The Washington Post is providing cover for antisemites. When the newspaper isn’t busy regurgitating claims by Hamas, it is failing to shine a light on antisemitism in the United States. Take, for example, the Post’s ignoring of a self-styled civil rights organization supporting the largest massacre of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust.
On Nov. 24, 2023 Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), expressed delight about the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre perpetrated by Hamas and other Iranian-backed terrorist groups. Awad’s remarks were delivered before the American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) convention in Chicago.
Awad told the convention that he was “happy to see the people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their own land.” Israel, Awad said, “did not have the right to self-defense.”
The CAIR leader’s decision to praise the October 7th massacre is noteworthy. Hamas burned people alive, raped women before executing them, dismembered parents in front of their children, and murdered children in their nurseries. All these crimes were well documented by the time that Awad spoke in Chicago. Awad knew what he was celebrating.
CAIR’s support for Hamas is unsurprising. Although it is often depicted as merely a civil rights organization for Muslim Americans, the group is far more extreme than many mainstream outlets would have readers believe.
As CAMERA and others have documented, CAIR has a long history of both antisemitism and support for terrorism.
CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation retrial, the largest terrorism financing case in history. As the FBI noted in an April 2009 letter to then-Senator Jon Kyl, during that trial, “evidence was introduced that demonstrated a relationship among CAIR, individual CAIR founders (including its current President Emeritus and Executive Director) and the Palestine Committee. Evidence was also introduced that demonstrated a relationship between the Palestine Committee and Hamas.” Accordingly, the FBI decided to suspend formal contacts with CAIR.
Indeed, no fewer than five former lay leaders or staffers of the organization have been arrested, convicted and/or deported on terrorist-related charges. Multiple CAIR staffers have made antisemitic remarks, including Awad.
In short: CAIR’s praise for the October 7 massacre isn’t surprising. Some, however, were caught off guard when they should have known better.
In May 2023, the White House included CAIR in its National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism—a move that received some criticism at the time.
On December 7, 2023, the Jewish Insider reported that White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates had condemned the CAIR leader’s remarks. “We condemn these shocking, antisemitic statements in the strongest terms,” Bates said. CAIR was also removed from supplemental documents attached to the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.
CAIR’s outrageous remarks and the White House response were covered by several major news outlets, including CNN. However, the Washington Post failed to cover the controversy.
The Post’s failure to report on both the CAIR leader’s remarks and the subsequent White House rebuke is worth noting. As CAMERA has documented, the newspaper has frequently uncritically quoted CAIR, treating them as merely a benign civil rights organization. CAMERA has even provided proof of CAIR’s troubling history to Post staffers, including religion reporter Michelle Boorstein who often favorably cites the organization. Yet, both Boorstein and the Post were silent about CAIR’s praise for the October 7 massacre.
Two months after the horrors of that day, the Washington Post Guild organized a one-day strike as part of contract negotiations. More than 750 employees walked off the job and picketed in front of Post headquarters. Some Post staffers held signs harkening back to the newspaper’s glory days, arguing that they were “fighting to preserve the culture of Martha Graham, Don Graham, Watergate, on and on.” Post employees, they argued, were working hard to “hold power to account.”
“News,” the Post’s onetime publisher Katharine Graham once said, “is what someone wants suppressed. Everything else is advertising.”