US withdraws nomination of activist who spouted anti-Israeli propaganda following investigation

US withdraws nomination of activist who accused politician of being ‘purchased’ by pro-Israel groups after Algemeiner investigation.

By Andrew Bernard, The Algemeiner

The United States has withdrawn its support for a human rights activist who accused US House Minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) of being “Bought. Purchased. Controlled” by pro-Israel groups, State Department Spokesman Ned Price said Tuesday afternoon.

The announcement comes a day after an exclusive Algemeiner investigation revealed that Prof. James Cavallaro had a multi-year history of incendiary posts critical of US foreign policy, Israel, and pro-Israel elected officials.

Cavallaro had been nominated Friday by the US government to a 2024-2027 post with the Organization of American States (OAS), a regional body headquartered in Washington, DC, that promotes security, democracy, and economic development in the Americas. Cavallaro had been nominated to be a commissioner with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an agency within the OAS.

In one Dec. 2022 tweet, now deleted, Cavallaro invoked language and imagery often associated with antisemitic claims of pro-Israeli political and financial control over US domestic politics.

“Bought. Purchased. Controlled,” Cavallaro wrote alongside a link to an article about the funds raised for Rep. Jeffries by AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups.

In other tweets, Cavallaro characterized Israel as an “apartheid state” and accused the US and Israel of “atrocities.”

Cavallaro began deleting the offending Tweets from his timeline on Monday after The Algemeiner reached out to him for comment. Cavallaro did not respond to multiple requests.

Announcing him as the US candidate for the IACHR seat on Friday, State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel said Cavallaro would “would bring valuable expertise to the Commission’s work,” but other posts from Cavallaro’s social media feed express views consistently at odds with Biden administration positions.

In February 2022, responding to Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-CA) visit to Ramallah where he met with Palestinian students, Cavallaro asked “did they say anything about high-level, US congressional delegations legitimating and praising the Israeli apartheid state?”

Cavallaro has also promoted the views of Rhania Khalek, a journalist and prominent anti-Israel activist who is also a supporter of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

In April 2021, he tweeted at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes that she should watch one of Khalek’s videos to “help you figure out *what* and *how* [sic] is going on in Palestine.” While the video is no longer available on Twitter, it appears that Khalek was promoting her video “Two-State Delusion: Israel Is A Racist One State Nightmare,” in which she claims that Israel is committing ethnic cleansing, is not a democracy, and “does not belong in the f—ing 21st century.”

Cavallaro teaches courses on human rights law and practice at Wesleyan University, Yale Law School and UCLA Law School, and he has previously taught at the law schools of Harvard and Stanford. The University Network for Human Rights supervises “interdisciplinary engagement in human rights practice at universities across the country and beyond,” according to its website.

This is a developing story.

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