In yet another sign of the increasing pressure felt by the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the CAIR website has issued a blistering attack on the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish defense organization, as a result of an ADL report which called members of the the Hungry For Justice Coalition “tainted by their own murky associations with radical organizations and individuals.” As previous posts have discussed, the Hungry for Justice coalition is a coalition of U.S. Muslim Brotherhood and allied organizations that has been attacking the government’s prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation in connection with financing of terrorism. The CAIR statement opens by accusing the ADL of “smear and exclusionary tactics” using language common to other attacks on critics:
It is regrettable that the Anti-Defamation League, which claims to defend American civil liberties, would seek to exploit the growing level of Islamophobia in our society by using the same smears and exclusionary tactics that have in the past been used by anti-Semites to target the Jewish community. Unfortunately, the ADL has a history of seeking to marginalize and disenfranchise American Muslims in an attempt to stifle an alternative viewpoint on U.S. policy in the Middle East.
After reciting a long list of alleged ADL misdeeds, the CAIR statement continues by raising the Palestinian issue to attack the ADL:
CAIR and other American Muslim organizations have consistently condemned terrorism, including attacks on Israeli civilians, while the ADL has remained silent about the abuses suffered by the Palestinian people under occupation. CAIR has also repeatedly called for a peaceful and just resolution to the Middle East conflict that takes into account the rights and responsibilities of all parties. For too long, the ADL has allowed its blind support for Israel’s brutal policies toward the Palestinians and its zero-sum approach to public debate on the Middle East conflict to unnecessarily poison relations between the Jewish and American Muslim communities. We call on the ADL to end its campaign of exclusion and to join with American Muslims in seeking to make our nation one that is both safe and free of intolerance and hatred.
The ADL has not been active in recent years with respect to U.S. Muslim Brotherhood groups and it is not clear why the organization issued their statement at this time. However, the strength of the CAIR response indicates how strongly it feels the growing pressure resulting from their recent naming as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land case.