Meet Khaliq Raufi, member of San Diego County’s Human Relations Commission.
In a meeting focused on previous troubling comments by fellow Commissioner George Khoury, who was accused of antisemitism by calling Israel a “racist, fascist state,” Raufi showed just how lacking in self awareness some Jew haters are.
🤦♂️https://t.co/OraQlCua1y pic.twitter.com/aJ4dowJFQv
— (((David Lange))) (@Israellycool) July 26, 2023
While coming to the defense of a fellow commissioner who had drawn outrage for earlier comments on Israel, Khaliq Raufi made offensive remarks of his own, falsely asserting that Judaism teaches Jews to kill.
Raufi said he’d read a few verses in Deuteronomy, the fifth book of both the Torah and Christian Old Testament. “It states ‘Go kill Palestinians. Wipe them all out,’” Raufi said Tuesday. “So it’s a teaching that they, on a daily basis, teach their followers in their synagogues.”
Audible surprise came from those in the audience. Among them was Sara Brown, regional director of the American Jewish Committee of San Diego, who could be heard saying, “Are you serious right now?”
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“Antisemitism takes many forms, it is ever-shifting — so it’s crucial for the county leadership to understand the ways in which it can manifest,” Brown later told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “The HRC and the leadership failed the Jewish community.”
Her organization and several others, including the Anti-Defamation League of San Diego and Imperial Counties and the Jewish Federation of San Diego, released a statement calling Raufi’s remarks “representative of the historical and false accusation of modern blood libel” — a false accusation of ritual murder long leveled against Jews.
“Blood libels, since especially the Middle Ages, have led to horrific violence, destruction, persecution and massacres of Jewish people and communities,” Brown added.
The joint statement calls on the commission “to take immediate action to address the commissioner’s abhorrent statement by undergoing commission-wide training, education and dialogue to meet its mission as an inclusive and bridge-building entity.”
Raufi could not be reached for comment. His comments will be an agenda item for discussion at the commission’s next meeting on Aug. 15, according to chair Ellen Nash, who said the remarks shocked her.
The rate this Commission is going, every meeting will be focused on antisemitic comments of their Commissioners.
