The Anti-Defamation League has called on the leaders of the Women’s March to condemn “anti-Semitic” statements made from one of the new board members.
The Women’s March opted to sever ties with Linda Sarsour, Bob Bland, and Tamika Mallory, all of whom have faced accusations of anti-Semitism, in recent weeks. But one of the new board members, a civil rights attorney named Zahra Billoo, had controversial tweets resurface on Monday.
Earlier this year, Billoo declared herself to be a “proud anti-Zionist,” because “if you support the idea of an ethnocentric nation-state, we are not in the same fight for liberation. I oppose a white nation, a Muslim nation, a Jewish nation, and any other whose current status requires privileging one identity over another.”
She has also called the movement a “violent ideology” and “racism,” while saying that if one supports the Zionist movement, then “I don’t think we can work on civil rights together.”
She “has a long history of deeply offensive and anti-Semitic statements,” the Anti-Defamation League said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Billoo repeatedly and unapologetically has said that she views Zionism – the belief in Jewish nationhood – as racism,” the press release stated. “She has equated Israel to that of an apartheid regime, and clearly rejects the very idea of a Jewish state, calling for a Palestine ‘from the river to the sea.’ She has lifted up statements that defend the terror organization Hamas’ intentional targeting of rockets to murder Israeli Jewish civilians, and has done so under the guise of someone working for peace.”
“In 2010, Billoo retweeted a highly offensive tweet that there is ‘no need for a holocaust museum, seeing as Israel has taken it upon itself to recreate it. #Israel #Nazis.’ Billoo also has said that Zionism has no place in the LGBTQ+ community and antiracist movements; thereby, excluding the overwhelming majority of the American Jewish community,” it went on.
“Fair criticism of any government and its policies, including Israel, is an important aspect of democracy. But outright rejecting Jewish nationhood and singling out solely the Jewish state with inflammatory and virulent rhetoric is anti-Semitic, plain and simple,” the ADL’s statement concluded. “We call on its leadership to condemn the statements and sentiments of Billoo.”
The accusations of anti-Semitism facing the Women’s March are not new. Sarsour and Mallory both have relationships with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who is a well-known anti-Semite. Mallory and another leader also accosted a Jewish woman in attendance at the first meeting for the leader’s of the march and they pushed an anti-Semitic claim that has been stated by Farrakhan.
