Jewish groups condemned testimony by the executive director of the Ohio branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations at a recent state Senate Judiciary Committee hearing during which he accused Israel of harvesting skin from deceased Palestinians.

Khalid Turaani testified on Feb. 18 against Senate Bill 87, which would see Ohio adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, asserting that “Israel has the largest human skin bank in the world.” 

Turaani claimed as his evidence a report by Israel’s Channel 10 from March 2014, though no such report exists. The conspiracy theory of Israeli organ harvesting originated in 2009, when a Swedish tabloid published falsehoods that the IDF kills Palestinians to provide organs to Israeli hospitals, and has been repeated by Palestinian media for years. 

The claim, which reemerged in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks, also plays on the blood libel trope, an antisemitic conspiracy accusing Jews of murdering Christians to use their blood, that dates back to the Middle Ages.  

“Where do you think they got all this skin from?” Turaani continued. “They have more human skin than China and India. They are literally skinning the dead bodies of my brothers and sisters in Palestine,” he said, without offering evidence. “And if I call them Nazis, your law is going to punish me.”

Greg Miller, board chair of Ohio Jewish Communities, which represents the state’s eight Jewish federations, told Jewish Insider that the “false, abhorrent and libelous statements made during this testimony are the kind that have been inciting hatred and violence against Jews for thousands of years.” 

Miller said the testimony “only reinforces the need for passage of this bill that provides absolute clarity that those statements are antisemitic. By codifying the IHRA definition, such statements aren’t criminalized but makes it obvious to be condemned by all Ohioans as the blind hatred that inspired them.”

Lee C. Shapiro, the American Jewish Committee’s Cleveland regional director, told JI that while there is “room for reasoned discussion about the IHRA definition,” Turaani “chose to ignore facts and instead propagated hatred and easily dispelled lies. It’s an insult to Ohioans and a disservice to the public square.”

The Anti-Defamation League’s Ohio River Valley office said it was “appalled” by Turaani’s testimony. “The antisemitic organ harvesting myth plays on the blood libel trope, which has spurred the torture, murder, and expulsion of Jews for centuries,” the statement continued. “It continues to fuel violence against Jewish communities today. Such hateful, utterly false rhetoric has no place in our state capitol. We call on Ohio’s leaders to join us in condemning these remarks and standing firm against antisemitism in all its forms.”

Leaders and senior officials of CAIR have on numerous occasions in recent years drawn ire from the Jewish community over comments relating to Israel and antisemitism.

Turaani himself moderated an event in October featuring a Hamas official designated as a terrorist by the Treasury Department, as well as other Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members.

And as Hamas was conducting its rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of CAIR-LA, praised the attacks, tweeting a prayer for Allah to “grant relief, freedom, and victory to the people of Gaza.” Weeks later, Nihad Awad, the executive director of CAIR, said at a conference that he was “happy to see people breaking the siege” on Oct. 7, describing the attacks as an act of self-defense.

The executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Ohio branch moderated an online event last week featuring a Hamas official designated as a terrorist by the Treasury Department, as well as other Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad members.

The Beirut-based think tank Al-Zaytouna Centre for Studies and Consultations hosted an event in Arabic last week titled “Palestinians Abroad and Regional International Strategic Transformations in Light of Operation Al-Aksa Flood,” using Hamas’ name for its Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel.

Among the speakers at the web conference was Majed al-Zeer, who was designated by the Treasury Department in October 2024 as “the senior Hamas representative in Germany, who is also one of the senior Hamas members in Europe and has played a central role in the terrorist group’s European fundraising.” 

Al-Zeer said that “the resistance” is key to maintaining the momentum of a “strategic shift” in how Europe and the world views the Palestinian issue.

Palestinian Islamic Jihad financier Sami al-Arian, a former University of South Florida computer science professor who was deported from the U.S. in 2015 due to his ties to the terrorist group, said on the same panel as Al-Zeer that “the overall Palestinian situation is much better strategically than it was before the flood [Oct. 7].”

CAIR-Ohio Director Khalid Turaani moderated one panel with commentary provided by Ziad el-Aloul, who is active in several Hamas-affiliated organizations in Europe, including the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad, which was designated a terrorist group by Israel in 2021 for its work on behalf of Hamas. More recently, PCPA was found to be involved in facilitating the Global Sumud Flotilla that attempted to sail to Gaza with climate activist Greta Thunberg on board.

Another speaker in the Turaani-led panel expressed hope that the Turkish army would deploy in Gaza and fight the IDF.

The CAIR-Ohio director’s participation in a conference with senior Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad figures came two months after Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) called for an IRS investigation into the organization and the revocation of its 501(c)(3) nonprofit status, citing alleged “ties to terrorist organizations like Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood.”

CAIR did not respond to a request for comment.