Great Blog on Charles Jacobs and the Roxbury Mosque

World News| US News| Money| Science & Technology| Lifestyle| Conservatism 2.0Rabbis Gone Wild: Boston Edition
Seventy progressive rabbis, strutting like peacocks showing off their moral finery, versus one lonely truth-teller? I like the odds.
July 21, 2010 - by Stella Paul Page 1 of 2 Next -> View as Single PageShare |
Boston is famous for Harvard, Paul Revere, and now for 70 loony liberal rabbis, each blessed with an ego bigger than the Green Monster at Fenway Park, and wisdom smaller than a baked bean.

Already, their noxious stunt of June 10 is legend, astounding Jews from Boston to San Francisco, Israel and beyond. For on that day, the rabbis finally managed to bestir themselves about the notorious, Saudi-funded mega-mosque in Roxbury. Its founder, MIT graduate Abdurahman Alamoudi, is currently serving a 23-year sentence for al-Qaeda-linked terrorist pranks. Its trust president, Osama Kandil, is the director of an Islamic charity designated as terrorist by the U.S. government. Its trustee, Jamal Badawi, is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial.

So what did these genius rabbis do? Did they demand an investigation into why Mayor Thomas Menino gave away $2 million of precious public land to the Islamic Society of Boston on which to build the mosque? Did they launch a public awareness campaign of the mosque’s terrifying link with Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the wart-faced “spiritual leader” of the Muslim Brotherhood who’s banned from the U.S. but served as the mosque’s trustee? Did they picket outside the home of Governor Deval Patrick, singing rousing protest songs and demanding he give back a $50,000 check he publicly accepted from a jihad-spouting imam for the purpose of training Massachusetts police in “Muslim cultural sensitivities”?

Of course not! These are far-left Reform and Reconstructionist rabbis we’re talking about and they worship only the progressive creed: putting barbarians first.

Instead, what these wise and wonderful rabbis chose to do was issue a public “Jewish fatwa” against Dr. Charles Jacobs, Boston’s heroic one-man truth squad about the mosque’s radical leadership. Yes, the Saintly Seventy all loudly signed their names to “An Open Letter to the Jewish Community,” published in the Jewish Advocate, in which they demanded that “Mr. Jacobs discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston’s Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories. We call upon members of our community to reject the dangerous politics of division that Mr. Jacobs fosters.”

The rabbis then applauded their own “commitment to interfaith dialogue and cooperation. We stand together in our commitment to a community in which neighbors seek to know one another and join together for the common good.”

Finally, they closed with a reference to the Torah portion in which Israelite scouts are struck by fear: “Because they succumbed to their fears, God condemned this generation to die in the wilderness. We refuse to allow Mr. Jacobs to spread his calumnies and paralyze our community in fear.”

I’ll pause a moment to let the fumes of the rabbis’ galloping smug-itis clear the room.

Dr. Charles Jacobs is a morally serious man. We’re talking about a man who was given the Boston Freedom Award by Coretta Scott King for helping to emancipate enslaved black Africans in Sudan, in his work as founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group.

In 2007, Jacobs was named by The Forward as one of America’s top 50 Jewish leaders. He not only co-founded Boston’s branch of CAMERA (Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America), to expose media bias against Israel, he also founded The David Project in 2002. This powerhouse organization trains college students to advocate for Israel and fight back against the demonization of Israel on campus.

Today, Dr. Jacobs heads Americans for Peace and Tolerance, an interfaith group he started in 2008 to safeguard American values from attack by radical Islamists and to support moderate Muslims.

This is the fine, brave man that 70 Boston rabbis defamed and tossed in the trash — and even potentially endangered by targeting him and his family for attack by vengeful Islamists.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the trashcan. It turns out Boston’s Jews did not relish the discovery that their spiritual leaders are preening ignoramuses.