CAIR sues US State Department over ‘failing to evacuate American citizens’ from Gaza

CAIR claims that the State Department has run afoul of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which ‘guarantees equal protection for citizens and legal residents abroad under federal law.’

By Corey Walker, The Algemeiner

The Council for America-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a group that purports to advocate for Muslim Americans, filed a lawsuit against the U.S. State Department for “failing to evacuate American citizens, American legal residents, and the family members of Americans trapped under Israeli bombardment in Gaza.”

According to CAIR, the plaintiffs in the case have “ tried, for months, to exhaust non-legal means to escape Gaza.”

“Each plaintiff in the lawsuit is eligible to be evacuated but has been summarily ignored by the State Department and other Biden administration officials,” CAIR wrote in a statement.

The organization claims that the State Department has been sluggish in extracting American citizens caught in the crossfires of the Israel-Hamas war.

In contrast, CAIR contends that the agency has responded with more urgency to evacuate American citizens caught in previous conflicts.

CAIR claims that the State Department has run afoul of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which “guarantees equal protection for citizens and legal residents abroad under federal law.”

“The law requires the U.S. government to protect Americans wherever they may be. With every passing day, the danger of our clients dying from Israeli bombardment or the starvation and disease now rampant in Gaza only goes up,” CAIR attorney Maria Kari said.

“The State Department must do the right thing and save these people from certain death.”

The State Department has cited the closure of the Rafah Crossing as the reason for the slowed evacuations of Americans from Gaza.

However, the plaintiffs have called for evacuations to be conducted from the Kerem Shalom crossing, arguing that evacuations have been carried out from this site in previous conflicts between Israel and the Hamas terrorist group.

CAIR’s lawsuit against Israel was not its first time stepping into controversy.

The organization’s co-founder and executive director, Nihad Awad, said in November that he was “happy” to witness Hamas’ rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, when the Palestinian terrorist group invaded the Jewish state from neighboring Gaza, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped over 250 others as hostages.

The massacre launched the ongoing war in Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign aimed at dismantling Hamas and freeing the hostages.

“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago last November.

“And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas.”

CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemn[s] all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”

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