Jewish Groups Line Up In Support Of Biden’s Muslim Court Pick Assailed By GOP | EUROtoday

Fifteen Jewish organizations on Tuesday pledged their “strong support” for President Joe Biden’s historic Muslim court docket decide Adeel Mangi ― days after Republican senators subjected him to hostile and Islamophobic questioning in his affirmation listening to.

“Having ethical and unbiased judges is ingrained in our Jewish teachings in which we are taught that ‘judges need to be people of strength through good deeds,’” reads the teams’ letter to all 100 senators, obtained by HuffPost. “It is clear to us that Adeel A. Mangi is a person of strength and good deeds, as evidenced by his career, devotion to his community, and commitment to religious freedom and civil rights.”

The letter hails Mangi’s authorized report and his professional bono work on behalf of spiritual organizations. It additionally highlights the quite a few amicus briefs he has filed in federal courts on behalf of spiritual communities regarding LGBTQ rights, illegal surveillance of spiritual communities and the repeal of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

“It’s important that people of faith have a voice on many of the critical issues that are before the Supreme Court and the appellate courts,” mentioned the organizations. “There’s something beautiful about … more than 150 different religious groups coming together to present a common position to the Supreme Court of the United States.”

The letter is signed by the National Council of Jewish Women, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Carolina Jews for Justice, The Shalom Center, and others. The teams collectively signify greater than 1,000,000 individuals nationwide.

Here’s a duplicate of their letter:

Mangi, if confirmed, would be the nation’s first-ever Muslim federal appeals court docket choose, and solely the third Muslim federal choose. Biden tapped Mangi for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the third Circuit, based mostly in Philadelphia.

The Jewish teams’ letter comes after Mangi, who’s a associate at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP, endured a sequence of offensive and irrelevant questions from Republicans within the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

GOP Sens. Ted Cruz (Texas), Tom Cotton (Ark.) and Josh Hawley (Mo.) yelled at and interrupted Mangi all through his listening to. They demanded that he share his private views on the Sept. 11 terrorist assaults, the Oct. 7 assault in Israel and the Israeli-Hamas battle on the whole. They additionally repeatedly tried to tie him to pro-Palestinian feedback made by individuals he didn’t know, and to occasions he didn’t learn about.

Mangi repeatedly needed to attest that he wasn’t antisemitic or sympathetic to terrorists.

Cruz, for one, particularly pressed Mangi to say whether or not he sees any justification for the Hamas militants’ terrorist assault in Israel that left some 1,200 Israelis useless.

“I have no patience ― none ― for any attempts to justify or defend those events,” Mangi replied.

Democrats on the committee later condemned Republicans for his or her therapy of Biden’s judicial decide, together with chairman Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who banged his gavel a number of instances in response to Cruz repeatedly interrupting Mangi.

On Friday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the biggest Muslim civil rights group within the nation, condemned all three Republican senators for his or her habits.

“Singling out a Muslim judicial nominee and forcing him to answer ‘gotcha questions’ about the Middle East simply because of faith or because of his tangential connections to Muslims who comment on the Middle East is Islamophobic and un-American,” mentioned Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR’s nationwide deputy director. “So is raising the hateful trope that presumptively assumes that Muslims are antisemitic.”

Mangi’s nomination isn’t going anyplace quickly. The Senate is about to recess for the vacations and isn’t anticipated again till Jan. 8. After that, it’s as much as Durbin to determine when to schedule a committee vote on Mangi’s nomination.