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Oct. 13, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Happiness Quotient

Jonathan Rosenblum: Ignore the Grandchildren

Oct. 10, 2008

Rabbi Abraham J. Twerski: The limitations of scientific miracles

Caroline B. Glick: Lebanon on the brink --- and why it matters

Oct. 8, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: The day when the sane talk to themselves

Ana Veciana-Suarez: Many nonobservant Jews are finding religion

Oct. 7, 2008

Gary Rosenblatt: Of politics and prayer

Caroline B. Glick: The ironies of the West's collusion with the Arabs and Iran

Oct. 6, 2008

Rabbi Yitzchok R. Rubin: Mamma to the masses

Jonathan Tobin: Ahmadinejad Isn't Too Impressed

Oct. 3, 2008

Rabbi A. Henach Leibowitz: The 'living dead' are all around us

Caroline B. Glick: Olmert's parting blows

Oct. 2, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: Often customers looking for our competitor accidentally enter our store. Can we just serve them without comment?

Jonathan Tobin: Jewish pundit quiz on next year's news

Sept. 29, 2008

Rabbi Eli Gewirtz: Lehman Brothers and the Day of Judgment

Rabbi Leiby Burnham: Apples, Honey and You

Sept. 26, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The shofar and the Echo of Sinai

Caroline B. Glick: A road paved on reality

Sept. 24, 2008

Greg Crosby: Home for the Holy Days

Ethel G. Hofman: Rosh Hashanah Favorites: Old-fashioned taste, reduced calories

Sept. 23, 2008

Caroline Glick: Liberalism or lives!?

Michael Ledeen: Dear President Ahmadinejad

Sept. 22, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Q: I gave a check to a local merchant, but it hasn't been cashed in months. Probably they lost it. Do I have to tell them?

Diana West: We are losing Europe to Islam

Sept. 19, 2008

Rabbi Berel Wein: On harvesting success

Caroline B. Glick: It is time to act

Sept. 18, 2008

Rabbi Hillel Goldberg: Is camping the panacea to save Jewry from self-destruction?

Craig Gordon: Was SNL hilarity too much for Hillary?

Sept. 17, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: The Whole World Is Watching

The Kosher Gourmet By Linda Gassenheimer: East meets Southwest in this quick meal: MEXICAN-ASIAN TOSTADOS

Sept. 16, 2008

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. : Into the fire

Everything's Relative : Your Official Jewish Guide to the 2008 USA Presidential Election

Sept. 15, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Enabling risky behavior

Diana West: A day that will live in ... accommodating Islam

Sept. 11, 2008

Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The skeleton in my closet

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein: Persecution and systematic destruction of Christians in the Middle East must be stopped

Sept. 10, 2008

Jonathan Tobin: There's Something About Sarah

The Kosher Gourmet by Kathy Manweiler: Who needs Chili's when you have these? Recipes for Mexican that taste great and are dietetic! Our commitment to freedom

Sept. 9, 2008

Daniel Pipes: Must counterinsurgency wars fail?

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.:

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

Sept. 8, 2008

The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir : How far must one go to help somebody out of a contract?

Barry Rubin: Waiting For Something

March 22, 2007

J-Rhythms with Avraham Rosenblum: JWR's cutting-edge music program showcasing performers -- singers, song writers, musicians, and bands -- who learn and live the Torah lifestyle (OUR NEWEST IGODCAST !)

Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Jan. 16, 2004 / 22 Teves, 5764

OUTED AND OUT

By Evan Gahr


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Muslim group leaves Alliance For Marriage's queer coalition just weeks after exposure by JewishWorldReview.com


http://www.jewishworldreview.com | The Alliance for Marriage, which suffered nationwide embarrassment, the loss of two key Jewish allies and withering criticism from prominent religious right leaders because JewishWorldReview.com has since 2001 exposed its collusion with radical Islamic groups, yesterday announced the resignation from its star-studded advisory board of the Islamic Society of North American (ISNA), currently under Congressional investigation for alleged terrorist connections.


ISNA was on the AFM website's "PARTIAL listing [emphasis added]" of advisory board members. The AFM previously refused JWR's request to name any other names. So it's an open question if the advisory board is entirely de-infested.


But ISNA's efforts to infiltrate American society has failed — even though its former colleagues on the AFM advisory board, Rabbi Barry Freundel, Rabbi Daniel Lapin, Father Richard John Neuhaus and Evangelical Richard Mouw, were determined to work along side their terrorist friendly comrades in the AFM led effort to amend the Constitution to limit marriage to heterosexuals.


In an email distributed late yesterday morning, AFM president Matt Daniels attributed ISNA's "withdrawal" to the Indianapolis-based group's desire to avoid becoming a "distraction" from the goals of his organization.


Actually, it was Daniels who had tried to create a "distraction" to avoid scrutiny of his alliance with an organization that at the very least has indulged the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel and anti-American sentiments far more vile than the stuff that got the Nation of Islam banished from polite society.


Free Congress Foundation head Paul Weyrich, who along with former presidential candidate Gary Bauer and the Rev. Bailey Smith were the only religious right leaders to criticize the AFM-ISNA alliance.


The breaking ranks dates to 2001 when JewishWorldReview.com's editor risked the wrath of his "community" to expose the Orthodox Union working side-by-side on the AFM advisory board with another problematic Muslim organization. The OU immediately resigned.


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Then last month it was deja Jew all over again. Rabbi Marc Gellman of "God Squad" fame resigned from the AFM advisory board about two weeks after the ISNA connection was exposed.


THE REAL PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY
How much damage did anti-gay marriage forces suffer because the AFM colluded with radical Islam?

That remains to be seen. Perhaps quite a bit. Unless, of course, the AFM can convince Americans that its priorities were justified because it was actually married gay couples in airplanes that brought down the World Trade Center.

But here's one possible unintended consequence and a very good one that could come from the AFM's dalliance with radical Islam.

The reaction by Christian conservatives, both nationally known figures and grassroots activists, all across the country refutes a notion prevalent in some liberal circles, that the Religious Right is a bigoted bunch of religious fanatics.

Rejecting the ends justifies the means ethos that animates true fanatics and bigots, religious and political, left and right, they spoke out against the AFM-ISNA alliance, even at the risk of hurting their own cause. "True, you don't know [if that will happen]," says Free Congress head Paul Weyrich, "but you do what is right and the L-rd can turn evil into good."

In emails from across the country, Christians made similar points. They decried the sad reality that their co-religionists who served on the AFM advisory board with ISNA had perverted Christianity's teaching for their own political purpose. That's quite interesting. Usually, it's conservative Christians who make that argument against the left.

To quote just one email:

"I can assure you that no true Evangelical Christian would ever knowingly align himself/herself with terrorists. This flies in the face of everything that Christ taught.

"Like the majority of Americans, I personally abhor the idea of gay marriage; however, Christianity is not about politics, it is about the cause of Christ, it is about truth. Period. There is no place for "strange bedfellows" at the cross."

The profound moral integrity manifested here parallels the behavior of Martin Luther King after the Vietnam War heated up. The intensifying conflict presented King with a serious moral conundrum.

He considered the war morally objectionable, yet he worried that to attack the war could alienate LBJ, whose good graces were crucial for advancing the civil rights agenda, which for King was just as crucial and morally stark as opposing gay marriage is for many Christians.

Eventually, King, despite the expected political ramifications came out publicly against the war; he didn't hide behind cheap little dodges like saying the war was not really a war because the government (Congress) didn't list it as such.

In the best American tradition of Martin Luther King, Christian conservatives, both some key leaders and the grassroots goyim, have refused to allow powerful claims of political expediency corrupt their core values.

Today, they are the real people for the American way.

— Evan Gahr

Comment by clicking here.


Finally, after some 20 media outlets including the Washington Times, Chicago Tribune, AndrewSullivan.com, InstaPundit.com, the Jewish Press, Forward and the Washington Blade, further circulated the unsettling fact that Matt Daniels, who wanted an advisory board that looked like America ended up with one that looked a bit like Guantanamo Bay, the AFM and ISNA parted company. Although Daniels made no reference to the ongoing Congressional investigation in his email, JWR linking the investigation to the AFM coalition apparently proved too hot to handle.


In an email response to JewishWorldReview.com's story about the Congressional investigation, Lapin, who previously wouldn't discuss the ISNA affiliation, said that "Our government identifying a group as ''terrorist related' makes all the difference in the world."

MORAL DIFFERENCE?
Since when do conservatives take their marching orders from the government? Is that part of the Judeo-Christian values which Lapin and Neuhaus purport to defend from the politicized perversions of Jews, liberals, secularists and homosexuals?


On the perennial and morally vexing question of how to choose allies and which to exclude from coalitions, the ultimate arbiter is the government?


As for Daniels, he still remains prostrate before the liberal goddess of diversity. Yesterday, the PR whiz emphasized that the Muslim community "will continue to be represented in the AFM's national coalition by the leadership of the African-American Muslim community in the United States."


Which leader? Louis Farrakhan? He's not on any government watch list.


Farrakhan, whose infamous reference to Judaism as a dirty religion sounds a bit like the sentiments expressed at an ISNA convention, would undoubtedly share the AFM goal which Daniels cited at the end of his e-mail. Namely, the AFM's determination to see that more children in America are raised in a home with a mother and a father."


Many children in America, all over the world and particularly Israel grow up in homes without mother and fathers because their loved ones were blown to bits, splattered all over the streets of Jerusalem and New York because of activities that some of Daniel's fellow allies have, at the very least, condoned.


Good-bye to all that. With no thanks to the AFM advisory board members or other religious conservatives.


One of the handful who did speak, Linda Chavez, says the removal of ISNA "shouldn't have taken this long." She blames the delay in part on the failure of AFM advisory board members to speak out. Still, she finds the end result heartening.


More importantly, America wins. This is an important victory in the country's ongoing war against terrorism.


ISNA's resignation means a crucial attempt by radical Islam to infiltrate American society has failed.


ISNA is denied the considerable legitimacy it might have obtained by standing at Ground Zero in the looming and most likely protracted cultural war over amending the Constitution.


Sadly, were it not for the adverse publicity, conservatives would have continued to work alongside and therefore legitimize an organization inimical to the interests of the United States.


What do conservatives call liberals, such as Communist Party USA fellow travelers, who emboldened the enemy in a similar fashion?

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Evan Gahr is a journalist in the Washington, DC area. Comment by clicking here.


© 2004, Evan Gahr