Anti-Israel congressman poses with antisemitic CAIR official

Rep. Jamaal Bowman meets with those tied to Palestinian terror and hatred of Jews.

By Joe Kaufman, Front Page Magazine

This past July, United States Democratic Representative from New York and member of the far left congressional group ‘The Squad,’ Jamaal Bowman, made a stop in Palm Beach, Florida to meet with members of the Muslim community.

Attending the event were local leaders of CAIR, a group with significant ties to Hamas.

One of the leaders was Wilfredo Amr Ruiz, someone who has previously attacked the Jewish religion.

This was an inauspicious yet understandable meeting for Congressman Bowman, as he has been criticized for being an “antisemite” himself, for the hostile, one-sided stances he has taken against the state of Israel.

CAIR or the Council on American-Islamic Relations was established in June 1994, as a member of the US chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood’s now defunct Palestine Committee, under the guidance of then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook.

The ‘seed money’ for CAIR came from another Palestine Committee member, the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). Years later, CAIR would be named as a co-conspirator for the federal trials prosecuting HLF for the entity’s funding of millions of dollars for Hamas.

CAIR had used its websites to actively raise money for HLF, including in the guise of donations for victims of the 9/11 attacks.

The Florida chapter of CAIR is one of the more prominent CAIR chapters, and its promotion of and embrace of Palestinian terror rivals that of its parent group. In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a rally in Downtown Miami, where rally goers repeatedly chanted, “We are Hamas” and “Let’s go Hamas.”

In August 2020, CAIR-Florida held an event featuring the ex-ringleader of a Tampa-area Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) network, convicted terrorist Sami al-Arian, fraudulently referring to al-Arian as a “political prisoner.”

CAIR-Florida has a close relationship with al-Arian’s convicted PIJ colleague, Hatem Fariz, organizing anti-Israel rallies with him.

Wilfredo Amr Ruiz is the Media & Outreach Director of CAIR-Florida. Accompanying Ruiz to the Bowman meeting was CAIR attorney Omar Saleh. Ruiz is also a lawyer.

For years, he has been legal advisor for the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), a group that was condemned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for promoting a “venomous” antisemitic video featuring white supremacist icon David Duke.

Ruiz founded AMANA’s Connecticut and Puerto Rico chapters. AMANA’s President, Sofian Zakkout, who Ruiz calls his “dear brother,” was thrown off two prominent anti-crime boards for his support of Hamas and Holocaust denial.

Ruiz has targeted Jews with bigotry, himself.

In April 2010, just three months prior to the ADL’s condemnation of AMANA, he authored an article in Spanish vilifying the Jewish religion, titled Las fobias de mi vecino (translated “My neighbor’s phobias”).

In it, Ruiz cites Justinas Pranaitis, a Lithuanian Catholic priest, who was infamous for advancing a blood libel claim against Jews and who was stripped of his priesthood.

As well in the piece, Ruiz provides a link to the website talmudunmasked.com, which contains Pranaitis’s antisemitic conspiracies and is produced by those alleging Jews perpetrated the 9/11 attacks and are Satanic.

Also at the Bowman meeting was Junaid Akhter, Marketing & Public Relations Director of the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF), an umbrella group for South Florida’s many radical Muslim institutions.

One Federation member, Masjid Jamaat Al-Mumineen (MJAM), promotes material on its website calling Jews and Christians “enemies,” sanctioning domestic violence against women, glorifying female genital mutilation, and mandating death punishments for gays.

Another member, Darul Uloom, has been a haven for high-profile al-Qaeda operatives and is run by an imam who was thrown off several county boards for promoting bigotry against gays.

Bowman showing up in Palm Beach to meet with such scandalous company as this makes sense, as he has built a reputation for himself of being incredibly anti-Israel to the point of being accused by his Congressional colleagues of being an antisemite, himself.

Note: According to CAIR’s 2022 Midterm Election Congressional Scorecard 117th Congress (2021-2022), Bowman voted 100% with CAIR. Indeed, Bowman’s attempts – along with his ‘fellow travelers’ in ‘The Squad’ or ‘Jihad Squad’ as it has been called – to pass legislation and spread propaganda aimed at harming and demonizing the Jewish homeland are well documented.

Bowman opposed a House resolution rejecting claims that Israel is a racist state.

He boycotted Israeli President Isaac Herzog’s address to a joint session of Congress.

He withdrew his support for bipartisan legislation aimed at strengthening and expanding the Abraham Accords.

He co-sponsored a resolution calling for the US to formally recognize the “Nakba,” the offensive term labeling the founding of Israel a “catastrophe,” while rejecting a resolution commemorating Israel’s 75th anniversary. And he co-signed a blatantly one-sided letter to President Biden and Secretary Blinken calling on the administration “to undertake a shift in U.S. policy” toward Israel.

In a letter signed by 13 New York rabbis, they write, “Congressman Bowman is no longer merely an accessory to anti-Israel rhetoric in Washington. He is now leading the effort to erode support for Israel on Capitol Hill and within the Democratic Party.”

Bowman’s alarming behavior and unhinged rhetoric have even drawn fire from many in his own party, who, along with pro-Israel factions, actively seek a viable candidate to run against him in the upcoming Democratic primary.

Captioned next to a photo from the Palm Beach meeting, in which Bowman is posing with the Florida CAIR officials and is arm-in-arm with CAIR’s Wilfredo Ruiz – the Representative and his supporters all flashing big smiles – Ruiz wrote, “Standing with this brave Congressman, Jamaal Bowman. Free Palestine.”

There is nothing brave about standing with the enemies of America and her ally, Israel. Jamaal Bowman’s embrace of CAIR, a Hamas-linked group, which aims to eliminate Israel and, in the past, stated its intention to replace the US Constitution with the Quran, attests to a dangerous conflict of interests which borders on treason.

AntisemitismCAIRJamaal Bowman