Three pro-Hamas activists — Salah Sarsour, Rafeeq Jaber, and Abdelbaset Hamayel — hosted fundraisers for Tlaib during her 2018 run for Congress.
Representative Rashida Tlaib, the far-left “Squad” member who has so far refused to specifically condemn Hamas for its slaughter of Israelis on October 7, has fundraising ties to at least three Hamas-linked activists, including one who served prison time for his connection to the terror group, according to a new report from a leading antisemitism watchdog.
The three pro-Hamas activists — Salah Sarsour, Rafeeq Jaber, and Abdelbaset Hamayel — hosted meet-and-greet fundraisers for Tlaib during her initial run for Congress from Michigan in 2018, according to a report released last week by the Canary Mission, a website that compiles dossiers on antisemitic activists and organizations.
Before that, they were leaders or funders of U.S.-based Hamas front groups, including the Islamic Association for Palestine, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, and the American Muslim Society, which were once found liable for financing terrorists.
The Canary Mission also claims that Tlaib’s finance committee chairman promoted her 2018 campaign on a website that spread antisemitic propaganda and supported Palestinian terror groups, including Hamas. And in 2015, Tlaib co-founded the Detroit-based Black4Palestine, which Canary Mission called an “anti-American, anti-Israel and pro-terror hate group.”
Attempts to reach Tlaib and her spokesman on the phone and via email were unsuccessful. Critics have accused Canary Mission of being overly aggressive in its targeting of antisemitism and people who oppose Israel, with some saying the website is akin to a blacklist.
The Canary Mission report comes as Tlaib faces calls for her censure over her response to Hamas terrorists’ targeting and butchering 1,400 innocent civilians in Israel on October 7.
Since the attack, Tlaib has not specifically condemned Hamas, has parroted Hamas talking points, has attacked both the United States and Israel, and is among the far-left lawmakers calling for a cease-fire, which would protect Hamas terrorists from Israel’s military response.
The Canary Mission report shows that Tlaib’s connections to anti-Israel activists and pro-Hamas supporters are not new.
For example, on July 28, 2018, Tlaib’s campaign promoted a benefit for her in Milwaukee, according to an online flyer obtained by Canary Mission. One of the hosts was Salah Sarsour, who, according to a 2001 FBI memo, was a fundraiser for the Holy Land Foundation. The money he raised for the foundation “is actually for HAMAS,” according to the memo, which is posted on Canary Mission’s website, and was first reported by the Washington Examiner last year.
Sarsour also raised money for the Islamic Association for Palestine, Canary Mission reports.
According to a 1999 Israeli Police report obtained by Canary Mission, Sarsour and his brother funneled money to a terrorism suspect and to pro-Palestinian organizations, and Sarsour once spent eight months in a Ramallah prison related to his involvement with Hamas.
When reached by National Review on the phone, Sarsour, a board member of the American Muslims for Palestine, called Canary Mission a “group of myth” and a “group of lying” that will “fabricate stories about anyone” in an effort to “close the eyes of people who want to think.” He called for a cease-fire in the “unjust war” between Israel and Hamas.
When asked repeatedly if he is still a supporter of Hamas, Sarsour refused to answer, accusing a reporter of asking “the wrong question in the wrong time.” National Review spoke to Sarsour shortly after an Israeli airstrike targeted a Hamas leader in a Gaza refugee camp.
“If you are a person of media, you should do your best to help for cease-fire,” he said before hanging up.
In 2019, Tlaib gave an address to Sarsour’s group, American Muslims for Palestine, telling attendees of the annual Palestine Advocacy Day that she feels “more Palestinian” walking the halls of the U.S. Congress than she does anywhere else in the world.
Sarsour has said on Facebook that he and Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour are “family.” Linda Sarsour stepped down from her role as a co-founder of the Women’s March in 2018 and was denounced by the Biden campaign after failing to address antisemitism within the group’s leadership. She is a staunch advocate of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement and has compared Zionism to “white supremacy in America.”
About a week before the 2018 Tlaib benefit in Milwaukee, at least two other Hamas-linked activists — Rafeeq Jaber and Abdelbaset Hamayel — were among the hosts of a meet-and-greet for her in a Chicago suburb, according to a flyer linked to the Canary Mission report.
Jaber also solicited donations for Tlaib’s 2020 reelection campaign on his Facebook page.
Jaber, a co-founder of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), testified in a 2003 deposition that while he was serving as a leader of Hamas front groups, the Islamic Association for Palestine and the American Muslim Society, those groups worked to raise money for and to “promote [the Holy Land Foundation] in every way we can.” In 2004, the groups were found liable by a federal jury for financing a terrorist gunman who opened fire on Jews at a West Bank bus stop in 1996, killing an American teenager, according to the Washington Examiner.
A man who answered a phone linked to Jaber, and who initially said he was Jaber, told National Review that it was the wrong number before hanging up.
Hamayel is also a former leader of the Islamic Association for Palestine and was at one point a representative in Illinois and Wisconsin for an organization called the KindHearts for Charitable Humanitarian Development. The group was dissolved in 2011 after the U.S. Department of the Treasury discovered it was funneling money to Hamas, Canary Mission reports.
Attempts to reach Hamayel were unsuccessful.
The Canary Mission report also ties Tlaib to what it describes as a now-deleted “pro-terror” Facebook page, Palestinian American Congress/USA (PAC-USA), which was created and administered by the chairman of her 2018 campaign finance committee, Maher Abdel Qader.
The page was used to spread antisemitism, to show support for “multiple Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas,” and was a repository for anti-American and anti-Israel hate, according to Canary Mission.
Abdel Qader promoted at least a dozen Tlaib fundraisers on the page, solicited campaign donations for her, and posted campaign photos, Canary Mission reports. Tlaib interacted with PAC-USA at least 18 times, according to Canary Mission, which linked to several archived posts.
Canary Mission also linked Tlaib to Black4Palestine, which it identifies as a “pro-terror, anti-American, anti-Israel activist group” based in Detroit. Black4Palestine has shown support for Hamas and other terrorist groups, and supports Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu Jamal.
During a 2018 campaign event, Tlaib credited black and Hispanic residents of Detroit for supporting her political rise, and said she is “one of the co-founders of Blacks for Palestine.”
Tlaib has a long history of calling Israel an “apartheid state,” and has compared the country to Nazi Germany. “Israel’s government doesn’t value Palestinian lives. It has managed a decades-long ethnic cleansing project funded by the U.S.,” she wrote on Twitter in 2021.
After racist and violent “death to Arabs” marches earlier today in Jerusalem, children in Gaza are being woken by bombs in the middle of the night.
Israel’s government doesn’t value Palestinian lives. It has managed a decades-long ethnic cleansing project, funded by the U.S. https://t.co/LTEVu3Zr9P
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) June 16, 2021
In May, around the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding, Tlaib held an anti-Israel event in Washington, D.C., to commemorate the nakba, an Arabic word meaning “catastrophe” that is used by Palestinians to refer to Israel’s founding. Then-speaker Kevin McCarthy blocked Tlaib from hosting the event at the Capitol, so she moved it to a Senate hearing room.
Tlaib said the event was an opportunity for Palestinian Americans “to tell their stories of trauma and survival.” McCarthy said it was “wrong for members of Congress to traffic in antisemitic tropes about Israel.”
Days after the October 7 attack, when Hamas terrorists slaughtered civilians in Israel, Tlaib was tailed by a Fox News reporter and refused to answer when asked if she believed Israel had a right to defend itself. She then released a statement saying that she grieved for “the Palestinian and Israeli lives lost yesterday, today, and every day,” before attacking the U.S. and Israel. “As long as our country provides billions in unconditional funding to support apartheid government, this heartbreaking cycle of violence will continue.”
She also parroted Hamas talking points, blaming Israel for an airstrike on a Gaza hospital, and has refused to accept reports, including from U.S. intelligence, showing that there was no direct hit on the hospital but rather an explosion in the parking lot caused by a Palestinian terrorist group’s misfired rocket.
Jewish leaders in Detroit previously told National Review that they are “beyond disappointed” in Tlaib’s response to the Hamas attacks, which they said have been “shameful” and “terrible.”