American Muslims for Palestine’s fiscal sponsor, AJP Educational Foundation, took in more than $2.2 million in revenue in 2023, according to its most recent tax filings, which do not disclose the group’s donors, Jewish Insider reported.
By Rachel Avraham
Jason Miyares, the Virginia attorney general, recently filed a petition against the anti-Israel group American Muslims for Palestine, demanding that they come clean about their financial records. According to JNS, the demand “requested records relating to American Muslim for Palestine’s noncompliance with the state’s charitable solicitation law and an investigation into allegations that the organization may have used raised funds for impermissible purposes, such as benefiting or providing support to terrorist organizations,” Miyares’s office said.
“The refusal of American Muslims for Palestine to comply with a lawful Civil Investigative Demand raises serious concerns about the transparency of their operations,” Miyares said in a statement. “Virginia law requires nonprofits soliciting charitable donations to operate with accountability, and my office will not hesitate to ensure that any organization—regardless of its mission—follows the law.” He proclaimed, “My office is committed to ensuring the rule of law is upheld. Virginians deserve transparency, accountability, and the assurance that organizations soliciting their hard-earned dollars are doing so for legitimate purposes.”
American Muslims for Palestine’s fiscal sponsor, AJP Educational Foundation, took in more than $2.2 million in revenue in 2023, according to its most recent tax filings, which do not disclose the group’s donors, Jewish Insider reported. Miyares — who has largely avoided commenting publicly on the active investigation — said that his office has been “aggressively in the process of using the legal system” to obtain additional records that American Muslims for Palestine has fought to withhold. “We have been relentless in that pursuit, and we will continue to be relentless,” he told Jewish Insider. “Our job is to get to the truth.”
The move by Miyares follows the arrest of an 18-year-old George Mason University student in Falls Church for allegedly plotting the murder of Jews at the U.S. consulate in New York City and the search of the home of two George Mason University sisters in Springfield that uncovered anti-American and anti-Jewish literature alongside firearms, the Fairfax Times reported.
According to the report, protests have surged since the October 7 terror attacks on Israel, with American Muslims for Palestine at the forefront of demonstrations that have drawn accusations of inciting hate. Due to the fact that the anti-Israel group has been involved in inciting youth, some claim that the George Mason University plots can be traced back to the American Muslims for Palestine. The Anti-Defamation League describes the group as “the leading organization providing anti-Zionist training and education to students and Muslim community organizations in the country.”
The American Muslims for Palestine has a long history of supporting terrorism. In December 2023, a few months after the October 7 massacre, Nihad Awad, a regular speaker at American Muslims for Palestine events, proclaimed at a Chicago conference, “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land and walk free into their land that they were not free to walk in.”
American Muslims for Palestine Executive Director Dr. Osama Abuirshaid gave a speech at a protest on December 1, 2023 at the Israeli Embassy in D.C. in which he denied the October 7 massacre, including the mass killings and documented mass rapes: “Most of the civilians were killed by their own army… They killed their own civilians… There were no rapes, that’s what they told us. And they still lie to us, why?”
In a December 2014 Facebook post, Abuirshaid appeared to praise Hamas on its 27th anniversary, writing that it has “rejuvenated itself by adhering to its principles based on liberation” while the rival Fatah party led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had “grown old after deviating from the doctrine of liberation and resistance on which it was founded.”
“A distinction is made… between those who form an army for liberation, and those who prepare battalions of agents [for Israel]… a difference between those who avenge the blood of their martyrs, and those who pour [that blood] into Israeli wine glasses,” he wrote, accusing Fatah and the PA of collaborating with Israel.
According to NGO Monitor, “In December 2021, Abuirshaid participated in a conference, “Towards the Features of a New Arab Strategy to Deal with the Arab-Israel Conflict,” hosted by the Middle East Studies Center–Jordan. At the event, Abuirshaid discussed “apartheid that exists in America until today” and referred to the “Arab countries financing the Zionist lobby” as “criminal” for signing peace agreements with Israel. Other speakers on the panel included PFLP convicted airplane hijacker Leila Khaled, Hamas co-founder Sami Khater, Sami Al-Arian, who was convicted in the United States in 2006 for providing assistance to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas senior official Mohammad Nazzal.”
Another prominent American Muslims for Palestine leader, who serves as the Director of Outreach & Grassroots Organizing, is Taher Herzallah. According to the Anti-Defamation League, in June 2024, Herzallah spoke on a panel at the United National Antiwar Coalition (UNAC) Conference where he glorified the terrorists who implemented the October 7 massacre: “..the events of October 7th, definitely shook the state of Israel, that’s undoubted… within a span of several hours, young men, most of whom were orphans, unraveled a security regime that had taken 75 years to build.”
In another instance, he proclaimed following the October 7 massacre: “What the Yemenis are doing today, the Lebanese are doing today, what the Iraqis are doing today, what the Palestinians have been doing for decades, showing the world that [at] the end of the day… What matters is what happens on the ground, because nobody… could have ever told you that after 180 days, Palestinian resistance is still whooping Israel’s butt.”
During a talk at the Islamic Center of San Diego, Herzallah described the terrorists of October 7 as “poor, under-resourced, devastated starving people” who “have destroyed the veneer of superiority that the West and the colonizers have fed us for generations.” He further asserted that in this current political climate, it is time “to make Zionists feel very uncomfortable on campus.”
According to NGO Monitor, “In August 2020, to mark the 48th anniversary of the death of PFLP spokesperson Ghassan Kanafani, American Muslims for Palestine participated in Samidoun’s “Days of Resistance” in major cities around the world to “remind the world that the Palestinian people will continue to rise and confront all attempts of liquidation and destruction of the cause of Palestine and resist dispossession, exile and genocide.”” The American Muslims for Palestine glorified on that day the same Kanafani who stood behind the Lod Airport Massacre, which slaughtered 29 innocent people.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, “AMP’s organizational roots lie with the now-defunct Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP), a group once described by the U.S. government as having “disseminated information/propaganda” for Hamas. Though IAP officially dissolved in 2004, many of its leaders have continued their activism with AMP, including Osama Abuirshaid, AMP’s current executive director, Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), Rafeeq Jaber, a former president of IAP who has spoken at AMP events, former AMP Executive Director Abdelbaset Hamayel who also previously served as IAP executive director and secretary general, Kifah Mustafa, formerly with IAP in Illinois and Raeed Tayeh, a former IAP member in Chicago.”
“Following the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led massacre, American Muslims for Palestine has helped organize and co-sponsor numerous anti-Israel protests, rallies and marches,” the Anti-Defamation League noted, thus highlighting how much the American Muslims for Palestine is merely a continuation of the Islamic Association of Palestine. “Some AMP-sponsored anti-Israel rallies have featured flags of terrorist groups and the glorification of individual terrorists, such as Hamas spokesman Abu Obaida; speeches and posters that contained antisemitic conspiracy theories about Zionist control of the U.S. government; and incidents of harassment towards Jewish people.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League, “American Muslims for Palestine Board Member and Convention Chairman Salah Sarsour, based in Milwaukee, is the one representative who has been reportedly directly implicated in Hamas activity in the West Bank in the 1990s. According to a 2001 FBI memorandum, Jamil Sarsour was arrested in 1998 for funding Hamas and told Israeli investigators that his brother Salah Sarsour was involved in funding Hamas through his fundraising for the Holy Land Foundation (HLF). In 1995, Salah Sarsour was arrested and imprisoned by Israel for eight months for supporting Hamas.”
The Anti-Defamation League concluded, “According to his brother, while in prison, Salah became close to the West Bank commander of Hamas’s al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of Hamas. In addition to his position with AMP, according to Wisconsin state records, from 2005 to 2016, Sarsour was the registered agent of the Muslim American Society (MAS) in Milwaukee, a non-profit educational and religious organization that defended the HLF case.” This makes one ponder, does Salah Sarsour help the American Muslims for Palestine funnel money to Hamas, just as he helped the Holy Land Foundation to do likewise? Hopefully, the investigation will soon reveal all.
