This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/8017

CAIR & September 11th Families For Peaceful Tommorows Advocate For Terrorists & The Taliban

CAIR's Jacob Bender & Wife Katharina Feil Exploit The 9/11 Attacks To Push A Far Left Pro Jihad Agenda
October 3, 2022

CAIR and the Anti-9/11 Families Who Shill for the Terrorists

'Useful idiots' cynically exploit the September 11th attacks.

MIM: Excerpt from a letter by the September 11th Families For Peaceful Tomorrows to President Biden urging him to give 7 billlion dollars in frozen assets to the Taliban. It was signed by CAIR and MPAC et al.:

"The Afghan people are not responsible… The Afghan people are as much victims of 9/11 as we are." "I can't think of a worse betrayal of the people of Afghanistan."

https://www.afsc.org/sites/default/files/documents/Afghanistan%20Asset%20Freeze%20CSO%20Letter%20.pdf

September 27, 2022 by Joe Kaufman

When one hears the group name 'September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows,' one likely envisions an assembly of mourning family members, who seek justice for those who took their loved ones' lives, on the day Muslim terrorists flew planes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon. However, while this entity may very well consist of relatives of those who perished on 9/11, the main goal of the group is not to bring justice to the terrorists, but to assist the terrorists by claiming that they too are 'victims.' Katherina Feil, is a founder/leader of this outrage, and together with her CAIR-affiliated husband they make up a power couple for radical Islam.

Jacob Bender and Katherina Sabine Feil reside in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. From there, Bender serves as the Creative Director for the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). Previously, he served as Executive Director of the chapter.

CAIR has foundational and financial ties to Hamas. CAIR was established, in June 1994, as a part of the Muslim Brotherhood's US Palestine Committee, under the leadership of then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. In 2007 and 2008, CAIR was named by the US government a co-conspirator for two federal trials prosecuting CAIR's fellow Palestine Committee member, the Holy Land Foundation (HLF), and its associates for raising millions of dollars for Hamas. CAIR used its websites to raise funds for HLF, and CAIR's Texas chapter founder, Ghassan Elashi, was HLF Board Chairman.

On September 4, 2022, Bender was honored with an award, at a banquet for the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), who like CAIR was named an HLF co-conspirator. When HLF began, in 1988, ISNA's (then and current) mailing address was used to receive HLF donations. Among ISNA's founders was Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) leader and convicted terrorist, Sami al-Arian. During Bender's ISNA talk, he claimed he had received $200,000 from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal for a documentary film he had directed. In April 2002, Bin Talal pledged $27 million to a Saudi telethon believed to have raised money for Palestinian suicide bombers.

It is ironic that Bender, a Jew who lived in Israel for a number of years and even worked at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, would be involved with entities associated with violence against his fellow Jews.

Feil, who grew up in Germany, also has somewhat of a Jewish background; her mother's father was a Jew. She learned about it years past her childhood, as it had been kept a family secret to protect from the Nazis. Like Bender, Feil spent much time in Israel, and she was a curator at Yeshiva University Museum in New York City. Also like Bender, today, Feil is involved with something incredibly controversial. She is the Director/Project Coordinator of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, a project of the Tides Center and a group that has a history of hindering fellow 9/11 victims and advocating for people involved in terrorism against the US.

September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows has been lobbying President Biden to release $7 billion to Afghanistan. The funds had been frozen to keep them from the Taliban, following the Biden Administration's botched 2021 pullout from Afghanistan that left the Taliban in charge. This has pitted them against other 9/11 families, who have been fighting to see the funds go instead to 9/11 victims. Biden has pledged half to Afghanistan and half to the victims, saying none will reach the Taliban. Yet, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said, "It is impossible to provide humanitarian assistance inside Afghanistan without engaging" the Taliban.

For over a decade, Peaceful Tomorrows has called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay prison, which holds many of the world's most dangerous terrorists, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM). In April 2011, the group expressed its "profound disappointment" that KSM was to be tried in a military commission. In a September 2020 article on the group's website and co-written by its Guantanamo Committee Chair Colleen Kelly, Kelly backs: the "immediate transfer" of KSM and four others involved in 9/11; the "repatriation or resettlement" of all remaining 35 detainees; and the US paying for their "rehabilitation and reintegration."

Recently, Peaceful Tomorrows filed Amicus Briefs in court on behalf of alleged terrorists Abu Zubaydah (October 2021) and Majid Khan (June 2022), claiming and/or insinuating that the rights of these two have been violated by the US government. Zubaydah is allegedly a high-ranking member of al-Qaeda, who was thought to be close to Osama bin Laden. Khan is a former courier for al-Qaeda, who, according to the US government, "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States."

Peaceful Tomorrows has been a roadblock to stop other 9/11 families from being compensated for the loss of their loved ones and from seeing that the terrorists who murdered their loved ones find justice for their actions. We have to ask ourselves why this group would seek to hinder their fellow Americans, who have suffered greatly and continue to suffer, and at the same time stomp on the memories of the fallen victims by providing assistance to the terrorists. To answer this, we must look into who the group is cavorting with, and we should look no further than Katharina Feil's husband's terror-related organization, CAIR.

For years, CAIR has co-sponsored a Day of Action with Peaceful Tomorrows to call for the closing of the Guantanamo Bay facility. In June 2021, CAIR co-signed with the group – along with the South Asian terror-related Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) – a letter to President Biden calling for an end to "extrajudicial killings" overseas. And in October 2016, CAIR co-sponsored a 9/11 "Commemoration," featuring a film, which discusses the Peaceful Tomorrows' founding. The contact for the event was none other than Jacob Bender.

The utter perversity of a group of 9/11 families partnering with CAIR is further amplified by the fact that CAIR was named as a defendant in a 9/11 terror lawsuit brought by the Estate of FBI agent John P. O'Neill, Sr., who was killed in the World Trade Center attack. The class action complaint states, "Council on American Islamic Relations and CAIR Canada (collectively, CAIR), have aided, abetted, and materially sponsored al Qaeda and international terrorism."

It is no doubt that September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows' intentions are malevolent. The group does not want to bring justice to the terrorists; it wants to free them. The group does not want to help the families of the victims; it wants to hinder them. But what is even worse is that some wish to legitimize the group. Peaceful Tomorrows has participated at a US Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, and it has, on more than one occasion, been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Peaceful Tomorrows' agenda needs to be exposed and scrutinized, and its cynical exploitation of the September 11th attacks to push its radical agenda must be stopped. It is time that people understand what this group is truly about, because what it is not about is advocating for 9/11 families.

Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/cair-and-the-anti-9-11-families-who-shill-for-the-terrorists/

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April 18, 2022

President Joseph R. Biden

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Ave Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

Afghanistan is in crisis. If immediate action is not taken to reverse the economic restrictions that have pushed the economy into free-fall, many experts believe that more Afghans may die in the coming year than were killed in 20 years of warfare. According to the UNDP, Afghanistan is at risk of soon reaching "universal" levels of poverty. 1 The most recent projections place 23 million people — 55% of the country's population — at a high level of acute food insecurity. 2 The World Health Organization estimates that 3.2 million children face acute malnutrition — one million of whom are at risk of death. 3 Behind these appalling statistics lie grievous human stories. Across the country, Afghans were made to choose between buying food to eat and fuel to heat their homes against the harsh winter cold. 4 In a recent Congressional hearing, International Rescue Committee President and CEO David Miliband shared reports of Afghans selling their organs, and others their own children, to avoid starvation. 5 "Because of debt and hunger I was forced to sell my kidney," one Afghan woman, Delaram Rahmati, told The Guardian, "I was forced to sell two of my daughters, an eight- and six-year-old." 6 This is a crisis of profound scale and tragedy. It is also, in large part, a crisis of choice. Though many factors have contributed to Afghanistan's economic disaster, including a collapse in outside salary support for hundreds of thousands of workers, drought, and the brutal rule of the Taliban, it is the US decision to prevent the country's central bank — Da Afghanistan Bank (DAB) — from accessing the roughly $7 billion in foreign currency reserves held in the United States that has pushed a fragile economy over the edge. European financial institutions have similarly blocked the bank's access to another $2 billion of international reserves. The central bank of Afghanistan, as is the case in other countries, plays a crucial role in stabilizing prices and exchange rates, preventing runaway inflation and financial crises, and, as the national lender of last resort, undergirding the country's entire banking system. However, in order to perform these essential functions, DAB needs access to its hard currency international

reserves; without this access, it simply lacks the resources needed to maintain a functioning financial system and stable economy in Afghanistan. According to Graeme Smith, an Afghanistan expert at the International Crisis Group, "The long and short of it is Western economic restrictions are creating an economic crisis in the country which is driving tens of millions Afghans into starvation." 7 As UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres noted when the winter began, "Freezing temperatures and frozen assets are a lethal combination for the people of Afghanistan." We, the undersigned organizations, representing humanitarian, human rights, anti-war, veteran, faith-based, 9/11 victim, working class, and diaspora communities, urge the administration to make the full $7 billion available to the central bank of Afghanistan. We also ask that you encourage other countries holding Afghan reserves to do the same. Though we applaud the recent General License No. 20 8 as well as US and multilateral efforts to provide much-needed humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people, neither of these can replace a functioning financial system. Without access to foreign currency reserves and international banking institutions, the country has no means by which to stabilize its currency, which is already leading to a liquidity crisis, enormous difficulties in purchasing essential imports, the depreciation of Afghanistan's currency, and serious damage to the country's banking system. Allowing DAB to access its reserves is a critical step to reestablishing the functioning of the Afghan banking system, halting the accelerating humanitarian crisis, and ultimately reversing Afghanistan's economic collapse — indeed, it is a necessary one. As John Sifton, the Asia Advocacy Director for Human Rights Watch succinctly puts it: "A country needs a central bank." 9 Seizing nearly half of these assets for potential compensation in a lawsuit by the families of September 11th victims is particularly illogical and unjustified. We all want justice for the victims of the September 11th attacks. But, as recently stated by members of September Eleventh Families for Peaceful Tomorrows who lost loved ones to the attacks: "The Afghan people are not responsible… The Afghan people are as much victims of 9/11 as we are." 10 "I can't think of a worse betrayal of the people of Afghanistan." 11 Nor is this policy justified by the terrible oppression experienced by Afghan women under Taliban rule. As Jamila Afghani, founder and president of the Afghan chapter of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, has said: "We are not supporting Afghan women by starving them.

We appreciate the challenges of attempting to help the people of Afghanistan without aiding the Taliban. However, these resources belong to the Afghan people, and to the extent that their access may inadvertently or indirectly benefit the Taliban government, this must be weighed against the hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of Afghan civilians who will die if these assets are not returned to the central bank — all in punishment of a government that they did not choose. The starvation of millions of Afghans helps no one. We urge you to act.

Sincerely,

9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows

Afghans for a Better Tomorrow

American Friends Service Committee

American Muslim Bar Association

Antiwar.com

Center for Economic and Policy Research

Charity & Security Network

Charter for Compassion

Church of the Brethren

CODEPINK

Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)

Demand Progress Education Fund

Democratic Socialists of America,International Committee

Emgage

Friends Committee on National Legislation

Just Foreign Policy

Justice Is Global

The Libertarian Institute

MADRE

Maryknoll Office for Global Concerns

Mina's List

Muslim Public Affairs Council

National Council of Churches

National Iranian American Council

National Religious Campaign Against Torture

NH Peace Action

Oxfam America

Pax Christi

US Peace Action

PEACEWORKERS

Poligon Education Fund Presbyterian Church (USA)

Project ANAR

Quincy Institute

Rethinking Foreign Policy

RootsAction.org

Unfreeze Afghanistan

United Church of Christ,Justice and Local Church Ministries

The United Methodist Church — General Board of Church and Society United for Peace and Justice

Veterans for Peace

War Prevention Initiative

Win Without War

Working Families Party

World BEYOND War

CC:

Secretary Antony Blinken

Secretary Janet Yellen

Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Chairman Sherrod Brown

Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Ranking Member Patrick Toomey

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member James Risch

House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters

House Financial Services Committee Ranking Member Patrick McHenry

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Gregory Meeks

House Foreign Affairs Committee Ranking Member Michael McCaul

This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/8017