An official at an anti-Semitic organization donated thousands of dollars to Deputy Chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) last year, a new report finds.
Taher Herzallah is the associate director of outreach and grassroots organizing at “the anti-Israel American Muslims for Palestine group who openly advocates for violence against the Jewish state,” The Washington Free Beacon reported. Campaign disclosure documents show that Herzallah donated $2,500 to Ellison in 2017.
“Herzallah is best known as one of the ‘Irvine 11,’ a group of students who were sentenced to three years probation for actions taken to disrupt a 2010 speech by then-Israeli ambassador Michael Oren,” the Free Beacon reports. “He more recently—just a few weeks before his contribution to Ellison—was arrested for disrupting confirmation hearings for U.S. ambassador to Israel David Friedman.”
Key takeaways from the Free Beacon’s report about Herzallah include:
Herzallah has in recent years openly advocated for using violence to destroy Israel, saying in 2014 that “the State of Israel is a lie” and “Israelis have to be bombed.”
Herzallah backs up his calls for violence by arguing “the only language that the state of Israel understands is that of resistance.”
Herzallah has also proposed establishing “an Islamic State” to “use violent means to resist occupation.”
The Free Beacon notes that Ellison has supported the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) campaign whose goal is to destroy Israel. Ellison’s support for the BDS movement continued all the way until he ran for Deputy Chair of the DNC in 2017, when he was blasted for his close ties to radical Islamic groups like the Nation of Islam and the Muslim American Society.
Even the left-leaning Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said that Ellison’s comments about Israel should have disqualified him from the position that he now holds, citing “deeply disturbing and disqualifying” past statements about Israel.
