Biden appointee for immigration policy defends terrorism and anti-Israel
Incoming presidents appoint a truly dizzying array of staffers so it is nearly impossible to fully check out their credentials and histories. So little fuss was made last August when CUNY Law Professor Ramzi Kassem was tapped by the Biden administration to be the White House Domestic Policy Council’s Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration. A cursory look at his past would have uncovered a long history of defending those who committed the 9/11 attaks and anti-Israel activity.
While at Columbia University, Kassem co-founded Turath, an association of Muslim students, and a similar organization, Qanun, at Columbia Law School. The organizations were criticized for holding events at which maps were displayed that replaced Israel with a fictitious Palestinian state. The organizations perpetuated the myth that Israel is an apartheid state and advocated for the antisemitic Boycott Divestment Sanctions movement.
One letter of complaint noted that “one speaker, disavowed by many of America’s pro-Palestinian activists, prior to being invited to Columbia, had said that Jews exist only to ‘dip their matzahs in the blood of Palestinian children.’”
In an article Kassem wrote for the university paper, he boasted of throwing rocks at the IDF troops stationed on the other side of the border with Lebanon.
“On a sunny day in early August, I headed down to the Lebanese-Israeli border at Fatima’s Gate with busloads of Palestinian adolescents from the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and we threw some stones,” he wrote. “Lebanese civilians, young and old, were playfully going through the motions… Having lived through my fair share of Israeli bombardments, raids, and sieges, I figured I might as well partake in the festivities.”
In another article, Kassem justified Palestinian terrorism.
“Some Palestinians resort to terrorism for many of the same reasons that people from various backgrounds have in the past: namely, despair and much endured suffering,” Kassem wrote. “One must ask oneself how and why a human being was pushed to the limit and saw no way out of a situation short of blowing himself or herself up.”
Kassem was named a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, a project of a foundation established by the brother of George Soros, the billionaire who funds extremist left-wing politics.,
The announcement on Twitter of Kassem’s appointment to the Biden administration noted he was an immigrant and the Founding Director of Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR), the law school’s free legal services focused on “addressing needs arising out of post-9/11 law enforcement policies & practices”. Effectively, the organization provided free legal aid to Muslims accused of terrorism.
His website framed that position in a slightly different light, explaining that his efforts “aim to contest the expressions and excesses of the sprawling U.S. security state, both domestically and abroad” which included the use of watchlists.
He listed among his achievements the successful release of 12 prisoners including Uzair Paracha, a Pakistani citizen serving a 30-year sentence for providing material support to al-Qaeda by a court in New York City in 2005.
Kassem also defended Ahmed al-Darbi, an al-Qaeda terrorist who pleaded guilty to terrorism charges before a military commission in relation to the October 2002 attack on the Limburg, a French oil tanker off Yemen. Al-Darb, s Saudi Arabian national, was also the brother-in-law of one of the 9/11 hijackers who flew a plane into the Pentagon, and who was himself a key figure in the bombing of an oil tanker.
Kassem’s work defending convicted terrorists is pro-bono.
In addition to these accomplishments, Kassem is a prolific writer. In a recent article in Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield cited an article written one week after the al-Qaeda attack on September 11, 2001.
“This is not a battle of good versus evil,” Kassem wrote. “The perpetrators were probably not driven to their actions by some intrinsic evil or inherent hatred of the good United States.”
In an egregious case of blaming the victim, Kassem placed the blame of the still-fresh 9/11 attacks on the US, writing that the al-Qaeda attack was the result of the “resentment these terrorists felt towards the United States” as a result of “our country’s policies.”
Greenfield noted that Kassem was a Syrian national who grew up in Lebanon and Iraq “and other Islamic terror states” before arriving in the US to “spread terrorist propaganda” and act as a “terror lawyer”.
“Kassem seems like a national security risk rather than a White House Policy Council adviser,” Greenfield wrote.
Twenty years after the tragic events that left a permanent scar on the nation’s soul, Kassem’s belief that the US is to blame has only deepened. In a Washington Post op-ed in which he said that “since 9/11, the government has consistently used the law to enable, operationalize and justify the violence it has deployed against Muslims.”
“The legacy of 9/11 ought to be recounted primarily through the stories of Muslims the world over who have largely paid the price of American power and prosperity,” Kassem wrote.
In a WaPo op-ed published in January 2022, Kassem challenged the claim that the security prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay “the worst of the worst”, implying that the incarceration of “Muslim men and boys, almost all of them brown- and black-skinned” was motivated solely by racism and “Islamophobia”. Kassem demanded the prison be closed and the convicted prisoners be repatriated after being compensated for their time served behind bars, comparing their plight to Japanese internment camps during WWII and the Chinese concentration camps for Muslim Uyghurs.
Kassem’s appointment is deeply concerning but it comes as just another in a long line of anti-Israel extremists filling the ranks of White House staffers.
“The Biden administration chose to elevate a vocal advocate for Islamic terrorists as a Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration at the White House Domestic Policy Council at a time when there are grave concerns about the penetration of terrorists through the unguarded southern border,” Greenfield wrote. “The Biden administration claims that it wants to protect the homeland and that it supports Israel. Putting Ramzi Kassem on its Domestic Policy Council shows those assertions to be lies. Its Policy Council includes a man who advocated for Gitmo terrorists and threw rocks at Israel.”
“Ramzi Kassem’s presence on driving the immigration agenda at the White House Domestic Policy Council is hard evidence that the Biden administration is putting the rights of Muslim terrorists ahead of the safety and welfare of Americans.
Greenfield warned of the dire consequences that may result from such extreme appointments.
“The White House Domestic Policy Council coordinates and develops the Biden agenda. Including a vocal activist against national security will have consequences,” he wrote. “And the Biden administration will not be able to play innocent when one of the Islamic terrorists it allows into the country kills Americans.”
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