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With Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set to address the Center for American Progress (CAP) Tuesday afternoon, progressive groups and figures—as well as its own staff—are expressing outrage that the influential, Clinton-tied think tank would provide a platform to a proven enemy of human rights and peace.

Organizations including the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation picketed the institution on Tuesday morning and plan to return just before Netanyahu’s afternoon speaking engagement.

“We believe very strongly that a policy institute that calls itself progressive should not be providing space for the Israeli prime minister to spread his message of hatred, racism, and apartheid towards the Palestinian people,” Josh Ruebner, policy director for the U.S. Campaign, told Common Dreams.

In the context of national politics, CAP’s invitation to Netanyahu is no small matter.

CAP is already playing a powerful role in the 2016 presidential race, due to the close ties of its top leadership to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. In fact, CAP founder John Podesta—a longtime powerful operative in Washington—is heading Clinton’s presidential campaign. Tanden also has a close relationship with Clinton, as the policy director for her former presidential campaign.

Clinton, meanwhile, has been broadly criticized for her hawkish agenda, from Syria to Iraq to Israel. Last week, Clinton released a policy statement entitled “How I Would Reaffirm Unbreakable Bond With Israel—and Benjamin Netanyahu.”

After Netanyahu’s invite, many are sounding the alarm.

In an open letter to CAP published on Sunday, over 100 “progressive leaders and organizations”—including activist and writer Naomi Klein, playwright and activist Eve Ensler, MoveOn.org co-founder Noah T. Winer, Jewish Voice for Peace, and the Arab American Institute—declared that CAP has “made a mistake” in inviting the prime minister. 

The letter cites Netanyahu’s call in 1996 for an end to the Oslo accords; opposition to President Barack Obama’s push in 2011 for a peace process based on the 1967 border; and vigorous lobbying against the nuclear deal between world powers and Iran.

“Netanyahu knows that he has created a deep partisan divide in the U.S. over Israeli policies and is attempting to repackage his increasingly far-right agenda as bi-partisan consensus,” the letter states. “CAP should not be providing him with this opportunity.”