Here they go again! Designated terrorist group CAIR spews yet another false blood libel against Israel

Khalid Turaani, executive director of CAIR’s chapter in Ohio, claimed that Israel harvests and collects the skin of dead Palestinians at a recent Ohio state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. “Israel has the largest human skin bank in the world,” Khalid Turaani said last week at a hearing on adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.

Algemeiner“Where do you think they got all this skin from? They have more human skin than China and India. They are literally skinning the dead bodies of my brothers and sisters in Palestine,” Turaani continued. “And if I call them Nazis, your law [adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism] is going to punish me.”

Scholars and activist groups have described the conspiracy theory of Israeli organ harvesting as a modern version of the antisemitic blood libel rooted in medieval conspiracies charging that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood during the holiday of Passover. The organ harvesting claim dates back to 2009, when a Swedish tabloid published an erroneous article saying that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) kills Palestinians to provide organs to Israeli hospitals.

Palestinian media has repeatedly invoked the organ harvesting conspiracy, which has been picked up by anti-Israel activists in the West.

Last week’s hearing came about four months after Turaani took part in an online event in October alongside a senior member of Hamas who has been sanctioned by the US government and other individuals tied to the Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) terrorist organizations.

Turaani moderated the event hosted by the Beirut-based Al-Zaytouna Center titled “Palestinians Abroad and Regional and International Strategic Transformations in the Light of Al-Aqsa Flood.” The term “Al-Aqsa Flood” is the name Hamas gave to its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 1,200 people and dragged 251 hostages back to Gaza.

Executive director of CAIR’s Los Angeles office, Hussam Ayloush, said that Israel “does not have the right” to defend itself from Palestinian violence. He added in his sermon at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City that for the Palestinians, “every single day” since the Jewish state’s establishment has been comparable to Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught.

Among the speakers was Majed al-Zeer, who was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department in October 2024 for his role as a senior Hamas operative in Europe.

Also featured was Ziad el-Aloul, a Hamas-linked activist involved with the European Palestinians Conference and the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, both groups accused by Israeli authorities of operating as Hamas fronts in Europe.

CAIR has drawn scrutiny in the past over its alleged ties to foreign terrorist groups. In the 2000s, CAIR was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing case. Politico noted in 2010 that “US District Court Judge Jorge Solis found that the government presented ‘ample evidence to establish the association’” of CAIR with Hamas.

CAIR-Ohio Executive Director Khalid Turaani spread a blood libel in the Ohio State Senate, falsely claiming Israel “skins” Palestinians and runs the “largest human skin bank in the world.”

An outrageous and dangerous old antisemitic conspiracy. pic.twitter.com/U5aj4EwRMl

— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) February 26, 2026