By CAIR
Photos: Wikimedia Commons\YouTube Screenshots
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, this week called on the Biden administration to “immediately sanction” far-right Israeli officials who enable violence by illegal Israeli settlers against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank.
President Biden issued an executive order Thursday imposing sanctions on Israeli settlers who have been attacking Palestinians in the occupied West Bank. According to Politico: “The designated individuals’ property held in American financial institutions will be frozen and blocked, the officials stated, while foreign nationals will be prohibited from making payments or providing services to the designated individuals.”
In a statement, CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said:
“The Biden administration should use this executive order to immediately sanction Israeli government officials who are enabling settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir. Just as importantly, President Biden must end American support for the Israeli government’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza. It makes no sense for the Biden administration to oppose killing Palestinian civilians in the West Bank while enabling the killing of Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”
Mitchell added that in 2022, CAIR called on the Biden administration to stand up to the then new Israeli government composed of openly racist and genocidal far-right politicians.
He noted that CAIR recently called on President Biden to personally condemn an Israeli massacre of Palestinian civilians in Gaza who were waiting for humanitarian aid in Gaza City.
In December, CAIR called Israel’s massacre of at least 70 people in a strike on Gaza’s Maghazi refugee camp and murdered a number of pregnant women.
Also in December, CAIR calls for a United Nations investigation of allegations that Israeli forces in Gaza carried our summary executions of unarmed Palestinian men in front of their family members.
Last week, CAIR welcomed a preliminary ruling ICJ, the UN’s principal judicial body, that declares South Africa’s charge of genocide against the Israeli government plausible.
Earlier this week, CAIR condemned the Biden administration’s “morally depraved and glaringly inconsistent” decision to engage in collective punishment against Palestinians by cutting funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) in response to unsubstantiated and suspiciously timed allegations made by the Israeli government.
