How Muslim group Emgage serves the American empire
Ali Abunimah The Electronic Intifada 17 March 2021
Man in suit flanked by generals
Trumps aggressive approach to China continues under Biden, and gets an
assist from US Muslims endorsing genocide claims based on dubious research
by a Christian Zionist extremist. Kevin DietschCNP/AdMedia
Farooq Mitha, a longtime leader in the Israel-lobby linked Muslim group
Emgage, has been given a job in the Pentagon by the Biden administration.
It can be seen as a reward for an organization that has faithfully supported
the Democratic Party and its hawkish foreign policies while posing as a
champion of Muslims and even of Palestinians.
And as Emgage apparently cements its relationship with the new
administration, it has quietly backed off a statement of support for BDS,
the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian rights.
Meanwhile, Emgage has embraced a hawkish campaign against China, endorsing
accusations of genocide perpetrated against Uyghur Muslims that stem from
discredited research by an extreme Christian Zionist who yearns to see a
Jewish temple built where Jerusalems al-Aqsa mosque and Dome of the Rock
now stand.
Mitha, who served as the Biden campaigns senior adviser on Muslim
engagement, was sworn in last month as director of small business programs
at the Department of Defense.
His job will be to help ensure that small businesses including women-owned
and minority-owned firms are among the suppliers of weapons and other
materiel that the US uses to impose its will and wage war on countries
around the world.
Mitha held a more junior position in the same office during the Obama
administration.
Ties to Israel lobby
Last September, The Electronic Intifada revealed the extensive ties between
Emgage leaders and Israel lobby organizations especially the Muslim
Leadership Initiative, a group that brings emerging US Muslim leaders on
propaganda junkets to Israel.
It also emerged that through its political action committee, Emgage was
endorsing and raising money for pro-Israel candidates in last Novembers US
elections.
These exposés set off a firestorm around Emgage, prompting many grassroots
activists to speak out.
Mitha was a co-founder and longtime board member of Emgage, though he
asserted that he stepped away from Emgage formally when he took his job
with the Biden campaign.
Revolving door
The revolving door nature of Mithas appointment underscores that an
organization like Emgage can hardly act as a source of pressure and
accountability on the same powers from which its leaders seek patronage and
jobs.
There is at least one other person with ties to Emgage who has landed a
position with the Biden administration.
In early March, the White House appointed Dilawar Syed as deputy
administrator at the Small Business Administration.
Syed, the CEO of a California healthcare technology company and an Emgage
board member, has been an active Democratic Party fundraiser, including for
Biden.
Like Mitha, Syed served in the Obama administration on a White House
advisory commission.
Widespread distrust
Following The Electronic Intifadas initial reporting in September, another
in-depth investigation by Middle East Eye revealed the widespread community
distrust that had been bubbling towards Emgage as it elbowed its way into
the limelight.
According to Middle East Eye, Emgages rise to national prominence was
not the story of a group that advocates for the Muslim community, but
rather one that is meant to muzzle it.
All this led to calls by activists for Muslim and Arab American community
organizations to end cooperation with Emgage, and on Biden to fire Mitha.
Amid outrage over Emgages coziness with Israel lobby groups, the US Council
of Muslim Organizations cut its ties with Emgage in October.
At the same time the group focused all its efforts on sheepdogging Muslim
Americans into voting for Joe Biden.
Abandoning Palestine
As part of its effort to counter the revelations, Emgages political action
committee Emgage Action scrambled to update its website to emphasize support
for Palestinian rights.
It even asserted that it supports BDS though that proved to be short
lived.
Emgage posted a handful of documents outlining its positions on Palestine.
These included a paper opposing Israeli plans to annex occupied West Bank
land.
In the event that Israel were to continue down this path, Emgage called on
Congress to take up legislation that conditions the $3.8 billion in US
military funding sent to Israel annually.
Emgage also defended itself with a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page
knocking down a series of strawman statements, such as Emgage is affiliated
with the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI).
However, neither The Electronic Intifada nor Middle East Eye alleged that
there was any formal tie between Emgage and MLI.
Rather, The Electronic Intifada accurately reported and Emgage
acknowledges that senior Emgage leaders had traveled to Israel on MLI
junkets.
The FAQ asserts that Emgage has always supported the human rights and
freedom of Palestinian peoples, including the right of return for
Palestinian refugees.
Emgage also declared its opposition to specific Trump administration
policies, including the heartless decision to eliminate US funding for
UNRWA, the UN agency that provides health and education to Palestinian
refugees.
The group also decried Trumps decision to relocate the US embassy to
Jerusalem and to recognize Israeli annexation of [the] occupied Syrian Golan
Heights.
No demands on Biden
So how well has Emgage held to these positions since Biden, the candidate it
endorsed, won the presidency?
On the day the new administration took office, Emgage CEO Wael Alzayat
penned an article laying out four things President Biden could do in his
first 200 days that will make a real difference in the Middle East.
One of his suggestions is that Biden restore $200 million in stabilization
funds for Syria cut by Trump that appeared destined for training local armed
militias.
Alzayats only reference to Palestine, however, is a call on Biden to
restore UNRWA funding a totally uncontroversial step that the Biden
campaign had already pledged to take on the basis that doing so would
benefit Israel.
Alzayat did not call on Biden to reverse the Trump administrations moves on
Jerusalem or the Golan Heights, nor did he urge the new administration to
end its hostility to the nonviolent BDS movement.
The Emgage CEO did not urge that any conditions be placed on US aid to
Israel, even as Israel approved big settlement expansions just before Biden
took office.
Emgage has not demanded that the Biden administration lift Trumps
outrageous sanctions against the International Criminal Court and give full
American backing to the tribunals investigation of war crimes in the
occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.
Aside from Alzayats call for the restoration of UNRWA funding, since the
November election Emgage has put out a handful of tweets offering rhetorical
support to Palestinians, but making no demands of Biden.
None of Emgages official statements since the election have focused on US
policy towards Palestine.
This is all in keeping with Emgages long-standing practice of echoing US
national security-state priorities rather than challenging them.
Backing off BDS
Emgage has however criticized New York City mayoral candidate Andrew Yangs
smears that the BDS movement is anti-Semitic.
But the organization has said nothing about similar attacks from senior
Biden administration officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken,
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen and US ambassador to the United Nations
Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Yellens attack on the boycott movement was particularly noteworthy as it
came with her pledge to use her vast powers as head of the US Treasury to
oppose BDS activities directed at Israel.
Indeed, Emgage has not only failed to challenge the Biden administrations
hostility to BDS, but has quietly backed off from its own claim of support
for the nonviolent movement.
Back in September, amid the uproar following The Electronic Intifadas
reporting, Emgage published a statement asserting, we support the BDS
movement.
At the time, this writer observed that this appears to be the first time
Emgage has said it supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
Yet it did not last.
The statement was quietly changed to read: We support the right to boycott,
divest and sanction.
Supporting the right to engage in BDS campaigns as an exercise in
constitutionally protected free speech is laudable, but hardly shows
courage and is not the same as actually calling for a boycott of Israel.
China genocide claims
Emgages refusal to support a boycott of Israel contrasts with its advocacy
in support of a boycott of goods manufactured in China over allegations they
are made with the forced labor of Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang province.
The day before leaving office, Trump administration Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo issued a determination that China is committing genocide against the
Uyghur population.
Emgage immediately endorsed Pompeos move, though admonished that this
genocide designation is long overdue.
These are the gravest possible accusations that demand close scrutiny and
compelling evidence.
State Department lawyers reportedly doubted that there was evidence of
genocide, but still assert that there are widespread abuses in Xinjiang. It
is unclear, however, what sources they are relying on.
The Biden administration is reviewing its predecessors genocide designation
after acknowledging that all of the procedures were not followed.
In the meantime, however, Bidens officials continue to use the term.
Christian Zionist source
Many well-meaning people have supported the well-publicized campaigns around
the Uyghurs, without realizing that the allegations of genocide, forced
labor and mass internment are rooted in dubious claims, falsehoods and
outright speculation stemming almost entirely from a single source: Adrian
Zenz, a far-right anti-Semitic German Christian Zionist affiliated with the
US government-founded Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and the
neoconservative Jamestown Foundation.
Pompeos 19 January statement emotively invoking the horrors of Nazi
concentration camps did not cite any sources for its claim of an ongoing
genocide against Uyghurs in Xinjiang.
But just months before making the accusation, Pompeo credited Adrian Zenz
personally for shocking revelations of forced sterilization, forced
abortion and coercive family planning against Uyghurs and other minorities
in Xinjiang.
Yet as journalists Max Blumenthal and Gareth Porter of The Grayzone recently
demonstrated, Zenzs research is rife with flagrant data abuse and outright
falsehoods.
While major human rights organizations have not endorsed Pompeos genocide
determination, Human Rights Watch has relied on Zenzs dubious research to
assert the use of forced labor.
Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have cited Zenz as their
sources for the widely repeated claim that more than a million Uyghurs have
been detained in internment camps.
Indeed, as the Jamestown Foundation proudly boasts, Zenzs assertions have
been the basis for media reports around the world.
Emgage CEO Wael Alzayat has also embraced the widely cited one million
figure:
Yet as Blumenthal and journalist Ajit Singh demonstrated in 2019, the claim
of a million or more detained people is based on two highly dubious
studies.
One, by the US-government funded Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders,
concluded that millions of people had been detained in Xinjiang by
extrapolating from interviews with a mere eight individuals.
Similarly, Zenz arrived at his estimate [of] over one million in a
dubious manner, Blumenthal and Singh note.
In his 2018 paper making the allegation, Zenz extrapolates the one million
number by making inferences and assumptions from a single unverifiable
source.
According to Zenz, a table allegedly showing numbers of detainees in various
sub-districts of Xinjiang was reportedly leaked from a reliable source to
a Uyghur exile media organization based in Istanbul.
Zenz does not cite the exile media organization itself, but a second-hand
report in Newsweek Japan.
Zenz acknowledges that the accuracy of this estimate is of course
predicated upon the supposed validity of the stated sources something he
does not and cannot vouch for.
Indeed, Zenz admits that while there is no certainty, it is reasonable to
speculate that the total number of detainees might range anywhere between
several hundred thousand and just over one million.
For some reason, these glaring caveats and his resort to speculation are
seldom if ever mentioned in the countless media reports relying on Zenzs
research.
Waiting for the Antichrist
While many outlets have taken Zenzs claims at face value, few have informed
their audiences that he is a far-right, anti-Semitic Christian Zionist who
appears to be on a mission to convert members of religious minorities in
China.
Zenz, a born-again Christian, told The Wall Street Journal in 2019 that as
the newspaper put it he has an affinity for Chinas minority groups
because they seem more open spiritually.
I feel very clearly led by God to do this. Zenz said. With Xinjiang,
things really changed. It became like a mission, or a ministry.
Zenzs research, The Wall Street Journal reported, was done from his house
in a suburb of the German city of Stuttgart.
In 2012, Zenz co-authored a book Worthy to Escape: Why All Believers Will
Not Be Raptured Before the Tribulation setting out his fundamentalist
beliefs and predicting the imminent rise of an Antichrist who will rule the
world, to be followed by the return of Jesus Christ.
According to Zenz, his end-times prophecy requires that the Jews gain
control of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which is currently the site of the
al-Aqsa mosque and the Muslim Dome of the Rock shrine, and construct a third
temple.
Zenz writes that the Antichrist will establish a treacherous peace covenant
with Israel.
He adds that part of Israels peace treaty brokered by the Antichrist will
include a deal that enables it to establish this end-times temple, perhaps
right next to the Muslim sites.
These are alarming statements, and Zenzs effort to soften them is a
transparent ruse.
Gods fiery furnace
This puts Zenz in the company of Israeli Jewish extremists and their
supporters in the Israeli government who are already making plans for the
destruction of the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and their replacement with
a Jewish temple.
Yet like other Christian Zionists, Zenzs eagerness to see Israel take over
Muslim holy sites has nothing to do with a love for Jewish people.
Rather, he warns that Gods refining process will wipe out all unbelieving
Jews who refuse to come to Christ and leave only born-again Israelites to
enter the millennial reign of Christ.
Jews who do not accept Jesus will apparently remain in what Zenz earlier
refers to as Gods fiery furnace.
While Zenzs book does not reveal his vision for Muslims, it is a safe bet
that he does not think they have any better chance of reaching heaven than
Jews, unless they too embrace Christianity as he defines it.
Zenzs book is a cauldron of bizarre end-times fantasy and far-right views.
He asserts that any belief system other than his apocalyptic version of
Christianity including any acceptance of homosexuality and the promotion
of gender equality is ultimately inspired by Satan.
He rails against hate-crime and anti-discrimination laws on the basis that
they are tools for the suppression of biblical Christianity.
Zenz did not respond to a request for comment.
Zenzs pseudo-scholarship repackaged
Earlier this month, the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy, a
Washington think tank, published what is being promoted as a landmark new
report concluding that China is committing genocide against Uyghurs.
While its publishers claim the report is the work of independent experts,
it has a familiar ring: One of those experts is Zenz, on whose research
the report largely rests.
He is cited in the footnotes dozens of times. Many other third party
articles cited in the report also link right back to Zenzs work.
Far from being academically credible, Newlines is a hawkish neoconservative
think tank packed with regime-change advocates and Israel lobbyists
including Elizabeth Tsurkov a veteran of Israels devastating 2006 war on
Lebanon and longtime anti-Palestinian activist Michael Weiss.
As Ajit Singh notes at The Grayzone, Newlines is operated out of Fairfax
University of America a visa mill for international students that was
nearly forced to close by Virginia state regulators in 2019 due to its
abysmal standards.
The expert signatories on the report include longtime anti-China
ideologues, former US government officials, regime-change lobbyists and
supporters of US military interventionism.
They include Irwin Cotler, a prominent Canadian Israel lobbyist who defended
and justified Israels horrific 2014 war on Gaza that killed more than 2,200
Palestinians including 550 children.
Rather than conducting a thorough and comprehensive review of the
available evidence, as the authors claim, Singh observes that the
report restricted its survey to a narrow range of deeply flawed
pseudo-scholarship along with reports by US government-backed lobbying
fronts for the exiled Uyghur separatist movement.
It amounts to nothing more than an attempt to repackage and rebrand Zenzs
discredited work with a veneer of academic authority.
Muslim cover for US policy
In short, Emgages approach to Palestine has been to say the bare minimum
necessary to stave off criticism while vigorously promoting US government
geostrategic interests and policies elsewhere even if it means jumping on
the bandwagon of the Christian Zionist Zenz and his neoconservative,
warmongering backers.
Theres a benefit to this approach: Its a great way for Emgage to appear to
be defending Muslims without having to challenge and indeed while courting
US power and government patronage.
To be sure, Emgage is not the only Muslim American organization to embrace
the Trump administrations genocide designation.
CAIR has done so explicitly, while Salam Al-Marayati, director of the Muslim
Public Affairs Council, shared the news about Pompeos designation without
comment.
And though she has not used the term genocide, Linda Sarsour, Democratic
Party activist and director of the group MPower Change, has written about
Uyghur Muslims in Chinas concentration camps an indication of how
mainstream the campaign largely driven by Zenzs claims has become among US
Muslim activists.
Such Muslim endorsements provide a multicultural assist to the US
governments aggressive and confrontational approach to China which
apparently remains unchanged despite the transition from Trump to Biden.
Journalist Dan Cohen recently produced this video that provides an overview
of how Zenzs dubious claims have taken on the tenor of unquestioned truth,
while Zenz and his extremist and anti-Semitic views have escaped scrutiny:
Supporting regime change
Emgage has barely mentioned Palestine since the election, let alone pressed
Biden to change his hardline pro-Israel policies.
But its CEO Wael Alzayat did find time to congratulate Representative Tom
Malinowski on his election as vice chair of the House foreign affairs
committee.
Malinowski is among the pro-Israel candidates Emgages political action
committee endorsed and funded despite the New Jersey congressmans
opposition to BDS and support for the Trump administrations decision to
move the US embassy to Jerusalem.
The soft spot that Emgage and Alzayat have for Malinowski is likely a result
of his advocacy for US regime change efforts in the Middle East.
Prior to his election to Congress in 2018, Malinowski served as an assistant
secretary of state in the Obama administration.
From that position, he aligned with the notoriously hawkish late Arizona
Republican Senator John McCain to push hard for even greater US involvement
in the Syria war.
As a lawmaker, Malinowski has introduced legislation that aims to prevent
the president of the United States from withdrawing troops from Syria.
He has also cosponsored legislation requiring the US to guarantee Israels
qualitative military edge against all other states in the region.
Malinowski and Alzayat likely became well acquainted when they both worked
in the Obama administration. Alzayat was a senior adviser to Samantha Power,
President Barack Obamas ambassador to the UN who championed disastrous US
interventions.
These included Obamas regime-change war in Libya and his decision to send a
billion dollars worth of weapons to rebel groups in Syria much of which
reportedly ended up in the hands of al-Qaida-linked militants and even ISIS.
(Israel was also directly arming and funding rebel groups in Syria at the
time.)
While Emgage can endorse any politician it pleases, it is impossible to
square the circle of backing pro-Israel figures like Malinowski with any
meaningful support for Palestinian rights.
Malinowski is scheduled to speak at Emgages gala next month.
Another high-profile speaker will be Nury Turkel, chair of the Uyghur Human
Rights Project.
That group was founded with a grant from the National Endowment for
Democracy, the US governments vehicle to foment instability and regime
change in countries that are in Washingtons crosshairs.
Turkels group is part of a network of NED-funded right-wing organizations
seeking regime change in China.
Turkel, who is now also a member of the US governments Commission on
International Religious Freedom, was recently hosted by the American Jewish
Committee, one of the most influential Israel lobby groups in the US.
Punkah walla
By choosing the path of engagement, we guarantee that American Muslim
voices are included in the process and are active players in the decisions
that govern our lives, Emgage CEO Alzayat asserted in an article in The
Arab American News weeks before the November election.
Vote for Biden-Harris or help Trump stay in power, he admonished.
Now that the election is over, we can see that whatever Emgages priorities
may be, countering the Biden administrations anti-Palestinian policies is
not among them.
An early public critic of Emgage was Nadia B. Ahmad, a lawyer and Democratic
Party activist in Florida.
Before The Electronic Intifadas exposé of Emgage, she charged that Farooq
Mithas role in the Biden campaign was about anything other than promoting
the voices of Muslim communities.
Mithas job would be to keep us in check. Keep us in line. Keep us from
doing anything, Ahmad said.
She slammed the activities of Emgages leaders as another male power grab
for a punkah walla position in a Biden administration using a British
colonial-era term for an Indian servant.
It looks like Ahmad was right. Mitha got his punkah walla position while
Emgage carries on with its usual business of not representing those whose
rights and interests it claims to champion. Instead it provides Muslim cover
for the American empire.
Wael Alzayat did not respond to a request for comment.
Ali Abunimah is executive director of The Electronic Intifada.