Osama Abuirshaid has openly expressed anti-Semitic views in the past; has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood; and has voiced support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

(December 3, 2021 / JNS) The executive director of the new lobby group Americans for Justice in Palestine Action (AJP Action) was a guest speaker at a recent conference in Jordan that also hosted members of Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), both of which are designated as terror groups by the theUnited States and the European Union.

Osama Abuirshaid, who is also the executive director of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), spoke on Nov. 21 at a conference titled “Towards the Features of a New Arab Strategy to Deal with the Arab-Israel Conflict.” It was hosted by the Middle East Studies Center–Jordan.

In his remarks, he talked about alleged “apartheid which exists in America until today” and called the United Arab Emirates “criminal” for signing the Abraham Accords with Israel. He also suggested that America “may collapse under the pressure of its own weight.”

“When one comes and says, ‘apartheid and racial separation’ —‘I am the one living it,’ I, the Latino in America, am living it … there are many opportunities ahead of us if we excel at the process of exploiting this discourse, developing this discourse,” he said.

While speaking on a panel with PFLP convicted airplane hijacker Leila Khaled, he said: “From a Palestinian point of view, we are generations of resistance.” He mentioned exploiting the pain of others.

Abuirshaid has been involved in pushing pro-Palestinian lobbying efforts for more than a decade.

Other speakers included 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.

Abuirshaid is a former member of the U.S.-based and now-defunct Hamas-affiliated Islamic Association for Palestine.

He has a history of making inflammatory remarks about America and Israel, which include saying that modern-day Israel “represents the ugly face of racial segregation, of apartheid,” and that the Jewish state is “a parasite living off the American body.” He has openly expressed anti-Semitic views in the past; has close ties to the Muslim Brotherhood; and has voiced support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran.

In an August 2010 article, he said: “We stand with Iran and Hezbollah when they are a reluctance He then wrote in May 2021 that “the Resistance [i.e., Hamas] is the legitimate representative [of the Palestinians], while the mummies of Ramallah … are a disgrace.”

Picture: Osama Abuirshaid, executive director of Americans for Justice in Palestine Action and American Muslims for Palestine, on Jordan's Yarmouk TV, Sept. 22, 2021. Credit: MEMRI.