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January 17, 2024
Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) President Morton A. Klein; Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA) President Dov Hikind; StopAntisemitism Executive Director Liora Rez; and Students Supporting Israel (SSI) Board President Valeria Chazin released the following statement:
The Zionist Organization of America, Americans Against Antisemitism, StopAntisemitism and Students Supporting Israel are all working hard to combat the surging evils of antisemitism, terrorism and defamation of the State of Israel, including on American college campuses. Especially at this difficult time, affiliations with organizations that spew antisemitism and host terrorists and terror supporters should disqualify judicial nominees. We thus strongly OPPOSE confirming Adeel Abdullah Mangi to be a Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge – a top post that it is just one step below the United States Supreme Court.
From 2019 through July 2023, Mr. Mangi was an Advisory Board member of an extreme, antisemitic, anti-Israel, anti-American, hate-mongering organization, the “Center for Security, Race, and Rights” at Rutgers Law School (CSRR), and gave repeated donations to CSRR. In addition, Mangi’s law firm, Patterson Belknapp Webb & Tyler LLP, donated $13,000 to CSRR and became a CSRR “law fellowship sponsor,” after Mangi transmitted donation requests to firm managers. Yet, when Senate Judiciary Committee members questioned Mangi about CSRR’s numerous hateful, antisemitic, terror-affiliated and anti-American activities, Mangi improbably claimed ignorance.
Mangi repeatedly asserted that he was merely a CSRR Advisory Board member; merely advised on CSRR’s “academic research”; and he had no knowledge of, responsibility for or involvement in CSRR’s activities, statements, publications, officials and featured speakers.
If a nominee for a top judicial post asserted that he was merely a Ku Klux Klan advisory board member, and merely advised on the KKK’s “academic research,” his nomination would be flatly rejected. Mangi likewise must not be confirmed.
It is moreover hard to believe that Mangi did not bother to vet CSRR’s antisemitic website and activities before repeatedly personally donating to CSRR and having his law firm also do so.
It is also deeply troubling that Mangi asserted that he never heard of hateful, infamous CSRR events featuring terror affiliates, or of public officials’ condemnations of those events.
For instance, during a December 2021 speech, posted online, Congressman Josh Gottheimer condemned CSRR for celebrating the September 11th terror attacks’ twentieth anniversary by hosting terror-affiliated speakers, including Sami al-Arian, who was convicted for funneling funds, good and services to the designated terror organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Rep. Gottheimer stated:
At an event marking the twentieth anniversary of September 11, Rutgers’ Center for Security, Race and Rights held an event with several controversial speakers, including those who have ties to terrorist organizations.
It is unconscionable that a day meant to reflect on the deadliest attack on United States soil was used to provide a platform to those affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad — a foreign terrorist organization designated by the United States. There is simply no reason why those with ties to militant terrorist organizations, groups who have killed civilians, deserve a podium to students here at Rutgers. With domestic terrorists and homegrown violent extremists often being inspired by propaganda from foreign terrorists, we must castigate and alienate these groups and their associates wherever they are, especially at New Jersey’s flagship public university.
At another event, the same group hosted Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN) — whose officials have connections to Al-Qaeda and Hamas networks.
Hamas sympathizers, or others with ties to other terrorist organizations involved in 9/11, have no place on college campuses. Associates of Palestinian Islamic Jihad have no place on this college campus.
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