Long Version: Zionizing Muslims via Interfaith Dialogue

Dangerous Jewish-Muslim Interfaith Activities

by Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

On Sunday March 15th the new Islamic Society of Boston Community Center (ISBCC) in Roxbury, MA, hosted an Interfaith Dialogue sponsored by the Interreligious Center on Public Life (ICPL). Not only did the behavior of some of the attending Jewish leaders raise real doubts about the value of interfaith activities with Jews, but Jewish leaders evinced so much prejudice, mendacity and scorn for non-Jews that Muslims would probably benefit more from a community defense organization that is savvier with regard to Jewish and Zionist issues, behavior, and tactics than from more dialogue with Jewish groups.

During the Interfaith conference breakout sessions, Louise Cohen, MSW and member of the Board of Advisors of the Gift of Life Bone Marrow Foundation (GOLBMF), passed around a document package explaining the need for a bone marrow registry. While it is not obvious from the organization name, the history section on the GOLBMF website fairly clearly indicates that organization is a Jewish philanthropy that is tightly embedded within the organized Jewish community and that is backed by the Bronfmans, who used to send out monthly Hillel fund-raising letters accusing ISM founder Huwaida Arraf, MAS Freedom executive director Mahdi Bray, and UC Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian of aiding and abetting terrorism.¹

Many Jewish charities have tended to do genuine philanthropic work within the Jewish community while they propagandize, indoctrinate, and either manipulate non-Jews with promises of benefits that rarely materialize or threaten non-Jews with legal action for behaviors that the Jewish leadership does not like. Sometimes Jewish groups have been the designated beneficiaries of manipulative charitable efforts albeit with somewhat more genuine carrot.

In the historical Jewish American context, German American Jewish philanthropic organizations often had the explicit goal of rendering Eastern European Jewish behavior more acceptable to non-Jewish Americans. Rafael Medoff writes in Baksheesh Diplomacy:

Philanthropy had, after all, proven an effective social and political tool for influencing (that is, Americanizing) New York's Jewish immigrant community. ... The institutions [German American Jewish patricians] established in the United States for Eastern European immigrants were facilitating an assimilation process that transformed the uncouth newcomers with their excessively Jewish ways into acceptable new Americans.

More recent Jewish philanthropic efforts have aimed at forestalling the development of sympathies for Palestinians among non-Muslim African Americans and at demonizing Arabs especially in the context of Darfur activism.

Because the Zionist strategy of scare-mongering a false political consensus to make the ME safe for Israel seems to have reached the point of diminishing returns with the discrediting of Bushite/Neocon policies, Israel advocates have changed tactics. The new approach seems to include resorting to more traditional Jewish philanthropic manipulation. The GOLBMF offer to establish a bone marrow registry beyond the Jewish community has the feel of a trial run to encourage African American Muslims, who constitute the largest American Muslim community, to feel gratitude toward America n Jews and as a consequence to refrain from criticism of the organized Jewish community, of the Israel Lobby, and of the State of Israel.

Possibly because many Jewish leaders have difficulty in abandoning the tactics of guilt-tripping when they deal with non-Jews, the GOLBMF document package included a Bone Marrow Foundation Letter that contained the following dishonest anti-Muslim, anti-Christian paragraphs:

There have been questions raised about the willingness of Muslims and Jews to give of themselves (literally) to save another human life.

The words "and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind" appear in the Koran (5:32) and the Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a). Yet early Christians and today Muslim commentators have said that the Talmudic ruling applies to Jews only saving Jewish lives, indicating Jewish selfishness. The [Internet] is rife with accusations that Muslims will not donate blood to others and that they will not accept "filthy Jewish blood" transfusions even to save their own lives.

The quantity of lies is impressive that Cohen managed to pack into such a short text.

Because the charge of Muslim unwillingness to donate blood, organs, or charity to non-Muslims seems to come mostly from anti-Islamic and Jewish Zionist websites or organizations like Investors Business Daily or Frontpagemag.com and has not found much traction beyond the Islamophobes, Cohen seems to be making an attempt to enmesh Christians and Muslims in an unwitting dissemination of Jewish anti-Christian and anti-Muslim propaganda.

Here are the facts.

The Palestinian Talmud was not completed until the 5th century CE and the Babylonian Talmud not until the 8th century CE. Christians were not terribly interested in the Talmud until the 16th century CE. Cohen's accusation that early Christians were somehow misusing the Talmud to slander Jews is simply baseless calumny.

I studied Talmud with Harvard Professor Isadore Twersky (the Talner Rebbe) and can explicate it as well as any Jewish scholar. In this case, the issue is simple translation of the following Mishna from the Talmud Sanhedrin. (Click on image to obtain readable text.)

Here is what the underlined text in Talmud Sanhedrin 37a really says:

"Whosoever preserves a single soul of Israel, Scripture ascribes to him as if he had preserved a complete world"

In order to be as fair as Louise Cohen is dishonest, it is necessary to acknowledge that the Talmud does not really provide authoritative rulings on such subjects. The main authoritative Jewish legal codes are found in the Mishneh Torah and the Shulhan Arukh or the Shulhan Arukh with Hamappah while the modern authorities are effectively uniform in treating all life preserving efforts as equally important although the reasons differ for saving Jewish versus non-Jewish lives.

The last sentence of the paragraph is thanks to the phrase "filthy Jewish blood" a sort of a potshot to make sure that readers of her letter view Muslims as crude anti-Semites and is fairly convincing proof that at least some Jews do not view interfaith activities as a vehicle for achieving mutual respect and understanding among believers.²

Marc H. Ellis, who is University Professor of American and Jewish Studies and Director of the Center for American and Jewish Studies at Baylor University, has developed doubts about the value of Jewish-Christian interfaith discussion and writes in At The End of An Era: A Meditation on Ecumenism, Exile and Gratitude:

The ecumenical dialogue, once an avenue for Christian renewal, has become the ecumenical deal. The ecumenical deal is simple yet with profound implications: Jews demand that Christians in the West repent for the sin of anti-Jewishness; the main vehicle for Christian repentance is uncritical support for the state of Israel and its policies. Uncritical support for Israel renders Palestinians and Palestine invisible. Critique of Israel’s policies vis-à-vis the Palestinian people is deemed anti-Jewish and a return to the previous understanding of Jews within Christian theology and practice. Conservative, moderate and radical Christian academics uphold this ecumenical deal. Though in private they may be critics of Israel, yet even amid the resentment and pressure exerted to enforce the ecumenical deal, they remain in public silent.

The Holocaust has become a safe haven for Jews and Christians. Instead of raising questions about power and oppression, the Holocaust often becomes a barrier to speech and activity. For Jews, the Holocaust becomes a place of unaccountability, a fire-wall against critical thought; for Christians, the Holocaust becomes a place of silent retreat, excusing their silence, as another crime is committed in the name of the Holocaust.

That Jews and Christians, worshiping the same God, sharing the Hebrew bible, and embracing a mutually binding covenant are working together to establish God’s reign on earth, is, it turns out, more of a myth than a reality. Jews employed in universities and seminaries are for the most part used to lay a deeper and more expansive groundwork for Christians’ belief. Thus Jews in the field of Hebrew bible, the study of Hebrew, medieval Jewry, even modern Judaism and Holocaust, are employed to romanticize Jewish history as a vehicle for Christian renewal. Jewish innocence and suffering become a way for Christians to recover their innocence through repentance and self-sacrifice.

I have attended enough Boston-area Zionist strategy gatherings and Jewish communal organizational meetings to infer from the behavior of important Jewish attendees at the ISBCC that Jewish interfaith groups are trying to establish a comparable ecumenical deal with Muslims, to wit, "You Muslims refrain from discussing or supporting Palestinians, and Israel advocacy attack dogs like Charles Jacobs, Roz Rothstein, Daniel Pipes, etc., won't mess with your livelihood or send you to jail as a terrorism supporter."

In order to obtain a better sense of Jewish interfaith goals in the context of dialog with Muslims, I read through the CJMR Interview: Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia...Same Coin?, which was passed out at the ISBCC interfaith conference and which records a 2007 interview of Dr. Abdul Cader Asmal and Dr. Larry Lowenthal by the Center for Jewish Muslim Relations.

According to the web document Dr. Abdul Cader Asmal was former President of the Islamic Center of Boston at Wayland and former President of the Islamic Council of New England while Dr. Larry Lowenthal was Executive Director of the Greater Boston Chapter of the American Jewish Committee.

The first priority of interfaith activity for decent Jews and Muslim should have been a joint effort both

• to expose the wealthy, politically-connected Jews attempting to incite Islamophobia in order to marginalize American Muslims in the American political process and also
• to out the Jewish fraudsters using fake accusations of anti-Semitism to distract from Jewish anti-Muslim incitement or otherwise to distort the American politics.

Instead, the transcription of the interview indicates that the Center for Jewish-Muslim Relations works mostly to indoctrinate Muslims in Zio-speak and to colonize them mentally.

Here are the first question and both interviewee responses with each followed by my comments.

CJMR: What is Islamophobia/anti-Semitism and do local Muslims/Jews experience it?

Dr. Asmal:

Islamophobia is a term that promotes the fear of Islam. In the process it generates hate against its adherents and permits a level of bigoted discourse that civil society would show zero tolerance toward if applied to any other racial, religious or nationalistic group. Since the nightmarish events of September 11th, orchestrated by a Muslim heretic and his small band of followers, all Muslims have had to listen to the refrain, “our enemies are Muslims.” This message has been amplified since the “showdown with Saddam” transmuted into today's catastrophe in Iraq so that what we as Muslims now hear is that “the Muslims are our enemies.” Thus on a daily basis with every news conference, with every talk show, with every political speech it has become an accepted part of our national discourse to accept Muslims as the “Other,” demonize them with impunity, and see them as guilty until proven innocent. Though the evil attack on September 11th was perpetrated by M uslim extremists, it provided the perfect pretext for the Neo-conservative movement to execute its preconceived so-called “global war on terror” to invade, occupy, and systematically dismantle a country that posed no threat to the US whatsoever. With each passing day of the uncontrollable horror in Iraq viewed as a crusade by increasing numbers in the Muslim world more mindless fanatics are driven to kill “the enemies of God” i.e., all who disagree with their views, thus multiplying the real threat to Muslims and non-Muslims alike as they pour fuel on the flames of Islamophobia.

I have no clue what extremism means in today's political context. It is not merely extreme to believe that E. Europeans had the right to steal Palestine on the basis of an etymological relationship between the word Judea and the word Jew; the idea is psychotic. On the model of Zionist logic, I could argue that the Irish would have the right to steal and drive out the native Romans because most Irish are Roman Catholic and the word Roman is derivative from the word Rome.

The question of heresy is a red herring, for Islamism, Salafism, and (for lack of a better term) Arab Jihadism are simply religiously-informed political ideologies, which Americans should understand in order to think rationally about international questions relating to the Arab and Muslim world.

Arab Jihadism was not founded by Bin-Ladin, who was basically the money guy/fundraiser, but by the Palestinian Abdullah Azzam and the Egyptian Kamal al-Sananiri. Azzam modeled his ideology on a somewhat mistaken understanding of Zionist history and politics with contributions from Sananiri's revision of Qutbism.³

The key point is a modernist reinterpretation of individual and collective obligation with regard to Jihad. Azzam claimed Sheikh Abdul-Aziz bin Baz approved Azzam's fatwa, but bin Baz never signed it.

In essence Azzam and Sananiri gave up on Qutb's ideas about overthrowing Muslim governments that were insufficiently Islamic and argued that every individual Muslim had an obligation to undertake personal jihad on behalf of oppressed Muslims everywhere, whether they are Palestinian, Afghan, Kosovar, Bosnian, Thai, Filipino, Chechen or whatever.

Because Arab Jihadis had no interest in overthrowing "Muslim" governments and because there was considerable overlap of their program with that of the US government and even of the Neocons, they worked in an essentially frictionless environment of International Islamic Organizations mostly headquartered In Hijaz while they traveled effortlessly throughout the world from Peshawar to Hijaz, and thence to the USA (especially Boston). While the US and Saudi governments mostly ignored them, the Afghan Mujahidin were at best uninterested in Arab jihadi help and generally considered Azzam's group to be more trouble than it was worth.

The Taliban Organization, which succeeded the Mujahidin was more open to collaboration with Arab Jihadis, even though Taliban ideology is probably closer to an anti-modernist Qutbism or to a more generic Salafism than to Arab Jihadism.

In general Azzam rejected terrorist attacks on civilians and had reservations with regard to the ideas of people like Taqi Usmani about offensive Jihad, which is -- to be frank -- is far less radical a concept than the Bushite/Neocon policy of aggressive preventive war.

Both Sananiri and Azzam were killed and left Bin-Ladin as the titular leader of the very informally or barely organized Arab Jihadi movement.

Bin-Ladin was less of a purist and seems gradually thanks to his power of the purse to have steered the "organization" in a new direction especially when he and his colleagues became more aware of American views of legitimate military targets during the NATO intervention in Bosnia.

Are Azzam, Sananiri and Bin-Ladin heretics? Only God knows for sure, but it is much easier to make the charge of heresy against Zionism from the standpoint of traditional Judaism, for I have a long list of late 19th and early 20th century Orthodox Rabbis who put Zionists in the category of the worst heretics.

In any case we can be quite certain

• that Arab Jihadism is more of a political than a religious movement and
• that the ideology clearly developed primarily as a response to Zionist criminality and genocidalism in Stolen and Occupied Palestine.

No one should be particularly surprised that members of Abdullah Azzam's family in Gaza are strong supporters of Hamas even though Hamas' ideology is probably best characterized as realist Qutbism.

While the illegal US aggressive war and occupation of Iraq created a massive recruiting opportunity for Arab Jihadism throughout the Muslim world, Asmal's last sentence represents the complete internalization of the delusional Jewish-Zionist worldview. Iraqi suicide attacks were intended to liberate Iraq by making the occupation unworkable. If the USA had experienced an illegal aggressive war and occupation, a lot of Americans would probably choose to resist via suicide attacks just as Iraqis have under US occupation.

Dr. Lowenthal:

Extreme anti-Semitism is the belief that Jews by definition are a people empowered by a mystical unlimited power to do evil similar to the beliefs of Hitler or those who believe and propagate the writings in the so-called “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” a fraudulent document that purports to be the records of a secret meeting by elder Rabbis with a purpose of world domination. Such beliefs are used to perpetuate stereotypes and misunderstandings of Jews.

Local Jews experience anti-Semitism in Boston as vehement anti-Zionism. People must understand that the Jewish anxiety about Israel's security is a paramount issue, and can not be evaded. People are free to criticize any aspect of Israeli policy or government decision or Israeli behavior toward Palestinians, but Jews draw the line at the equation of Israelis with Nazis, or Prime Minister Sharon with Hitler, or the situation on the West Bank with Auschwitz. Such criticism, in our opinion, crosses the line between acceptable criticism of Israel to anti-Semitic ranting.

Yet Jewish and Zionist groups routinely use terms like Nazi, Fascist, or Hitler to describe Hamas, Fatah, Haniyeh, Abbas, or Ahmedinejad even though none of them have any connection with German Nazi ideology. Not only is the situation completely unfair, but it is also a pure historical political falsification, for Zionism is the one important surviving modern political ideology that has much similarity to German Nazism.

The late University of Wisconsin Professor George Mosse lectured at Hebrew University on the common völkisch racist currents of German Nazism and Zionism. I have read practically all the primary literature of both movements. With the obvious ethnic substitutions the ideologies are practically identical with allowances for internal factions. (For example Ben-Gurion and his followers are ideologically most similar to the Straßer faction of the NSDAP.)

After Herzl there is probably no figure more important in Political/Congress Zionism than Max Nordau, whose ideas of national degeneracy through race mixing, national revival through racial purity and eugenics were at least as influential among German Nazis as they were among Zionists.

Vladimir Jabotinsky's Zionism was initially a form of ethnic fundamentalism and practically identical to Hitler's belief system, but by the 30s it had evolved into a sort of political ethnic monism that was a good deal more extreme than mainstream German Nazism.

Because Jabotinskian Zionism is the dominant current of Zionism both among Neoconservatives and also in Israeli politics, properly understanding the true nature of Zionism and its relationship with German Nazism is particularly important from the standpoint of American politics.

Because Jabotinsky and his colleague Achimeir like some German Nazi ideologists believed in waging a sort of ethnonational financial warfare against non-Jews or non-Aryans respectively, all Americans should be concerned that Milton Friedman's family were particularly extreme Jabotinskians and should worry that Jabotinskian ideology may have provided the core beliefs that form the basis of Friedman's economic theories.

Conclusion

At present Muslim-Jewish interfaith activities are simply a vehicle for Jews to manipulate Muslims for the sake of Israel. Muslims need to develop a strategy to render interfaith activities beneficial to Muslims and to Americans in general by identifying those Jews willing to collaborate within a framework of mutual respect and equality against Jewish-Zionist political intimidation and manipulation that no longer threatens only Palestinians, Arabs, and Muslims but all Americans and the entire world.

Christians, Muslims, and Jews involved in interfaith activities need to pay more attention to the precepts of scripture. Here is Leviticus 19:16-17 on the subject.

טז לֹא-תֵלֵךְ רָכִיל בְּעַמֶּיךָ, לֹא תַעֲמֹד עַל-דַּם רֵעֶךָ: אֲנִי, יְהוָה.	16 Thou shalt not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people; neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy neighbor: I am the LORD.
יז לֹא-תִשְׂנָא אֶת-אָחִיךָ, בִּלְבָבֶךָ; הוֹכֵחַ תּוֹכִיחַ אֶת-עֲמִיתֶךָ, וְלֹא-תִשָּׂא עָלָיו חֵטְא.	17 Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thy heart; thou shalt surely rebuke thy neighbor, and not bear sin because of him.

In the context of such a genuine and scripturally-informed dialogue, the Jewish participants will have the opportunity to make apologies that far too many of them have never offered but have owed to non-Jews for a very long time.

Notes

[1] Muslims should think twice before helping extremist Jewish Zionists and Islamophobes like the Bronfmans create a database of Muslim genetic information. The Muslim community is perfectly capable of creating its own database.

[2] Rabbi Sanford Seltzer, who is the executive director of the Interreligious Center on Public Life, responded (a) that my complaint is both so outlandish and exaggerated that it smacks of the Protocols of the Elders Of Zion. He adds (b) "when you denigrate Jewish efforts, which were really inter-religious efforts, in the context of Darfur, you again underscore the true purpose of your [criticism]." In addition he retorted (c):

Let me therefore address myself specifically to your critique of the Talmudic statement found in Sanhedrin 37a: the statement, by the way, is also found in [Mishnah] Sanhedrin 4:5 where it explicitly says "whosoever preserves a single soul, it is as if he preserved a complete world." I find it curious that you chose not to recite the Mishnaic reference. Yes, it is true that the Talmudic version does speak of the "soul of an Israelite," however, what you neglect to point out is that just because early Christian and contemporary Muslim commentators view this as an act of Jewish selfishness, it must be so. The Talmudic statement does not and I repeat, does not, make any pejorative reference to either Muslims or Christians since its concern and readership was the Jewish people. One finds in virtually all sacred texts, references that are both universal and parochial. Your failure to note that in both instances the interpretation is tendentious and biased on the part of the commentators, who seek to denigrate Judaism is most revealing of their goals, as well as your own.

Here is my reply.

(a) Protocols of the Elders of Zion

I took a David Project (DP) course in Israel Advocacy. Among other things we were supposed to deal with public debates about Israeli policies by giving the appearance of acting as independent concerned pro-Israel citizens in order to show politicians that there was a "genuine" groundswell of support for Israel.

Four years before the Abu el-Haj controversy broke out at Columbia, I attended an Israel on Campus Coalition meeting that discussed the growing problem of pro-Palestinian academics on campus and how to prevent them from receiving tenure. The DP ended up paying academics to knock her scholarship.

In January 2003 I attended an AIPAC event to recruit Harvard KSG students, who would be serving as interns in Washington over the summer. The students were supposed to report back on any Israel-related AIPAC-disapproved opinions among congressmen or staffers.

Harvard Divinity School graduate student Rachel Fish secretly worked for the DP to prevent a no-strings $2 million donation from Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan to the Harvard Divinity School.

I read through the discovery materials on the Roxbury Mosque case. The David Project was coordinating among Steven Emerson, Fox News (Jonathan Wells), the Boston Herald (Jonathan Wells), a bunch of Jewish real estate developers, and the NE Israeli Consulate. From the emails, Jeff Jacoby was initially unenthusiastic about the anti-Mosque effort, but by the end he was publishing DP talking points as op-ed columns.

After Cardinal Priest and Cologne Archbishop Joachim Meisner expressed sympathy for Palestinian suffering, he was subjected to an irrational but highly coordinated international defamation campaign. I had a report that Stefan Kramer of Zentralrat der Juden in Deutschland actually came to Boston to consult with local Jewish leaders about how to proceed before the attack started. I do not know whether then DP President Jacobs was included in the meetings, but the attacks on Meisner were quite similar to those on Dr. Abu al-Laban and Dr. Fitaihi.

At a cost of at least $0.5 million, the JCRC Boston organized a campaign against Somerville Divestment that included a number of unique tactics including harassing signature gatherers by following them closely and preventing them explaining the Divestment Initiative to Somerville voters. The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs studied Somerville politics and issued several reports. In Seattle the Jewish Federation with the aid of StandWithUS ran a practically identical campaign against Seattle Divestment (I-97) with the same sort of signature gatherer harassment and other identical tactics while recently the DP and CAMERA have been fighting Emory Divestment with identical tactics.

The United States Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) was subverted by Jewish members and staff like Abigail Thernstrom and Kenneth Marcus to serve Jewish privilege instead of carrying out its civil rights mission. In 2005 the Commission was investigating anti-Semitism on campus, watching the defamatory movie Columbia Unbecoming produced and distributed by The David Project, and taking testimony from professional Israel advocate Sarah Stern all for the purpose of substantiating a non-existent problem of anti-Semitism on college campuses while the same Jewish members and staff went out of their way to suppress any investigation of Jewish Zionist efforts to craft an outbreak of Islamophobia modeled on late 19th and early 20th century anti-Semitism.

The distribution of Obsession: Radical Islam's War on the West during the presidential election involved a clandestine conspiracy among the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), Aish HaTorah/The Clarion Fund/HonestReporting/WordsCanHeal and one or more hyperwealthy Zionists. I suspect Irwin Katsof while others have seen the hand of Sheldon Adelson, but Roberto Tanenbaum is also a candidate because of his involvement with the RJC. Of course, all three and others could have been involved.

No thought control activity is too small. When Susan Abulhawa came to Brooklyn to introduce her book entitled Scar of David at a local college and bookstores, the Brooklyn JCC coordinated harassment of the professor who invited her as well as any bookseller willing to host her.

I can trace this sort of conspiratorial Zionist activity throughout the country and back to the 50s particularly in the media and finance industries. Often serious SEC and FEC violations are involved along with intimidation via middle market restraint of trade.

When I was a student at Harvard, I was a concentrator in E. European history. Not only is conspiracy historically a normal part of Eastern European politics, but historians of Russia or Poland write about the politics of conspiracy all the time.

One can argue whether Eastern European Jews brought a political cultural propensity to conspiracy with them to the USA, but Bolshevik Ashkenazim were probably the most important group in the conspiracy to overthrow Czarism as both UC Berkeley Professor Yuri Slezkine and Yale Professor Benjamin Harshav have pointed out in books and articles.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an obvious work of fiction, and I used to give a lecture about the reasons it might be believed or be published. Because of the dearth of materials available to non-Jews at the beginning of the 20th century about Eastern European Jewish history or culture, I am reluctant to accuse someone of anti-Semitism merely for resorting to the Protocols in order to understand E. European ethnic Ashkenazi politics. Anti-Semitism is more likely involved when there is a belief in a single overarching conspiracy among Jewish wealth, Jewish communists and Jewish Zionists. There simply was not one single Jewish conspiracy at the beginning of the 20th century. There were several often violently opposed to one another. Even though the vast majority of Jews were not involved in any conspiracy at all, the existence of Jewish conspiracies in the 19th and 20th century is simply undeniable.

(b) Darfur

I sat about 10 feet from Ken Sweder in Kehillath Israel when he explained how he sold Darfur Activism to the Jewish Council for Public Affairs because it would be good for Jews. I had a fairly long talk with Ruth Messinger of the American Jewish World Service about her organization's Darfur Activism, which consisted entirely of a publicity campaign against the Sudanese government.

Unlike both of them I have actually been in Darfur, and I understand something of the politics of the region. I am fairly certain that the behavior of the Jewish community with regard to Darfur is extremely harmful and that the leadership is either seriously hypocritical or seriously misguided. There are a good number of Sudanese academics in the Boston area. Except for Omer Ismail, who has his own agenda, the SaveDarfur movement has consulted none of them. There are also Muslim charity organizations that have done work in Darfur. The SaveDarfur movement has consulted none of them. Don't these omissions bother you?

I certainly cannot trust any Jewish Darfur or anti-Genocide activism unless the Jews involved categorically condemn Zionism as a racist genocidal movement. If it was not clear before the Gaza rampage, it should be now that a good number of Israeli and American Zionists should have been indicted longer before there was any thought of issuing a warrant on Omar al-Bashir. Because it is close to Passover and relevant, [you can find the testimony] that I gave about Darfur before the Massachusetts legislature [as well as a small correction at 5th Question: Darfur and Eric Cohen vs. Eric Cohen].

(c) Talmud versus Mishnah

I did not cite the Mishnah because Cohen explicitly referred to Talmud Sanhedrin 37a. The Mishna text certainly says "one soul from Israel."

משניות מבוארות

Many censored or self-censored editions leave out "from Israel," but both Pinhas Kehati (author of משניות מבוארות Misnayot Mevuarot) and Jacob Neusner consider the version above to be the original and correct reading.

I do not concede the existence of any accusations of selfishness against Jews by early Christian or Muslim commentators on the basis of Talmudic text in question.

I claimed that the accusation against early Christians was simply a calumny. I am not sure exactly how Cohen was defining "early" but let's define "early" to mean the period of the 9th century and earlier so that Christians would have had a century to analyze the completed Babylonian Talmud. I do not know of a single early Christian writing on this verse from the Mishnah or the Talmud.

There were some important Church fathers before the completion of the Mishnah, who had the skill set to read Hebrew and possibly one dialect of Jewish/Judean Aramaic, but by the time the Mishnah was completed, not only were such skills completely lost among Christians as far as I know, but there were no convenient translations of the Mishnah into Greek or Latin.

If I am not mistaken, there are less than five Muslim scholars of the Talmud or Mishnah. As far as I know, none of them have written anything on the passage.

I sometimes try to read Christian, Muslim, and Jewish scripture together in order to use each text to illuminate the others.

Even though I know no commentary to the following effect, it is possible that the Quran 5:32

مِنْ أَجْلِ ذَلِكَ كَتَبْنَا عَلَى بَنِي إِسْرَائِيلَ أَنَّهُ مَن قَتَلَ نَفْسًا بِغَيْرِ نَفْسٍ أَوْ فَسَادٍ فِي الأَرْضِ فَكَأَنَّمَا قَتَلَ النَّاسَ جَمِيعًا وَمَنْ أَحْيَاهَا فَكَأَنَّمَا أَحْيَا النَّاسَ جَمِيعًا وَلَقَدْ جَاء تْهُمْ رُسُلُنَا بِالبَيِّنَاتِ ثُمَّ إِنَّ كَثِيرًا مِّنْهُم بَعْدَ ذَلِكَ فِي الأَرْضِ لَمُسْرِفُونَ

[For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind. Our messengers came unto them of old with clear proofs (of Allah's Sovereignty), but afterwards lo! many of them became prodigals in the earth. (32) ]

is directly commenting on Talmud Sanhedrin 37a according to the principle enunciated in Quran 3:78:

وَإِنَّ مِنْهُمْ لَفَرِيقًا يَلْوُونَ أَلْسِنَتَهُم بِالْكِتَابِ لِتَحْسَبُوهُ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَمَا هُوَ مِنَ الْكِتَابِ وَيَقُولُونَ هُوَ مِنْ عِندِ اللّهِ وَمَا هُوَ مِنْ عِندِ اللّهِ وَيَقُولُونَ عَلَى اللّهِ الْكَذِبَ وَهُمْ يَعْلَمُونَ

[And lo! there is a party of them who distort the Scripture with their tongues, that ye may think that what they say is from the Scripture, when it is not from the Scripture. And they say: It is from Allah, when it is not from Allah; and they speak a lie concerning Allah knowingly. (78) ]

The Quranic verse refers to a distortion of the Book (the Bible) with their tongues and not necessarily of the written text while Talmud 37a provides analysis of Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:5. The Mishna is the first redaction of Oral traditions that compose the Oral Law or תורה שבעל פה‎ -- in other words the Law which is not supposed to be written but which is spoken with tongues.

Thus the Quran specifically refers to the Children of Israel in 5:32 because the verse provides the correct non-distorted interpretation

• which the Mishnah was supposed to draw from the stories of Adam, Eve, Cain, and Abel and
• which Rabbi Seltzer apparently wishes were the genuine Jewish tradition.

In any case, I never claimed that the statement in Talmud Sanhedrin 37a made pejorative references to Muslims or Christians, and I was not addressing questions of the universal or parochial.

Some Jews are so deeply enmeshed in a delusional world of murderous anti-Semitic non-Jews that rational interfaith discussion becomes impossible, and for such Jews anyone not sharing the delusion is an enemy. At least Rabbi Seltzer makes it clear where he stands. It is much more difficult to deal with Jews that hide their delusional mindset.

[3] LCDR Youssef Aboul-Enein, MSC, USN, provides analysis following the theme of the Many-Tentacles-of-Islamic-Terrorism in a paper entitled Egyptian Collection on Islamist Militant Groups: Expose’ of the Writings of Terrorism -- Scholar Abd al-Raheem Ali on al-Qaida. Aboul-Enein summarizes the research of Abd al-Raheem Ali in “Tanzeem al-Qaida, Ushrun Ahman, wal-Ghazu Mustamir, (Al-Qaida, 20 Years and the Battle Continues),” by Abd-al-Raheem Ali, who is himself dependent on the book entitled “Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” by screenwriter Lawrence Wright (The Siege).

After I spoke with Lawrence Wright at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, I had the impression

• that he was heavily dependent on MEMRI and other Jewish Zionist sources including Daniel Pipes and
• that Zionist Neoconservatives, Israeli intelligence services, the Egyptian establishment, and factions within the US government have invested a lot of effort in creating a narrative that serves the separate purposes of each group of fabricators but has limited connection to reality.

For example the following passage insinuates or claims a lot of connections that simply have not stood up to scrutiny.

Typically the focus on Bin Ladin in 1990 and 1991 is his critique of the Saudi Royal family, the books delves deeper into his supporting of Islamist militants against communist Yemen and his reevaluation of his financial network after the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) scandal. BCCI would be the bank of choice for drug dealers, smugglers, terrorists, dictators and liberation movements. Bin Ladin would spread wealth and donor funds not only into regular banks, but Islamic banks, as well as Hawala accounts. Usama Bin Ladin did not always rely on Hawalas, the unofficial and pre-industrial Islamic banking system based on reputation, and keeping one’s word. The book claims that Islamist radical donors organized by Bin Ladin would infuse $12 million to support the electioneering of the Algerian Front Islamique du Salud (FIS) in 1991. Another transaction by the al-Faisal Islamic Bank in Khartoum would handle the transaction of $20 million to the FIS as they were poised to win the parliamentary elections in Algeria in 1992. Al-Qaida detainee Jamal al-Fadl claimed that Bin Ladin co-founded the al-Shamal Bank in Sudan, to allow additional freedom to finance Islamist militant causes around the globe. Azzam’s vision of a foundation would have its earliest applications not in Afghanistan but in Sudan. What the book stresses, is that the BCCI scandal and financial collapse, would see Bin Ladin complicating and concealing his financial network, creating front companies in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. This was not only to protect the funds, but to protect and conceal the identity of regular donors. One deception technique Bin Ladin applied was the exploitation of Islamic charities; this provided not only a means to hide funds but to set up offices in England, Germany, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Afghanistan. These charities would take in millions, part of these donations were skimmed to finance terror operations. It is important to note that book describes them as financial networks that are redundant and overlapping. One charitable network linked to Bin Ladin was controlled from Stockholm and had thirteen branches in Albania, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Romania, Russia, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and the Gulf States. Pre 9-11 saw financial and fund raising networks in North America.

The meaning of "Islamist radical donors organized by Bin Ladin" reflects the prejudices of the analyst.

The FIS is similar to the Turkish AK in orientation. While many Zionists probably consider donors seeking the creation of an Islamic Democratic alternative comparable to Christian Democratic parties in Europe to be Islamic extremists, continuous repeating of the mantra of Muslim extremism hardly renders the Zionist perspective true, and in general Arab Jihadists did not show much interest in the political violence that occurred in Algeria after cancellation of the 1992 elections.

Proof of Bin-Ladin (or Hamas) Islamic charity connections has also for the most part failed to materialize.

One can legitimately describe transnational Arab Jihadist politics as conspiratorial

• just as 19th and early 20th century Polish politics was,
• just as Jewish communist politics was until the Rosenberg Trial, or
• just as Jewish Zionist politics remains to this day,

but as far as I know, no secret Arab Jihadists have been identified that serve either in pro-USA Arab governments or in the US government and that would be comparable

• to secret Polish patriots serving in governments occupying historic Poland,
• to secret Jewish communists in the US government, or
• to Zionist US government officials, who put Israeli or Jewish interests ahead of those of the USA.

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