Why Are the Left’s Favorite Muslims Anti-Semites? https://mosaicmagazine.com/picks/politics-current-affairs/2019/09/why-are-the-lefts-favorite-muslims-anti-semites/

September 20, 2019 | Siraj Hashmi
About the author:

On Monday, the organization that runs the now-annual anti-Trump Women’s March announced that, after a variety of complaints, it had severed its ties with three of its four former leaders: Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, and Linda Sarsour. Presumably among those complaints were Mallory’s close association with Louis Farrakhan and Sarsour’s record of venomous hatred of the Jewish state. Siraj Hashmi comments on what followed:

Monday’s announcement should have been a turning point for a movement that has been tainted by the recurring strain of anti-Semitism. Instead, in a move both remarkable and disheartening, the Women’s March has managed to find yet another anti-Semitic Muslim woman to serve on its board.

Zahra Billoo [is] an attorney and the executive director of the San Francisco chapter of the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Billoo’s hateful and anti-Semitic tweets, particularly in relation to Israel, were brought back into focus when she was promoted to the Women’s March board. In a June 2012 tweet, [for instance], Billoo wrote, “Apartheid Israel kills children as a hobby.” . . . Billoo also made direct comparisons between Israel and the terrorist Islamic State (IS), posting on Twitter, “Who has killed, tortured, and imprisoned more people: apartheid Israel or IS?”

In the intervening days, the organization announced that it was removing Billoo from her position; but, to Hashmi, the incident points to a larger problem, which he sees as well in the progressive left’s elevation of Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota’s Attorney General Keith Ellison:

Unfortunately, Billoo’s racist tweets do not stand alone. They seem to reflect the views of most prominent Muslims in America on the left. . . . [I]t’s disheartening, not least because not all Muslims are anti-Semitic. The left’s apparent alliance with American Muslims who hate Israel and are openly anti-Semitic is doing a great disservice to all Americans, including Americans who are Muslim like me, and is damaging to the fabric of our country.

Read more on Forward: https://forward.com/opinion/431550/when-the-left-only-amplifies-anti-semitic-muslims-they-are-betraying/