“Just stop partying with Zionists,” tweeted on September 10 the Israel-hating Palestinian-American comedian and political activist Amer Zahr, a longtime Senator Bernie Sanders supporter. Already controversial as a surrogate for Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign during the Democratic Party primary, Zahr has further demonstrated online just how radical the Democrats’ leftist elements have become towards Israel.
Zahr was feuding on Twitter with Wa’el N. Alzayat, the head of the Muslim-American activist group Emgage. Zahr had joined a recent chorus of condemnation from Muslim and non-Muslim activists against Alzayat and Emgage’s affiliations with pro-Zionist groups. These included the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI) of the Jerusalem-based Shalom Hartman Institute, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
Such fulminations follow logically from Zahr’s rejection of any “straight up Zionist, AIPAC [American-Israel Public Affairs Committee], pro-Israel worldview talking point,” as he tweeted on May 7. He had thereby condemned the anti-Semitic Muslim-American Representative Ilhan Omar, long a hero for American Islamists and Leftists, for signing a congressional letter supporting a continued arms embargo on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Most Americans would find banal his quoted statement that “America must continue its longstanding, bipartisan leadership in order to limit Iran’s destabilizing activities throughout the world.” Yet he bizarrely fumed: “No one of conscience should sign a letter that concludes like this.”
By contrast, Israel is demonic in Zahr’s worldview, as he tweeted on June 23, the day that Israeli border police shot Ahmed Erekat, the nephew of Palestinian Authority (PA) leader Saeb Erekat, at a checkpoint near Jerusalem. Like him and Ahmed’s cousin, the radically anti-Israel Rutgers University law professor Noura Erakat, Zahr ignored obvious evidence from a security camera video that Ahmed had attempted a vehicle attack against the police. Instead, they promoted the crazed theory that the Israelis had “murdered” Ahmed when he supposedly suddenly lost control of his car. This fantasy proved to Zahr that “Israel sees Palestinian[s] as subhuman, unworthy of the most basic respect and dignity.”
Unsurprisingly, Zahr has joined many other pro-Palestinian activists on Twitter in asserting a linkage between American-Israeli police training exchanges and American police abuses. This calumny reflects the Deadly Exchange campaign of Israel-haters such as Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), a modern blood libel that attempts to tar Israel as racist and thus include it in the wrath of the Black Lives Matter movement. On June 11 he tweeted that “American police train in Israel. And that needs to stop immediately.”
“All annexed. All stolen,” is how Zahr described Israel’s mere existence within any borders in a July 16 tweet. His Israel city listing included the Mediterranean ports of Akka (Acre), Haifa, and Yafa as well as Israel’s capital, Jerusalem. Correspondingly, he trivialized on October 19 CNN’s 2018 firing of anti-Semitic commentator Marc Lamont Hill. His call then for Israel’s destruction “from the [Jordan] river to the [Mediterranean] sea” supposedly meant for Zahr “Criticize Israel = Get the F-k out!”
For Zahr, Israel is a pariah, as shown by his October 14 call for American officials to boycott any appearance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “racist war criminal.” In an August 22 tweet, he even compared Israel to the celebrity murderer O.J. Simpson:
Saying “Zionism is the belief in a Jewish homeland” is like saying “OJ Simpson was a football player. I mean, it’s true, but it leaves out the really juicy stuff.
Contrastingly, Zahr reiterates a common Palestinian propaganda trope of appropriating the Jew Jesus as a “Palestinian.” In reality, these Muslim-majority Arabs have origins in the seventh-century Islamic conquest of a territory first called “Palestine” by second-century Roman occupiers. While the PA Basic Law contains invocations of Islamic faith and law, Zahr falsely played up the Christmas and Easter Christian holidays as popular Palestinian celebrations in his April 12 and April 19 tweets. He gushed that Jesus inspires Palestinians to “protect his tradition, and we follow in his footsteps,” yet in reality the vanishing Palestinian Christian minority faces severe Islamic persecution.
Amidst Zahr’s skewed, stark moral absolutes, the great bugaboo is “normalization” with Israel. “We call out the Zionist normalization of American Muslim groups (like @EmgageAction) just like we do with Bahrain and UAE [United Arab Emirates],” he tweeted on September 12. The previous day Bahrain had announced it would establish full diplomatic relations with Israel following UAE. Its earlier recognition had prompted him on August 13 to condemn UAE as an “official wing of Israeli hasbara propaganda.” On October 13 he denounced “normalization with Zionists, who justify the murders of my people,” by Emgage for political gain.
Alternatively, to “justify the murders of” Israelis apparently raised no qualms for Zahr in a September 17 tweet. He promoted a petition in support of Leila Khaled, a notorious Palestinian Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist. She had provoked furor with her planned Zoom address to a September 23 San Francisco State University (SFSU) panel. Protests, including legal threats, ultimately moved Zoom, Facebook, and YouTube to refuse the panel’s streaming.
Curiously, no controversy resulted when Zahr hosted a September 20 conversation on his Facebook page with Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian-American convicted of providing financial support to Palestinian Islamic Jihad in 2006. In 2015, this former University of South Florida University professor was deported to his current home in Turkey. Zahr’s second guest was SFSU professor Rabab Abdulhadi, Khaled’s radical soulmate who had organized the planned September 23 SFSU event.
The September 20 trio ranted about Emage’s Zionist affiliations, which Al-Arian analogized to “Uncle Toms.” He condemned Israel’s “colonial-settler state” and Zionism’s “racist ideology,” which Abdulhadi defined as “Jewish supremacy; it’s just like white supremacy.” The issue of “Palestine is a red line,” he stated, which Emgage had violated.
With friends like these, Zahr actually perceives little difference between Democrats and Republicans in the 2020 presidential election year, as he tweeted on August 26:
I can’t think of any good reason to ever stop pointing out that the “establishments” of both the Rep and Dem parties are beholden to Israel & hostile to Palestinians. And even if I could, “Help Joe Biden beat Donald Trump” wouldn’t be on the list.
Contrastingly, most Americans would not have “any good reason” to have someone such as Zahr as a political ally. Yet as intramural Islamist/Leftist quarrels over Emgage indicate, Democrats including Sanders are increasingly dependent upon extremist voters such as Zahr. The American public will have to draw its disturbing conclusions about the Democratic Party accordingly.
mortimer says
It’s queer for a Sunnite Muslim to support an aggressive, bigoted Shi’ite dictatorship in Iran. The Sunnite bloc is now moving to support Israel against Iran, so the Pallies are now the odd man out.
It’s as if the Sunnite world is now saying, ‘Pallies? What Pallies?’
gravenimage says
Of course, most Sunni Muslims still hate Jews. This is, as you well know, a core part of Islam.
livingengine says
CAIR and the Racist Lunatic
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD-HLDoEmss
gravenimage says
Thanks for that link, livingengine.
gravenimage says
Bernie Bro Amer Zahr Hates on Israel
…………….
Appalling, but not surprising. Sanders would have been an even worse candidate than Biden, which is saying a great deal.
OLD GUY says
People like these are a real danger to freedom.