Imag­ine if Al Qaeda funded groups inter­na­tion­ally to warn peo­ple about the wicked nature of Jews. Far­fetched? Not exactly. It’s hap­pen­ing right now except the group isn’t Al Qaeda it’s the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. Harm­less? Try ask­ing those close to for­mer Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent Anwar Sadat. Heck, you could ask Sadat your­self if the Broth­er­hood hadn’t assas­si­nated him in ’81 for sign­ing a peace treaty with Israel. Alarm­ing? I’d say. The Broth­er­hood is the main sup­porter of the Coun­cil of Amer­i­can Islamic Rela­tions (CAIR). And right now CAIR is tak­ing its anti-Israel mes­sage to over 40 loca­tions world­wide that include major uni­ver­si­ties, town squares and shop­ping cen­ters to beg peo­ple to boy­cott, divest and sanc­tion (BDS) Israel.

Don’t be rail­roaded by CAIR’s BDS cam­paign. Most are unaware that CAIR is a spin­off of the Islamic Asso­ci­a­tion for Pales­tine (IAP). This might not raise red flags except that CAIR’s founders, Nihad Awad and Omar Ahmad, both served in the IAP and had close ties to a senior Hamas oper­a­tive, Mousa Abu Mar­zook. In fact, the IAP oper­ated as Hamas’ pub­lic rela­tions and recruit­ment arm in the United States. But there’s more. CAIR’s founders, board mem­bers and affil­i­ates have had numer­ous run-ins with the FBI result­ing in fed­eral indict­ments and prison sen­tences mak­ing their ter­ror­ist front look more like America’s Most Wanted List than a grass­roots orga­ni­za­tion formed to pro­mote a pos­i­tive image of Mus­lims and Islam. Hmm. A makeover for Islam? Are they magi­cians? How can any­one “makeover” using planes as bombs, cut­ting off heads and the like?

Today, CAIR has over 30 affil­i­ates in the US in 19 states and 10 alone are in Cal­i­for­nia. Just to give you an idea of the threat state­side, CAIR’s co-founder, Ahmad, told a Fre­mont, Cal­i­for­nia audi­ence in July 1998:

“Islam isn’t in Amer­ica to be equal to any other
faith, but to become dominant.”

CAIR funds the Mus­lim Stu­dents Union and other orga­ni­za­tions like it that extort the Pales­tin­ian cause via protests at Israeli Con­sulates, Holo­caust Muse­ums, uni­ver­sity protests, free­way blog­ging and vir­tu­ally any­where they can drum up an audi­ence. So don’t be sur­prised if you see the lat­ter two groups this month sup­port­ing the Sixth Annual Israeli Apartheid.

Really? Apartheid? Com­par­ing Israel to South African apartheid is about absurd as com­par­ing Israel to Nazi Ger­many. Detrac­tors that try to dele­git­i­ma­tize Israel or chal­lenge Israel’s exis­tence have repeat­edly made these bizarre com­par­isons. The truth is that these com­par­isons are noth­ing other than moral inver­sions. Ene­mies of Israel (and we all know that this means Jews) are com­par­ing the Jew­ish State to the worst abusers of all time.

This is trou­ble­some because peo­ple begin to believe lies when that is the only story they hear. The truth is that the Arab League offi­cially adopted a boy­cott of Israel just shy of the Jew­ish state’s found­ing in 1948 but hasn’t always enforced it. But the Pales­tin­ian cry to boy­cott Israel of late has hem­or­rhaged into other areas like Britain, Lon­don, Nor­way, South Africa and iso­lated groups in the US. Unless Jew­ish and Israeli activists groups refute Pales­tin­ian claims more could occur. Frankly, boy­cotting Israel is just as abom­inable as boy­cotting Jew­ish shops by the Nazis in the 1930’s.

Luck­ily, Stand­WithUs is edu­cat­ing peo­ple on where the real apartheid is. And guess what? It’s not in Israel. It’s smack dab in the Arab world that has silenced its vic­tims and veiled them so heav­ily that in some cases only their eyes show. But the out­ward appear­ance only begins to tell the story of the degra­da­tion many women expe­ri­ence in Arab League nations. Women most at risk are those that have lim­ited legal rights and actions com­pared with men. This is none other than gender-based oppression.

Why would any­one want to rewind to a time where women receive less hon­or­able treat­ment than a man’s flock of sheep. Vot­ing rights in many coun­tries are reserved for men and don’t even think about own­ing prop­erty, dri­ving a car, going as you please or tes­ti­fy­ing in court. Women in these coun­tries lack equal oppor­tu­ni­ties to edu­ca­tion, wages and career sta­tus. Their lot in life is best described as one where polit­i­cal and eco­nomic seg­re­ga­tion is the norm.

For instance, Sharia law forces women in Islamic coun­tries to cover their faces. Saudi Ara­bia enforces seg­re­gated side­walks for men and women. And many Islamic coun­tries like Jor­dan, Syria, Egypt and Iran restrict women from trav­el­ing with­out a male escort. This back­wards attempt at piety doesn’t gel when the male escort just might be the per­son sex­u­ally abus­ing  women he’s escort­ing. By all accounts, Sharia law has reduced rights of women in Islamic coun­tries to that of minors in West­ern countries.

What’s worse is that domes­tic vio­lence is com­mon in Islamic coun­tries and there are no laws in effect to pro­tect women. What kind of sick soci­ety blames vic­tims for their rape? I mean, really. How can women be respon­si­ble for rape when we know rape is about power? This becomes more ridicu­lous when you con­sider other known facts. Sharia law forces women to wear what looks like a drab cur­tain from head-to-toe. Could it be the provoca­tive eyes? Or maybe the risque eye­brow? The idiocy of this reminds me of Bill Maher’s burka fash­ion show. Or how about the Islamic soci­ety that enforces laws that date back cen­turies where women are mere prop­erty?  And if you think this is hor­rific, I can do one bet­ter. Rapists in many of these coun­tries can escape pun­ish­ment by mar­ry­ing their vic­tim. This means women lose all the way around. Like­wise, there’s a good chance the fam­ily of the rape vic­tim will mur­der her for dis­hon­or­ing her fam­ily (aka “honor killing”). I can’t think of a any­thing worse. This is a night­mare all over again for rape vic­tims.  Many legal sys­tems includ­ing the PA grant light sen­tences for honor killings as Islam teaches that fam­ily mem­bers are respon­si­ble to restore honor to one’s family.

Feel­ing like you’ve landed in the mid­dle of the Salem witch tri­als? Well, hang on. More atroc­i­ties on the way. Any guess how Arab League coun­tries treat gay men and women? If you guessed tor­ture and death, then you won another apartheid prize. That’s right. Iran, Saudi Ara­bia, Sudan, Syria and oth­ers treat homo­sex­u­al­ity as a crime pun­ish­able by impris­on­ment, flog­ging, ston­ing, hang­ing or behead­ing. And who has the best record of enforc­ing tor­ture? Bingo if you guessed Iran. The Iran­ian gov­ern­ment hung about 4,000 homo­sex­u­als between 1979 and 1999.

Local law enforce­ment in Egypt and the PA often arrest gay men and women for lewd con­duct then beat and tor­ture them. Any­one “con­vict­ed” of mur­der­ing homo­sex­u­als receives lenient sen­tences reserved for honor killings. Bar­baric?  I’ll say. Com­par­ing these total­i­tar­ian dic­ta­tor­ships dol­ing out human rights abuses to demo­c­ra­tic Israel where all peo­ple enjoy equal rights, rea­son­able pay, and oppor­tu­nity is like com­par­ing slave own­ers to Mar­tin Luther King. It just doesn’t work.

Israel is a thriv­ing democ­racy respon­si­ble for some of the lat­est life­sav­ing med­ical and tech­no­log­i­cal advances. The world has even dubbed it the Sil­i­con Val­ley of the Mid­dle East. It has the high­est amount of col­lege grad­u­ates per capita. Israel val­ues its peo­ple as it has released hun­dreds of enemy sol­diers for a hand­ful of Israeli sol­diers (even sol­diers bod­ies). Unlike sur­round­ing Arab League nations, Israel is not a mil­i­tant regime that teaches hate and rewards fam­i­lies for sac­ri­fic­ing sons and daugh­ters as human bombs in the name of Allah.

So next time you come across a group like CAIR or the MSU, track the money back. If you can track their fund­ing back to ter­ror­ists like the Broth­er­hood or Hamas, you prob­a­bly want to dis­tance your­self. Instead, ask the hard ques­tions. Where are the bil­lions that for­mer Pres­i­dent Yasser Arafat received? Where are the hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in inter­na­tional aid that Hamas-run Gaza is receiv­ing each year? Hmm. I haven’t heard of much infra­struc­ture cre­ated in Gaza like schools, hos­pi­tals, pub­lic build­ings or other facil­i­ties that peo­ple need to rise above inter­na­tional hand­outs and become pros­per­ous.  Why haven’t the 22 Arab nations lent a hand to raise the refugee pop­u­la­tion? Why can’t they give any land when they are 640 times big­ger than Israel? Why is Iran­ian Pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad send­ing arms/missiles and threat­en­ing to dec­i­mate Israel at every turn? Why are there some 300 tun­nels com­ing from Egypt into Gaza? Why do we hear about the unfair wall in Gaza when there are 21 oth­ers in the world includ­ing the U.S. wall with Mex­ico? On that note, should Egypt and all the other coun­tries remove their wall too?

Instead of Israel, blame the real cause. Blame the Pales­tin­ian lead­er­ship for liv­ing the high life on an inter­na­tional dole while leav­ing their peo­ple in the lurch. Blame sur­round­ing Arab nations for caus­ing the refugee sit­u­a­tion dur­ing the Sixth Day War and repeat­edly refus­ing to lift Gazans. Blame the coun­tries who are send­ing aid to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) for Pales­tine refugees while groups like Hamas and the PA are lin­ing their pock­ets and using them as pawns to bomb Israel. Blame coun­tries fund­ing and arm­ing Hamas. Blame the Hamas-led, UN approved schools that teach hatred of Jews and Israelis to youths at 59 Pales­tin­ian refugee camps. Lastly, blame the ter­ror­ist groups like Hamas that wield their pub­lic rela­tions arms like CAIR and MSU to mis­lead peo­ple around the world into becom­ing the Fourth Reich.