Falwell who don’t “promote the faith from the biblical foundations of love, truth and justice.” Instead, they are part of the “unholy connection” where “[r]eligion is being used as the cover for greed. The term ‘‘evangelical’’ has been hijacked in favor of corporate interests.”  

According to the methodology used by Whitehead and Perry to determine what Christian nationalism means, looks like and implies for the U.S., a phrase like “in God we trust” could be considered a Christian nationalism dog whistle.

What’s obvious is that Barber’s five “interlocking injustices” that form the basis of his moral budget and moral agenda align perfectly with the Movement 4 Black Lives (M4BL) policy platform and the agenda of BLM.

Barber also rallies against Israel and “Trumpvangelicals”

Barber’s speech at the 2018 anti-Israel U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) national conference affirmed his view that Israel is an apartheid state and that “historically, it is important for us to remember that one path regarding the Zionism project in Palestine was a colonialist project from the beginning…[i]t was  never just purely about righting the terrible wrongs of the Holocaust. But for [Britain’s great colonialist] it was about expanding a global empire.”

Not surprisingly, Barber’s comments align with the whole Christian nationalism narrative which is primarily directed at evangelical Christians who tend to be committed advocates for Israel. It also aligns perfectly with both the M4BL and BLM anti-Israel positions and their promotion of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) campaign.

By no coincidence, the USCPR has endorsed M4BL’s policy platforms.

William J. Barber II reveals what he really means when he uses the slur of Christian nationalism came at the close of his speech:

“In this moment when Trumpvangelicals have linked up with Zionist extremists and the corporate facism of white nationalists around the world, it may seem like [the USCPR’s] goal of Palestinian rights is at a low point….The same corporate interests that used white nationalism to put Trump in the White House, and leaned into Zionist extremism to move the U.S. Embassy to Tel Aviv, also want to cut taxes for corporations, deregulate, ignore climate science, take away healthcare, deny living wages, cut the social safety net and give more and more money to the U,S. military. But here’s the good news: There are far more of us than there are of them. And, God have mercy, even some of them have joined us when we’ve come together in truth and love and mercy.”

If you voted for Trump, Barber was talking about you.
If you’re a white Evangelical Christian, Barber was talking about you.
If you believe our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles and the need to stay true to those principles, Barber was talking about you.
And God forbid, if you support Israel, the sole democratic state in the Middle East, Barber was talking about you and it’s a double whammy if you also happen to be a Christian.

And what about the Barber5 Republicans who voted to honor Barber?

Rep. Bob Ramsey and Kevin Vaughn are illegal alien protectionists.

Rep. Jeremy Faison (chair, House Republican Caucus) – his vote to honor Barber is just one more reason that the House Republican Caucus needs a new chairman.

Rep. Tandy Darby – he’s new and his vote raises questions about him that will require monitoring.

Rep. William Lamberth – at best, his vote is confusing; contact him and ask him to explain – rep.william.lamberth@capitol.tn.gov

The sociologists who defined Christian nationalism say that white Americans who adhere to this ideology, see it almost as an ethnic identity with others who share their cultural values and who “look like them.”

Rep. Yusuf Hakeem (D-Chattanooga) who wants critical race theory (CRT) taught in Tennessee schools, admitted as much during the House Education discussion about HB580, the CRT bill:

“There are those and I’m among them who feel systemic racism is real. As an example of how our system has allowed one group of people see as superior and one inferior. I’m a member of the Christian church like many of you but I remember growing up and when I looked at God he didn’t look like me and I think that some people interpreted that as they were better because they looked like God and some people who looked like me did not. I think this should be cleared up by history, by standards, by what we teach.”

The Barber5 Republicans had already voted to ban the teaching of CRT in Tennessee public schools. How then did the Barber5 completely fail to understand that Barber’s Christian nationalism point of view is nothing more than camouflage for using the lens of CRT in all aspects of life?