The following flyers have been placed all over New York City.
Including the homes of Rebecca Vilkomerson, Executive Director, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), and Hatem Bazian, Chairman of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), leading to this attack by Vilkomerson, JVP and AMP.
Note how they characterize the flyers as “Islamophobic” because they “attempt to link Islam with terrorism” – even though nothing in the flyers actually suggests this.
Instead, let’s look at the accusations in the flyer to see if they are founded.
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)
According to the ADL – which incidentally comes out hard against “Islamophobia” – AMP is not only affiliated with terrorists, but is also antisemitic.
American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) is the leading organization providing anti-Zionist training and education to students and Muslim community organizations in the country. Founded in 2005, AMP promotes extreme anti-Israel views and has at times provided a platform for anti-Semitism under the guise of educating Americans about “the just cause of Palestine and the rights of self-determination.”
Although the size of its membership remains unclear, the Chicago-based non-profit organization operates several chapters across the country. While its educational efforts have been primarily geared toward providing the Muslim community with inflammatory rhetoric and false accusations against Israel to promote advocacy for Palestine, AMP has also placed a heavy emphasis on supporting and helping coordinate the activity of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the primary organizer of anti-Israel events on campus with dozens of chapters.
To mark the start of the 2014-2015 academic year, for example, AMP Chairman and University of California, Berkeley professor Hatem Bazian, announced and promoted an “International Day of Action on College Campuses” to be held on September 23, the day before Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year.
AMP seeks to delegitimize and demonize the Jewish state. Its materials are prominently featured at its events and conferences, in its publications and through materials available on its website.
In March 2013, AMP unveiled a billboard campaign on Metro North stations in suburban New York falsely accusing Israel of “apartheid.” The ad, which was announced on the first day of the Jewish holiday of Passover, features the silhouette of an Israeli soldier aiming a gun at a Palestinian child and called for an end to “unconditional American aid for Israel.”
In March – April 2014, AMP again embarked on an anti-Israel ad campaign on Washington D.C. area bus sides calling for an end to U.S. aid to Israel. The ad ran on a popular tourist route during D.C.’s Cherry Blossom Festival and stated: “We’re seating April 15 so Israelis don’t have to!”
AMP has its organizational roots in the Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), an anti-Semitic group that served as the main propaganda arm for Hamas in the United States until it was dissolved in 2004. Since its creation in 2005, AMP continues to work closely with some former IAP leaders who currently hold positions as AMP board members.
More from Canary Mission:
The AMP board includes at least two members, Salah Sarsour and Osama Abu Irshaid, with ties to the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), whose assets were frozen by the U.S. Treasury in 2001 after the discovery that its money was being funneled to Hamas.
Jamal Said, the imam and director of the Mosque Foundationof Bridgeview, is a frequent speaker and fundraiser for AMP. He was listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the widely-publicized HLF Hamas financing trial. In 2000, he asked attendees at an Islamic Association for Palestine event to “pay for the family of a martyr.” In 2009, he said, “We need to raise our children to know the martyrs of Gaza.”
During the 2011 AMP conference, AMP board member Osama Abu Irshaid argued that launching rockets from Gaza into Israel cities should be legal, saying “So instead of blaming the victim, we should look at the criminal and the murderer. And instead of blaming the victim that even though if they’re firing rockets, regardless, now this is according to the international law should be a legitimate resistance, because they are under occupation.”
Archbishop Atallah Hanna, the Archbishop of Sebastia from the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem, was arrested and charged with ‘suspicion of relations with terrorist organisations’, ‘illegally entering an enemy country’ (i.e. Syria and Lebanon) and ‘incitement’ by the Israeli government. As an official speaker at the 2013 annual AMP conference he said, “There are more than 8,000 Palestinian prisoners in the prisons of the Occupation. They are the pick of Palestinian youth, of honorable strugglers, who served the Palestinian cause. They were sentenced to the prisons of the racist Occupation because they defended the cause of their people, because they resisted, because they struggled, because they waged Jihad.”
Sarah Mufid Abdulqader, daughter of one of the convicted HLF members mentioned above, Mufid Abdulqader, told the 2013 annual AMP conference audience: “It’s an honor to have a father that was put in jail”, Sarah Abdulqader said, and she asked Allah “to free all political prisoners of Palestine in Palestine and in the United States.”
In July 2013, AMP National Campus Coordinator Taher Herzallah praised Israeli casualties of Hamas attacks. He posted photos of injured Israeli soldiers on his Facebook and wrote underneath, “The most beautiful site in my eyes.” The post was removed after it got attention.
In April 2014, AMP hosted a fundraiser dinner praising Rasmieh Odeh, a convicted terrorist directly responsible for two deaths in an Israeli grocery store bombing, who was later convicted in November 2014 of immigration fraud by an American federal court.
The website Hamas on Campus has more on AMP’s support for terrorism.
Hatem Bazian
AMP Chairman Hatem Bazian did indeed call for a violent uprising in America. There’s even video of it.
https://youtu.be/KT4wxD8UB4g
And there’s more. According to the Zionist Organization of America,
Hatem Bazian has held leadership positions in groups with ties to terrorist organizations; founded a student group dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish state; seeks to harm both the Israeli and Palestinian-Arab economies; and spreads anti-Semitic biases.
Bazian has been involved in groups connected to U.S.-designated terrorist organizations.
- While studying at UC-Berkeley, Bazian headed the Muslim Student Association (MSA), a student group originally founded and funded at Berkeley by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The Muslim Brotherhood has provided the basis for all modern-day Sunni Islamic terrorist organizations such as Hamas, Al Qaeda, and Islamic Jihad. According to Richard Clarke, a former national coordinator for security under Presidents Clinton and Bush, “all of these organizations are descendants of the membership and ideology of the Muslim Brothers.”- Bazian spoke at a KindHearts fundraising event entitled ‘Palestinians in Agony!’ in June 2004.
In 2006, KindHearts’ assets were frozen by the U.S. Department of Treasury for allegedly transmitting money to terrorist organizations. According to the Treasury, KindHearts was trying to replace the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, the main fundraising division of Hamas.—
Bazian spreads dangerous anti-Semitic messages on campuses.
- While at SFSU in the 1990s, Bazian accused his student newspaper of being full of “Jewish spies.”
- Bazian blocked the approval of a Jewish student to the Student Judicial Council at SFSU in the 1990s using the reasoning that the student supported the Jewish State and was therefore racist.
- Bazian conducted a national speaking tour in 2011 titled “Never Again to Anyone,” which compared Israel’s actions to the Holocaust
Jewish Voice For Peace (JVP)
It is no secret that JVP heralds terrorists and those who support terrorism as heroes.
They just recently hosted and praised terrorist Rasmea Odeh.
JVP are also one of the organizations endorsing the campaign to free arch terrorist Ahmad Sa’adat.
In other words, the content of the flyers is true and accurate.
As for Vilkomerson’s suggestion these flyers are somehow cowardly, this is coming from the executive director of the organization that not long ago impersonated the New York Times to demonize Israel.
