An official of a terrorist-sponsoring state that has a horrible human rights record spoke over the weekend at a convention in Washington. She accused Israel of “ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians” and accused American forces in Iraq of trying to wipe out Arab culture. She was met with a standing ovation. You’d think that in the middle of a war on terrorism American politicians would want to steer clear of this sort of event. Or if they did show up, they would at least voice a protest. Yet the Bush administration sent a top official from the Department of Homeland Security, Asa Hutchinson, to participate and speak at the meeting. The Kerry campaign sent the candidate’s wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. Ralph Nader showed up in person.

Welcome to the latest conference of the Arab-American-Anti-Discrimination Committee, where hostility to Israel attempts to put on an all-American face. But it’s getting harder and harder to do that, all the more so in an election year. Syria’s record — hosting terrorist groups, occupying Lebanon, massacring dissidents — is documented in the State Department’s annual reports. President Bush recently announced his plans to impose sanctions on Damascus, as authorized by Congress. And the particular Syrian government representative at the weekend conference of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Bouthaina Shaaban, has a track record of dismaying public statements that would have been easily available to any politician who had bothered to check before showing up.

In a June 18, 2003, speech to the Brookings Institution, Ms. Shaaban claimed, “There’s no county that is more similar to the United States than Syria.”Tell that to the thousands killed by the Assad regime at Hama or to Syrians who might like the chance to do as Americans do and elect their president in a free and democratic election. She went on to claim,”We don’t know of any act of terrorism that Iran has committed in the region.” She described Hezbollah — whose slogan is “death to America” — as “a resistance party against occupation, a right that all people in the world have exercised.”

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s nature, too, is a matter that anyone who wanted to find out about could easily have discovered. According to the group’s Web site, the organization’s board approved resolutions at this weekend’s meeting asserting that the group “favors constructive engagement to the language of unhelpful sanctions and boycotts” and that the American invasion of Iraq caused “irreparable damage to the U.S. and Iraq.” It’s in keeping with the organization’s pattern over the years: a soft line against vile dictatorships, coupled with harsh criticism of America and Israel. American government officials and political campaigns err by lending it their names.