California is funding the very hate it promised to stop

Imagine the leader of a civil rights organization wishing for people to suffer and die from cancer. Zahra Billoo, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations-San Francisco Bay Area, wished just that upon former President Joe Biden.

“There is no amount of cancer treatment that can protect President Joe Biden from the prayers of the oppressed and ultimately God’s wrath,” she posted last May 18.

As a two-time cancer survivor, I feel confident saying Billoo’s statement was not a political critique — it was a call for human suffering, evincing an utter lack of empathy and blatant disregard for human life. But even after a news outlet flagged the post, she did not retract it. Rather, she doubled down, reposting it with the added comment, “cancer is less painful than a genocide.”

She later extended the same wish to President Trump, writing that “his time will come too.”

Despite these and other hateful comments, Billoo has been chosen as a featured speaker at California’s May 11 Civil Rights Summit. That’s right — the anti-hate program of the nation’s largest state is funding and platforming the very hate it claims to be fighting under the banner of civil rights.

I know how California’s anti-hate apparatus operates in practice because I called the CA vs Hate hotline in January 2024 after being threatened, called a “baby killer” and a “pedophile,” and told that “Hitler didn’t finish the job.” I expected the state to investigate, expose, and hold bad actors accountable. Instead, I was routed to counseling to address my distress.

When I insisted on filing a complaint, I was made to wait five months for an interview. During the interview, I........

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