Late last month, this author reported on FrontPage Magazine about a series of Facebook posts South Florida Muslim leader Sofian Zakkout made promoting white supremacist leader David Duke with four videos featuring Duke. Zakkout’s response was to post another Duke video. This would be of little consequence, if it weren’t for the fact that Zakkout sits on the boards of two anti-crime organizations, Crime Stoppers and Citizens’ Crime Watch, groups that are supposed to be protecting and bringing the community together but, instead, have been providing a facade of legitimacy for someone who continues to compromise and sabotage their core mission.
On September 21st, Sofian Abdelaziz Zakkout, the President of the American Muslim Association of North America (AMANA), took to Facebook and posted four David Duke videos. Three of the videos were put out by Duke’s official website, DavidDuke.com, one referring to CNN news anchor Wolf Blitzer as a “Jewish Zionist Agent.” The fourth video was a news report featuring a clip of Duke being interviewed at a white nationalist rally held in Charlottesville, Virginia in August, an event where a white nationalist plowed his car into a group of protesters, killing one.
This author reported about this, in his FrontPage piece, titled ‘SOUTH FLORIDA MUSLIM LEADER SOFIAN ZAKKOUT’S DAVID DUKE DAY.’ Zakkout’s response to this was to post another Duke video, and like so many Duke videos, Jews are the target – a scary reality given that Zakkout and his group AMANA are located in a heavily Jewish section of Miami.
In the video, Duke pushes an often told anti-Semitic conspiracy theory about disproportionate power wielded by Jews. He states, “And it’s not just Israel then that’s the problem. They really dominate American politics. They control the financing of American elections. They control the printing of American money through the Federal Reserve. They control American foreign policy.”
Duke then obscenely attacks then-Secretary of State John Kerry for having Jewish roots. Duke states, “Today, our Secretary of State is a man named John Kerry. He comes from the state of Massachusetts. And Kerry is a very traditional Irish name... Being a Kerry is very advantageous in politics in Massachusetts. But his true family name is not Kerry. He passed himself off as Irish, but he was a deceiver. His true family name is Kohn – Cohen – Hungarian Jews – nothing to do, not a drop of Irish blood. So he’s our Secretary of State, and when he does America’s bidding around the world, he’s not doing America’s bidding. He is an agent for Israel...”
It must be acknowledged that, according to John Kerry, he was not aware of his Jewish roots, until a reporter from the Boston Globe brought it up to him while he was campaigning for President in 2003. It was his paternal grandfather, Fritz Kohn, a Jewish convert to Roman Catholicism, who changed his last name to Kerry long before John Kerry was born.
Along with the Duke video, Zakkout posted another report about Charlottesville, featuring Duke. The piece immediately describes Duke as “Former KKK leader David Duke.”
As mentioned in the previous FrontPage article by this author, Zakkout’s promotion of Duke has been going on for many years. He and his group AMANA were even condemned by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for doing so, in 2010.
For many years, as well, Zakkout has served on the boards of anti-crime organizations, and he continues to do so. He sits on the Board of Directors of Crime Stoppers of Miami-Dade County, and he is a member of the Executive Committee of Citizens’ Crime Watch of Miami-Dade County. The leadership from these groups has been contacted repeatedly and provided with evidence of Zakkout’s hateful incitement, but the situation has been ignored time and time again.
And it is not just the David Duke material that these groups ignore.
They also ignore Zakkout’s own anti-Semitism, like when he repeatedly refers to Jews as “monkeys and pigs” or when he promoted a report claiming that “the Holocaust was faked.”
Worse yet, they ignore Zakkout’s relationship with a terrorist organization, Hamas. Zakkout was the Vice President of a now defunct Hamas-related charity, the Health Resource Center for Palestine (HRCP), whose Secretary/Treasurer, Syed Ahmad, was a web designer for Hamas. In July 2014, Zakkout organized a pro-Hamas rally outside the Israeli Consulate in Miami, where rally goers repeatedly shouted “We are Hamas” and “Let’s go Hamas.” Zakkout has posted innumerable photos of Hamas militants, leaders and founders onto social media. In August 2014, Zakkout declared on Facebook, “Hamas is in my heart and on my head.”
Last year, he even posted a graphic memorializing Osama bin Laden.
It is offensive, it is dangerous, and it is an embarrassment that Sofian Zakkout continues to serve on the boards of these anti-crime organizations, while he himself openly supports bigotry and terrorism. He has done nothing to deserve his status within these groups, but he has done everything to show that he is at odds with all of the good that they seek to accomplish.
One would logically assume that anti-crime groups would not wish to be associated with white supremacists like David Duke or terrorist organizations like Hamas, yet their leadership continues to turn a blind eye toward all the information provided them, enabling Zakkout to promote his sociopathic agenda with impunity.
It is high time for these groups to stop looking the other way, when it comes to Sofian Zakkout. Zakkout’s participation in Crime Stoppers and Citizens’ Crime Watch needs to end immediately.
