hate crimes

This past week began on a deeply disturbing note. Elon Musk reposted on X (formerly Twitter) a dangerously false attack on more than a dozen American entities who had received USAID or State Department grants over the past decade. The original post referred to the groups as “terrorist-linked.” In his repost Musk commented, “As many people have said, why pay terrorist organizations and certain countries to hate us when they’re perfectly willing to do it for free?”

The groups listed in the original post had apparently been compiled by an individual with an anti-Arab or anti-Muslim bias. He appears to have gone through a list of grant recipients and randomly culled out entities with “Arab” or “Muslim” in their name or who had done work in the Middle East. I don’t know all of the groups mentioned, but those I do know—for example, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA)—have been in the forefront of providing lifesaving support to refugees or victims of war or natural disasters, and, in the process, building better ties between the U.S. and affected communities in need across the Middle East. Other groups I recognized had equally important, impressive records of service.