An anti-Israel group started by two federal officials who resigned from the Biden administration over U.S. support for Israel is soliciting residents of Dearborn, Mich., a hotbed of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas sentiment, to fund its “professional lobbying force” to pressure lawmakers to vote against laws protecting Israel and Jews.
A New Policy Inc., a group formed last year by former State Department official Josh Paul and former Department of Education official Tariq Habash, is soliciting donations through Facebook ads to fund its lobbying efforts to combat AIPAC—which it accuses of steering U.S. foreign policy to foment “endless conflict”—and change public perception of Israel’s war against Hamas.
The group has spent $13,000 on 20 Facebook ads, many of them directed specifically to users in Dearborn, according to data provided by Facebook.
“AIPAC has lobbyists. We’ve had to rely on outrage,” one ad states. Another accuses AIPAC of “weaponiz[ing] Jewish identity” to justify policies that “sustain occupation” of Gaza.
“For too long, America has neglected Palestinian freedom & equality,” says another ad directed at Dearborn, featuring a Palestinian flag. “Join the movement for a new approach that centers human rights and advances OUR national interest!”
Habash, who served as a policy adviser at the Department of Education until January 2024, touted the group during a panel at ArabCon, a convention of anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activists held last month in Dearborn.
“There are organizations like mine, A New Policy. If you don’t know us, please you should know us,” Habash said.
It’s further indication that the anti-Israel movement sees Dearborn as the epicenter of its organizational activities. The city has the largest ratio of Muslim and Arab residents in the nation and has been dubbed “America’s Jihad Capital” thanks to local community leaders, elected officials, and religious leaders who have promoted Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran.
Chants of “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” have been heard at rallies held in the city against Israel’s war on Hamas. Dearborn mayor Abdullah Hammoud attended a rally there last year where Arab-American community leader Osama Siblani hailed Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah as a “hero.”
Paul, the former director of congressional and public affairs for the State Department’s bureau of political-military affairs, leads A New Policy’s lobbying arm, according to lobbying disclosures.
Paul, who resigned from the State Department just days after Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, lobbied the Senate, House, and State Department on dozens of bills, including against the Preventing Antisemitic Harassment on Campus Act of 2025, a bill introduced by Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) that fines universities for repeated failures to stop antisemitic harassment.
A New Policy’s super PAC has contributed to just two candidates: $500 to “Squad” member Rep. Summer Lee (D., Pa.) last year, and $2,500 in June to state Rep. Donavan McKinney (D., Mich.), who is challenging Rep. Shri Thanedar (D., Mich.), a progressive who has drawn the ire of anti-Israel groups for accepting donations from AIPAC.
It’s all part of a two-track strategy “to find levers to be able to influence” members of Congress to counterbalance what the “pro-Israel, pro-genocide lobby has been doing for decades,” Habash said at ArabCon. “Because that’s how politics works.”
Habash, who told the audience they “can give directly through A New Policy PAC’s conduit page,” said that anti-Israel groups and donors “have to make sure that [members of Congress] know when we are contributing to them.”
Habash said the lobbying efforts are largely directed at allies to the group’s cause. A number of veteran Senate Republican aides told the Washington Free Beacon they have had no interaction with A New Policy.
During the panel, Zahra Billoo, a notoriously anti-Semitic official with the pro-Hamas Council on American-Islamic Relations, singled out Jewish Democratic Rep. Brad Sherman (Calif.) as an example of a lawmaker who should face “real consequences” for supporting Israel.
“Wow, AIPAC has bought that seat and him, and he doesn’t care,” said Billoo, who accused Sherman of taking “every opportunity to make an anti-Palestinian statement.”
Billoo contrasted Sherman with Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), who spoke at ArabCon just before the panel with Billoo and Habash. “I’m really proud that Congressman Ro Khanna represents the district that the CAIR office I run is in,” said Billoo.
During his remarks, Khanna railed against Israel and AIPAC and blasted fellow House Democrats who have not signed onto his bill to create Palestinian statehood. Khanna said those Democrats “are making us on the side of the pariah in world opinion,” referring to Israel.
Khanna did not mention Oct. 7 or criticize Hamas, though he told the Free Beacon prior to ArabCon that he would.
Other ArabCon speakers defended Hamas and other terrorist organizations at the three-day conference. Billoo, during her panel with Habash, touted the five co-founders of the Holy Land Foundation, who were convicted of funding Hamas, as “incredible, generous, kind, beautiful men.”
Rabab Abdulhadi, a San Francisco State University professor, refused to condemn Hamas or Oct. 7 in a panel on Sunday.
“I never ever condemn Palestinian resistance and anyone’s resistance around the world,” she told moderator Amer Zahr, a Dearborn school board member who has said he “stand[s] with” Hamas and Hezbollah against Israel.
Lara Sheehi, who spoke on a panel Saturday moments after Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed, praised the “Al-Aqsa Flood”—Hamas’s name for the Oct. 7 terrorist operation—as a “force that disrupts” Israel’s “oppressive system.”
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