Harris' Arab Outreach Pick: 'Zionists Controlling Politics'

The woman tapped by the Harris-Walz campaign to head Arab-American outreach said pro-Israel factions were "controlling" U.S. politics in a 2002 interview. Brenda Abdelall, then a University of Michigan student, made the remarks to the New York Sun while attending the American Muslim Council's annual convention in June of that year. She was responding to a comment by one of the speakers, anti-Israel professor Jamil Fayez, who said, "Zionists are destroying America."

Abdelall said, "'Destroying' is a harsh word. The Zionists have a strong voice in American politics. I would say they're controlling a lot of it."

The Harris campaign said Wednesday that "those 2002 comments do not reflect Brenda's views or the views of the campaign."

Abdelall is now an attorney who, in her role at the Department of Homeland Security, "worked closely on the implementation of the country's first National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism," a spokesman for the Harris campaign told the New York Post. They added, "She also led efforts for the first United We Stand summit, a White House event to counter hate-fueled violence, like we tragically saw with the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue."

Another attendee of that 2002 AMC convention was then-Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., who infamously blamed Jews for the 9/11 terror attacks, alleged former President George W. Bush had advance knowledge of them, and in 2009 attended a Holocaust-denying event in London.

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