Debbie Schlussel: Meet Ahmadinejad's Mainstream Jewish American Enablers
It often upsets me when someone, commenting on a terrorism issue, says, "Well, I'm Jewish, and I think . . ." or "Well, so-and-so is Jewish, and it doesn't bother him/her . . ." The fact is terrorism is NOT a Jewish issue. It is EVERYONE'S issue, especially all Americans.
Jews have neither the monopoly on the issue--as one would hope the 9/11 attacks finally proved to those who thought it's a Jewish thing-nor the sole expertise. In fact, as I've noted on this site, far too many of my prominent fellow co-religionists are witting enablers of terrorists and their supporters on our own soil. They call it "outreach." And if they were around in the 1930s and '40s, they'd be supping on wienerschnitzel with members of the Nazi fan club known as the German American Bund, while their co-religionists in Auschwitz became lampshades and ash.
These days, mainstream Jewish leaders who claim to represent me are claiming they are against today's Hitler, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Yet, at the same time, they are helping his agents here in America. I'm not talking about the Neturei Karta rabbis, the small group of fringe rabbis who've hung out with Ahmadinejad at his Holocaust confab in Tehran and who have been denounced by all denominations of Judaism. They don't count.
I'm talking about Jewish leaders--especially two emblematic ones here in the Detroit area--who have the big bucks of the Jewish Welfare Federation a/k/a United Jewish Communities behind them. In most Jewish communities in major American cities, that's the unelected, self-appointed, left-wing-dominated umbrella group for most Jewish groups in town.
Specifically, I refer to Robert Cohen and Sharona Shapiro, two individuals who over the years have claimed--and continue to claim--to speak for me as a Jewish American. They don't, nor do they speak for more than a handful of Jews. That's why it's distressing that, yesterday, Mr. Cohen--who is Executive Director of the Jewish Community Council (an organization my late paternal grandfather once headed)--helped lead a rally against Ahmadinejad at the Detroit-area Holocaust Memorial Center (founded and headed by my cousin) . . . while at the same time he's breaking pita with Ahmadinejad's well-known anti-Semitic American agents. The calorically-gifted Ms. Shapiro, until recently the headmistress of the local American Jewish Committee, also does the same.
Just after last summer's Hezbollah war and accompanying Dearbornistan rallies of tens of thousands in support, Mr. Cohen sent out a note to all Jewish community leaders stating that he will continue to reach out to Iranian-influenced Shi'ite extremist leaders in town because "Christians want us to" (which Christians?) and because we must do that "to keep our community safe." Baloney. In fact, Cohen's letter sounds ironically identical to the lecturing we heard over the weekend from Columbia Prez Dean Bollinger and Dean John Coatsworth about the need to "engage in . . . discussion" and "dialogue" with Ahmadinejad.
Ms. Shapiro spoke with the Detroit newspapers also stating that outreach was in order. On Passover, she even holds a joint Jewish-Muslim Passover Seder at her house in swanky West Bloomfield, Michigan. I guess she forgot that Passover is about celebrating freedom, NOT dhimmitude.
And both of them continue to reach out to Imams Hassan Qazwini and Mohammed Ali Elahi, both supporters and defenders of Ahmadinejad. They are the two most prominent Shi'ite clerics in town and also throughout North America. But both are not only extremists who support Mahmoudstock, but both have been photographed visiting their buddy, Hezbollah spiritual leader Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah. In addition, Elahi was sent here by the Khomeini government he once served as spiritual leader of its Navy (and Hezbollah officials), in order to radicalize the Shi'ite congregants at his former mosque (now Qazwini's), the Islamic Center of America.
Despite all of that--despite their open, vocal support for Ahmadinejad, Hezbollah, HAMAS, etc.--both Mr. Cohen and Ms. Shapiro (whom I've appropriately dubbed the verbal Monica Lewinsky to extremist Islam) continue to send out missives and notes urging "dialogue" and "outreach" with these two imams, who are known agents of the current Government of Iran. Shapiro even offered to pay for minor damage to Elahi's mosque, when a drunken person threw a bottle through a side-door window. When Showtime debuted its excellent series, "Sleeper Cell," she protested louder than Muslims that it did not show "the real Islam." The woman is an Islamist-groupie. In 1940, she'd have been a coppo at the concentration camp.
Yesterday, Cohen told the Detroit Free Press:
Iran must be stopped, must be deterred from acquiring nuclear weapons. It is the world's leading sponsor of terrorism. It denies the Holocaust. It threatens the state of Israel and the whole world.
If you truly believe this, Robert Cohen, then why do you pander to those who believe the same and live here in the Detroit area? Why do you pander to those who have openly stated that they are agents of this madman? Why?
Because you are a phony.
Frankly, while I am extremely troubled that the modern-day Hitler, Ahmadinejad, was welcomed to Columbia U and given a platform, I find the support these two unelected Jewish leaders give to Ahmadinejad's U.S. agents to be far more troubling. Mahmoud and his entourage will go home to Tehran, but Elahi and Qazwini will not. They will continue to remain here and influence minions upon minions in the Iranian Shi'ite agenda of hatred, as they have been doing. And their congregants--like Hezbollah financier Talal Chahine and his convicted honor-murderer son Khalil Chahine--will continue to do Ahmadinejad's bidding.
And these two super-duper dupes--Robert Cohen and Sharona Shapiro--will continue to legitimize them.
Given this, all the rallies in the world against Ahmadinejad at Holocaust museums don't make a whit of difference.
In fact, they are just a charade. If you can't connect the dots, get out of the playground.
These Jews don't speak for me. And they don't speak for you on terrorism, either.
Posted by Debbie on September 25, 2007 03:40 PM to Debbie Schlussel