The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) “condemn[ed]” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass Wednesday for speaking out (belatedly) against an antisemitic protest at a synagogue on Sunday, saying the protest was legitimate.
As Breitbart News reported, a mob of pro-Palestinian activists targeted the Adas Torah synagogue in the Jewish neighborhood of Pico-Robertson, blocking the entrance to bar access to an event about buying real estate in Israel.
It was the second protest at a synagogue in Los Angeles in the space of three days. Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officers eventually cleared the protesters, after violence broke out aith pro-Israel counter-demonstrators.
Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and Mayor Bass (D) condemned the protest late on Sunday evening (after Breitbart News reported that neither had done so). On Monday, President Joe Biden also condemned the protest, calling it “dangerous, unconscionable, antisemitic, and un-American” for targeting a synagogue. The Israeli government also weighed in, calling the targeting of a Jewish house of worship, and the subsequent violence, “absolutely shocking.”
But CAIR objected to Bass’s words when she repeated her condemnation of the protest on Monday, June 24.
In a statement, CAIR said:
On June 24, Mayor Bass spoke at a press conference held in response to the violence that broke out when pro-Israel counter-protesters confronted pro-Palestinian demonstrators who were gathered outside the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles to protest a real estate event organized by an Israel-based agency that reportedly markets real estate in Israel and the illegally occupied West Bank.
During the conference, Mayor Bass condemned the pro-Palestinian protesters and characterized the demonstration as “violent” and “abhorrent.” She did not mention the violence that was perpetrated against the pro-Palestinian protesters by pro-Israel counter-protesters or the reports that law enforcement on the scene did little to stop the violence against them.
CAIR denied that the protest was antisemitic, claiming that there were Jews involved in the demonstration. CAIR did not explain why the protesters blocked access to a house of worship rather than protesting peacefully nearby.
As Breitbart News has noted:
In 2007-8, CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in the terror financing trial of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development. That case, in turn, led the FBI to discontinue its work with the organization. In 2009, a federal judge ruled that the government “produced ample evidence to establish” the ties of CAIR with Hamas, the Palestinian terror organization. The United Arab Emirates labeled CAIR a terrorist organization in 2014 (a decision that the Obama administration opposed).
CAIR executive director Nihad Awad praised the Hamas terror attack of October 7, leading the White House to distance itself from the group, which had — bizarrely — been involved in drafting Biden’s antisemitism “strategy.”
The company staging the event, A Home in Israel, placed advertisements in local Jewish newspapers that showed coastal property, not homes in “the illegally occupied West Bank.”
The company has denied advertising real estate on “stolen” land; most of its homes are in sovereign Israeli territory. Past exhibitions have included homes in three “settlements” in the West Bank that are part of the Etzion Bloc, which is an area from which Jews were expelled by the Jordanian army in 1948, and to which Jews returned after the 1967 war; it is expected to be part of Israel in any final peace deal.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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