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[Order a copy of Robert Spencer’s newest book, Empire of God, by clicking here.]
Hamakom synagogue, a conservative congregation in Los Angeles, has just gotten a bracing introduction to the reality beneath the surface of efforts at “outreach” and “dialogue”: it leased its facility to a local Muslim group, only to have it host a viciously anti-Israel speaker who has refused to condemn Hamas and likened the Jewish state to National Socialist Germany. Yeah, tensions are really eased now.
The Washington Free Beacon reported Monday that Hamakom “axed its leadership and is struggling to retain members” after leasing its main facility to the Islamic Society of West Valley. The synagogue “entered into an agreement with the Islamic Society that allowed it to take over the synagogue’s main campus, pushing Jewish members onto a smaller satellite branch.
The synagogue leadership did this in the hopes it would build bridges with Muslims in Los Angeles: “In this time of rising anti-Semitism and Islamophobia,” synagogue leaders told the congregation, “it is incumbent upon us to reach out to strengthen the bonds between religious communities in our neighborhood, recognizing there is more that unites us than divides us.” Almost immediately, however, their starry-eyed hopes of bridging the gap of centuries of hatred and suspicion, and showing the Muslims of Los Angeles that Jews weren’t really “the most vehement of mankind in hostility to those who believe,” as the Qur’an says (5:82), were dashed.
Yet Hamakon gave its all to this effort. The synagogue leadership allowed the Muslims to use the building every night, while the Jews themselves “would only be allowed to worship in two rooms from 8 p.m. to midnight. Evening programs and Friday night Sabbath services were also relocated to a smaller site also owned by the synagogue.” Even worse, “in anticipation of the lease’s commencement, the synagogue’s leadership covered up pictures of Israeli hostages (pictured above) captured by Hamas during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.”
Yes, you read that right. It wasn’t the mosque that covered up the pictures of Israeli hostages. It was the synagogue leadership, showing that they were so avid to build bridges with the Muslim group that they were willing to abandon their own principles and basic standards of human decency to do so.
The Islamic Society of West Valley, in contrast, was not so eager to abandon its own beliefs in order to make friends with the Jews. “Soon after the Islamic Society began using Hamakom’s facility, it hosted anti-Israel activist Hussam Ayloush, who said last year that Israel did not have a right to defend itself following the Oct. 7 attack and compared Israel to Nazi Germany.” Even worse, years ago I myself was on a radio show with Ayloush, the top dog of the Los Angeles chapter of the the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). I repeatedly challenged him to condemn Hamas and Hizballah. He steadfastly refused.
The Ayloush appearance led to outrage among members of the synagogue, with the anger growing so great that Hamakom ultimately severed its arrangement with the Islamic Society. The leaders of the synagogue have resigned, and Hamakom is promising a “thorough internal review to understand the missteps taken and to implement corrective measures.”
That’s great, but it’s unlikely that this internal review is going to be deep or honest enough to uncover the real problem. Jews in Los Angeles (and elsewhere, of course) have been reaching out to Muslims for years, without any reciprocal action from the Muslims. As far back as 2012, the Jewish Federation of Los Angeles canceled a speech by human rights activist Pamela Geller; Geller remarked that the Federation had “cravenly submitted to Islamic supremacists who wanted to suppress free speech.”
Indeed. In its story on the cancellation, the Los Angeles Times quoted none other than Hussam Ayloush, who said all the things that he knew the leftist Times and its equally leftist audience would want to hear. Geller, he claimed, was a “fringe speaker.” He added: “We will not be affected by the noise of people who hopefully become more and more irrelevant. Unfortunately, outrageous rhetoric gets attention because it’s outrageous, and Pamela Geller knows that very well.”
The “outrageous rhetoric” to which Ayloush referred had to do with Geller sounding the alarm about the necessity of awakening to the reality of Islamic jihad. Meanwhile, here is some genuinely outrageous rhetoric: “For 75 years, every single day for the Palestinian people had been October 7.” Let’s see. In 1950, the population of Gaza was 63,444. Now it is estimated to be over 800,000. Have the Israelis really been going into Gaza and carrying out orgies of murder and rape every day for 75 years? Hamas jihadis murdered 1,200 people on Oct. 7, 2023. If Israel did the same thing every day in Gaza, 32,850,000 people would have been killed.
Who made this preposterous and incendiary claim? Hussam Ayloush. Ayloush was speaking at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City, and clearly was trying to stir up his hearers to hate Israel and be willing to support the jihad against it. Ayloush isn’t interested in building bridges; he is interested in blowing them up (figuratively!).
Or if he is interested in outreach, it is in order to bring people to Islam. “Building bridges” is also a frequently enunciated goal of CAIR. Such bridges, however, are really just proselytizing mechanisms to convert the Christians to Islam, not an attempt to engage in genuine dialogue — as the Muslim Brotherhood theorist Sayyid Qutb explained: “The chasm between Islam and Jahiliyyah [the society of unbelievers] is great, and a bridge is not to be built across it so that the people on the two sides may mix with each other, but only so that the people of Jahiliyyah may come over to Islam.”
So on the one side, we have a coarse and brutish propagandist spreading blood libels against the Jews. On the other side, we have leftist Jews so anxious to be friendly to Muslims that they give over their premises to a mosque that brings in this same hateful propagandist to speak. What’s wrong with this picture? If leftist Jews in Los Angeles had listened to what Pamela Geller was trying to tell them in 2012, they wouldn’t be in this fix.
The synagogue thought it was building a bridge. Instead it found itself in Hamas tunnel.
Interesting, this Ayloush declares Pamela Geller a fringe voice, and then it happens. He must be a prophet of some sort.
This highlights two things: the illogic of the liberal progressive leftists among Jews and also the collapse of the non-0rthodox Jewish world (which is mainly in the liberal progressive leftist sphere). Why should a Conservative movement synagogue lease out its bigger space/campus to anyone, much less Muslims, if it had enough attendees at its services and other functions? In comparison, the Orthodox jewish synagogues and schools in major metropolitan ares are generally bursting at the seams and expanding, and constructing new institutions and buildings.
When you stop practicing Judaism and focus on social justice, you lose Jews who actually want to live a Jewish life that is meaningfully distinct from non-Jewish life.
This problem will sort itself out, albeit in a tragic way. In 1883, the Reform Movement in Judaism held the “Treifa Banquet” in Cincinnati, in which frogs legs, shrimp, oysters and other non kosher food was served. At least those Jews weren’t hosting people who are unapologetic Jew haters, and bending over backwards to avoid offending them. I wonder how many of the descendants of the attendees at the “Treifa Banquet” are Jews. I would be very surprised if the proportion is over 25%, even using the elastic standards of the Reform movement, which recognizes patrilineal as well as matrilineal descent in determining Jewishness, and allows non Jewish spouses of members membership in synagogues.
I suspect that 50 years from now, most of the grandchildren of Hamakon synagogue members (even if it is technically Conservative as opposed to Reform) will be like the living members of the Sulzberger Ochs clan at The New York Times- antisemites who are non practicing mainline Protestants of partially Jewish descent.
The Hamakom Web page’s “community update” as of the Free Beacon’s publication date, was a mealy-mouthed blather of simpering solicitude. Fire. Them. All.
This makes me wonder how Synagogue leaders are chosen. At least the Hamakon congregation got rid of those barking mad moonbats before they renamed their Synagogue the Haman Synagogue.
They are leftists first and Jewish somewhere else down the line. They refuse to believe the murder and mayhem that the koran dictates to its followers. They close their eyes and put their fingers in their ears and invite the wolves into the sheep’s quarters.
Yep, and unfortunately, these left-wing fools won’t learn a thing from this self-induced debacle!
They can’t learn; they’re delusional. They believe we do, or can, live in a Barney the purple dinosaur world where everything is rainbows, butterflies, and gum drops and we can all get along if we think good thoughts. They usually even have these vacant smiles on their faces (see, e.g., the women at this recent Boston meeting for black reparations). And they can’t learn from their mistakes as that would be to admit they’d done wrong which they can’t because in their minds they’re smarter and better than rational people and if they admitted they were wrong it would cause uncomfortable cognitive dissonance. And they don’t like being uncomfortable. They’re pretty much mentally children.
The naivety of leftist elites will ONLY be eased when they experience the consequences of their policies.
I know this from personal experience.
This synagogue probably is devoted to social justice not traditional Judaism
And yet polls show most Jews in America have a higher opinion of Muslims than of Evangelical Christians, who widely support Israel and the Jewish community in America. Go figure.
Idiots.
This is what happens when Tikkun Olam bites you in the assets.
American Jews always vote for their own executioners and always enable their enemies.
A little less Tikkun Olam and a little more lead.
At least the German Jews knew not to vote for Hitler.
It appears from a historical perspective that Islamists are clashing with Judeo- Christian values and are attempting to dominate the world .
I have a hard time sometimes understanding people of the Jewish Faith. Why in the world would the Hamakom Synagogue lease space to a group that wants all the Synagogue members to die? Why not just hand these heathens guns and bullets, and go stand by the wall? American Jews too often work towards their own demise, as they seem to be doing by demanding that Bibi and crew back down, give Hamas some ‘breathing room’. Schumer and his kind are leading American Jews into a self destruction. Well, if that’s what you want, go for it, but don’t ask for help or sympathy, it is all on you.
Only a small minority of American Jews have called for a ceasefire, self-hating groups like Jewish voice for Peace (actually for Palestine). These self-haters are democratic socialists, unemployed (young and old) with the time to take to the streets and the college yards to attack Israel.
Another bridge the congregation boasts of is one they bought in Brooklyn.
And the one that got hit in Baltimore.
75 years ago, or even 50 years ago, there was no such thing as “the Palestinian people.” Everybody called them what they were and are,Arabs. Whem the state of Israel was founded, in 1948, hundreds of thousands of JEWS were PALESTINIANS.It said so, on their passports and birth certificates.
In WW2 the British Army had a “Palestinian Brigade” consisting entirely of Jews from Mandatory Palestine. There was no other concept of a Palestine national identity until in the 1960s the KGB invented one as a device so they could generate a “war of national liberation” there as they were doing throughout the Third World at the time.
75 years ago, didn’t Gaza belong to EGYPT?
Yes, Gaza was Egyptian territory until the 1967 war. When Israel left in 2005 Egypt did not want it back. Egypt also does not want to accept any Palestinians today. Evidently, Egypt is not think much of “Palestinian” culture which consists largely of hatred and terrorism.
As Egypt builds a wall to keep them out.
To offer peace to butchery and killers is to invite suicide via more butchery. It’s a dumb idea.
It’s doubtful if all these attempts at peaceful cooperation with Mohammed’s disciples are only the result of historical ignorance. There must be something more to it than this. For one thing, the stench of globalism can be detected. No one has ever described Islam better than Churchill.
Makes as much sense as a Muslim needing a kidney transplant accepts one from a pig.
Sheep invites the wolf to its Easter Party
When I go camping in the Cascades, I never invite or encourage bears to share my campsite. Same things with scorpions in the slick rock country of Utah. It just seems axiomatic.
I guess Reform means Dhimmi.i
I am a Christian. I fully support Israel. And Judaism.
Why cannot American Jews do the same?
I want nothing to do with Islamic peoples. They hate me. They hate Jews.
I will not intentionally do business with them.
Islam is destroying Europe. North America is next.
Thanks Joe. Thanks Justin.