Ramzi Kassem repped an Al Qaeda terrorist; now he’s setting immigration policy for Biden.
By Daniel Greenfield, Front Page Magazine
“This is not a battle of good versus evil,” Ramzi Kassem wrote in an op-ed that appeared on September 17, 2001. “The perpetrators were probably not driven to their actions by some intrinsic evil or inherent hatred of the good United States.”
He went on to argue that the Al Qaeda attack a week earlier was the result of the “resentment these terrorists felt towards the United States” as a result of “our country’s policies.”
Two decades later, Kassem, now a CUNY law professor and prominent terror lawyer, claimed in a Washington Post op-ed that, “since 9/11, the government has consistently used the law to enable, operationalize and justify the violence it has deployed against Muslims.”
And that, “the legacy of 9/11 ought to be recounted primarily through the stories of Muslims the world over who have largely paid the price of American power and prosperity.”
Next year, Ramzi Kassem was named by the Biden administration as a Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration at the White House Domestic Policy Council.
A Syrian national who grew up in Lebanon, Iraq and other Islamic terror states, arriving in this country to attend college and spread terrorist propaganda before becoming a terror lawyer, Kassem seems like a national security risk rather than a White House Policy Council adviser.
Ramzi Kassem had boasted of having “held the record for the longest delayed security clearance in the Guantánamo setting”, but even that does not seem to have dissuaded the Biden administration from bringing him on board.
While some leave behind the extremist views of their college years, Ramzi Kassem instead built a career around them, becoming a noted terrorist lawyer whose Gitmo inmate clients included .
Ahmed al-Darbi, an Al Qaeda terrorist and the brother-in-law of one of the hijackers who flew a plane into the Pentagon, and who was himself a key figure in the bombing of an oil tanker.
Some lawyers represent paying clients, but Kassem, like many terror lawyers, worked pro-bono, and his advocacy echoed his pre-existing support for Islamic terrorism.
In his columns, as in his activism, Ramzi Kassem repeatedly justified terrorism as a reaction to its victims. “Terrorism is but one of many reactions to oppression and dispossession and not their cause.”
While at Columbia University, Kassem co-founded Turath, an association of Muslim students, and then Qanun at Columbia Law. A fellow student described these hateful groups as having brought “under the guidance of Mr. Kassem… speakers to this campus that support violence against American and Israeli civilians… defended the genocidal program of Hamas.”
The Columbia letter noted that, “one speaker, disavowed by many of America’s pro-Palestinian activists, prior to being invited to Columbia, had said that Jews exist only to ‘dip their matzahs in the blood of Palestinian children.’”
This antisemitic blood libel didn’t seem to have interfered with Kassem’s career prospects.
Kassem’s college obsession with Jews extended even to condemning Columbia’s dining hall for serving “Israeli Wrap” sandwiches and demanding that the name be changed to the “more inclusive” Middle-Eastern Wrap. But not all of Kassem’s hostility to Jews was non-violent.
In his own columns for the university paper, Kassem boasted of throwing stones at Israel.
“On a sunny day in early August, I headed down to the Lebanese-Israeli border at Fatima’s Gate with busloads of Palestinian adolescents from the refugee camps of Sabra and Shatila, and we threw some stones,” he described. “Lebanese civilians, young and old, were playfully going through the motions… Having lived through my fair share of Israeli bombardments, raids, and sieges, I figured I might as well partake in the festivities.”
Even more violent acts of antisemitic murder found a ready defense.
“Some Palestinians resort to terrorism for many of the same reasons that people from various backgrounds have in the past: namely, despair and much endured suffering,” Kassem argued. “One must ask oneself how and why a human being was pushed to the limit and saw no way out of a situation short of blowing himself or herself up.”
These defenses of Islamic terrorism came within the larger context of calls to eliminate Israel and accusations of ethnic cleansing, while blaming Islamic violence against Jews, even before the creation of Israel, on its Jewish victims.
Kassem was named a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow, a project of a foundation by Soros’ brother, notorious for its cultivation of political extremists hostile to America and its values, and worked with the Center for Constitutional Rights, a former Communist organization.
After law school, Ramzi Kassem founded Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) at CUNY to provide free legal aid to Muslims accused of terrorism.
The City University of New York had become notorious for its antisemitic atmosphere and Kassem signed on to a letter in defense of antisemitic Islamist activism alongside known hate groups and terrorist support organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, Al-Awda, Within Our Lifetime, and Samidoun: designated by Israel as a terrorist organization.
The letter accused Jews of using antisemitism to “repress activism and harass and threaten Palestinian students and Muslim students”.
Across the decades, Kassem’s college advocacy against Jews had come full circle from student to professor. And his war against this country has taken him from Gitmo to Washington D.C.
The Biden administration chose to elevate a vocal advocate for Islamic terrorists as a Senior Policy Advisor for Immigration at the White House Domestic Policy Council at a time when there are grave concerns about the penetration of terrorists through the unguarded southern border.
The Biden administration claims that it wants to protect the homeland and that it supports Israel. Putting Ramzi Kassem on its Domestic Policy Council shows those assertions to be lies. Its Policy Council includes a man who advocated for Gitmo terrorists and threw rocks at Israel.
Ramzi Kassem’s presence on driving the immigration agenda at the White House Domestic Policy Council is hard evidence that the Biden administration is putting the rights of Muslim terrorists ahead of the safety and welfare of Americans.
The White House Domestic Policy Council coordinates and develops the Biden agenda. Including a vocal activist against national security will have consequences. And the Biden administration will not be able to play innocent when one of the Islamic terrorists it allows into the country kills Americans.
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