Petition Drive Urges Mesa Sheraton to Cancel Council on American-Islamic Relations Event Featuring Rep. Rashida Tlaib

A Phoenix resident launched a petition urging the Sheraton Mesa at Wrigleyville to cancel next month’s annual Council on American-Islamic Relations banquet, featuring anti-Israel radical U.S. Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI-12).

As The Arizona Sun Times first reported, Tlaib is the featured speaker for the Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations Conference (CAIR)’s signature event, slated for November 18.

“We are honored to have US Representative Rashida Tlaib as our keynote speaker for this year’s banquet!” the group notes on its webpage in promoting the banquet titled, “Muslim-American Legacies: Past, Present and Future.”

The bombastic member of “the Squad,” a group of far-left congressional extremists, has been accused by even some of her most ardent liberal peers of “fanning the flames” in the Israel-Hamas war.

“As a concerned citizen of Phoenix, AZ, I am deeply disturbed by the upcoming event scheduled at Sheraton Mesa at Wrigleyville West,” states a creator of the petition, identified as Y.J. “The hotel is set to host the 2023 Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Conference on November 18th, featuring Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) as a speaker. Ms. Tlaib’s history of antisemitic remarks and her response to attacks on our ally, Israel, are disgraceful and cannot go unchecked.”

The change.org petition seeks 1,500 signatures. As of late Wednesday afternoon, 1,507 people had signed on. A new goal has been established.

“This event is a clear indication of support of Hamas, a terrorist organization. Thousands of Jews have been slaughtered, murdered, raped, burned alive, babies decapitated and hundreds are being held as hostages! Jews living in America – including many of in Arizona are scared to leave the house, go to Jewish gatherings, or even send our children to school!” the petition states. “By hosting this event, Marriott Sheraton shows us that we do not have your support while Jews are being targeted just because they are Jewish.”

Tlaib has yet to delete a statement she made last week on her X account blaming Israel for bombing a hospital in Gaza despite overwhelming evidence the deadly explosion was the result of an errant rocket launched by the Islamic Jihad group and aimed at Israel.

As Newsweek reported, the Palestinian American is likely to face punitive action from Republicans once Congress has elected a new speaker.

Tlaib has frequently spouted the pro-Palestinian line, accusing Israel of creating an “apartheid state.” She has routinely failed to comment on the barbaric acts of violence perpetrated on Israelis by a terrorist network that stands for the obliteration of Israel and Jews.

The day after the October 7 Hamas attack that killed more than 1,400 Israelis, most of them civilians, Tlaib issued a statement expressing sorrow for the loss of “Palestinian and Israeli lives,” but blamed Israel for the violence in calling for “ending the occupation and dismantling the apartheid system that creates the suffocating, dehumanizing conditions that can lead to resistance” in Gaza.

In introducing a resolution to censure Tlaib for antisemitism, U.S. Representative Jack Bergman (R-MI-01) said the congresswoman’s “longstanding history antisemitic and racist rhetoric toward Israel cannot go unchecked.”

“There is no moral equivalence between Israel defending itself and Hamas attacking innocent Israeli civilians,” Bergman wrote. “Tlaib’s long history of anti-Semitic tropes and blatant anti-Jewish propaganda is both disturbing and evil – and should have no place in the halls of Congress.”

“As Hamas terrorists beheaded infants, paraded dead Jewish teenagers through town, and attacked innocent concert goers in the most deadly day for Jews since the Holocaust, Rep. Rashida Tlaib chose to place the blame solely on Israel and the Jewish people,” he added.

Within hours of Hamas’ attack on Israel, Nihad Awad, CAIR co-founder and executive director, tweeted in Arabic, “All Arab peoples must go out on Sunday, October 8, and every day, in demonstrations in support of the Palestinians and in rejection of normalization with the occupier and the apartheid regime.”

Hamas’ charter rejects peace “initiatives” and “so-called peaceful solutions,” stating that “there is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by Jihad.”

Other hotels have canceled CAIR events in recent days.

The Marriott Crystal Gateway hotel in Crystal City, Virginia, located in the shadow of the nation’s capital, reportedly canceled the CAIR planned annual banquet.

CAIR’s Awad told ABC News the banquet will go forward at a location that has not been publicly announced.

“The key message is that we’re not going to be stopped, silenced or intimidated,” Awad told the news organization.

In Texas, the Hilton Houston Post Oak by the Galleria canceled a conference scheduled Friday through Sunday by the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights over unspecified safety concerns.

The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) praised the hotel chain for “taking a moral and correct action” in canceling the “radical Jew-Hating, Israel-hating Hamas-linked CAIR (Council on Council on American Islamic Relations) national banquet that was scheduled at the Marriott Crystal for Saturday night, October 21, 2023.”

In the petition on the Sheraton in Mesa, the petitioner writes, “There are no two sides to a story when dealing with terrorists! You can only choose to be on the side of humanity or the side of pure evil.

“It is crucial that we stand against hate speech and any form of support for terrorism. Hosting this conference would be an implicit endorsement of such harmful rhetoric,” the petition states.

Sheraton Mesa at Wrigleyville West officials did not return a call seeking comment, nor did representatives with the CAIR Arizona chapter.

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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Background Photo “Sheraton Hotel” by Kevin Dooley. CC BY 2.0.