David Yerushalmi, is an attorney with U.S. Islamophobia network inner core groups the Center for Security Policy and the American Freedom Law Center. He is confident in his hatred of Islam. Writing in the American Spectator in 2006 Yerushaml asserted, “Our greatest enemy today is Islam. The only Islam appearing in any formal way around the world is one that seeks a world Caliphate through murder, terror and fear.” Yerushalmi is also a founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence, a group that once advanced a policy advocated incarceration for “adherence to Islam.”
Outside
of his anti-Islam activism Yerushalmi is notable for writing, "There is a
reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to
vote." According to an article in New York Jewish Week in 2007, Yerushalmi
also says he finds truth in the view that Jews destroy their host nations like
a fatal parasite.
He is
also the author of American Laws for American Courts (ALAC), the template for
many anti-Islam bills introduced across the nation.
He wrote
the bill for the American Public Policy Alliance (APPA). While the organization
has a professional-looking website, its Washington, D.C. address is a UPS
Store. APPA has a minor Facebook presence, with less than 100 friends as of
early 2013.
Yerushalmi’s
bill is then pushed at the state-level by groups like ACT! for America, the
Eagle Forum and to a lesser extent Pamela Geller’s Stop the Islamization of
America.
In its 2011 IRS filings, ACT! for America includes among the
organization’s accomplishments a total membership of 175,000 people, 635
chapters, and 40,000 Facebook fans. The group also celebrates its role in the
passage of anti-Islam bills in Arizona and Tennessee. Also among its accomplishments
ACT! lists the distribution of thousands of “Sharia Law for Non-Muslim” [sic]
pamphlets and the hosting of multiple events at which participants were
inaccurately taught “how the Islamic doctrine of abrogation, which is the
annulling of contradictory passages in the Koran, has annulled up to 124
peaceful and superseded them with violent and jihadist verses aimed at
non-Muslims.”
In 2008, ACT! for America founder Brigitte Gabriel
told the Australian Jewish News: "Every practicing Muslim is a
radical Muslim." Speaking at the Intelligence Summit in
Washington, D.C. on February 19, 2006, Gabriel told the audience, “America and
the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify
the real enemy. Islam.”
In a newsletter the Eagle Forum
told its supporters, “Sharia law is becoming part of the American landscape as
Christianity is being systematically removed. Christian students are being told
they cannot pray at school activities or even pray in front of American
institutions, while public school students adopt Muslim names, pray on prayer
rugs and celebrate Ramadan under a state-mandated curriculum," according
to the Houston Chronicle. Tennessee’s anti-Islam bill was given to legislators
by Tennessee Eagle Forum President Bobbie Patray. Texas Eagle Forum president
Pat Carlson testified in favor of that state’s anti-Islam bill.
In December 2012, an Alaska
ethics panel recommended that Karen Sawyer, former chief of staff to state Rep.
Carl Gatto, be fired after it found “she used state resources to help an
anti-Islamic group.” The panel also recommended that Sawyer never be allowed to
work for the legislature again. Sawyer resigned before she could be fired.
According to the panel’s findings, Sawyer allowed David Heckert of Stop
Islamization of America to “use the Wasilla legislative information office and
equipment for work related to his organization.” It also found that Sawyer used
state equipment to help plan activities related to a 2011 group conference, and
that she failed to file a timely disclosure showing she was a member of the
group's board in 2011 and 2012.” The Associated Press also noted that
the panel found that SIOA’s "main mission appeared to be promoting their
organization and its mission with HB88 [Alaska’s anti-Islam bill] as a
validation point."
Summed
up, one man with a history of anti-Islam prejudice writes a bill for a group
that appears to exist only on the internet which is then pushed by
organizations committed to spreading fear and prejudice about Islam.
