A trending online petition calls on U.S. Attorney General William Barr and Special Envoy for Antisemitism Elan Carr to investigate Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN-05) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-13) and their ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
The petition, which had more than 12,000 signatures at the time of publication, was started by Stop Antisemitism and describes CAIR’s connections to the terrorist organization Hamas.
“In 2007, CAIR was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the case that found Holy Land Foundation responsible for siphoning over $12 million to Hamas,” the petition states.
It goes on to describe Omar and Tlaib’s connections to CAIR, noting that it has “provided thousands of dollars directly and indirectly to support the campaigns of Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – both of whom have received awards and recognition by the organization.”
“There’s no doubt that Tlaib and Omar have close-knit ties with Hamas-affiliated CAIR and we, as concerned citizens, call on Attorney General and U.S. Special Envoy for Antisemitism to investigate these ties,” the petition concludes.
Liora Rez, co-founder of Stop Antisemitism, told The Jerusalem Post that her organization is “very excited” by the traction the petition has received in just over a week.
“But what we want is for Barr and Carr to investigate CAIR’s ties to Hamas and how Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are involved with this organization, which we feel is extremely troubling,” she said.
As The Minnesota Sun reported Monday, Omar was the keynote speaker for CAIR’s Fourth Annual Valley Banquet in Los Angeles Saturday. She spoke alongside Hassan Shibly, chief executive director of CAIR-Florida, who has said that the “U.S. enables Israel to slaughter children” and “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God and humanity.”
During her speech, Omar placed the blame for the New Zealand massacre on President Donald Trump.
“We all kind of knew this was happening, but the reason I think that many of us knew that this was going to get worse is that we finally have a leader, a world leader in the White House, who publicly says Islam hates us—who fuels hate against Muslims, who thinks it is OK to speak about a faith and a whole community in a way that is dehumanizing, vilifying, and doesn’t understand, or at least makes us want to think that he doesn’t understand the consequences that his words might have,” Omar said.
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Anthony Gockowski is managing editor of Battleground State News, The Ohio Star, and The Minnesota Sun. Follow Anthony on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
