The Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) has expressed its appreciation to the members of Congress who wrote a letter to President Obama asking him to lift the blockade on Gaza. According to an MPAC announcement:
The Muslim Public Affairs Council today applauded 54 members of Congress who signed a letter to President Obama asking his Administration to lift the blockade on Gaza. Led by Congressmen Keith Ellison (D-MN) and Jim McDermott (D-WA), the letter to the President reads in part, “The unabated suffering of Gazan civilians highlights the urgency of reaching a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and we ask you to press for immediate relief for the citizens of Gaza as an urgent component of your broader Middle East peace efforts.” “Ending the situation in Gaza is absolutely necessary to achieving a sustainable Mideast peace,” Executive Director Salam Al-Marayati. “We recognize and applaud these elected officials for seeking to end the ongoing humanitarian crisis. We must continue to support our elected officials who uphold the human rights of the Palestinian people and hold those officials accountable who do not uphold those rights.”
MPAC was established initially in 1986 as the Political Action Committee of the Islamic Center of Southern California whose key leaders likely had their origins in the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Since that time, MPAC has functioned as the political lobbying arm of the U.S. Brotherhood. MPAC has opposed virtually every count-terror initiative undertaken or proposed by the U.S. government. At times this opposition was said to be on civil-rights grounds but, just as often, MPAC claimed that U.S. counter-terror efforts were aimed at the U.S. Muslim community itself. MPAC has consistently supported and facilitated terrorism by supporting terrorist organizations and, more broadly, constructing an elaborate ideology defending the use of violence by Islamists and Islamist organizations. More than any other U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organization, MPAC has developed extensive relationships with the U.S. government which have included numerous meetings with the Department of Justice and the FBI.
Previous posts have discussed Congressman Ellison’s ties to U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organization such as the Muslim American Society who paid for his pilgrimage to Mecca and his appearance at a fundraiser for the Council on American Islamic Relations.