‘Dear friend’ of Texas rabbi taken hostage is outspoken BDS, anti-Israel advocate

Local Muslim leader and ‘dear friend’ of Congregation Beth Israel rabbi calls for U.S. to ‘stop funding Israeli apartheid,’ calls Sheikh Jarrah evictions ‘ethnic cleansing.’

By World Israel News Staff

A Muslim activist who said she has been friends with Congregation Beth Israel Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and his wife for over 15 years is an outspoken supporter of BDS and has posted a number of tweets with vehemently anti-Israel statements.

Alia Salem wrote on Saturday during the standoff that she was “gutted” to learn that her “dear friend” had been taken hostage.

The rabbi and his wife, she tweeted, “are the kindest, most gentle, and loving people who have been absolute rock-solid friends and allies not only to me but to the entire Muslim community through thick and thin.”

Remarkably, Salem openly supports the same cause – releasing convicted terrorist Aisha Siddiqui from a U.S. federal prison – that the hostage taker reportedly cited as his motivation for the synagogue attack.

She clarified, however, that Siddiqui’s release should only come about via nonviolent, legal means.

In August 2021, Salem reposted a statement from the BDS Movement, which featured a quote from terrorist Omar Barghouti comparing Israel to apartheid South Africa and calling it a “racist” and “supremacist” state.

During May 2021’s Operation Guardian of the Walls, Salem reposted a number of statements condemning Israeli military action against Gaza.

One tweet, directed at U.S. President Joe Biden, demanded that he “stop giving $3.8 billion in weapons a year for Israeli apartheid.”

“Many things in life are complicated. This is not one: #Israel, one of largest military forces in the world, armed with hundreds of nuclear warheads, dropping bombs on a defenseless urban population in #Palestine,” read another tweet reposted by Salem.

“This is an abomination, a disgrace. There is no ‘both sides’ here.”

An earlier tweet that Salem also reposted referred to the evacuation of families in the eastern Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah as “ethnic cleansing enabled by an apartheid government, funded by the American government, and enabled by cowardly governments in the Middle East.”

The court order was equivalent to “state sanctioned terror that sees people being thrown out of their homes.”

Notably, there was no acknowledgement on Salem’s Twitter feed of the Jews killed by Arab rioting within Israel during the clash, or by rockets fired from Gaza by terror groups.

Neither has Salem  condemned the murder and attempted murders of Jews during an uptick in Arab terror attacks on Israelis that began in November 2021.