If Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA) and Democratic colleagues who claim to oppose antisemitism put their votes where their mouths are, they will oppose President Joe Biden’s nomination of Adeel Mangi, a left-wing radical, to the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Mangi’s nomination barely survived a party-line vote last week in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where several Democrats were said to be worried about his fitness for the job. He serves on the advisory board for the Rutgers Center for Security, Race, and Rights, and most criticism of the center revolves around a panel it hosted on the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks which featured speakers with ties to, or a history of advocating, terrorist causes. Even after that 9/11 panel drew unfavorable attention, Mangi stayed on its advisory board, but now claims he was unaware of the event.
The group is, however, objectionable for more than the one panel discussion, and Mangi’s long support for it is disqualifying. He not only served on the CSRR board for four years, until shortly before being nominated for the judgeship in 2023, but also donated $6,500 to it while his law firm donated another $13,000. This isn’t just lending his name at arm’s length, but a larger embrace of its activities and mission.
CSRR’s affiliations with extremist groups are lengthy. Of the 9/11 event panelists, one was Dr. Sami al Arian, a former professor who pleaded guilty in 2006 to aiding the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group. Another was Dr. Rabab Abulhadi, a “senior scholar” of SFSU’s Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Studies program, who organized panels featuring terrorist Leila Khaled of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Khaled was known for two airplane hijackings in the 1960s and 1970s. Abulhadi says she “idolizes” Khaled specifically because she hijacked planes.
Another panelist was Dr. Hatem Bazian, co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine, affiliates of which are being shut down at campuses across the country for supporting Hamas terrorism. Bazian’s long record of radical comments includes a 2004 call for an “intifada” in the United States. An intifada is an uprising and usually involves violence against Israelis.
The Middle East Forum has compiled a list of CSRR’s other unsavory associations. One of CSRR’s “policy fellows” is Zahra Billoo, who was kicked off the board of the hard-left Women’s March because of her long record of antisemitism. Another policy fellow is Asad Dandia, identified by the New York Police Department as having made “statements … in support of violent jihad” and of “organizing a trip to Pakistan in 2011 to train and fight alongside extremist elements.” Another is Joseph Massad, for decades credibly accused of viciously anti-Jewish stances, who called Hamas’s attacks on Israel last year a “shocking success,” “astounding,” “striking,” “awesome,” and “innovative,” and celebrated “victories of the resistance.”
The list goes on with another half-dozen CSRR affiliates with similar backgrounds.
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When people are asked to join “advisory boards,” they shouldn’t be held “guilty by association” with every other person also affiliated with them. But even cursory due diligence would have shown Mangi that the Rutgers CSRR is not randomly associated with antisemitic violence but instead has surrounded itself with rancid Jew-hating, anti-Western agitators. Anybody joining such a board lacks the discernment to be a federal judge.
Mangi is expected to earn unanimous Republican opposition in the Senate. If just two Democrats join them, the nomination will fail. Fetterman especially has justifiably earned plaudits for denouncing antisemitism, and most of his Democratic colleagues have made similar if quieter noises. If they confirm Mangi, these will ring hollow.