When did honoring purveyors of hate become politically correct? In a society that demands “safe-spaces” and “trigger warnings” so the snowflake generation can be sheltered from opinions their delicate minds find offensive, why is disdain for Jews tolerated and even condoned by the far Left?
Less than 75 years after Henry Ford published The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) released America’s Greatest Enemy: The Jew as part of a series titled “Know Your Enemy” for distribution at a Muslim student conference in August 1994, according to the Investigative Project on Terrorism.
Consisting of republished screed such as “Zionism Rules The World,” which sources The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, speeches from Holocaust denier Austin J. App, and a section on “How They Rule: The Media Monopolies,” America’s Greatest Enemy reads like an orientation manual for Nazi recruits in 1930s Germany.
Holocaust denial plays an important role in the IAP publication.
“The fact that… scholars are beginning to puncture the myth of the six million has driven the Anti-Defamation Leaguers into fever of propaganda to brainwash the pupils of our schools… It is in fact the most unfounded and most impudent lie in recorded history.”
IAP’s public relations director from 1993 to 1994 was Nihad Awad, currently the Executive Director and Founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), anunindicted co-conspirator in the terror-finance trial against the Holy Land Foundation and its former officials.
Following the trial, the FBI severed all ties with CAIR over concerns of alleged terror ties, in particular the terrorist group Hamas.
Awad recently told Tablet, “I did not work for IAP in the summer of 1994, I am not aware of this particular document [America’s Greatest Enemy], and CAIR and I have a long history of challenging anti-Semitism in all its forms.”
Considering the time and effort it takes to plan, write, research, edit and print such a document, not to mention the culture of hate that must have festered at IAP leading up to the book’s conception and publication, you can decide if Mr. Awad’s hands are clean of this case-study in Jew-hatred.
But facts, affiliations and hate be damned when it comes to the Progressive agenda.
Awad was recently honored at Harvard University, receiving the Robert Coles “Call of Service” Lecture and Award, presented by the Phillips Brooks House. According to their website, the award “celebrates the courage of people committed to social action and change.”
Who knew that aligning with terrorists and educating young people to believe anti-Semitic canards and deny the Holocaust was a form of “social action and change”?
Rabbi Jonah C. Steinberg of Harvard University’s Hillel publicly expressed his disgust:
It is dismaying – and more than that, it is truly dangerous – that the Phillips Brooks House Association, a student-led public service nonprofit organization housed in the heart of Harvard University’s campus, is honoring Nihad Awad with its Coles Lecture and Call of Service award.
Awad was once the head of an American student wing of the P.L.O., whilst that group was in the forefront of terrorist opposition to Israel’s existence. He then shifted his allegiance to the murderous Hamas movement when the P.LO. recognized Israel and participated in peace negotiations. Also prior to his current work, Mr. Awad was the Public Relations Director of the Islamic Association for Palestine. That organization (one month after Mr. Awad’s departure from it, so he contends) published, as the tenth in a series of pamphlets, a screed entitled “America’s True Enemy! THE JEW: and an Unholy Alliance!” which contains some of the most blatant and scurrilous anti-Semitism I have ever seen.
Honoring Awad is only a recent example of the Left’s embrace of bigots.
The New School, a private research university in Manhattan, has organized a special event for later this month, “Anti-Semitism and the Struggle for Justice.” Scheduled to lead one of the panel discussions is none other than rabid anti-Israel and pro-Sharia crusader Linda Sarsour.
Sarsour, progressive flavor of the day in 2017, tweeted in 2012 that “nothing is creepier than Zionism.” She has supported bigots throughout her career, praising notorious anti-Semite Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has referred to Judaism as a “gutter religion.” She has also praised Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh, the murderer who orchestrated a terror attack at a Jerusalem supermarket that resulted in the death of two Israeli students.
Glamour magazine this month honored Sarsour as one of its 2017 Women of the Year. This is the same woman that claims “Zionists can’t be feminists” and has vilified Somali-born feminist Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a former Muslim, who campaigns against female genital mutilation, honor killings and child marriages.
In 2011, Sarsour tweeted about Hirsi Ali and activist Brigitte Gabriel, “I wish I could take their vaginas away. They don’t deserve to be women.”
This is who Glamour magazine is honoring. I guess some do find beauty in bigotry.
Paul Miller is president and executive director of the news and public policy group Haym Salomon Center. Follow him on twitter @pauliespoint.
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.
