Israel Matzav

The dork diva, the useful idiot and why Israeli officialdom panders to their agenda

The Investigative Project on Terrorism has a piece that discusses why Chelsea Clinton (known in the television industry as the dork diva) would make a great promoter for 'Islamophobia.' The jump-off point for the post is Clinton's 'moderating' a March 14 event at the JCC of Manhattan, which featured useful idiot Marc Schneier and his good friend Imam Muhammad Shamsi Ali. Here's part of that post.

One weapon that has proven useful to the Industry is so-called "interfaith dialogue" involving Jewish and Islamic leaders. The Muslim participants tend to be Islamists, while their Jewish counterparts tend to be well-meaning "useful idiots" like Rabbi Marc Schneier, who has tried to establish a partnership with the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which is rooted in the Muslim Brotherhood. All too often, the result is a debacle in which the liberal Jews pine for dialogue while the Islamists stonewall and repeat anti-Semitic slanders.

And when Schneier (who heads a group called the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, or FFEU) and Imam Muhammad Shamsi Ali joined Chelsea Clinton at the JCC March 14, things didn't go a whole lot better. Although it talks a lot about the virtues of diversity, the Islamophobia Industry portrays Muslim life in America in a bleak, one-dimensional way: as if Muslims here are little more than innocent victims of thuggish, bigoted non-Muslim gangs determined to punish them for 9/11 and subsequent jihadist actions.

I was taught a long time ago in Journalism 101 that the job of a journalist is to report on the news – not to act as an advocate or partisan. NBC's special correspondent views things a lot differently, declaring it is "the responsibility of the media to help ameliorate Islamophobia."

And that's precisely what Chelsea tried to do, tossing one softball after another to Ali and Schneier, parroting misinformation of her own and failing to question whoppers from the imam and the rabbi. Schneier, for example, bragged about his collaboration with hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons at FEU, but didn't get a single question from the moderator about Simmons' long history of sycophantic praise for Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, a notorious anti-Semite.

Nor did Chelsea seem well-informed about the Ground Zero Mosque controversy that heated up in 2010. She askedSchneier how "you think about trying to use the media to in many ways combat the media?" Chelsea suggested that Schneier might need to gear up for battle because "we saw such vitriolic statements covered widely in the media" with commentators using "terms that at best were insensitive to somewhere in the middle, or derogatory, and at worst were really dehumanizing." (She neglected to provide an example).

After Chelsea asked what the pair was doing to stop this, Schneier talked about his opposition to hearings on Islamist radicalization in the United States by House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Peter King, R-N.Y., and bragged about working with Islamist Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., in an effort to win the release of kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit. Schneier received thunderous applause from the audience when he described such work as an example of "the genuine authenticity that is needed for this Muslim/Jewish reconciliation."

Neither Schneier nor Chelsea Clinton bothered to mention that this "authenticity" came at a heavy price: the release of more than 1,000 imprisoned terrorist operatives, including planners of grisly attacks targeting civilians.

Read the whole thing. Until now, I have largely ignored Schneier. He's been mentioned about six times previously on this blog. I didn't believe that anyone outside the Jewish community in the United States and those who follow it had ever heard of him, and like Mikey Lerner and Wacky Waskow, Schneier wasn't worth the time or the bandwidth to attack. Then Sunlight sent me these, which apparently come from the Hampton Synagogue's website.
It is clear to me, as I am sure it is to all of you, that hotshot politicos and the like show up at Bar Mitzva's to honor the father and not the 13-year old boy (I'm making a Bar Mitzva this summer, God willing, and if you're a hotshot politico and want to come, send me an email and I'll consider letting you know where it is). I'm looking at these blurbs and I am wondering what the heck is wrong with Israeli officialdom? Why do Ron Prosor and Ido Aharoni (what - Michael Oren couldn't make it?) have to show up for this Bar Mitzva? Why does Rabbi Metzger, like a schnorrer, fly halfway around the world hours after landing in Israel to honor someone who is thousands of miles away from his own worldview?

What's clear to me is that all these Israelis are being sucked in by the American Jewish community. They're smart enough to avoid J Street, because J Street was started by former Israelis, and by not embracing it they have ensured that any embrace of J Street by the American Jewish community is tentative at best. But they see Schneier - a four-time loser who probably has more adherents in Al Sharpton's crowd than in Rabbi Metzger's - as someone to whom we have to pander.

What could go wrong?

Labels: American Jewish leadership, Marc Schneier, Rabbi Yona Metzger, Ron Prosor

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:35 PM