Maryland hate crime task force member claimed babies murdered by Hamas were ‘fake,’ compared Israel to Nazis
Fox News
A member of a Maryland task force aimed at combating hate crimes published numerous antisemitic social media posts, including claiming that the babies brutally murdered in the Oct. 7 Hamas attack were “fake,” and comparing the nation of Israel to Nazi Germany.
Zainab Chaudry, an anti-Israel activist who serves as the director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ (CAIR) Maryland office, made the posts in the weeks following Hamas’ attack, which saw more than 1,200 people killed, including children and babies, as well as numerous rapes and destruction of property.
“I will never be able to understand how the world summoned up rage for 40 fake Israeli babies while completely turning a blind eye to 3,000 real Palestinian babies,” Chaudry wrote in a Facebook post dated Oct. 26.
“[T]hat moment when you become what you hated most,” Chaudry wrote in an Oct. 17 post, including two photos of the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany, one showing it lit up with the Israeli flag in solidarity with Israel following the attack, and another from a ceremony in 1936 when it was decorated with the flag of Nazi Germany during the Olympics that year.
In another post from Nov. 6, Chaudry appeared to suggest the mere existence of Israel as a nation was the cause of the ongoing war, writing it was an “inconvenient fact.” She included an image of the words “it all started in 1948,” the year Israel was founded as a nation.
Others from the weeks following the attack showed Chaudry sharing a quote celebrating “martyred Palestinians,” and a post citing what appeared to be an Islamic prophesy that said “garrisons who defend the lands of Islam will be in Ashkelon,” an Israeli city north of the Gaza Strip.
Despite the posts, Chaudry has maintained her place on the Maryland Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention, a position for which she was nominated by Democrat Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown in August.
The commission’s goal, according to Brown’s office, is to address hate crime incidents across Maryland, and to “communicate and promote understanding of diverse perspectives in a positive and meaningful way.”
Brown’s spokesperson, Jennifer Donelan, told Fox News Digital that “the views and opinions of any individual Commission member do not reflect those of either the Maryland Commission on Hate Crime Response and Prevention or the Attorney General.”
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“We understand that there are many viewpoints regarding current events in the Middle East. The Commission will do its best to explore the impact of those events on our community, and to determine how best to address escalations in hate and bias incidents across the state,” she said, explaining that the Commission would “develop policies and protocols governing its work” and how its members engage on the issues.
“Just as we urge others to do, the Commission will identify ways in which we can foster productive and empathetic dialogue amongst ourselves that leads to mutual understanding. We, like the rest of the world, must first talk to one another and, most importantly, listen to one another as we work toward the goals of peace and tolerance,” she added.
When reached for comment, Chaudry told Fox News Digital that the “Nazi post” was originally shared “by a close Jewish friend,” before going on to accuse the Israeli government of wanting to commit genocide against Palestinians.
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“The Israeli prime minister has analogized the bombing of Gaza to an ancient biblical story about the total genocide of a city, [and] declared that there are no innocent civilians in Gaza, the Israel defense minister has justified starving Palestinian civilians by calling them ‘human animals,’ the Israeli military spokesman has said that the aim of their bombing campaign is destruction rather than accuracy. Multiple Israeli ministers have called for the ethnic cleansing of Gaza, with one even calling the ongoing war a ‘Nakba 2023,'” she said.
“I strongly and unapologetically condemn Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right, racist government for repeatedly making such genocidal threats towards the Palestinian people and killing over 13,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children murdered in their homes. Unlike many of the Israeli government’s most extreme supporters, I recognize that killing any civilians is wrong, which is why my office has repeatedly condemned the killing of both Israeli and Palestinian civilians,” she said.
“There is no conflict between condemning the Israeli government’s genocidal war crimes overseas and standing up against all forms of hate here at home, including antisemitism, Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism. False smears from anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim extremists will not stop me from standing up for justice here and abroad,” she added.
Fox News Digital has reached out to CAIR for comment.