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(WASHINGTON, D.C.) – The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, Monday condemned the recently passed Israel Relations Normalization Act for enabling continued Israeli human rights abuses of Palestinians, bolstering dictatorships in the Middle East, and furthering the Trump Administration’s regional arms deal.
The congressional Act, and the so-called Accords, promote Israeli government relations with authoritarian governments in the Middle East like Bahrain and the U.A.E. – with the promise of greater access to U.S. weapons sales and other enhanced relations – if those dictatorships ignore the Israeli government’s human rights abuses against the Palestinian people.
In the past two years, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Israeli based human rights group B’Tselem, have separately designated the Israeli government’s decades-long human rights abuses against the Palestinian people in both the Occupied Territories and Israel itself as a system of apartheid.
In a statement, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said:
“President Trump’s so-called Abraham Accords was nothing more than an arms deal that gave dangerous weapons and political support to unelected, authoritarian governments in the Middle East so long as they prioritized working with the Israeli government over supporting Palestinian human rights.
“The Biden administration should not embrace this arms deal or otherwise prioritize the Israeli government’s relations with regional dictatorships at the expense of Palestinian human rights. This is not what a foreign policy based on human rights looks like.
“This shows the hypocrisy of rightfully supporting the Ukrainian people against a brutal Russian invasion while doing the opposite when it comes to the Palestinian people and other oppressed nations.”
The act was approved by the U.S. Senate on Thursday as an attachment to the larger omnibus spending bill, which will keep the U.S. government operating through September. CAIR expects the White House to approve the bill shortly.
The omnibus bill also included $1 billion in U.S. tax-payer funds to subsidize and re-arm the Israeli military’s Iron Dome program. CAIR has historically been opposed to subsidizing the Israeli military, which is guilty of war crimes in Gaza and throughout occupied Palestine and apartheid Israel.
[Note: The omnibus bill also approved $250 for the federal government’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program – a program that CAIR encourages American Muslim community organizations to apply to. For more information, read CAIR’s op-ed: “Why and How Muslim Institutions Should Use FEMA Funding to Enhance Physical Security.”]
In January, CAIR joined Jewish Voice for Peace Action, and now over 50 other grassroots and advocacy organizations, in an open letter calling on members of Congress “to embrace a U.S. foreign policy toward Palestine/Israel that is rooted in human rights, justice and equality, and to resoundingly reject any attempts” to further the Trump administration era Abraham Accords or advancing legislation like the Israel Relations Normalization Act of 2021.
CLICK HERE: READ THE FULL STATEMENT AND LIST OF SIGNERS
Two weeks ago, CAIR called on U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to speak against ongoing human rights abuses by the Israeli government, including a recent police assault on a Palestinian girl and other children in Jerusalem during a religious event.
In February, CAIR condemned U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides’ “dismissive and offensive” tweet in response to Amnesty International’s landmark report recognizing the Israeli government’s systemic human rights abuses against the Palestinian people as apartheid.
In January, CAIR called on President Biden and the U.S. Department of State to “forcefully condemn the Israeli government’s ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing of Sheikh Jarrah” – following Israeli police yesterday dragging 15 Palestinian family members from their home, reportedly beating some, including a nine-year-old girl, before demolishing the residence with a bulldozer.
In August, CAIR joined Americans for Justice in Palestine Action and other civil and human rights organizations to protest outside the White House as President Biden welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Washington, D.C.
The groups demanded an end to the Israeli government’s ongoing and systematic violations of Palestinian human rights, and the Biden administration’s unconditional support for Israeli apartheid.
The protest also called for an end to US military and diplomatic support of all human rights violations, including an immediate halt to forced expulsions of Palestinians from their homes in Jerusalem, and the suffocating siege of Gaza.
