ExtremismWomen’s March Votes Out Board Member for Anti-Semitic Tweets

Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the San Francisco Bay Area chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, was dismissed from the board of directors of the Women’s March only two days after she was appointed. 

The board voted to remove her after several of her tweets were judged to be anti-Semitic.

In a statement, the board said: “Zahra Billoo has been removed from board membership effective immediately,” the board posted Wednesday on Twitter. “We found some of her public statements incompatible with the values and mission of the organization. Women’s March will continue to build an inclusive and effective movement that holds space for all women.”

Billoo has called herself a “proud anti-Zionist” and said that she does not believe Israel has a right to exist. She also has accused Israel of committing war crimes “as a hobby” and accused it of “ongoing apartheid.”

Among her past tweets, she wrote: “the Israeli Defense Forces, or the IDF, are no better than ISIS. They are both genocidal terrorist organizations,” and that “racist Zionists who support Apartheid Israel” scares her more than “the mentally ill young people the #FBI recruits to join ISIS.”

Late Wednesday, Billoo tweeted: “This followed an Islamophobic smear campaign led by the usual antagonists, who have long targeted me, my colleagues, and anyone else who dares speak out in support of Palestinian human rights and the right to self-determination.”

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) had issued a statement on Tuesday expressing their concern with Billoo’s “deeply offensive and anti-Semitic statements.” In its statement, the ADL said:

Billoo repeatedly and unapologetically has said that she views Zionism – the belief in Jewish nationhood –  as racism. She has equated Israel to that of an apartheid regime, and clearly rejects the very idea of a Jewish state, calling for a Palestine “from the river to the sea.” She has lifted up statements that defend the terror organization Hamas’ intentional targeting of rockets to murder Israeli Jewish civilians, and has done so under the guise of someone working for peace. And in 2010, Billoo retweeted a highly offensive tweet that there is “no need for a holocaust museum, seeing as Israel has taken it  upon itself to recreate it. #Israel #Nazis.” Billoo also has said that Zionism has no place in the LGBTQ+ community and antiracist movements; thereby, excluding the overwhelming majority of the American Jewish community.

The Times of Israel reports that the Women’s March has had to handle accusations of anti-Semitism since March 2018, when it emerged that three of its co-chairs had longstanding ties with Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has a decade-long history of anti-Semitic statements.

The organization’s shake-up this week included the departure of two of those co-chairs, Linda Sarsour and Tamika Mallory, as well as another co-chair, Bob Bland. The Women’s March denied that the move had anything to do with the anti-Semitism controversy.

The new board also includes three Jewish women. Another activist still on the board, Charlene Carruthers, tweeted praise of Farrakhan in 2010.