The Michigan chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI), a chapter of the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today condemned a “blatant and hateful” hoax perpetrated by the rightwing outlet Jewish Insider and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who have falsely claimed that Rep. Rashida Tlaib accused Nessel of prosecuting 11 anti-genocide protesters at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor because she is Jewish. Tlaib never made such a comment.
The defamatory lie apparently originated in an article written by Josh Kraushaar and published in Jewish Insider. Michigan Attorney General Nessel sparked outrage by tweeting the same false claim against Rep. Tlaib and labeling the statement that Tlaib never made “antisemitic.”
ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt has also faced criticism for repeating the same lie. During a CNN interview with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer yesterday, Jake Tapper reinforced that false claim by asking:
“Do you think that Tlaib’s suggestion that Nessel’s office is biased was antisemitic?…Do you think Attorney General Nessel is not doing her job?… Because Congresswoman Tlaib is suggesting that she shouldn’t be prosecuting these individuals that Nessel says broke the law, and that she’s only doing it because she’s Jewish and the protesters are not. That’s quite an accusation. Do you think it’s true?”
What Rep. Tlaib actually said was, “It seems that the Attorney General decided if the issue was Palestine, she was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”
Rep. Tlaib comments made no mention of Nessel being Jewish, but that there was possible bias against the Palestinian cause within the Attorney General’s office. Of the 11 protesters prosecuted by Nessel’s office, only 3 of them are Muslim and some of them are Jewish.
“It is shameful that Attorney General Nessel has joined a blatantly false and hateful smear campaign against Congresswoman Tlaib because she dared to criticize her politically charged prosecutions of anti-genocide protesters, which includes members of the Jewish community,” said CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid. “Mischaracterizing dissent as ‘antisemitic’ in order to stifle concerns of biased prosecutions is not only undemocratic but also takes attention away from real antisemitism that takes place in society.”
Walid noted that CAIR-MI has offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction of a reported hate crime against a Jewish student of the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor which took place last week.
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CONTACT: CAIR-MI Executive Director Dawud Walid, 248-842-1418, dwalid@cair.com; CAIR-MI Staff Attorney Amy Doukoure, 586-943-8823, adoukoure@cair.com