I don’t know who wrote last week’s editorial in the Great Neck News (“No Threat to free speech here”) about the appearance of author/blogger/activist Pamela Geller at the Great Neck Chabad on April 14, but he or she certainly was not among the 600 people who turned out to hear what was described as a “flame-throwing hatemonger.”
In fact, Geller is soft-spoken, often humorous, and the opposite of hateful – except to those who have a peculiar allergy to empirical and verifiable truth.
In addition to chiding the Great Neck Synagogue and the Chabad of Great Neck – they should be “ashamed” – like a prissy schoolmarm for inviting Geller to Great Neck, the writer fools no one by stating: “this is not a question of free speech,” when it is clear that whoever penned this opinion piece loathes free speech – again, except if it’s the free speech of authentic flame-throwing hatemongers like Louis Farrakhan, Al Sharpton, unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers (“guilty as hell, free as a bird”), and others that the leftists in Great Neck would lionize if they were invited to speak here.
“Would a Neo-Nazi or a leader of the Klan also be a `potentially important voice’ in some `ongoing debate?’” the inflamed editorial writer continues, once again demonstrating two traits of the progressive left: (1) They invariably default to temper-tantrum mode and gratuitous name-calling, and (2) they have zero tolerance for opinions other than their own, making them the most stunningly intolerant people in the entire American political system, their exalted self image to the contrary.
The writer goes on to call Geller a “bigot,” to say she has a “legacy of hatred,” to accuse her of “whining,” to say she “hates the Islamic faith,” and to call her speech a “tirade” – not one word of which is accurate, as anyone who visits the videotape of her speech can easily see (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4oLlfmdB8c) or her site at www.atlasshrugs.com.
It is no mystery why leftists think and act as they do, as in the case of this editorial, in which both the scenario at the Chabad and Geller herself are unrecognizable to anyone who actually attended the event. Why the lies and distortions and rage? Wasn’t it a little more than 65 years ago that the left supported the Jews and Israel and not their mortal enemies?
When the straggling remnants of the Holocaust reached Israel – starving, cadaverous, hollow-eyed, bereft – the Jews of America, no matter their political stripe, sent aid and assistance and championed their efforts to establish an independent state. But then Israel did the unthinkable: it defeated the multiple Arab armies that simultaneously attacked the fledgling state!
As soon as Israel was no longer a victim, the bond between the American left and Israel was shattered. I’m not talking about the fundraisers they hold to elect leftists who consistently undermine Israel’s strength, or the lip service they still pay to Israeli sovereignty, but to the deep ideological antipathy that never fails to compel them to support her enemies.
Of course this allowed liberals to ignore the treachery of their idol FDR, who abandoned the Jews to Hitler’s annihilation and closed our ports to the few who escaped. It allowed them to ignore the fact that the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem – one of the Muslim leaders of the Jew- and Israel-loathing Muslim Brotherhood, which today plays a prominent role in the White House and other departments of our government – collaborated with Hitler to rid the world of Jews.
But leftists cannot stand to be reminded of these facts or to be held accountable for their own abandonment of the Jews. That’s why they invented political correctness and multiculturalism, the first which forbids any language that “hurts the feelings” of the recipients, which effectively shuts down any debate, and the second that perversely holds that all cultures are equal – as if building symphonies and medical institutions, as Israel does, is equal to teaching young children to strap homicide bombs on their slight little bodies, as the Palestinians do routinely!
This is the ilk that insults a Geller and takes two orthodox synagogues to task!
Can’t make this stuff up!
Joan Swirsky
Great Neck
