Most representatives from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) offend the Jewish community by attacking Israel. However, one CAIR leader, Ruanne Zein, has chosen a different tact, offending Jews by posting revolting jokes about the Holocaust on social media. While CAIR likes to shout “Islamophobia” at every instance of real or imagined prejudice against Muslims, how will the group react to an obvious case of bigotry promoted by one of its own?
CAIR was established in June 1994 as part of a terrorist umbrella group headed by then-global head of Hamas, Mousa Abu Marzook. In 2007 and 2008, CAIR was named by the US Justice Department a co-conspirator for two federal trials dealing with the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas. Since its founding, a number of CAIR representatives have served jail time and/or have been deported from the United States for terrorist-related crimes. In November 2014, CAIR, itself, was designated a terrorist group by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government.
CAIR-Florida reflects the extremism of its parent organization. In August 2010, CAIR-Florida Executive Director Hassan Shibly, who has denied that Hezbollah is a terrorist group, wrote, “Israel and its supporters are enemies of God...” In July 2014, CAIR-Florida co-sponsored a pro-Hamas rally in Downtown Miami, where rally goers shouted, “We are Hamas” and “Let’s go Hamas.” Following the rally, the event organizer, Sofian Zakkout, wrote, “Thank God, every day we conquer the American Jews like our conquests over the Jews of Israel!”
Ruanne Zein, aka Ruanne Elmalawani, is CAIR-Florida’s Orlando Outreach Coordinator. According to her Facebook page, she also works for Universal Studios Entertainment. She started working for CAIR this past February. It only took her less than three months from then to offend the Jewish community with imagery that made light of the most horrific period in modern Jewish history.
On May 6th, following a tweet made by Presidential Candidate Donald Trump depicting Trump eating out of a taco bowl, wishing people a “Happy Cinco de Mayo,” and professing his love for Hispanics, Zein posted a parody of the tweet containing a smiling photo of a seated Hitler with a sandwich in front of him along with a crude and repulsive message. The message read, “The best Kosher deli sandwiches are made in the Reichstag. I love the Jews!”
Portraying Adolf Hitler with a smile talking about how much he loves Jews, when this man was responsible for the murder of one-third of the world’s Jews, and representing the Nazi Parliament, the Reichstag, as serving Kosher food - the same Reichstag where Hitler first called for the “annihilation” of Europe’s Jewry, is offensive, disgusting and an act of total disrespect to all the lives and families who were destroyed during the Holocaust.
Zein’s base callousness towards this subject was exhibited even more so in what she wrote underneath the post. Under it, Zein’s friend Reba stated, “I’m going to hell for laughing at this.” To which Zein replied, “Lmao [Laughing my ass off] me and you both.”
Ruanne Zein was not the only villain who posted the Hitler Kosher joke. Indeed, Zein originally took the post from the Facebook page of Dominic Vincent Polito, the Post Production Supervisor, Online Editor, Audio Engineer and Lead Compositor at Mr. Pickles, an adult animated television series. He hit ‘like,’ when his friend Rob referred to the post as “rawschwitz.”
This was not the first time that Zein touched upon Holocaust humor. On March 13th, amid reports that Donald Trump had blamed Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders’ supporters for the violence that occurred at a Chicago rally where Trump was scheduled to address his crowd, Zein posted a message parodying the reports. It read as follows, “Trump is blaming Sanders supporters for the violence at his rally because you can’t truly be Hitler until you blame a Jew for your problems.”
Zein has also posted messages mocking the EgyptAir hijacking that took place in March. Wearing and displaying a fake bomb belt, Egyptian Seif El Din Mustafa forced a flight from Alexandria, Egypt, which was scheduled to stop in Cairo, to divert to Cyprus. One of Zein’s posts was of a photo of an EgyptAir plane in flight asking people to fill out a survey with the caption, “Want to tell the world what really matters to you? NO NEED TO HIJACK A PLANE!” During the hijacking, passengers were reportedly crying and panicking.
While this last Holocaust post and EgyptAir post may not be as controversial as the previously aforementioned one featuring the smiling Hitler, it does show a pattern of insensitivity to the suffering of others. And that is important, because in order to make accusations of “Islamophobia” appear credible, CAIR needs to give off the impression that it, instead, has empathy for others.
Islamophobia is a modern-day term used mainly by Islamists to describe an unwarranted fear or hatred of Islam and/or Muslims and a term also used by the like to, more appropriately, shut down any conversation about the radical element found within the Muslim community. Essentially, Muslim victimhood is used by groups such as CAIR to silence the critics who look to expose their and their terror supporting compatriots’ sinister words and deeds.
So posting jokes about the Holocaust or mocking plane hijackings on social media, as CAIR’s Ruanne Zein has done - things that are usually off limits in normal ethical society - does harm to CAIR’s promotion of “Islamophobia” and makes the representatives at CAIR look like the hypocrites that they are.
It doesn’t make Harry Potter or Universal Studios look so good, either.