[Make sure to read Robert Spencer’s contributions in Jamie Glazov’s new book: Barack Obama’s True Legacy: How He Transformed America.]
In Old Joe Biden’s America, those who hate the country and want to see it radically “transformed” into a state without borders, the freedom of speech, the right to bear arms and other annoying obstacles to socialist internationalism, are in the driver’s seat. And they’re raking in millions. This includes the left’s pro-Hamas allies, most notably the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Nihad Awad, CAIR’s cofounder and longtime executive director, recently came under fire for saying of the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre of 1,200 Israeli civilians: “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.” This was too much even for the Biden regime, which removed CAIR from its campaign to combat antisemitism. CAIR, loaded as it is with jihad supporters and Jew-haters, never should have been part of that initiative in the first place, but was likely included because it enjoys so much favor among those who make up the Biden regime’s hard-left base. And that favor has translated into millions of dollars in donations for this sinister, unsavory group.
The Jewish News Syndicate reported Wednesday that some of the nation’s most prominent and well-heeled leftist philanthrophic groups shoveled massive amounts of cash to CAIR, despite its lengthy record of smearing foes of jihad violence, justifying that violence, and engaging in jaw-dropping antisemitism. The chief offenders were the American Online Giving Foundation, which gave Awad and his henchmen $1,637,087, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, which was close behind with $1,499,447, and Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, which forked over $1,474,868.
Then there was California Endowment, which contributed $785,604 for CAIR’s victim-blaming and jihad-enabling;Schwab Charitable Fund, which added $782,178; California Community Foundation which kicked in $781,065; and many others: Sierra Health Foundation gave $637,558; Tides Foundation $631,300; Weingart Foundation $602,950; and K. Kellogg Foundation $500,000. JNS adds: “The remaining 10 organizations each provided more than $300,000. These include the San Francisco Foundation ($494,000); Network for Good ($489,800); MarJac Foundation, which Mauro [Ryan Mauro, author of the original study] describes as a group linked to the Muslim Brotherhood ($450,000); Charities Aid Foundation ($406,000); California Wellness Foundation ($350,000); Movement Voter Project ($348,240); Columbus Foundation ($336,250); American Endowment Foundation ($315,600); Levi Strauss Foundation ($310,000); and the Orange County Community Federation ($301,255).”
This adds up to some very serious money for Hamas-linked CAIR, and doesn’t even represent its entire donor base. CAIR reportedly took in $7.78 million in 2021, and had assets as of that year of $15.6 million. And all that was for a group about which federal prosecutors said this in 2007: “From its founding by Muslim Brotherhood leaders, CAIR conspired with other affiliates of the Muslim Brotherhood to support terrorists…the conspirators agreed to use deception to conceal from the American public their connections to terrorists.”
Meanwhile, organizations that speak honestly about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat, including Jihad Watch, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, and others continue with a small fraction of that funding, and are generally struggling financially. Most would-be donors have been scared away by smears and defamation from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League; others have been lulled into complacency by lies about how much these organizations actually receive in donations.
It is a symptom of the insanity of our times that groups dedicated to the defense of the United States and Western civilization are shunned, marginalized, and deplatformed, while those dedicated to the destruction of both are prospering and getting richer by the day. CAIR has temporarily lost favor with the Biden regime, but the money will keep rolling in from leftist foundations and other fellow travelers and dupes, and the establishment media will continue to treat this group as if it really were simply a civil rights organization. We are not free of its baneful influence by a long shot.
William Butler Yeats said it in his apocalyptic poem “The Second Coming”: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.” In the age of absurdity, we can go Yeats one better, and observe that the best lack all funding, while the worst are full of donations from witless, deluded leftists who think they’re contributing to “diversity” while all they’re really doing is providing the funding for their own eventual ruin.