Pro-Mamdani political action committee linked to terror-boosting group

A political action committee spending tens of thousands of dollars to boost NYC mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani has ties to a New Jersey-based Palestinian group that hosted a member of a terror organization which was involved in the Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

We the People, America For All PAC has doled out more than $36,000 on video billboard ads hyping the socialist mayoral frontrunner’s proposal to make bus fares free, city campaign finance records show.

The ads list the PAC’s top donor as The Truth Project, led by New Jersey attorney Abed Awad – a longtime leader and funder of the Palestinian-American Community Center in Clifton, who also serves as treasurer for “We the People, America for All.”

The Palestinian-American Community Center’s president, Diab Mustafa, was listed as one of The Truth Project’s three founding trustees when it formed in 2022.

The center sparked outrage in April when its annual conference featured a livestream address by Wisam Rafeedie, a longtime member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Syria-based left-wing terrorist group that the U.S. Department of the Treasury and other observers say took part in Hamas’s murderous attack on Israel in 2023.

The center has also promoted Rafeedie’s book and repeatedly hosted figures from the group Samidoun, which the U.S. State Department, Canada, Germany, and Israel have identified as a PFLP front.

The PFLP is infamous for pioneering airplane hijackings as a terror tool, and masterminding the slaughter of Puerto Rican Christians at an Israeli airport in 1972.

The Network Contagion Research Center, an independent group monitoring political extremism, warned that the ads’ emphasis on Mamdani’s bus proposal instead of Middle Eastern issues reflects a classic political strategy for fringe groups attempting to infiltrate the mainstream.

“These actors are engaging in entryism by adopting a popular, non-controversial issue not because it reflects their true mission, but because it gives them an easy way to gain legitimacy and a foothold in electoral debates,” said Alex Goldenberg, senior advisor at the NCRI.

The PAC also has ties to the “Uncommitted” movement that split the Democratic Party in 2024.

Last year it collaborated with the nonprofit American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, where Awad serves on the board, on the Uncommitted campaign, which discouraged Arab-Americans from backing Joe Biden and Kamala Harris over their stance on Israel.

Awad’s son, Ahmad, was an Uncommitted delegate to the Democratic National Convention and was among The Truth Project’s founding trustees. And The Truth Project’s co-founder, D.C. political consultant Mohammed “Mo” Maraqa served as the Anti-Discrimination Committee’s lead digital strategist during the election season.

Bitter Dems blame Uncommitted for Harris losing states like Michigan to President Trump.

Meanwhile, the PAC hasn’t revealed where the cash for the pro-Zohran ads came from — only that it flowed through the Truth Project and Maraqa’s Molitico Consulting. The consultant said, “We the People, America for All” hasn’t spent enough yet or gotten donations big enough to trigger the rules requiring disclosure.

The New York City Campaign Finance Board declined to comment.

Awad, however, maintained that the PAC has obeyed all city and state regulations, and that despite the overlaps in leadership, the committee is totally separate from the other organizations he and Maraqa are affiliated with.

“The Truth Project has had no further role, financial or otherwise, in the PAC’s activities beyond what has already been publicly disclosed to the applicable authorities,” he said. “Separately, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and the Palestinian-American Community Center have no financial involvement, governance role, or other input—direct or indirect—in The Truth Project or in We the People, America for All.”

Maraqa denied having any personal link to the PFLP and its affiliates.

“I am in no way associated, nor have I ever been associated with PFLP/Samidoun and of course denounce the group and every other terrorist organization which participated in Oct. 7th or any other attack on civilians,” he said.