Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.
After disrupting a Holocaust Remembrance Day event at U.C. Berkeley, Hatem Bazian told supporters to look at all the Jewish names on the buildings, “take a look at the type of names on the building around campus — Haas, Zellerbach — and decide who controls this university.”
In 2017, Bazian, the founder of hate groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine and American Muslims for Palestine, retweeted anti-Semitic memes from a Holocaust denial Twitter account.
After the backlash, the Islamist hate group leader claimed that he had Jewish friends.
Next year, Bazian’s Jewish friends came out of the closet when he boasted through a megaphone outside Senator Kamala Harris’ office, while protesting in support of Hamas attacks on Israel, that, “AMP and IfNotNow are coming together.”
AMP was Bazian’s own hate group, whose board members had been accused of supporting Hamas. The organization has been sued by the parents of David Boim, an American teen murdered by Hamas.
IfNotNow is an anti-Israel hate group notorious for targeting Jewish charities and organizations. A member of the hate group had just recited a mock Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, for what the two hate groups falsely claimed was a massacre of civilian protesters in Gaza. In fact, Hamas had admitted that 50 of the 62 killed in the attacks on Israel were members of the terrorist organization.
Officially, If Not Now claims to be a Jewish protest movement against the “occupation”. In July, Max Berger, its radical co-founder, faced his own backlash over a tweet declaring that he, “would totally be friends with Hamas”. Berger had praised the violent Hamas riots and claimed that, “the biggest obstacle to peace in Israel-Palestine is the bigotry of American Jews.” The most politically prominent member of IfNotNow was New York State Senator Julia Salazar, the leader of a Christian campus organization, born into a Catholic family, who joined the anti-Israel hate group while falsely claiming to be Jewish.
Whether IfNotNow’s members are Jewish, there is no doubt that they make a point of targeting Jews. That’s what IfNotNow really has in common with Hatem Bazian and members of the AMP hate group.
Neveen Ayesh, the executive director of AMP-Missouri, had tweeted anti-Semitic hate such as, “#crimesworthyoftherope being a Jew”, ” “I hate Jews… I hate Israelis”, and “I just want to spit in their faces. All of them any Jew Israeli.”
As documented by Canary Mission, IfNotNow activist Hal Rose had been interviewed by Ayesh in an anti-Israel conference. Despite her collaboration with an anti-Semitic activist who had called for the murder of Jews, Rose has claimed that ICE’s attempts to detain illegal aliens are just like the Holocaust. She also defended Rep. Omar’s anti-Semitism by arguing that AIPAC’s actions “often fall into antisemitic stereotypes.”
In 2017, IfNotNow had invited Taher Herzallah of AMP to train its members on Islamophobia. Herzallah had posted that “Hamas rockets are an oppressed people’s cry for help” and celebrated photos of wounded Israeli soldiers as a “beautiful site”. He had even defended a California Imam’s call for killing Jews by contending that, “The Jewish community in America overwhelmingly supports Israel.”
Next year, also as documented by Canary Mission, Herzallah was back teaching IfNotNow activists about “Palestinian non-violent resistance and how our community can take action to oppose the Israeli Military’s recent actions.”
At an AMP conference a few years earlier, Herzallah had asked, “What if, as Muslims we wanted to establish an Islamic state? Is that wrong? What if, as Muslims, we wanted to use violent means to resist occupation? Is that wrong?”
The partnership between AMP and If Not Now applies Hatem Bazian’s campus politics to the political process. Like Students for Justice in Palestine, a campus hate group that uses its handful of Jewish members as political shields against accusations of anti-Semitism, IfNotNow’s presence whitewashes a violently genocidal cause. And IfNotNow can go where AMP, with its history of Hamas ties, can’t.
IfNotNow co-founder Max Berger works for Senator Elizabeth Warren. IfNotNow members have been able to pose with Warren and Senator Bernie Sanders, and win their support for their hateful cause. The hate group was also able to corral Biden, Buttigieg and Booker. Though with little to show for it. But despite an outcry from the Jewish community, the Warren campaign failed to dump Berger.
IfNotNow has hired six activists to operate in New Hampshire in order to influence the 2020 election. And that’s why Canary Mission’s campaign to bring attention to its alliance with AMP is so critical.
Canary Mission, a Jewish civil rights organization exposing anti-Semitic leftist hate groups online, has launched a campaign to call attention to IfNotNow’s ties with the Hamas supporters and anti-Semitic racists of American Muslims for Palestine. Its report names 25 AMP figures who have spread anti-Semitic hate and 58 IfNotNow members who have worked with AMP.
The issue is especially urgent since IfNotNow has made it clear that it is seeking to influence the 2020 Democrat primaries and its partner, AMP, has been accused of links to a foreign terrorist organization.
Three years ago, Jonathan Schanzer, a former terror finance analyst for the Treasury Department, and a senior vice president for research at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, testified in Congress that organizations funding Hamas had gravitated to American Muslims for Palestine.
The groups in question include the Islamic Association for Palestine, which had been set up by the Muslim Brotherhood.
Hamas is also an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood.
He noted that, “AMP is a not-for-profit corporation, but not a federal, 501c3, tax-exempt organization. Therefore, AMP does not have to file an IRS 990 form that would make its finances more transparent.”
That makes it hard to know where AMP’s funding is really coming from.
The Muslim Brotherhood is an international terrorist organization whose past members have included Osama bin Laden, along with other key Al Qaeda figures. Its political activists have a history of building networks in order to influence foreign governments and manipulate political elections.
IfNotNow is partnered with a group linked to hostile foreign political interests, and is attempting to influence the upcoming presidential election. And the same Democrats who are still warning about Russian election interference show no interest when they’re the ones being influenced.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has announced a new election security plan, but is still employing Max Berger. Warren’s failure to cut ties with Berger and his IfNotNow hate group raises questions of collusion.
In 2008, a report showing Gazans running a phone bank for Obama failed to lead to any action. If a Hamas ally is once again interfering in a presidential election, it must be meaningfully addressed.
There can be no place for supporters of a foreign terrorist group in the 2020 election.
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