FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita launched an investigation into the Council on American-Islamic Relations and Students for Justice in Palestine Wednesday, demanding documents regarding the groups’ statements following the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks on Israel.
Rokita sent civil investigative demand letters, ordering CAIR and Students for Justice in Palestine to hand over internal communications related to public statements they issued condemning Israel after the Oct. 7 attacks and any connections they may have with foreign terrorist organizations.
“Through unedited body-camera and security-camera footage from that horrible day, I have seen Hamas murdering unarmed civilians, including children, in their homes and in the street, and while visiting Israel I have seen the aftermath firsthand,” Rokita told the Daily Signal in a statement on the investigations Wednesday.
“October 7th is Israel’s 9/11, and just as most of the world stood with us on that day and afterward, the majority of my fellow Hoosiers stand with Israel and against the bigoted barbarity directed at Jews that still exists,” the attorney general added. “As attorney general, I am investigating organizations that may have given aid and support to Hamas in the wake of the October 7 attack.”
“I will follow the evidence and take all action I can to expose bigots and make clear that terrorist supporters are not welcome in the great Hoosier State,” Rokita concluded.
Under Indiana Code Section 4-6-17-1, the attorney general may demand documents when he has reasonable cause to believe an entity may be an “affiliate of a foreign terrorist organization.”
The CAIR demand focuses on remarks that the council’s executive director, Nihad Awad, delivered at a Nov. 23, 2023, press conference.
“The people of Gaza decided to break the siege, the walls of the concentration camp, on October 7th,” Awad reportedly said. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land.” He stated that “the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense,” and that “Israel as an occupying power does not have that right to self-defense.”
Awad later claimed that his remarks had been spliced together to create a false meaning. “What I actually said while discussing international law: Ukrainians, Palestinians and other occupied people have the right to defend themselves and escape occupation by just and legal means, but targeting civilians is never an acceptable means of doing so,” he said.
“The average Palestinians who briefly walked out of Gaza and set foot on their ethnically cleansed land in a symbolic act of defiance against the blockade and stopped there without engaging in violence were within their rights under international law; the extremists who went on to attack civilians in southern Israel were not,” he added. Awad explicitly condemned the Hamas slaughters of Israelis on Oct. 7, and said that in his initial remarks he condemned hate and violence against Jews committed “because of their faith or their life or their religious practices.”
Rokita’s demand orders CAIR to produce “all versions and drafts” of the remarks, all preparatory material, press-response communications, and documents reflecting any internal action taken after the public reaction. The demand asks CAIR to identify if it has any communications or has carried out business with an organization the U.S. government designates as a foreign terrorist group, and to produce any such communications. It also asks for documentation on any connections between CAIR and Students for Justice in Palestine.
The Students for Justice in Palestine demand seeks the identities of those responsible for statements calling for students to “seize the university” and describing their objective as “the dismantlement of the Zionist entity and the liberation of Palestine, from the river to the sea.” The statements also anticipated “an era of escalating crisis in the belly of the beast.”
“Hundred of thousands of students have worked tirelessly to uphold the Palestinian liberation struggle and challenge the US empire from within,” the “Letter from the Editors” added in the January 2024 edition of “The Written Resistance.”
Rokita’s demand orders Students for Justice in Palestine to describe its relationship with Samidoun and the Palestinian Alternative Revolutionary Path Movement, known as Masar Badil, and to hand over documents related to the organizations. It also demands that Students for Justice in Palestine produce documents related to any foreign funding it may receive.
The Indiana investigation comes after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated CAIR, which bills itself as the largest Muslim civil rights organization in the country, a “foreign terrorist organization” and a “transnational criminal organization.” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his Cabinet designated CAIR and its Florida chapter “domestic terrorist organizations.”
CAIR has challenged both states’ actions in federal court, arguing that state officials have no constitutional basis to brand an American civil rights organization a terrorist group. A federal judge preliminarily blocked DeSantis’ original executive order in March, but CAIR has filed a new challenge to Florida’s designation under a subsequently enacted state law.
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
