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.”