The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today called the forced sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations to a consortium of investors led by Oracle’s pro-Israel billionaires Larry Ellison and Safra Catz a “desperate and doomed” attempt to silence young Americans who used the platform to learn about and oppose the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza.
In a statement, Washington, D.C., based CAIR said:
“Let’s be clear. The main reason for the forced sale of TikTok to a consortium of pro-Israel billionaires is a desire to prevent young Americans from using the platform to learn about and oppose the Israeli government’s human rights abuses. Everyone from Mitt Romney to Benjamin Netanyahu has admitted this obvious fact. The Israeli government and its supporters hope that TikTok’s new U.S. investors will build a ‘censorship moat’ that shadow bans or outright censors TikTok posts that criticize Israel’s crimes against humanity. We believe this ploy is both desperate and doomed. Young people speaking out against the Gaza genocide have defeated every effort so far to censor and silence them, and we are confident that the sale of TikTok to anti-Palestinian billionaires will ultimately fail to silence the young people of America.”
Selling TikTok: The Anti-Palestinian Agenda
- Oracle board chair Larry Ellison is both a major donor to the Israeli military as well as a close confidant of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
- Oracle board member and former CEO Safra Catz has stated, “I love my employees, and if they don’t agree with our mission to support the State of Israel then maybe we aren’t the right company for them.” The Israeli-American billionaire has also said, “Larry [Ellison] and I are publicly committed to Israel and devote personal time to the country, and no one should be surprised by that.”
- U.S. Senator Mitt Romney stated in 2024, “Some wonder why there was such overwhelming support for us to shut down potentially TikTok or other entities of that nature. If you look at the postings on TikTok and the number of mentions of Palestinians, relative to other social media sites — it’s overwhelmingly so among TikTok broadcasts.”
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently described the sale of TikTok as “the most important purchase happening … I hope it goes through because it can be consequential.” Netanyahu, who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Gaza, sees control of TikTok as a part of Israel’s military strategy. “You have to fight with the weapons that apply to the battlefield, and one of the most important ones is social media,” he said.
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CONTACT: CAIR National Deputy Director Edward Ahmed Mitchell, 404-285-9530, e-Mitchell@cair.com; CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, 202-742-6448, rmccaw@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