A donor who gave money to Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D-MI) campaign as recently as last month not only has been accused of having financial ties to the terrorist group Hamas but also has posted links to an Islamist preacher who has said he wants Muslims to be responsible for the next Holocaust, The Washington Free Beacon reports.
Salah Sarsour donated $1,000 to Tlaib’s reelection campaign on Dec. 12, according to the Federal Election Commission’s website. Cameron Cawthorne of the Beacon notes that Sarsour “posted on his Facebook page in support of radical Egyptian preacher Yusuf al-Qaradawi.”
Cawthorne points out that in 2016 Sarsour posted a clip on his own Facebook page of al-Qaradawi, who has been banned from the U.S., speaking. He also noted that Sarsour lauded al-Qaradawi for getting his audiences “closer to Allah with love and knowledge” and enthused that he had “kissed” al-Qaradawi’s hand.
Cawthorne noted, “During a 2009 speech that aired on Al Jazeera, al-Qaradawi said he wants Muslims to be responsible for the next Holocaust, adding he ‘will shoot Allah’s enemies, the Jews, and they will throw a bomb at me, and thus I will seal my life with martyrdom.’”
In 2016, Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the Treasury Department, informed the House Foreign Affairs Committee:
Salah Sarsour is an AMP (American Muslims for Palestine) board member. A 2001 FBI memo to the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) describes how Sarsour’s brother, after being arrested by Israel in 1998, told Israeli officials about Sarsour’s “involvement with Hamas and fundraising activities of HLFRD [Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development].”
At AMP’s 2015 conference, Sarsour was identified as the conference chairman. On the advertising and sponsorship page for the conference, non-profits that wish to donate to or advertise with AMP are instructed to contact Sarsour. Sarsour told Al-Jazeera “that the conference aims to keep up with and support the Palestinian people’s continuous intifada.”
Sarsour’s past is cause for concern. According to Israeli sources cited in a book by former FBI and U.S. Treasury official Matthew Levitt, Sarsour’s brother, Jamil Sarsour, told Israeli authorities that he and Salah used their Milwaukee furniture store’s bank account to pass money to Adel Awadallah, who was then a leader of the Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s armed wing.
According to Jamil, Salah Sarsour and Awadallah had become friends while sharing a prison cell. Salah Sarsour spent eight months in jail in Israel for his Hamas activity.
As The Daily Wire reported on Monday, Tlaib promoted a false blood libel story last week demonizing Israelis for the death of a young Palestinian boy. The tweet that Tlaib promoted stated: “KIDNAPPED & EXECUTED 7 year old #Palestinian child Qusai was kidnapped by a Herd of violent #Israeli settlers, assaulted & thrown in a water well was found this morning frozen to death in Beit Hanina, #Jerusalem after #Israeli forces assaulted search teams.”
The Jerusalem Post reported, “In fact the boy was found by Israeli emergency services dead in a cistern on Saturday morning after going missing on Friday. Nevertheless, some Palestinian social media accounts incited against Israel, with small clashes resulting in East Jerusalem. The tweet accusing Israelis of kidnapping and murder and which actually shows the boy’s body being taken from the cistern by medical personnel has now been viewed 125,000 times. It has led to an outpouring of incitement against Israel.”