The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today condemned the takeover of the Ibrahimi Mosque in the occupied West Bank by illegal Israeli settlers.
Thousands of illegal settlers took over the prayer room in the mosque while Muslims were banned from the holy site. In 1994, an Israeli extremist massacred 29 worshipers at that mosque.
In a statement, CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said:
“As illegal Israeli settlers continue their violent campaign of ethnic cleansing against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, they are also violating houses of worship important to the world’s two billion Muslims. With every destroyed mosque and burned Quran, the Israeli government’s genocide against the Palestinian people expands into a war on Islam.”
He noted that CAIR recently said videotaped burning of copies of the Quran and destruction of mosques by Israeli soldiers in Gaza shows that the Israeli genocide in Gaza is targeting Islam as well as the Palestinian people.
Yesterday, CAIR called on the Biden administration to treat the lives of Palestinians and Israelis as equally valuable by condemning the murder of a 58-year-old Palestinian man from the West Bank whose body was returned to his family with clear signs of torture after two hours in Israeli custody and by forcing Benjamin Netanyahu to agree to a ceasefire that ends the Gaza genocide and frees all hostages and political prisoners.
The Washington, D.C., based civil rights organization also condemned the far-right Israeli government’s systematic campaign of collective punishment, destruction of civilian infrastructure and killing of Palestinians in the West Bank, including driving a military vehicle over the body of a dead civilian.
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CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, ihooper@cair.com; CAIR National Communications Manager Ismail Allison, 202-770-6280, iallison@cair.com