Articles by Isabel Vincent

Politics

Muslim group CAIR cutting $1,000 checks for anti-Israel agitators who have been disciplined by colleges

Anti-Israel agitators who spread disruption at US colleges and were punished by authorities were awarded checks for $1,000 by a Muslim nonprofit, The Post has learned. The money was given to students who faced penalties for leading pro-Palestinian protests before and after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 2023, according to a bombshell report by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI) and the Intelligent Advocacy Network (IAN) The cash was awarded from a “Champions of Justice Fund,” set up by the California chapter of the Council on American-Muslim Relations’ (CAIR) as “institutional endorsement,” the report claims. In California, the largest arm of the CAIR web of nonprofits, affiliates in San Francisco and Los Angeles raised more than $100,000 in donations for campus radicals, while the main group solicited $64,000 in donations, records show. The money was then offered as interest free loans in grants of $1,000 to students who lost “scholarships, housing or other support because of their advocacy,” according to CAIR’s website. In October 2024, CAIR-CA awarded $20,000 in loans and scholarships to 20 student protestors from the “Champions of Justice Fund.” The identities of the student recipients have never been revealed, but the institutions they attend were in CAIR’s literature, and included Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. That means students suspended or expelled from Columbia University for storming and occupying the university’s Hamilton Hall, barricading themselves inside the building with furniture and padlocks on April 30, 2024 — an incident which resulted in the building having to be stormed by police — could have potentially qualified for the $1,000 checks. “These programs support students after acts of criminality and violence, creating a reward structure for building the most militant face of the movement. This is how ideologies metastasize,” NCRI founder Joel Finkelstein warned to The Post. One testimonial published by CAIR in literature about their fund read: “The consequences of my pro-Palestine advocacy have been swift and severe. As a safety Marshal at a protest against the bombing of the Al-Shifa hospital, I was doxxed by Zionist students, leading to my information being spread to the far-right media. “I have endured relentless death threats, lost my summer law firm offer and its accompanying diversity scholarship. This ordeal has set me back at least $115,000 in lost income and legal fees, an overwhelming burden for my working class family.” Although the quote is anonymous, the details match those of Ibrahim Bharmal. He was arrested on Oct. 18 at Harvard Business School campus after participating in a “die in,” the night after Al-Shifa hospital was bombed in Gaza. At the time he was volunteering as a safety marshal. He also told the Boston Globe he lost his summer placement at a prominent law firm as a result of the altercation. Bharmal, 29, was later sentenced to 80 hours of community service and to complete an anger management program for an assault of a Jewish business student during the campus protest. He and others surrounded the student, Yoav Segev, and waved kaffiyehs at him while yelling “shame!” to his face, blocking Segev from leaving. Bharmal never received any punishment from Harvard for his conduct. In fact, a year after his arrest he was even awarded a $65,000 fellowship by Harvard Law Review, a publication he had contributed to, for graduates who plan to go into the public sector. Bharmal graduated in 2025 and now works at CAIR-Los Angeles as an immigration rights fellow. He did not respond to The Post’s request for comment about how much money he had received from CAIR. CAIR leaders backed many of the anti-Israel encampments. On the second day of a student encampment at University of California Riverside in the spring of 2024, Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Greater Los Angeles Area office of CAIR led a teach-in and gave a talk to the anti-Israel protestors, according a report. CAIR says it is the largest Muslim charity in the US, receiving hundreds of thousands in donations from progressive nonprofits, including Tides Foundation and the California-based Weingart Foundation. It claims that less than 1% of its funding comes from outside of the US. However, when an ex-employee, Lori Saroya, filed a lawsuit against CAIR for defamation, which asked for details on who their foreign sources of funding were, and a judge ruled they had to disclose them, the charity abruptly settled the case out of court. The charity had previously been awarded $500,000 from Saudi Prince Alwaleed ibn Talal, according to a 2002 report in Arabnews.com Separately, CAIR-CA is under probe by the Department of Justice, according to IAN, and the California Fair Political Practices Commission over alleged financial misrepresentation of federal funds. In one instance, the charity took $7.2 million in taxpayer cash intended to settle impoverished immigrants in California between 2022 and 2024. The cash, which was intended to assist 1,800 Afghan refugees, only helped 177 Afghan refugees from 2021 to 2023, less than 10% percent of the total it was meant to serve, according to the report. Much of the money could not be accounted for within CAIR’s official filings, reviewed by The Post NCRI and IAN told The Post they are demanding a forensic audit of CAIR-California, which received more than $17 million in donations from individuals and businesses as well as the government in 2023, according to their latest publicly available filings. A lawyer representing CAIR-California denied there has been any misuse of funds. “The false claims alleged are part of a larger defamation campaign targeting Muslim Americans by fringe anti-Muslim groups,” said Amr Shabaik, the legal director of CAIR-California. “All contributions CAIR-California receives are reported, accounted for, and used strictly for their intended purpose and subjected to rigorous internal auditing and reporting. “That is why both private and public funders have worked and continue to work with CAIR California.” CAIR’s origins can be traced to Middle East based groups the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Federal court records from the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial identified CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator, according to legal documents which found “ample evidence” connecting CAIR to the Palestine Committee, a US-based group founded by the Muslim Brotherhood to advance Hamas, according to the report. CAIR counter-claimed the trial of the Holy Land Foundation was “deeply flawed and widely criticized,” and said it “was ruled unconstitutional by the Fifth Circuit [court] in 2010.”