False accusations can incite violence

This past week began on a deeply disturbing note. Elon Musk reposted on X (formerly Twitter) a dangerously false attack on more than a dozen American entities who had ceived USAID or State Department grants over the past decade. The original post referred to the groups as “terrorist-linked.” Musk’s repost said, “As many people have said, why pay terrorist organizations and certain countries to hate us when they’re perfectly willing to do it for free?”

The groups listed in the original post had apparently been compiled by an individual with an anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bias. He appears to have gone through a list of grant recipients and pulled out entities with “Arab” or “Muslim” in their name or who’d done work in the Middle East. I don’t know all of the groups, but those I do—for example, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA)—have been in the forefront of providing lifesaving support to refugees or victims of war or natural disasters, and, in the process, building better ties between the US and affected communities in need across the Middle East. Many had impressive records of service.

Most troubling to me was that my organization, the Arab American Institute, was on the list—which was profoundly off-base and irresponsibly dangerous.

The facts: The Institute received a State Department grant in 2018 (during the first Trump administration) to create partnerships between Arab American elected officials and public servants with local elected officials in Tunisia. Founded in 1985, the Institute has a proud history of encouraging Arab Americans to run for local office. As our work progressed, we realized that many of these young leaders had never been to the Middle East, or had only been to the countries from which their parents had come. I had long hoped to create a program to give them exposure to and an understanding of the broader Arab World, and to share their experiences and what they’d learned in American political life with their counterparts in Arab countries.

The initial phase of the program was so successful that the State Department supported expanding it into Morocco and then Jordan. It was delightful to see these young Arab and Arab American participants working collaboratively, discussing problems of municipal governance and actions to improve constituent service. They worked together in building local democracy and finding solutions to improve people’s day-to-day lives like trash collection, creating community tech hubs, and providing support for families with disabled children. The program ended in 2023.

For an individual infected by an anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bias to identify these people-to-people efforts with support for terrorism is so wrong that it defies understanding. And for a person of Musk’s standing in this administration to have amplified this message is irresponsibly dangerous.

As inclusive as the US can be, our country also has a history of hate and violence, that in recent decades has been disproportionately directed at Arab Americans and supporters of Palestinian rights. After a former employee of mine at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee was murdered in 1985, I was asked to testify before the US Civil Rights Commission and the US Congress on hate and violence directed against my community. In my testimony I noted how the environment for hate crimes against Arab Americans was fostered by those calling us terrorists or terrorist supporters (including some respected pro-Israel groups)—and it’s spurred some to violence against us. I know this personally from death threats I’ve received over the years.

In the last two decades alone, there have been four convictions of individuals for threatening my life and the lives of my family and staff, often accompanied by accusations of terrorism or support for terrorism.

So I take it seriously when a person as powerful as Musk irresponsibly charges my Institute with support for terrorism. Even more concerning is that his post has been viewed by nearly 20 million people, and it only takes one deranged individual to respond with violence.

Some cautioned us not to react to Musk’s incitement, hoping it would just fade away. I disagree. In the end, the best defense is to point out both how wrong he is and the danger posed by his words.

The writer is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute