White House says Muslims were the real victims of October 7th.
And kicking a Jewish female student in the head was a “peaceful protest.”
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This is a guest essay written by Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
On October 7th, Islamic terrorists invaded Israel and murdered over 1,000 people.
They raped, looted, and burned families alive in their home. Those whom they did not kill, they took hostage.
According to the U.S. President Joe Biden administration’s newly announced Islamophobia strategy, however, Muslims in America were the real victims of October 7th — just like they were the real victims of 9/11.
“Threats and acts of violence against Muslim and Arab communities have increased since the October 7 terrorist attacks,” the official White House “Islamophobia” strategy claims. Muslims are also concerned “about the recent spike in incidents of hate and discrimination in the aftermath of the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, concerns they say mirror their community’s experiences following the 9/11 attacks.”
Forget the hostages; the real issue stemming from the brutal Hamas massacres — according to the administration’s “strategy” — is that “members of Muslim and Arab communities have often faced obstacles in renting and using public and private gathering spaces. This issue has become more prevalent following the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.”
The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate operates out of this parallel universe in which Muslim mobs have not been attacking synagogues and assaulting Jews, or blockading Jewish students from college campuses, but have been the victims.
The Biden administration has yet to condemn the sustained harassment, boycotts and assaults on Jewish students at UCLA, the City University of New York, and Columbia University; instead it claims that, since October 7, 2023, “Muslim and Arab students, faculty, and staff, have been subject to violence, discrimination, hate, harassment, bullying, and online targeting.”
The Islamophobia strategy provides no citation for its claim of nationwide harassment of Muslims on college campuses. Under its Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights section, its few named incidents include a University of Michigan student who claimed that “someone yelled at her that she had terrorist friends because she participated in a pro-Palestinian protest” and that “the City University of New York Law School cancelled an event hosted by a Muslim student group without adequate justification for doing so.”
The event in question was by the Muslim Law Students Association falsely accusing Israel of genocide for fighting against Hamas, which was reportedly to feature City University of New York students who had expressed support for terrorism, including Fatima Mohammed who had tweeted, “i pray upon the death of the USA on a public platform “ and had urged “grant victory to the Mujahideen (jihadists).” There was also Nerdeen Kiswani who had quipped, “I hope that pop-pop is the last noise that some Zionists hear in their lifetime!”
According to the White House Islamophobia strategy, the City University of New York’s failure to platform murderous hatred for America and Israel was “discrimination” and “hate” against Muslim students.
Meanwhile at the City University of New York, anti-Israel students had demanded the expulsion of most Jewish students and called to “globalize the intifada.” A City University of New York professor described how “a Kingsborough/City University of New York student beat a Jewish man in a kippah with a bat while yelling, “Kill all Jews, free Palestine.”
But according to the Biden administration, Muslim students at the City University of New York are the real victims because a Muslim group’s ugly hate event was canceled “without adequate justification.”
Students for Justice in Palestine, the top campus anti-Israel group, had openly celebrated and praised the atrocities of October 7th, and campus protests featured Hamas and Hezbollah flags, but the Islamophobia strategy falsely claims that “student protestors, despite having condemned Hamas and terrorism and engaging in only peaceful protests, have been accused of supporting terrorism merely due to their advocacy for the human rights of Palestinian civilians.”
The strategy’s citation for the claim that anti-Israel students faced “violent attacks, threats, discrimination” was the UCLA encampment where a federal judge ruled that “Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.”1
Prior to what the CNN story linked in the strategy describes as Jewish violence against the terrorist encampment, multiple Jewish students and community members had been assaulted, and a Jewish female student had been knocked unconscious.
The Biden administration’s idea of “peaceful protests” was kicking a Jewish girl in the head, and it claims that students calling for Hamas to destroy Tel Aviv were “accused of supporting terrorism merely due to their advocacy for the human rights of Palestinian civilians.”
The UCLA encampment had been set up by Students for Justice in Palestine UCLA which had co-signed a statement declaring “our unwavering support of the resistance in Gaza” and taking pride in “Towfan Al-Aqsa” (the Hamas name for the October 7th massacres) “as a revolutionary moment in contemporary Palestinian resistance.”2
The White House Islamophobia strategy has as little basis for the “peaceful” nature of the terrorist mobs as it does for the contention that Muslims faced a surge of violence after October 7th.
The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate quickly discredits itself by citing hoax after hoax. It repeatedly plays up the Burlington hoax referencing “the shooting of three young men in Vermont” and the contention that “a gunman shot three college students of Palestinian descent in Burlington, Vermont.”
While a mentally ill man did shoot three Muslim men, he was a Hamas supporter.
Rather than being anti-Muslim, the gunman had tweeted, “the notion that Hamas is ‘evil’ for defending their state from occupation is absurd” and “what if someone occupied your country? Wouldn’t you fight them?” The Burlington Islamophobia hoax was so thoroughly discredited that even the Council on American-Islamic Relations had given up on listing it in its litany of “Islamophobic” events, but the Biden administration somehow manages to have even lower standards for the truth than the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The Islamophobia strategy also lists an incident where “an individual believed to have been involved in prior violent incidents at a Minneapolis mosque struck a man with a minivan in the mosque’s parking lot.” The individual, James Evan Suttles, was a black man who had a long list of prior violent incidents, suffered from paranoid delusions, and had been committed four times to mental institutions. No hate crimes charges were brought against him over the attack.
The Biden Islamophobia strategy has to lean on such cases to manufacture the myth of Muslim victimhood because it lacks any actual substance. And it props that up with calls for censorship. The strategy urges social media platforms to specifically cover Islamophobia and rig their algorithms to “de-rank and stop recommending” content that Muslim groups consider hateful.
Beyond censorship, what does the Biden administration propose we do to fight “Islamophobia”?
The strategy calls on Congress to formally recognize the United Nation’s International Day to Combat Islamophobia. The Islamophobia resolution was introduced by former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan had described Osama bin Laden, whom Pakistan had harbored, as a “martyr” while supporting the Taliban. He was later charged by his own country under its terrorism act.
Once again, Islamophobia turns out to be how Islamic terrorists silence criticism of their crimes.
The Biden administration’s “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia” is an insult to American Jews and Christians. It uses lies and hoaxes to turn the Muslim terrorist supporters who have shut down Christmas tree lightings and attacked synagogues, and who rally for the murder of Americans and Jews as the victims, while portraying Christians and Jews as “Islamophobes.”
The Islamophobia strategy is the final insult of many from an administration that has stood with the Islamic terrorists and never with their Jewish and Christian victims.
“UCLA excluding Jews ‘unimaginable, abhorrent,’ per federal judge.” JNS.
“Students for Justice in Palestine Cheers Hamas Crimes at Colleges Across U.S.” Front Page Magazine.
It feels like we are living in a lunatic asylum.
That is such a great piece. A pure reality check. God bless you, the Jews, Israel and all those who love the truth.