When pressed by reporters, CAIR representatives blandly condemn terrorism in general, but they never concede that groups such as Hamas or Hezbollah are terrorist organizations. That's because the supposed terrorism CAIR has in mind is Israel's.
CAIR's ties to terrorism are public knowledge. Sen. Charles Schumer (D., N.Y.) pointed out during a Senate hearing that the group "has ties to terrorism." Sen. Barbara Boxer (D., Calif.) rescinded the award she had given to CAIR amid criticism of the group's connections to terrorism.
What connections? In 2007, in charging the Holy Land Relief and Development Fund with raising money for Hamas, federal prosecutors named CAIR as an unindicted coconspirator.
Moreover, a number of CAIR officials have been personally involved in terrorism. Former CAIR civil rights coordinator Randall Royer, for example, is serving a 20-year jail term for his involvement with the Pakistani terror group Lashkar-e-Taiba. That's the group responsible for the heinous attack on a Jewish center in India last year, in which a rabbi and his wife were tortured and murdered.
The founder of a CAIR chapter in Texas, Ghassan Elashi, is serving a 65-year prison term for assisting Hamas. And CAIR fund-raiser Rabih Haddad, whose charity was suspected of supporting terrorism, was deported from the United States.
Despite all this, Sestak hired CAIR's director of communications in Philadelphia, Adeeba Al-Zaman, to work in his new Washington office in 2007. Soon thereafter, Al-Zaman had arranged for Sestak to be invited to speak at CAIR's Philadelphia dinner that year.
Sestak accepted the invitation to headline the dinner. Members of the Jewish community met with him beforehand and pleaded with him to cancel, citing CAIR's terrorism ties. But Sestak wouldn't budge.
