[Editor’s note: Make sure to read Daniel Greenfield’s masterpiece contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
“This is not a battle of good versus evil,” Ramzi Kassem wrote in an op-ed that appeared on September 17, 2001. “The perpetrators were probably not driven to their actions by some intrinsic evil or inherent hatred of the good United States.”
He went on to argue that the Al Qaeda attack a week earlier was the result of the “resentment these terrorists felt towards the United States” as a result of “our country’s policies.”
Two decades later, Kassem, now a CUNY law professor and prominent terror lawyer, claimed in a Washington Post op-ed that, “since 9/11, the government has consistently used the law to enable, operationalize and justify the violence it has deployed against Muslims.”
And that, “the legacy of 9/11 ought to be recounted primarily through the stories of Muslims the world over who have largely paid the price of American power and prosperity.”
Next year, Ramzi Kassem was named by the Biden administration as a Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration at the White House Domestic Policy Council.
A Syrian national who grew up in Lebanon, Iraq and other Islamic terror states, arriving in this country to attend college and spread terrorist propaganda before becoming a terror lawyer, Kassem seems like a national security risk rather than a White House Policy Council adviser.
Ramzi Kassem had boasted of having “held the record for the longest delayed security clearance in the Guantánamo setting”, but even that does not seem to have dissuaded the Biden administration from bringing him on board.
While some leave behind the extremist views of their college years, Ramzi Kassem instead built a career around them, becoming a noted terrorist lawyer whose Gitmo inmate clients included .
Ahmed al-Darbi, an Al Qaeda terrorist and the brother-in-law of one of the hijackers who flew a plane into the Pentagon, and who was himself a key figure in the bombing of an oil tanker.
Some lawyers represent paying clients, but Kassem, like many terror lawyers, worked pro-bono, and his advocacy echoed his pre-existing support for Islamic terrorism.
In his columns, as in his activism, Ramzi Kassem repeatedly justified terrorism as a reaction to its victims. “Terrorism is but one of many reactions to oppression and dispossession and not their cause.”
While at Columbia University, Kassem co-founded Turath, an association of Muslim students, and then Qanun at Columbia Law. A fellow student described these hateful groups as having brought “under the guidance of Mr. Kassem… speakers to this campus that support violence against American and Israeli civilians… defended the genocidal program of Hamas.”
The Columbia letter noted that, “one speaker, disavowed by many of America’s pro-Palestinian activists, prior to being invited to Columbia, had said that Jews exist only to ‘dip their matzahs in the blood of Palestinian children.’”
This antisemitic blood libel didn’t seem to have interfered with Kassem’s career prospects.
Kassem’s college obsession with Jews extended even to condemning Columbia’s dining hall for serving “Israeli Wrap” sandwiches and demanding that the name be changed to the “more inclusive” Middle-Eastern Wrap. But not all of Kassem’s hostility to Jews was non-violent.
In his own columns for the university paper, Kassem boasted of throwing stones at Israel.
“On a sunny day in early August, I headed down to the Lebanese-Israeli border at Fatima’s Gate with busloads of Palestinian adolescents from the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and we threw some stones,” he described. “Lebanese civilians, young and old, were playfully going through the motions… Having lived through my fair share of Israeli bombardments, raids, and sieges, I figured I might as well partake in the festivities.”
Even more violent acts of antisemitic murder found a ready defense.
“Some Palestinians resort to terrorism for many of the same reasons that people from various backgrounds have in the past: namely, despair and much endured suffering,” Kassem argued. “One must ask oneself how and why a human being was pushed to the limit and saw no way out of a situation short of blowing himself or herself up.”
These defenses of Islamic terrorism came within the larger context of calls to eliminate Israel and accusations of ethnic cleansing, while blaming Islamic violence against Jews, even before the creation of Israel, on its Jewish victims.
Kassem was named a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, a project of a foundation by Soros’ brother, notorious for its cultivation of political extremists hostile to America and its values, and worked with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a former Communist organization.
After law school, Ramzi Kassem founded Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) at CUNY to provide free legal aid to Muslims accused of terrorism.
The City University of New York had become notorious for its antisemitic atmosphere and Kassem signed on to a letter in defense of antisemitic Islamist activism alongside known hate groups and terrorist support organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, Al-Awda, Within Our Lifetime, and Samidoun: designated by Israel as a terrorist organization.
The letter accused Jews of using antisemitism to “repress activism and harass and threaten Palestinian students and Muslim students”.
Across the decades, Kassem’s college advocacy against Jews had come full circle from student to professor. And his war against this country has taken him from Gitmo to Washington D.C.
The Biden administration chose to elevate a vocal advocate for Islamic terrorists as a Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration at the White House Domestic Policy Council at a time when there are grave concerns about the penetration of terrorists through the unguarded southern border.
The Biden administration claims that it wants to protect the homeland and that it supports Israel. Putting Ramzi Kassem on its Domestic Policy Council shows those assertions to be lies. Its Policy Council includes a man who advocated for Gitmo terrorists and threw rocks at Israel.
Ramzi Kassem’s presence on driving the immigration agenda at the White House Domestic Policy Council is hard evidence that the Biden administration is putting the rights of Muslim terrorists ahead of the safety and welfare of Americans.
The White House Domestic Policy Council coordinates and develops the Biden agenda. Including a vocal activist against national security will have consequences. And the Biden administration will not be able to play innocent when one of the Islamic terrorists it allows into the country kills Americans.
John Sweet says
CUNY Law professor. What a surprise.
Daniel Greenfield says
it’s like Al Qaeda City down there
Mo de Profit says
Where did he get the money to provide all these legal services for free? Was it the same place where Biden and Obama got their millions while working for the government their entire lives?
Daniel Greenfield says
it’s a government funded university so partly taxpayers
also grants from the usual lefty foundations including the Pillars Fund which serves as a gateway for moving lefty foundation funding to Islamic groups
I’ve written about it before but it deserves its own article
Steven Brizel says
This administration is infested with supporters of terrorism
Guy Jones says
That’s why I fairly and accurately refer to these vile, feckless and morally despicable reprobates, as “Dhimmi-crats.”
Kasandra says
It is infested with people whose goal is the collapse of Western Civilization. That is common goal of both the Left and Islam. That’s why you see the insane Leftism and sympathy for, and support of, Islam throughout the Biden maladministration. I don’t know what Biden’s true beliefs are and I doubt he has any except advancement and enrichment of himself. But he seems to have made a Devil’s bargain with the far far Left in his Party in which they’d get him over the finish line and he would do whatever they want.
Intrepid says
Why do we let Muslim criminals run free in this country under the guise of the law?
Daniel Greenfield says
The Left is filled with their allies and the GOP with their useful idiots.
Algorithmic Analyst says
Muslims always see themselves as victims.
Daniel Greenfield says
people who always see others as out to get them tend to be abusers
Algorithmic Analyst says
Excellent point, which hadn’t occurred to me previously.
ed says
Moslems are an invading army and should be treated as such
Tex the Mockingbird says
Biden like Clinton(Bill)and Obama selects their guests from the very bottom of the Trash Barrel
Kasandra says
Their motto in hiring decisions is “Why not the worst.”
mj says
This savage, his disciples and accomplices are no monotheists. Anyone justifying and celebrating murder is no monotheist. They worship hatred and death. Their thirst for blood will never be quenched. So, after reading this article, I realized that Jewish blood is only an appetizer.
These savages will crave more blood.
This immense evil is savagery for savagery’s sake. It’s more than anti-Semitism, which masks the ultimate goal of creating an absolutely evil world. Let’s say anti-Semitism is the prototype.
Anti-Semitism easily takes hold if people let it take hold of them. They don’t question false assumptions. The ignorant want to believe the lies and the blood libels. The pseudo monotheists give in to the dark side and, in its grip, let latent, hidden hatred be nurtured and whipped up into a frenzy.
Evidently, Biden & Co. are not just woked up, they’re whipped up. This suits their purposes – the perfect domestic policy complement to their blatantly anti-Semitic foreign policy towards Israel.
But don’t they and all Americans realize that they’re next on the menu?
There really should be global branches of Anti-Semites Anonymous……
Liat says
It’s (radicals’) Arab Racism stupid. The same goes for HRW’s Omar Shakir (pushing the Apartheid slur since his 2010 activities) or all Arab terror attacks and nassacres since…1920.
Avi says
The core at the Middle East ‘conflict’ is about anti-Jewish bigotry
* The intolerance started mainly since Sheikh Suleiman al-Taji al-Faruqi wrote a hateful poem in Falastin newspaper on November 8, 1913 mixing Quranic ideas with old anti Semitic stereotypes (leading to the 1914 closure of the newspaper by the Turks for inciting race-hatred). Then by Haj Amin al-Husseini in the 1920s. The Mufti also chose to “believe” in ancient blood libel.
* The brunt of the victims in 1920, 1921 and especially in Hebron 1929 massacre, were non-Zionist pious-Jews.
* March 1933, within weeks of Hitler’s coming to power, the Mufti already approached German’s council and offered alliance.
* May 1933, Falastin newspaper glorified Hitler as “noble” and justified his persecution of the Jews.
* September 1933, Eissa Bendak, editor of the radical bi-weekly Sawt Al Shaab has left for Paris to receive instructions from a group of Germans and Arabs on “conducting Nazi propaganda” in Palestine.
* Ibrahim a-Shanti’s 1934 founded the newspaper ‘Ad Difa’a’ was very pro Hitler.
(Asides from the instances he had to moderate his tone under British censorship and threat of banning).
* May 1935, when delegates returned from an Arab youth conference in Haifa, their train to Afula bore a swastika chalked on one of the coaches with an Arabic inscription beneath it reading “Germany over All.”
* June 1935, Arabs in Haifa form Nazi club, called ‘Red Moon,’ well funded by the Nazis. “Groups of brown-clad Arab youths are now organized.”
* 1936, Grand Mufti with Jamal al-Husseini established the Futuwwa modeled on Hitler Youth.
* 1936-1937, Hitler’s book Mein Kampf – a best sellers among radical Arabs in Palestine.
* Jan 1937, Istiqlal’s Auni Abd al-Hadi told Nazi magazine: “Arabs Like the Nazis.”
* 1937, ahead of the Bludan conference, the Grand Mufti, (after Nashashibi left the Arab Higher Committee) sent a warning (officially by the Arab Higher Committee) to other Arab countries (including Lebanon) in the Middle East not to accept any Jews. The Mufti sent also a hate booklet to the conference. It was used in his 1943 recruitment of SS Bosnian Muslims.
* 1937, Walter Doehle, German consul in Jerusalem: ‘Palestinian Arabs in all social strata have great sympathies for the new Germany and its Führer…’
Merira says
Core of “conflct” is bigotry – Part II
* September, 1938, around 100 representatives from Arab Palestine at Nazi conference in Nuremberg.
* May 1939, Istiqlal’s Auni ‘abd al-Hadi, meets Nazi officials in Berlin.
* Hitler’s “Voice of the Arabs” radio, started with Yunis Behari, and was especially reinforced by the Mufti after 1941. His hate broadcasts from Berlin, in which he also called on all Arabs to “kill the Jews wherever they are – this is pleasing to Allah”.
* A survey by Mr. Sari Sakanini in Palestine in February 1941 found that 88 percent of the Arabs supported the Nazis.
* 1941, together with other Arabs, (including from Palestine: Akram Zuaiter and Darwish al-Miqdadi), instigate to the Farhud massacre that happened in June 1941 in Iraq, where some say even a thousand Jews died. There was gang rape and children were thrown into the water in front of their parents.
* The married immoral Mufti spent the war years 1941-1945 in Berlin, surrounded by German women and received a lot of money.
* 1939-1944, the Nazi periodical in Arabic, “Barid al Sharq” (The Orient Post, by Kamal al Din al Galal) which included contributors, Shakib Arslan, the Mufti and Younes Bahri.
* 1942 – The mufti plans to build crematoria, like Auschwitz, for the Jews of the Middle East, in the Dotan Valley.
* 1943, the mufti with Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, accompanied by Nazi officials, visits the Trebbin concentration camp. In addition to eyewitnesses, another visit to the third Auschwitz – “Monowitz”.
* 1943 between the spring and October 29: for six months the mufti urged the Nazis to bomb cities with Jewish settlements, especially Tel Aviv. In addition, he suggested carrying out the attack on November 2 – the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration.
* By the way, not only the mufti worked with the Nazis. There were like 200 Arabs with him, mainly from Palestine.
* After the war, the mufti won the jubilation of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
The notorious anti-Semite Nazi Johann von Leers (Omar Amin) was accepted in Egypt by the Mufti and he became the political adviser of the Department of Information under Muhammad Naguib and Gamal Abdel Nasser. He also helped Nazi Ernst-Wilhelm Springer escape to Egypt.
Merira says
Core of “conflct” is bigotry – Part III
* 1946, although the Mufti “was not allowed to enter Palestine, the Arab League now installed him as the new leader of the Palestinian Arabs with an annual budget of £10,000.”
* The mufti’s student, Ahmad Shukeiri (who helped the mufti’s gang kill his brother Dr. Anwar Shukeri on June 8, 1939) and his accomplice Jamal al-Husseini, both justified the Holocaust in 1946.
* 1947, Arabs recruit ex Nazis to fight the Jews. All in all. Some research showed, around 1,000 of them.
* 1947, Issa Nakhleh would work for the Mufti in the Arab Higher Committee, then agitating in Argentina, then coming back to the US and spread propaganda for decades (1960s, 1970s, 1980s) with neo-Nazis.
* 1947-1948, Arab leadership including the Mufti, told the Arabs of Palestine to leave the land till “victory.”
* The Arab League worked with Neo Nazis on South America in the 1960s. And the Palestinian terrorists were linked with Neo Nazis in the 1960s such as with François Genoud [Genaud], the PLO linked with Nazis or/and neo-Nazis in the 1970s-1980s, among them: Otto Ernst Remer, L’Oeuvre Francaise, Karl-Heinz Hoffmann, Udo Albrecht, Willi Pohl / Voss (pseudonym E. W. Pless).
A. Meira says
Core of ‘conflict’ is bigotry – part IIII
* Ask yourself, had all the Israelis been ethnicaly Arab or most of them Muslim, would there then even be a conflict? = “Arab racism!”
* Returning to a historic homeland has nothing to do with “racism” and the 2001-Durban Hitlerist propaganda especially by Arab Lawyers Union and others, showed the bitter irony of racists masked as “anti-Racist”.
* One can not detach bigotry from Ahmad Shukairy’s invention of the “apartheid” false-analogy in 1961 (a little bit over a year after he had promoted a neo-Nazi group and quoting the Sep.16.1962 New York Times article which in fact states the Nazi nature of the group), or of Omar Shakir’s anti-Israel activities since 2010 and abusing the HRW group in 2021 for this propaganda in falsifying or misrepresenting facts and via changing the Apartheid definition to fit his propaganda.
* Praising Hitler, denying the Holocaust and creating (hateful, racially motivated) fake comparisons to clashes and security measures are all happening at once.
* If anti-Israel bigoted propaganda had any truth in it, then why do the Israelis keep going into trouble, risking its soldiers lives, and even inventing measures only to minimize Arab casualties when going after terrorists?
How much does the Arab world know about preferential treatment for Arabs over Jews, including in courts’ decisions, academia, employment and more?
* If the Arab leadership or anti-Israel “activists” were worried for Arab lives more than defaming Israel – then, when was the last time it condemned the use of civilians as human shields, school, places of worship, or shooting from densely populated areas?
* The 113 UNRWA teachers between 2015-2022 engaging in pro terror and many in anti-Semitism, including pro Hitler propaganda.
* By the way, the TikTok (since April 2021) attacks by many Arabs and getting thousands of feedback from other Arabs are attacks against pious Jews in Jerusalem who (most) are not Zionist and even refuse to serve in the IDF. The same is the, (past and present), anti-Semitic cartoons in Arab media often of clearly visible such pious Jews. Worst is, the terror massacres specifically targeting such communities in various cities. Which again, shows the underlying ‘Arab racism’ motivation behind it all, in principle.