I'm not the planet's biggest CAIR defender, but if the Trump Admin is going after them, I become skeptical.
Nihad Awad, CAIR’s national executive director, said the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, while Israel does not, in a speech that surfaced Thursday. Awad also said he was “happy to see” the people of Gaza “breaking the siege” on Oct. 7, when Hamas attacked Israel and killed 1,200 people.
Awad released a statement Thursday saying his speech was taken out of context, and that he has condemned the violence demonstrated against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7.
I'd like to see the full transcript of the problematic speech.
Here's his statement:
In a statement, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said:
“During my remarks at a conference two weeks ago in support of Palestinian human rights, I condemned violence against all civilians and all forms of bigotry, specifically including Islamophobia and antisemitism.
“As I said, ‘The hatred, the prejudice, the violence, the discrimination against Jews because of their faith or their life or their religious practices is a hateful mindset, behavior and action. We as human beings, as Muslims, as Palestinians, see it as evil the way it is, and [it] should be condemned because antisemitism is a real phenomenon, a real evil, and it has to be rejected and combated by all people regardless of their faith tradition, ideology, or those people who have no ideology. It is an attack on humanity and should be clearly condemned by all people.’
“Despite my clear remarks, an anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian hate website selected remarks from my speech out of context and spliced them together to create a completely false meaning.
“What I actually said while discussing international law: Ukrainians, Palestinians and other occupied people have the right to defend themselves and escape occupation by just and legal means, but targeting civilians is never an acceptable means of doing so, which is why I have again and again condemned the violence against Israeli civilians on Oct. 7th and past Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians, including suicide bombings, all the way back to the 1990s—just as I have condemned the decades of violence against Palestinian civilians.
“The average Palestinians who briefly walked out of Gaza and set foot on their ethnically cleansed land in a symbolic act of defiance against the blockade and stopped there without engaging in violence were within their rights under international law; the extremists who went on to attack civilians in southern Israel were not. Targeting civilians is unacceptable, no matter whether they are Israeli or Palestinian or any other nationality.”
= new reply since forum marked as read