CAIR rewarded student activists involved in anti-Israel campus unrest

The report comes as Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designates the Council on American-Islamic Relations as a terrorist and criminal organization.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The leading Muslim advocacy group in the United States gave financial rewards to anti-Israel campus protest leaders who were penalized by their college administrations, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

The California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) gave the money as an “institutional endorsement” of their actions out of a special Champions of Justice Fund, the paper said, citing a report by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN).

The two watchdog organizations are dedicated to countering extremism and hate groups.

After a full year of violent anti-Israel demonstrations and encampments on dozens of university campuses following the Hamas-led invasion that sparked war in Gaza, CAIR-CA gave $20,000 in interest-free loans and gifts in October 2024 to 20 protesters who lost “scholarships, housing or other support because of their advocacy,” the CAIR website stated.

While not naming the students, the schools cited included Columbia University, Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania, which suffered numerous criminal acts during protests that supported the terrorist organization and vilified its victims.

These included defacing and damaging school property, breaking into and occupying school buildings, and assaulting Jewish students.

CAIR, a charity that also receives federal funding, promoted and participated in encampments, condemned the use of police to clear protesters out, and offered legal assistance to students facing disciplinary hearings or arrests for their actions.

It still has more money to disburse, as CAIR-CA raised $100,000 and the parent group raised $64,000 for this purpose.

NCRI charged in its report that CAIR’s West Coast chapter “has systematically misused millions of dollars in taxpayer-funded grants since 2022” and noted that it is currently being investigated by the Department of Justice.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is not waiting for conclusions regarding financial improprieties.

On Tuesday, he designated both CAIR and the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs) and transnational criminal organizations.

The two groups, he said, “have long made their goals clear: to forcibly impose Sharia law and establish Islam’s ‘mastership of the world.’ The actions taken by the Muslim Brotherhood and CAIR to support terrorism across the globe and subvert our laws through violence, intimidation, and harassment are unacceptable.”

In his official proclamation, Abbott listed numerous cases of CAIR members’ affiliation with people convicted of terrorist offenses in the US.

He also cited a 2009 federal court case where CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator in a terrorism financing scandal in which “ample evidence” was found to link CAIR with Hamas, a US-designated FTO, which he noted was formed as the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood.

CAIR has not been designated by the federal government as an FTO, and sent Abbott a letter stating that his announcement had no basis “in law or fact.”