CAIR Los Angeles Executive Director Hussam Ayloush currently serves as an Assembly District Delegate to the California Democratic Party. He has a long history of unchallenged extremist and antisemitic rhetoric. Now leaders in the local Jewish community are demanding he be held accountable for his vitriole.
In an open letter to California Governor Gavin Newson, California Democratic Party Chair Rusty Hicks, and Assembly Member Jesse Gabriel, Jewish community leaders representing Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewish communities in the state of California expressed their concern regarding the "multiple antisemitic statements made by California Democratic Party (CDP) leader Hussam Ayloush."
They write:
As an institution whose mission is to be a “leading advocate for justice and mutual understanding” and whose Los Angeles Executive Director, Hussam Ayloush, currently serves as an Assembly District Delegate to the CDP, we are deeply concerned by CAIR LA’s role in influencing California’s Democratic Party with revisionist lies about Israel and the Jewish people, and the Middle Eastern Jewish community in particular. These lies are contributing to the rising tides of antisemitism our communities are currently experiencing, and are making the CDP an increasingly hostile place for many Jews – particularly those of North African and Middle Eastern descent.
We feel it is critical to open this letter by asserting that the vast majority of Jewish people are indigenous to Israel. As Mizrahi Jews, our ancestors lived continuously in the Middle East since the dawn of Judaism itself. In the mid to late 20th century, state-sanctioned antisemitism—frequently taken under the banner of anti-Zionism—led to the ethnic cleansing and displacement of close to one million Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews from countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa. About 650,000 of these Jews fled to Israel as stateless refugees and the remainder scattered to countries around the world, including the USA, with an estimated 200,000 residing in California. Today, Mizrahi and Sephardic Jews comprise over half of Israel’s Jewish population.
Hussam Ayloush's repeated dehuanization of the Jewish people is doumented in the letter:
Since 2014, former CDP Executive Board member Hussam Ayloush has gone on record with antisemitic, genocidal calls for the state of Israel to be “terminated. We are deeply disturbed to learn that Mr. Ayloush has also referred to those who support Israel as “heartless hateful bloodthirsty humans” and compared them to "Nazis"....We are also deeply concerned that Mr. Ayloush’s ongoing and repeated characterization of Zionism as a “political ideology whose tentacles are rooted in racism” is directly contributing to antisemitic, revisionist histories of the Jewish people.
California deserves Democratic leadership that bridges gaps and unifies our diverse community. We deserve better than Hussam Ayloush.
Read the entire letter here:
Letter Denouncing Antisemitic Statements made by California Democratic Party Leader Hussam Aylous
