America's new anti-Israel alliance takes shape
When Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the San Francisco branch of CAIR — America’s top Muslim lobby — announced last week she was taking a “sabbatical” after she sparked a furor by accusing “Zionist” organizations of fueling Islamophobia, it would be easy to dismiss it as one more anti-Semitic rant.
Along the East Coast, the House of Representatives two weeks ago passed a law calling on the State Department to create a special envoy to monitor and combat Islamophobia and to devote a section of the department’s annual human rights report to incidents of state-sponsored Islamophobic violence.
At first glance, these two events seem unrelated. Combating Islamophobia also sounds like fair play. Since 2004, the State Department employs a special envoy who tracks global anti-Semitism.
There’s one major difference.
The House passed the measure creating the anti-Semitism envoy by unanimous consent. The law mandating the Islamophobia envoy squeaked by in a 219-212 vote, along party lines. Not one Republican voted for it. You can either chalk it up to extreme polarization, or examine the motives of the bill’s sponsors.
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