Over the past several years, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has attempted to build a public image as a civil rights organization. In reality, it has become a hub for dangerous rhetoric, particularly against Israel, Jews and their supporters — rhetoric that is no longer just hateful speech but contributing to real-world violence.
A Track Record of Hate
CAIR’s leaders have spent the last several years referring to Zionists as “enemies,” dismissed Israel’s right to self-defense, and objected to Jewish synagogues being protected. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has tracked dozens of examples where the leadership of CAIR representatives used inflammatory and dehumanizing language to describe Israel and those who support it.
These aren’t just policy critiques. This is language that paints Jews, Israelis, and their supporters as existential threats — language that demonizes Jews and encourages acts of extremism. When you call someone a colonizer, an oppressor, a baby-killer, or genocide supporter, you invite violence against them.
And now, we’re seeing the consequences.
From Words to Violence
In recent weeks, two Israelis were shot and killed in Washington, D.C. outside a Jewish cultural event, in what’s being investigated as a targeted hate crime. A few days ago, an Egyptian man firebombed Jewish civilians walking peacefully in Boulder, CO in support of hostages taken by Gazans from Israel.
CAIR was quick to issue a press release condemning the Boulder attack. But make no mistake: the climate that led to these incidents didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was built brick by brick, tweet by tweet, speech by speech — by organizations like CAIR that have spent years demonizing Israel and portraying supporters of Israel as evil, illegitimate, and dangerous.
The Debate And Inversion About Material Support For Genocide
Legally speaking, genocide requires intent to destroy a group “in whole or in part.” Hamas, the political-terrorist group which leads Gaza, is the very definition of a genocidal group. Hamas’s incredible support in Gaza and the West Bank and for the barbaric massacre it conducted in Israel on October 7, 2023, is a condemnation of the gross deformity in Palestinian culture today.
The Stateless Arabs from Palestine (SAPs) are providing material support to Hamas. They elected it to 58% of parliament in 2006, stand as sentries over their terrorist tunnels in Gaza and continue to want Hamas to survive to destroy Israel, even after being pummeled in the war it initiated over 600 days ago.
CAIR’s support for the SAPs and their war to destroy Israel has been unwavering. It supported the October 7 attacks while Hamas was still burning families alive, making then President Biden remove CAIR from the taskforce to combat antisemitism. CAIR continues to support SAPs in the war, and calls Gazans’ failure to commit a genocide of Jews, a genocide perpetrated by Israel, in an attempted absolution via inversion.
CAIR has been careful to avoid direct financial support for Hamas, and has seemingly kept its activities on a vocal level. It had been caught in the past being linked to the terrorist group Holy Land Foundation, which provided material support to Hamas, and is attempting to avoid becoming a banned entity.
To all appearances, to make up for its inability to materially back the antisemitic horde in Gaza, CAIR has ratcheted the language it uses for Israel and its supporters. In doing so, it has created a toxic swamp of Jew hatred in the United States.
Has CAIR provided material support of a genocide of Jews in Israel? It has probably avoided that in a court of law. But abetting a genocide of Jews in the United States? It seems clear that it is doing so, despite the veneer of its condemnation of the Boulder attack. Sanctifying the burning of Jews alive in Israel endorses the burning of Jews in Boulder, despite the wink to the press.
Just a few months before Gazans launched its war of extermination, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres delivered remarks for the anniversary of the 1994 Rwanda genocide against the Tutsi. He flagged hate speech as the “key indicator of the risk of genocide.”
How easily hate speech — a key indicator of the risk of genocide — turns to hate crime. How complacency in the face of atrocity is complicity. And how no place, and no time is immune to danger — including our own.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres
CAIR’s vilification of Jewish groups caught the attention of The Investigative Project on Terrorism back in December 2021. The vitriol from the CAIR has only increased since the October 7 attack.
Why This Matters for America
The attacks in Boulder and Washington aren’t isolated incidents — they’re part of a pattern. Jewish Americans are the most targeted group for hate crimes per capita in the United States – far above Blacks or members of the LGBT community. Yet groups like CAIR continue to push rhetoric that fuels that fire while pretending to stand for peace.
Enough is enough.
We can — and must — defend free speech. But we must also hold public figures and organizations accountable for the real-world consequences of their words. That starts by demanding that CAIR and others stop using anti-Zionism as a cover for antisemitism, stop dehumanizing Israelis and their supporters, and start owning up to the damage they’ve done. Their Diaspora Intifada is killing Jews here in America.
Jews have every right to safety and dignity. If CAIR can’t accept that, then maybe it’s time the rest of us stop accepting CAIR as a legitimate voice in our public discourse.
Related articles:
Colorful Antisemitic Manifestos Are At Your Lips (May 2025)
The Diaspora Intifada (September 2024)
Hamas, CAIR, DSA, Within Our Lifetime, SJP Are All Gunning For Jews (May 2024)
CAIR On October 7 Sadistic Massacre (December 2023)
First One Through 