A political motion committee spending tens of hundreds of {dollars} to enhance NYC mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani has ties to a New Jersey-based Palestinian group that hosted a member of a terror group which was concerned within the Oct. 7, 2023 assault on Israel.
We the Folks, America For All PAC has doled out greater than $36,000 on video billboard advertisements hyping the socialist mayoral frontrunner’s proposal to make bus fares free, metropolis marketing campaign finance data present.
The advertisements listing the PAC’s high donor as The Reality Mission, led by New Jersey lawyer Abed Awad – a longtime chief and funder of the Palestinian-American Group Middle in Clifton, who additionally serves as treasurer for “We the Folks, America for All.”
The Palestinian-American Group Middle’s president, Diab Mustafa, was listed as one in every of The Reality Mission’s three founding trustees when it fashioned in 2022.
The middle sparked outrage in April when its annual convention featured a livestream tackle by Wisam Rafeedie, a longtime member of the Common Entrance for the Liberation of Palestine, a Syria-based left-wing terrorist group that the U.S. Division of the Treasury and different observers say took half in Hamas’s murderous assault on Israel in 2023.
The middle has additionally promoted Rafeedie’s e book and repeatedly hosted figures from the group Samidoun, which the U.S. State Division, Canada, Germany, and Israel have recognized as a PFLP entrance.
The PFLP is notorious for pioneering airplane hijackings as a terror device, and masterminding the slaughter of Puerto Rican Christians at an Israeli airport in 1972.
The Community Contagion Analysis Middle, an impartial group monitoring political extremism, warned that the advertisements’ emphasis on Mamdani’s bus proposal as a substitute of Center Japanese points displays a traditional political technique for fringe teams making an attempt to infiltrate the mainstream.
“These actors are partaking in entryism by adopting a preferred, non-controversial difficulty not as a result of it displays their true mission, however as a result of it offers them a straightforward solution to achieve legitimacy and a foothold in electoral debates,” mentioned Alex Goldenberg, senior advisor on the NCRI.
The PAC additionally has ties to the “Uncommitted” motion that break up the Democratic Get together in 2024.
Final yr it collaborated with the nonprofit American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, the place Awad serves on the board, on the Uncommitted marketing campaign, which discouraged Arab-People from backing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over their stance on Israel.
Awad’s son, Ahmad, was an Uncommitted delegate to the Democratic Nationwide Conference and was amongst The Reality Mission’s founding trustees. And The Reality Mission’s co-founder, D.C. political advisor Mohammed “Mo” Maraqa served because the Anti-Discrimination Committee’s lead digital strategist in the course of the election season.
Bitter Dems blame Uncommitted for Harris dropping states like Michigan to President Trump.
In the meantime, the PAC hasn’t revealed the place the money for the pro-Zohran advertisements got here from — solely that it flowed via the Reality Mission and Maraqa’s Molitico Consulting. The advisor mentioned, “We the Folks, America for All” hasn’t spent sufficient but or gotten donations large enough to set off the principles requiring disclosure.
The New York Metropolis Marketing campaign Finance Board declined to remark.
Awad, nonetheless, maintained that the PAC has obeyed all metropolis and state rules, and that regardless of the overlaps in management, the committee is completely separate from the opposite organizations he and Maraqa are affiliated with.
“The Reality Mission has had no additional position, monetary or in any other case, within the PAC’s actions past what has already been publicly disclosed to the relevant authorities,” he mentioned. “Individually, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Palestinian-American Group Middle don’t have any monetary involvement, governance position, or different enter—direct or oblique—in The Reality Mission or in We the Folks, America for All.”
Maraqa denied having any private hyperlink to the PFLP and its associates.
“I’m under no circumstances related, nor have I ever been related to PFLP/Samidoun and naturally denounce the group and each different terrorist group which participated in Oct. seventh or some other assault on civilians,” he mentioned.
