Israel Matzav

Will the first 'Palestinian' in the NFL make it through training camp?

I've already written once about Oday Aboushi, who hopes to become the first 'Palestinian' in the NFL after being drafted by the New York Jets. Aboushi was showing up with anti-Semitic comments on social media, which is not likely to make him a fan favorite in the market with the most Jews in the US. Now, Aboushi has backed it up in person, appearing as the main speaker at a conference run by an organization that denies Israel's right to exist and that has been tied to Islamic terror organizations.

According to the group sponsoring the event, “El-Bireh Palestine Society was founded to perpetuate the strong ties among its members and to link their communities around the world together and with their ancestral roots in El-Bireh, Palestine.” One of the ways the group accomplishes this is by holding annual conferences.

Speaking at the Society’s August 1986 Fifth National Convention held in Dearborn, Michigan was Fouad Rafeedie. Two years later, the INS charged Rafeedie with being a high-ranking member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist group. The PFLP is currently named as such on the U.S. State Department list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Also speaking was Osama Siblani, the publisher of Arab American News (Sada al-Watan) and a public supporter of Hezbollah and Hamas.

The three-day El-Bireh Convention 2013 (“Connect 2013″) began this past June 28thin Arlington, Virginia. Featured as a speaker at the event was Oday Aboushi. Also participating in the conference was Nitham Hasan, the President of the Islamic Center of South Florida (ICOSF). ICOSF’s mosque property is owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a group named by the U.S. Justice Department as being a party to the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas.

El-Bireh Palestine Society’s logo, found atop the organization’s website, contains a graphic of the entire nation of Israel covered in a Palestinian flag – a patent denial of Israel’s legitimacy and right to exist. Like Aboushi’s Nakba, images such as this fuel terrorism and hate abroad and potentially here at home as well. Worse still, the Facebook page for the conference – which is administered by the same individual who created the Society’s website, Ashraf Abed – is accompanied by horrifically anti-Semitic, anti-Christian and terrorist propaganda.

On the same El-Bireh Facebook site as the conference, there are contained different images of Hitler and rabid anti-Christian cleric Ahmed Deedat, who authored the infamous work CRUCIFIXION OR CRUCI-FICTION? There are terrorist memorials for Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin and Hamas bomb maker Yahya Ayyash. About Arafat and Yassin, the site states in Arabic, “The martyr leader Yasser Arafat with the Mujahid Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. G-d have mercy on them.”

NFL teams are very sensitive to the images that their players' off field activities give to the team. Just last week, the New England Patriots released tight end Aaron Hernandez after he was charged with murder.  Patriots owner Bob Kraft said that his team was duped.

With training camps starting this week, the Jets should be pressured to release Aboushi before he ever takes the field for them. Click here to contact the NY Jets to tell the team your thoughts on this matter. Please be respectful in your comments.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: American Jewish indifference to Israel, American Jews, anti-Semitism, Islamist, NFL, Palestinians

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:45 AM