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	<title>FrontPage Magazine &#187; Ilya Feoktistov</title>
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		<title>Northeastern U. Suspends &#8216;Students for Justice in Palestine&#8217;</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ilya-feoktistov/northeastern-u-suspends-students-for-justice-in-palestine/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=northeastern-u-suspends-students-for-justice-in-palestine</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2014/ilya-feoktistov/northeastern-u-suspends-students-for-justice-in-palestine/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 18 Mar 2014 04:53:30 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ilya Feoktistov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Daily Mailer]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://www.frontpagemag.com/?p=221247</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A group of terrorist supporters gets what it deserves. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><span style="line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/1unnamed.jpg"><img class="alignleft  wp-image-221251" alt="1unnamed" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/1unnamed-294x350.jpg" width="235" height="280" /></a>A young man from Brookline, Massachusetts poses for a photo somewhere inside the Palestinian territories. He’s got a bullet belt wrapped around his shoulders, wannabe-Rambo-style. Together with a young woman, he’s proudly showing off a terror group’s PK-class machine gun. A gun like that can take down a helicopter or pierce a Humvee’s armor. The AR-15 “assault” gun used to massacre the children of Newtown, CT is little better than an old hunting rifle compared to the firing power of this killing machine, whose likely main purpose is to massacre the children (and adults) of Israel.</span></p>
<p>The young man is Max Geller, leader and spokesman of Northeastern University’s Students for Justice in Palestine (NU SJP). The young woman is also a NU SJP member.</p>
<p>Last week, Northeastern suspended NU SJP after years of anti-Semitic vandalism, glorification of terrorist groups, calls for the destruction of Israel, and other actions by NU SJP’s leadership, all of which have created a hostile learning environment for Jewish pro-Israel students on campus.</p>
<p>NU SJP emerged as a belligerent presence at Northeastern when its members <a href="http://youtu.be/ppCV6EHksK0">crashed</a> a Holocaust Awareness Week event in 2011 by whipping out anti-Israel signs and yelling insults at the audience and speakers before storming out.</p>
<p>By 2012, NU SJP faculty advisor M. Shahid Alam was bragging to SJP members at one of the group’s meetings that anti-Israel activism on campus has made pro-Israel students afraid to speak out in support of the Jewish State. He <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9mmOilcDA4">can be seen</a> suggesting to NU SJP members that they should be proud to be called anti-Semites and that they should wear this label as a badge of honor.</p>
<p>During the 2012 Israel Apartheid Week, members of Students for Justice in Palestine vandalized the campus with anti-Semitic messages, specifically targeting and defacing the statue of a Jewish donor and trustee of the university.</p>
<p>Israel’s November 2012 operation against deadly rocket fire from Gaza gave NU SJP the opportunity to take their disruptive tactics into the Boston neighborhoods surrounding Northeastern. Protests organized by NU SJP shut down traffic in sections of downtown Boston’s dense Back Bay neighborhood, as its members marched from Northeastern’s campus to the Israeli Consulate. The protesters’ <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Dv_PcP4aU">chants of choice</a> were: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a call for the destruction of the entire Jewish state, and: “Resistance is justified when people are occupied” – a justification of Palestinian terrorism against Israeli civilians.</p>
<p>At one such protest, NU SJP spokesman Max Geller decided to wear a headband with the emblem of Palestinian Islamic Jihad – the most violent Palestinian terrorist group. Geller has a penchant for fetishizing terrorists, having posted pictures of himself wearing a Hizbullah flag T-shirt and a T-shirt glorifying Hizbullah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah.</p>
<div id="attachment_221252" style="width: 325px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2unnamed.png"><img class="wp-image-221252 " alt="2unnamed" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/2unnamed-450x340.png" width="315" height="238" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Max Geller with Palestinian Islamic Jihad headband.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_221253" style="width: 329px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/unnamed.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-221253  " alt="unnamed" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/unnamed.jpg" width="319" height="263" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Max Geller with Hizbullah flag T-shirt.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_221254" style="width: 136px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/3unnamed.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-221254 " alt="3unnamed" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/3unnamed-126x350.jpg" width="126" height="350" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Geller with T-shirt of Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah.</p></div>
<p style="text-align: left;">Geller is not the only terrorist groupie within NU SJP. NU SJP board member and philosophy graduate student Ryan Branagan likes to do his protesting in a t-shirt featuring convicted terrorist hijacker Laila Khaled clutching an AK-47. For the past five months, his Facebook cover photo was a masked terrorist aiming an M-16 automatic rifle with the word “resistance” in block letters above the gun. Two weeks ago, in honor of International Women’s Day, he replaced this photo with one showing a woman holding the M-16. Tributes to women’s rights aside, these are not your average gun control left-wingers.</p>
<div id="attachment_221255" style="width: 370px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/4unnamed.jpg"><img class=" wp-image-221255" alt="4unnamed" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/4unnamed-450x299.jpg" width="360" height="239" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Branagan (front) in Laila Khaled T-shirt.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_221256" style="width: 460px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/5unnamed.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-221256" alt="5unnamed" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/5unnamed-450x188.png" width="450" height="188" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Facebook page of Ryan Branagan.</p></div>
<div id="attachment_221257" style="width: 460px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/6unnamed.png"><img class="size-medium wp-image-221257" alt="6unnamed" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/6unnamed-450x239.png" width="450" height="239" /></a><p class="wp-caption-text">Image posting on Ryan Branagan&#8217;s Facebook page.</p></div>
<p>By 2013, NU SJP was beginning to get some pushback. After a series of <a href="http://www.shameonneu.com/">video exposes</a> by Americans for Peace and Tolerance detailing the anti-Semitic climate the group and sympathetic faculty created at Northeastern, the Zionist Organization of America <a href="http://shameonneu.com/docs/zoa_aoun.pdf">wrote a letter</a> to Northeastern’s administration asking that the university remedy the hostile campus environment for Jewish students. The administration commendably took action. Northeastern President Joseph Aoun made a campus-wide announcement that anti-Semitism will not be tolerated. NU SJP was put on probation.</p>
<p>The administration tried to come to a middle-ground resolution where NU SJP would maintain its status as a student group while at the same time moderating its behavior. The organization’s leaders were asked to meet with student life administrators and to sign a statement agreeing to follow campus rules. NU SJP refused to do either. Instead, its members and sympathizers began to lash out in increasingly threatening ways.</p>
<p>In September of 2013, Boston’s WBZ ran an investigative report featuring Jewish Northeastern students describing the threats and hostility they face on campus. NU SJP posted about the story on Facebook and the comments section under the online story was quickly flooded with anti-Semitic vitriol. A Jewish Northeastern student claiming that she too felt the hostility on campus was told that, “transfer is always an option… so is the oven.  … You need to take a shower, you filthy joo!” The comments <a href="http://boston.cbslocal.com/2013/09/18/i-team-jewish-students-claim-discrimination-by-northeastern-professors/">remain published</a> on the WBZ website.</p>
<p>Responding to the WBZ report, Northeastern Law School grad and former NU SJP leader Andrew Pappone wrote: “At least the commenters on the article seem to be on the right side.”</p>
<p>Messages to Americans for Peace and Tolerance about Northeastern were more direct. One individual wrote: “you really need to die so allah can show you the right path … you Jews are all worthless to me, god bless Hitler for trying to do whats right … if i see a jew il tell him whats on my mind and if he has anything to say il decapitate him!! and il sit the rest of my life in jail with honor.” Nice.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, NU SJP continued to inflame the situation. Within two weeks in early 2014, it held two events with Jewish anti-Israel hate mongers Max Blumenthal and Ilan Pappe, who proclaimed from Northeastern’s podia that Israel must be destroyed.</p>
<p>On February 24, 2014, during this year’s Israel Apartheid Week, Northeastern students had fake eviction notices slipped under their dorm doors telling them that they were getting kicked out for no reason because that’s exactly what Israel does to the Palestinians. NU SJP then put out a <a href="https://www.facebook.com/nusjp/posts/10152319820839954">statement mocking </a> Northeastern Hillel’s reassuring message to Jewish students who felt threatened and isolated by this action.  In response, the administration suspended the group until 2015.</p>
<p>As one would expect, NU SJP is now playing the victim card, claiming that its free speech rights are being denied, and (echoing classic anti-Semitic memes) that it’s being repressed by an administration unduly influenced by certain “rich donors.” The anti-Israel blog mob is weighing in with its usual histrionics and rehearsing the “victim of Jewish pressure” theme.</p>
<p>Reflecting the moral confusion so common on campuses, Northeastern’s student newspaper is supporting NU SJP. Its <a href="http://huntnewsnu.com/2014/03/editorial-university-policies-amount-to-censorship/">editors bizarrely</a> claim that: &#8220;just because a rule [which NU SJP broke] is on the books it does not mean the school is right to enforce it.&#8221;  According to the editorial, violations of campus rules are protected freedom of expression as long as such violations are motivated by a political purpose. Never mind that the political purpose in this case is to harass pro-Israel Jewish students.</p>
<p>Students for Justice in Palestine is a rogue <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3346/american-muslims-for-palestine-web-of-hamas">Hamas-linked</a> campus organization founded at UC Berkeley in 2000. It was at Berkeley in 2010 that SJP head Hussam Zakharia <a href="http://www.investigativeproject.org/3100/lawsuit-details-depth-of-berkeley-jewish-student">sent</a> a teenage Jewish girl to the hospital by smashing her in the back with a shopping cart for holding a sign that said “Israel Wants Peace.”</p>
<p>Like so many other radical organizations, SJP exploits academic freedom, free speech, and civic norms to promote an agenda of hate. Sadly, these days the only hatred tolerated on campus is the one directed at Israel and its supporters, and so administrations at dozens of other colleges continue to turn a blind eye to SJP bigotry. Hopefully, NU SJP’s justified suspension becomes a wakeup call for those schools as well.</p>
<p><em>Ilya Feoktistov is Director of Research at Americans for Peace and Tolerance.</em></p>
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		<title>The Ground Zero Imam&#8217;s Troubling Texts</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ilya-feoktistov/the-ground-zero-imams-troubling-texts/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-ground-zero-imams-troubling-texts</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ilya-feoktistov/the-ground-zero-imams-troubling-texts/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 01 Sep 2010 04:06:02 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ilya Feoktistov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=70156</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[The disturbing discoveries in a careful study of Feisal Rauf's published works and speeches.]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Rauf1.jpg"><img class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-70171" title="Rauf" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/Rauf1.jpg" alt="" width="400" height="261" /></a></p>
<p>It’s now clear to most Americans that while Imam Feisal Rauf has the right to build his mosque wherever he desires, his decision to build it near Ground Zero is grossly insensitive, to say the least, and flies in the face of his reputation as a &#8220;moderate&#8221; bridge builder.  Let&#8217;s take a closer look at whether Imam Rauf is truly a moderate Muslim leader whose teachings are in line with American principles.</p>
<p>New York Times’s Maureen Dowd insists that, “you have to be willfully blind not to know that the imam in charge of the project, Feisal Abdul Rauf, is the moderate Muslim we have allegedly been yearning for.” Others have suggested that Rauf can’t be a radical because he was selected to represent America to the Muslim world by President George W Bush. And many who have met him speak highly of his charm and apparent good will.</p>
<p>And yet, as we are by now well aware, Rauf has claimed that America’s policies “were an accessory” to 9/11, refuses to denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization, and proposes that our secular democracy be replaced with an Islamic state ruled by Sharia law. His supporters counter that the imam believes that the U.S. Constitution is already in line with Islamic law. Nonie Darwish, among others, <a href="http://frontpagemag.com/2010/08/27/sharia-for-dummies/">has exposed the gross absurdity </a>of that position.</p>
<p>A closer look at Imam Rauf’s published work on the topic of Sharia reveals a lot of what we need to know about this imam. His religious views are completely incompatible with the American social and political system.</p>
<p>In his book, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">What’s Right with Islam Is What’s Right with America</span>, as well as during his numerous lectures at the Chautauqua Institute, Rauf postulated that the U.S. Constitution is the best embodiment of what he believes to be the second most important commandment from God: “Love thy neighbor.” But there’s a major caveat: according to Rauf, the American political system is missing the first and most important commandment: “Love thy God.”</p>
<p>It is on this specific assertion that Rauf departs from secular democratic ideals. Writing in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Islam: A Sacred Law, What Every Muslim Should Know About Sharia</span>, he points out the difference between the American government based on man-made law, and an Islamic system, which Allah authored:</p>
<blockquote><p>God’s role in the explicit philosophical construct of the law makes a big difference between the modus operandi of a righteous Muslim judge in a Muslim court and a righteous Western judge in a Western court. […] The Muslim judge explicitly “reports to God.” The judge who sits in the Western court is only explicitly responsible to the Constitution, the interpretations of a civil law and its rules.</p></blockquote>
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		<title>The Buffalo Interfaith Bluff</title>
		<link>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ilya-feoktistov/the-buffalo-interfaith-bluff/?utm_source=rss&#038;utm_medium=rss&#038;utm_campaign=the-buffalo-interfaith-bluff</link>
		<comments>http://www.frontpagemag.com/2010/ilya-feoktistov/the-buffalo-interfaith-bluff/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:04:20 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator><![CDATA[Ilya Feoktistov]]></dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[FrontPage]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Ahmad Kuftaro]]></category>
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		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://frontpagemag.com/?p=49060</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[How the Jews taking part in Buffalo "interfaith efforts" were so easily bamboozled. ]]></description>
				<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/muslimrrally3.jpg"><img class="alignnone size-medium wp-image-49164" title="muslimrrally3" src="http://cdn.frontpagemag.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/muslimrrally3-300x224.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="224" /></a></p>
<p>Rabbi Marc Schneier is a leading exponent of Jewish-Muslim dialogue. As founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, he recently <a href="http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/guestvoices/2010/01/jews_muslims_can_defeat_common_enemies.html">described in Newsweek</a> the successes of his second annual “Weekend of Twinning of Synagogues and Mosques.” This interfaith initiative brings together “100 synagogues and 100 mosques” for a weekend of interfaith programming. Unfortunately for the Rabbi, he used, as a local example of mosque-synagogue twinning the case in Buffalo, NY – a case which shows just how easily Jews can be deceived by radical Muslims posing as “moderates.”</p>
<p>“…Coming just days after the horror of extremist violence at Fort Hood ,” wrote Rabbi Schneier, “the Weekend of Twinning was heartening evidence that most Muslims are moderates, and that majorities in both the Muslim and Jewish communities seek better relations…”</p>
<p>It may well be true that most American Muslims are moderate, but the Jews in Buffalo seem to have got themselves snookered.</p>
<p>As the Research Director of an organization that investigates and scrutinizes radical Islamic groups, I was approached last fall by concerned members of the Buffalo Jewish community who asked us to help them understand the recent local efforts to forge Muslim-Jewish interfaith relationships. We were told that some of the groups and individuals behind this initiative are known for being sources of viciously anti-Israel activity and rhetoric. Together, we began a long effort to collect information on the Twinning. What we found was that the entities behind the Buffalo interfaith effort are anything but moderate.</p>
<p>As Rabbi Schneier describes in his Newsweek article, the event was conceived and coordinated by Robert Stall and Othman Shibly – a Jewish geriatrician and a Muslim dentist who worked to provide free health screenings to people in the community without health insurance. The doctors became close after jointly attending a medical conference in Damascus, Syria. During a break in the conference, Dr. Shibly took Dr. Stall to a Damascus mosque and introduced him to a respected Syrian cleric, Sheikh Rajab Deeb. Sheikh Deeb had been the top disciple of Dr. Shibly’s own spiritual mentor, the recently deceased Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro.</p>
<p>In his efforts to convince Buffalo Jewish leaders to join the Twinning, Dr. Stall has characterized Dr. Shibly and his Syrian spiritual leaders as moderate and peace-loving men of faith. Writing to a concerned community member, Dr. Stall said that, “Dr. Shibly’s efforts to improve the world by having different faiths work together, side by side, competing to outdo one another in good works, is to a large extent based in [sic] the teachings of Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, a Syrian imam who was in many ways ahead of his time.”</p>
<p>As proof of Kuftaro’s progressiveness, Dr. Stall provided links to Kuftaro’s English language articles with titles like “Spirituality in the 21st Century.” Jewish leaders who participated in the Twinning Weekend must have been convinced – Kuftaro’s disciple, Rajab Deeb, was linked in via Skype to address the interfaith event participants through an interpreter.</p>
<p>It is unfortunate that Dr. Stall and the Jewish participants didn’t consult an interpreter earlier, for while the Sheikhs’ English-language websites are full of new-age fluff about interfaith spirituality, the Arab-language sections contained something different.</p>
<p>A video recording of Kuftaro’s August 18, 2003 sermon on “Islam and Terrorism” posted on his website began with a section on, “The control of the Jewish lobby on world opinion,” where he insisted that American claims of Syrian support for terrorism were, “suggested to them by the Jewish lobby, who are the killers of prophets.” Kuftaro has also said that “ Israel is a dagger in the heart of the Muslim nation” and in a meeting with Hamas leaders insisted that “all Muslims are obligated to do jihad upon the Zionists.”</p>
<p>In a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=seoiIzPpwzc">video taped on July 5, 2002</a>, Kuftaro turned over his pulpit to Luis Farrakhan, who was visiting his mosque as an honored guest. On November 8, 2002, <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJ5IO8-GYQ0">he gave the same honor</a> to the neo-Nazi preacher William Baker. In online video of both events, Kuftaro looks on from the dais while both anti-Semites give lectures denouncing America and Israel in front of his congregation.</p>
<p>On the personal website of Sheikh Rajab Deeb, together with the audio of the sermon he gave at the Buffalo event, is a May 15, 2005 sermon titled, “Jerusalem is Ours.” In the sermon, Deeb claimed that the Holy Land is undergoing a so-called, “process of desecration through the delirious allegations of the presence there of the Jewish Temple .” About Jews, he said: “They want to remove and destroy every trace except for their footsteps and pollute every creed except their faith, and eradicate every race except their race, and they claim to be God’s Chosen People…”</p>
<p>In a position statement on Syria’s army, Deeb said:</p>
<p>“You must set up sophisticated weapons, which are appropriate to the times. The saber and spear were good predecessor weapons, which then evolved into the catapult. This development is still ongoing to the present age, where the weapons became firearms, then artillery, missile and aircraft, and then, with increased development, came the atomic and hydrogen bombs… His eminence [Sheikh Deeb] encourages the development of the national weapons industry; when the State possesses the secrets of these weapons, no enemy can resist it.”</p>
<p>Deeb’s support for Syria ’s national weapons industry is not surprising – in fact both he and Kuftaro have served as top clerics in Bashar Assad’s totalitarian government, known for spreading virulent Jew-hatred. Until Kuftaro’s death in 2003, he was the Grand Mufti of Syria and Deeb is currently the Chief Scholar in the Syrian Ministry of Religion. Considering that Syria has expelled all its Jews, hosts the top leadership of Palestinian terror groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and arms Hizbullah, the tenor of Deeb and Kuftaro’s sermons about Jews is also not surprising.</p>
<p>The Shibly family has promoted a similar pro-terror ideology in Buffalo . Dr. Shibly’s son Hassan Shibly is a prolific blogger who has written that Hizbullah should not be considered a terrorist organization. In a high-profile incident at the Rainbow  Bridge in 2004, Hassan and Dr. Shibly’s wife Sawsan Tabbaa, were detained at the border after returning from the controversial “Reviving the Islamic Spirit” annual conference in Toronto . Responding to a discrimination lawsuit filed by the Shiblys against it, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6225-2005Apr20.html">the Department of Homeland Security said</a> that: “In this instance, we had credible intelligence that conferences similar to the one from which these individuals were leaving were being used by terrorist organizations to fundraise and to hide the travel of terrorists themselves.” In 2007, <a href="http://nefafoundation.org/miscellaneous/FeaturedDocs/Tabaa_v_Chertoff_Opinion.pdf">the courts rejected the Shibly family’s claims of discrimination</a> and judged that the terror threat associated with the conference justified their detention.</p>
<p>What’s stunning here is that finding this information was not that hard. How is it possible that the Jews taking part in Buffalo interfaith efforts were so easily bamboozled? Surely, no one involved in this “twinning” business would have signed a contract to renovate his bathroom without such minimal due diligence. The answer is the deep obsession with politically correct ideology that pervades many liberal Jewish communities: “It just can’t be true that Islamic radicals would try to take advantage of our good will. If anyone even thinks of this as a possibility, he must be a “racist!”</p>
<p>And why would Islamic radicals pretend to be moderate in order to establish interfaith relationships with Jewish community? I believe that this and many other similar “Twinning Initiatives” around the country have an ulterior purpose. Already, the interfaith relationship as it currently exists in Buffalo is being exploited to intimidate local Jewish groups into forfeiting their freedom to vigorously advocate for Jews everywhere, including Israel . Shortly after the twinning, Dr. Shibly denounced a lecture by Israeli General Effie Eitam at the University of Buffalo . Writing to the event organizers, Dr. Shibly said: “It is so sad as we are trying to bring our communities together and make a historical step to join the national efforts of twinning mosques and Synagogues projects for common good, we get a slap in our face.” Likewise, when the Jewish community wanted to screen “Farewell Israel ,” a thoroughly-researched film about the dangers Israel faces, Shibly again invoked the interfaith threat: “This movie and other programs presented before were misleading and promote islamophobia. They destroy all the bridges and dialogues that we are building to promote peace, love and understanding.”</p>
<p>This type of disingenuous interfaith dialogue with Jewish leaders is also a strategic force-multiplier for extremists. The rest of American society tends to look to Jews on the topic of extremist bigotry and intolerance as the proverbial canary in the coal mine. By embracing radical Islamists in an official interfaith relationship, Jewish leaders give them a ticket into American institutions.</p>
<p>Interfaith dialogue between Jews and Muslims can be valuable. Yet dialogue is only productive when it occurs with partners who are honest about their true intentions. This doesn’t seem to be the case with Dr. Shibly and his Syrian government clerics. Instead of promoting peace and tolerance, legitimizing such entities through interfaith partnerships will only promote the hatred they preach when they think the Jews aren’t paying attention. Rabbi Marc Schneier and Dr. Richard Stall should be apologizing to the Buffalo Jewish community instead of congratulating themselves on a job well done.</p>
<p><strong>Ilya Feoktistov is Research Director of <a href="http://www.peaceandtolerance.org/">Americans for Peace and Tolerance</a>.</strong></p>
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