Viral video sparks outrage: Former CAIR Official's Antisemitic tirade in Manhattan
A viral video has surfaced showing former CAIR Kentucky official Noora Shalash delivering an antisemitic tirade in a Manhattan office building, prompting widespread condemnation and an investigation by the NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force.
A recent incident in Midtown Manhattan has ignited widespread condemnation after a woman, identified as Noora Shalash, was captured on video delivering an antisemitic rant towards a Jewish man. The footage, which has rapidly circulated online, shows Shalash making inflammatory statements, including expressing support for ISIS and calling for violence against Jewish individuals.
Noora Shalash, previously associated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Kentucky, is seen in the video confronting a Hasidic man in the lobby of a Manhattan office building. Witnesses reported that the altercation escalated when Shalash began shouting phrases such as "I demand Jihad! I want ISIS to kill all of you!" The incident has prompted investigations by law enforcement, with the NYPD's Hate Crimes Task Force currently looking into the matter.
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Background and the main reason of the incident
The confrontation occurred in the lobby of 950 Third Ave. near East 57th Street, where Shalash allegedly approached the Jewish man and initiated a verbal assault. A bystander, Seth Bell, intervened and recorded the encounter, during which Shalash's rhetoric became increasingly hostile. Following the incident, building security contacted the police, leading to Shalash's detention and subsequent evaluation at Bellevue Hospital.
CAIR has long been a controversial organization. In the 2000s, the organization was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association' of CAIR with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas", according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that it “unequivocally condemns all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the US Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.'”
Anti-Defamation League ramps up lobbying to promote controversial definition of antisemitism. Photo: The Guardian.
Reactions and CAIR’s response
In response to the video's circulation, CAIR issued a statement clarifying that Shalash has not been affiliated with their Kentucky chapter for five years. The organization condemned the antisemitic remarks captured in the footage, emphasizing their stance against all forms of hate and bigotry. The incident has reignited discussions about antisemitism and the importance of addressing hate speech in public spaces. “We condemn and reject the antisemitic comments in the video, just as we condemn and reject the anti-Palestinian racism and anti-Muslim hate,” the organization added.
The head of CAIR, for example, said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage of rape, murder, and kidnapping of Israelis in what was the largest single-day slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. “The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on October 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director, Nihad Awad, said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago last November. “And yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walking free into their land, which they weren't allowed to walk in.”