Over the course of President Joe Biden‘s time in office, an anti-Israel group that receives large checks from Democratic megadonor George Soros has seen its top staffers score 60 trips to the White House for high-level meetings, according to records.
Officials at Emgage, a group that has promoted the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, have hobnobbed at the White House on at least 60 occasions combined since 2021, according to White House visitor logs reviewed by the Washington Examiner.
Emgage notably blamed Israel for allegedly provoking Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack last year and counts Khurrum Wahid, an attorney who was reportedly placed on a federal terrorist watch list and has a track record of associating with Muslim Brotherhood-linked groups, as one of its leaders.
The frequent White House visits illustrate how national anti-Israel groups have gained influence and a seat at the policymaking table in the Biden-Harris administration. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, much to the ire of Republicans and pro-Israel groups, continue to press for a ceasefire in the Middle East conflict.
On Sunday, Israeli forces announced they recovered the bodies of six Israeli hostages kidnapped by Hamas terrorists last year. The hostages were found in a tunnel in Rafah, a southern city in Gaza that Biden has urged Israel not to invade.
Emgage, which was formed in 2006, describes itself as “a family of organizations dedicated to building political power for Muslim Americans.”
The Emgage umbrella includes Soros-backed nonprofit groups and a political action committee spending money in elections to boost Democrats such as Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Summer Lee (D-PA), and Susan Wild (D-PA), Federal Election Commission filings show. Emgage partners on initiatives with the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the Islamic Society of North America — two unindicted co-conspirators in a 2009 terrorism financing case.
Between 2021 and 2024, Emgage CEO Wa’el Alzayat, a former Obama State Department official, visited the White House at least 24 times, according to White House visitor logs.
Some of those visits have been with Biden, such as an Oct. 26 meeting in the Roosevelt Room attended by five people. Alzayat also appeared to have a one-on-one meeting with Middle East National Security Council coordinator Brett McGurk on Feb. 2 — the same day over 800 officials in the United States and Europe released a statement slamming Western governments for supporting Israel. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
But the Emgage CEO’s White House access is no anomaly for the group.
On Emgage’s website, the group touts how it has held monthly meetings with the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Biden — an office “responsible for aiding the president in recruiting, vetting, and nominating over 4,000 political appointees throughout the federal government.”
Some individuals affiliated with Emgage have gone on to work in the Biden-Harris administration, including Emgage board member Farooq Mitha, who works in the Defense Department. Dilawar Syed, deputy administrator for the Small Business Administration, resigned from his Emgage board member role in 2021.
Iman Awad, Emgage’s deputy director and national legislative director, has visited the Biden White House 11 times, according to visitor logs.
Salima Suswell, a senior Emgage adviser who worked for Biden’s 2020 campaign, has visited the Biden White House six times. Suswell attended an April meeting with Biden and five others in the White House’s East Wing, according to visitor logs.
Other Emgage staffers that have scored White House visits include policy analyst Hanna Dasoo, organizing director Mohamed Gula, Florida organizer Zakir Shareef, Texas policy associate Niloufar Hafizi, senior adviser Debbie Almontaser, and others, according to a Washington Examiner review of visitor logs.
Emgage, which did not respond to a request for comment, has received millions of dollars over the years from Soros’s Open Society Foundations grantmaking network. It also gets checks from the Tides Foundation, a massive left-wing dark money group behind anti-Israel protests.
Iltefat Hamzavi, the Emgage Foundation’s board chairman, was also appointed in 2018 to the Islamic Society of North America’s board, tax records show.
Hamzavi was recently the president of a newspaper called the Muslim Observer, which publishes antisemitic articles — including a 2014 piece claiming that “Israel controls almost every aspect of American life from politics and government, to the economy they invest in, to the media they are exposed to.”
The outlet also published a 2014 article by Holocaust denier Kevin Barrett that blamed Israel for the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. and a 2021 article by Muslim religious leader Aslam Abdullah arguing the “U.S. backs Israel because both political parties are under the influence of Christians for Israel and Zionists.”
Farrukh Shamsi, another Emgage board member, has shared antisemitic content online, such as the conspiracy theory that Jews control the White House. He also promoted the conspiracy theory that there was no mass rape committed against Israeli women during the Oct. 7 attacks.
Emgage’s access to the White House concerns Richard Goldberg, a former member of the White House National Security Council who worked on the Iran portfolio.
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“The degree to which the Biden-Harris administration has been penetrated by pro-Hamas organizations is simultaneously breathtaking and unsurprising,” said Goldberg, now senior adviser to the nonpartisan Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.
“Breathtaking that groups like this can sit with the president and his senior advisors; unsurprising when you look at the increasingly hostile policies and statements toward Israel these past few months,” Goldberg told the Washington Examiner.
