Boston
Muslims Forgive
Israel Advocates
By
Karin Friedemann
03 June,
2007
Countercurrents.org
Many
celebrated the construction of New England’s largest mosque as
proof of “the Muslim community coming into its own." Yet
not everyone celebrated. In 2004, the City of Boston was sued for selling
the land to Muslims. Racist commentators whipped up public hysteria
against the mosque.
“Muslims
are very upset," said Mushtaque Mirza, who has lived in Boston
for 30 years. “The mosque is always depicted as [supporting] terrorism."
The lawsuit
against the City was dismissed in 2007, but irreparable damage had already
been done. Donations slowed to a trickle, the mosque only half built.
When in 2005,
mosque directors Dr. Yousef Abou Allaban and Ossama Kandil sued Fox
News and the Boston Herald for defamation, analysis of discovery materials
exposed a professionally coordinated network of pro-Israel organizations,
mass media, Islamophobic academics, and real estate developers. The
directors accused a growing list of defendants, including Steven Emerson,
the David Project, and Citizens for Peace and Tolerance (CPT), whose
president is Dennis Hale, of "a concerted, well-coordinated effort
to deprive ... members of the Boston Muslim community of their basic
right of free association and the free exercise of their religion."
The
Jewish community
Some Jewish
groups kindly distanced themselves from this conspiracy to deprive Muslim
Americans of their constitutional rights, which is a federal crime,
but Nancy Kaufman, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations
Council of Greater Boston, whose stated mission includes minimizing
the political influence of groups feared hostile to Israel, stated,
"None of those organizations [who signed statements supporting
the mosque] are members of the organizations of the JCRC. We don't consider
them to be a part of the mainstream Jewish community."
Who
is Charles Jacobs?
In 2006,
Dr. Yousef Abou-Allaban, chairman of the board of the Islamic Society
of Boston, addressed Charles Jacobs, president of the David Project,
in an open letter that was quoted in the Boston Globe.
"We
would like to know why you and others at the David Project appear to
be so intent on inflaming relations between our communities," Abou-Allaban
wrote. "Do you really hate us that much?"
Charles Jacobs,
like Charles Krauthammer and Richard Perle, earns his living through
a speakers' bureau called Benador Associates, which specializes in pro-Israel
campus events focusing on Islam and terrorism.
A pioneer
in the technological aspects of mass-marketing hate, CAMERA, which Jacobs
co-founded in 1982 to enforce pro-Israel bias in the news, email blasts
tailored “action alerts” to huge databases of specific target
groups.
This Polish
immigrant, armed with only a BA from Rutgers and a Masters in Education
from Harvard has proven exceptionally effective in manipulating the
US government and major American institutions into following policy
blueprints created by his Israel advocacy organization, the David Project.
The
David Project
The David
Project is an affiliate member of the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC),
a network of national Jewish organizations, founded in partnership with
the Jewish student organization Hillel and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman
Family Foundation. (The three organizations share a building in Washington.)
It is essentially an Islamophobia franchisor complete with manuals and
training videos.
In October
2003, the David Project funded a film, produced by Ralph Avi Goldwasser,
to slander professors Rashid Khalidi, Joseph Massad, Hamid Dabashi,
and Georges Saliba of Columbia University's Department of Middle East
studies. Joseph Massad became known as one of the most dangerous intellectuals
on campus. Calls for the professor’s dismissal were issued by
Congressman Weiner and by the editors of the Daily News and the New
York Sun, and the propaganda film was shown in Israel before a government
minister at an anti-Semitism conference.
The David
Project regularly places racist anti-Arab and anti-Muslim speakers on
Harvard campus, but its first major accomplishment was blocking a $2
million donation from the late president of the United Arab Emirates,
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, for a chair in Islamic Studies at
the Harvard Divinity School. The Project's 2003 smear campaign, coordinated
with the ADL, sought to exclude Arabs and Muslims from developments
at Harvard University.
Anti-Sudan
Campaigns
Jacobs' pro-Israel
advocacy organization spearheaded the campaign to vilify the Islamic
Republic of Sudan, and provided huge quantities of lurid, both popular
and pseudo-academic material, in which Sudan is described as a "terrorist,
genocidal" state engaged in a "holy war." Charles Jacobs’
carefully designed "PR puff pieces" about "slavery"
in Sudan have managed to secure national media coverage.
While pro-Palestine
activists have long struggled to halt public funding of Israel, the
dishonest “Save Darfur!” campaign, put together by DP friends
and trainees, is the quickest divestment success in history. Sudan divestment
resolutions have become law in Iowa and are in the process of approval
in 12 states. The JCRC coordinating with the David Project has further
poisoned human rights discourse with this effort to turn Arab and African
Americans against each other.
ISB
Settles Lawsuit
The furor
over the Roxbury mosque has exposed the ways Israel advocacy groups
pollute discourse on US foreign and domestic policy, which have until
now remained mostly invisible to American political scientists.
Two lawyers
that were originally helping the David Project, Jonathon Leffel and
Jacob Feinberg, apparently had a change of heart and handed over to
the Islamic Society of Boston damning evidence against the David Project.
The ISB had
always made clear that they would settle if the David Project stopped
challenging their right to build the mosque. On May 29, 2007 the David
Project offered to withdraw Policastro’s appeal, and on May 30,
2007, the Muslim American Society announced that Kandil and Abou Allaban
agreed to dismiss their defamation lawsuits.
Every time
Jacobs, Kaufman, or Goldwasser look out of the top floor window of the
Combined Jewish Philanthropies in downtown Boston, they will see the
dome and minaret despite their best efforts to prevent its completion.
Karin
Friedemann is editor of World View News Service in Boston,
focusing on the Islamic world. Please visit http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/wvns/
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