Executive Director of the Ohio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-OH) Khalid Turaani, speaks at a press conference, July 9, 2025. Photo: USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect

The director of the Ohio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) took part in an online event last week alongside a senior member of Hamas who has been sanctioned by the US government and other individuals tied to the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organizations.

Khalid Turaani moderated the event hosted by the Beirut-based Al-Zaytouna Center last Wednesday titled “Palestinians Abroad and Regional and International Strategic Transformations in the Light of Al-Aqsa Flood.” The term “Al-Aqsa Flood” is the name Hamas gave to its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and dragged 251 hostages back to Gaza.

Among the speakers was Majed al-Zeer, who was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in October 2024 for his role as a senior Hamas operative in Europe.

Al-Zeer “is the senior Hamas representative in Germany, who is also one of the senior Hamas members in Europe and has played a central role in the terrorist group’s European fundraising,” the Treasury Department stated in its formal designation. “He has appeared publicly with other senior Hamas members in order to generate funding and other support for Hamas. Al-Zeer has also served in Hamas delegations in the Middle East along with Adel Doughman and Hannoun.”

The US Treasury noted that al-Zeer “was designated for having acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, Hamas.”

Despite working as a terrorist operative, al-Zeer spoke at last week’s event during a session following Turaani’s panel, which remains publicly available on YouTube.

Al-Zeer praised Hamas’s conduct, branding the terrorist group as a “resistance” and arguing that the Islamist movement has propelled a “strategic shift” in how Europe and the US view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Screenshots from Al-Zaytouna’s website show Turaani listed alongside al-Zeer and Dr. Sami al-Arian, a convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad financier deported from the United States after pleading guilty to terrorist-related charges. Al-Arian praised Hamas’s terrorism, claiming “the overall Palestinian situation is much better strategically than it was before the Flood.”

Also featured was Ziad el-Aloul, a Hamas-linked activist involved with the European Palestinians Conference and the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, both groups accused by Israeli authorities of operating as Hamas fronts in Europe.

CAIR’s participation in an event featuring multiple extremists will likely amplify long-standing concerns about the organization’s alleged links with Hamas. US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) has called on the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate CAIR’s status as a nonprofit organization, arguing the group has ties to Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, two internationally designated terrorist groups.

“The IRS has broad authority to examine whether an entity’s operations align with its exempt purpose. Tax-exempt status is a privilege, not a right, and it should not subsidize organizations with links to terrorism,” Cotton wrote in the letter.

CAIR has denied any ties to Hamas or other terrorist organizations, portraying itself as a civil rights group defending Muslim Americans.

At last week’s event, speakers also expressed hope that Turkey, a vocal backer of Hamas, would deploy troops to Gaza with the aim of launching a war against Israel. According to reports, the Trump administration has commenced discussions with Turkey about potentially sending troops as part of an “international force” to help rebuild the Gaza strip. Israel has rejected the idea.

The Al-Zaytouna Center, which regularly hosts pro-Hamas scholars and activists, has not commented publicly on its invitation to the US nonprofit leader.

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 the Palestinian terrorist group 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 it “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.'”

CAIR leaders have also found themselves embroiled in further controversy since Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities in southern Israel.

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 Oct. 7,” CAIR co-founder and executive director Nihad Awad said in a speech during the American Muslims for Palestine convention in Chicago in November 2023. “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.”