Palestinian terrorists ride an Israeli military vehicle that was seized by gunmen who infiltrated areas of southern Israel, in the northern Gaza Strip, Oct. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Ahmed Zakot

A senior official of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) recently shared a post on social media that read in part, “Hamas deserves a Nobel Peace Prize.”

Zahra Billoo, the executive director of CAIR’s San Francisco chapter, last week on X/Twitter reposted writer and podcast host CJ Werleman, who wrote, “Hamas deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for keeping Israeli prisoners safe from indiscriminate Israeli carpet bombing, which destroyed +90% of all buildings and slaughtered +100,000 people.”

Notably, the post referred to the Israelis kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, as “prisoners” rather than “hostages” — using the preferred language of the Palestinian terrorist group — and promoted unsubstantiated data points that are even larger than the figures published by Hamas.

Werleman is a columnist for Byline Times, as well as an anti-Israel activist and conspiracy theorist whose pinned post on X refers to Israel as “the pedophile state.”

CAIR did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

In response to the post, US Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) noted the significance of Billoo’s repost of what he called an “outrageous” statement considering the position of prominence she is in. 

“Never mind that Hamas murdered, maimed, mutilated, raped, and tortured thousands of Jews. Never mind that Hamas has left hostages starved and emaciated after holding them captive for nearly 500 days,” Torres continued. “If the Anti-Israel movement were a country, useful idiocy would be its leading export.”

The Executive Director of CAIR’s San Francisco Chapter has been caught retweeting the outrageous statement that Hamas “deserves a Nobel Peace Price.” Never mind that Hamas murdered, maimed, mutilated, raped, and tortured thousands of Jews. Never mind that Hamas has left hostages… pic.twitter.com/2h07W4mgfP

— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) February 14, 2025

This is not the first time Billoo has expressed pro-Hamas or Hamas-sympathetic sentiments. After the killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Iran last year, she mourned his death.

“Never say that those martyred in the cause of Allah are dead — in fact, they are alive! But you do not perceive it,” Biloo wrote after Israel’s assassination of the terrorist leader. “Tonight, we mourn Ismail himself but know his martyrdom is not in vain. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

Nor is this CAIR’s first brush with controversy. The head of CAIR said he was “happy” to witness Hamas’s rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when the Palestinian terrorist group invaded the Jewish state from neighboring Gaza, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages.

“The people of Gaza only decided to break the siege — the walls of the concentration camp — on Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and national 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 walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in.”

Additionally, in the 2000s, CAIR 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 Hamas.

According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas”” CAIR has disputed the accuracy of the ADL’s claim and asserted that the Islamic group “unequivocally condemn[s] 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.'”