NY Jets Player Speaks at Extreme Anti-Israel Conference

Oday Aboushi, touted as the first “Palestinian” football player in the NFL by the New York Jets, the team who drafted him, is also one of the most politically oriented NFL players – with his orientation anti-Israel. During his three months on the team, Aboushi has attended numerous anti-Israel conferences, and his Facebook page is peppered with tales of Israeli “apartheid” and “persecution of helpless Palestinians.”

Aboushi's activities were revealed by Frontpage Magazine, where security expert Joe Kaufman cataloged some of his excesses. “Problems in the NFL usually revolve around drugs or alcohol abuse or players being bad influences in the locker rooms. Aboushi’s problem is an unusual one for pro sports. He’s a Muslim extremist,” wrote Kaufman in the Frontpage piece.

The article details Aboushi's increasingly bold forays into extremist politics. The American-born Aboushi (he was born in Brooklyn to parents who immigrated from Beit Hanina in Jerusalem) spoke at several events recently, including at an event sponsored by an extremist group, “The El-Bireh Palestine Society.” Past guests at the annual event have included Fouad Rafeedie, a high-ranking member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist group, and Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News and a supporter of Hizbullah and Hamas.

Aboushi was the featured speaker at this year's event, which took place in Virginia, where he played his college football, on June 28. “Also participating in the conference was Nitham Hasan, the President of the Islamic Center of South Florida (ICOSF),” wrote Kaufman. “ICOSF’s mosque property is owned by the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), a group named by the U.S. Justice Department as being a party to the financing of millions of dollars to Hamas.

“On the same El-Bireh Facebook site as the conference, there are contained different images of Hitler and rabid anti-Christian cleric Ahmed Deedat, who authored the infamous work CRUCIFIXION OR CRUCI-FICTION?,” continued Kaufman. “There are terrorist memorials for Hamas leader Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi, PLO leader Yasser Arafat, Hamas founder Ahmed Yassin and Hamas bomb maker Yahya Ayyash. About Arafat and Yassin, the site states in Arabic, 'The martyr leader Yasser Arafat with the Mujahid Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. G-d have mercy on them,'” he wrote.

The Jets are aware of Aboushi's extremism, but have chosen not to address it as of yet, wrote Kaufman. Other players on the team have ignored Aboushi's extra-cirricular behavior as well, he adds, but that is unlikely to continue. “This author, however, believes that the Jets have much more to worry about than whether or not Aboushi can create holes in the opposing team’s defense or if he can provide protection for the quarterback,” wrote Kaufman. “Given the actions he continues to engage in and the dangerous persons and groups he chooses to surround himself with, the Jets must change the game plan they originally had when they took Oday Aboushi in the 2013 NFL Draft and release this player. In the end, those individuals Aboushi truly wishes to protect may very well be the ones we have to worry about the most.”