Dutch MP and Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders has been busy this week in both Philadelphia and New York at a number venues including Temple and Columbia University. Yesterday, we had a full day with events at both the Harvard Club courtesy of Nina Rosenwald and the Hudson Institute and later in the evening at Columbia. Among the people besides yours truly who attending the Hudson Institute event were Nobel Laureate Elie Weisel and his wife Miriam, David Horowitz, New English Review colleague Ibn Warraq, U.K. apostate Dr. Sam Solomon, Warrior Rabbi Jon Hausman, Tom Trento and CJ Sculnick from the Florida Security Council, Security consultant David Moore, blogger Larry Auster, Brooke Goldstein formerly with the MEF legal project, Jed West, west coast based publicist and brother of columnist Diane West, Jamie Kirchick assistant editor of The New Republic, Judy Jacobson of the Columbia Chapter of Schollars for Peace in the Middle east (SPME), her husband Leon and son Matthew and Dr. Michael Welner, ABC, CNN forensic psychiatrist and consultant and his wife Orli.
The great video team of Alan Kornman and Mark Campbell came up from their undisclosed locations on the Florida peninsula. We took a run up to the Columbia campus late in the afternoon to do some editorial shots of college walk at my alma mater and chanced to find a young woman muslim student attired in a hijab.
I was able to present Geert Wilders with his very own "Mo doll" and letter from the Stop Islamization of America co-founders Kendra and DL Adams. A video of the "Mo doll" and the text of the SIOA Letter to Wilders
can be viewed here. Wilders relayed his thanks to he SIOA team for their valued stand in alerting Americans to the loomming threat of Islamization here in America that he commented on during his speech.
Here are two videos of the Q+A of Wilders' responses to questions following his speech at the Hudson Institute event. Part I of the Wilders Hudson Institute
Q+A can be viewed here;
Part II, here. The text of the speech, also used at Columbia University with minor modificatioins can be found at Pamel Geller's
website, Atlas Shrugs.
A number of us were filmed at the Harvard Club following the Hudson Institute event saying in a variety of languages, "I am Geert Wilders"-a sendup on the ending of the classic 1960 film "Spartacus"with Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis, the late Peter Ustinov and John Ireland. I did my salutations in both yidish and English. Rabbi Hausman did his in both Hebrew and Arabic.
I spent some time with apostate Sam Solomon, author of
"A Proposed Charter of Muslim Understanding," duing an interlude at the Princeton - Columbia Club between the Harvard Club Hudson Institute New York and Columbia University Wilders' events. Solomon was present during the U.K. Immigration Tribunal proceedings last week in London that overturned the ban of Wilders' entry to Britain in February. Wilders had been invited by Lord Malcolm Pearson and Baroness Carolyn Cox to show his film "Fitna' in private meetings at the House of Lords, only to be ejected upon arrival at Heathrow Airport. Ironically that scene was viewed by Rabbi Jon Hausman and his daughter Jacquie who were in transit from the US to Israel. Solomon told me that the barrister who presented oral arguments before senior British judges was an Apostate from Islam who at 17 years of age fled his parents' home in the U.K. when they tried to take him back to Pakistan for an 'arranged marriage.'
Last night at Columbia came off very well. Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs sat next to me to record video of Wilders speech and the mindless questions from the students on campus who queued up during Q+A. You can read Pamela's account of the Columbia episode and view videos of his speech and the Q+A with leftists out to bait him here. Wilders handled the truculent questioners, masterfully.
The Columbia event was a collaborative effort that I was pleased to have been involved in facilitating. Thanks for sponsoring the event go to the stalwart leaders of the CU College Republicans, especially David Honeycutt, Derek Turner and Jon Kaiser, Judy Jacobson and Awi Federgruen of the CU chapter of SPME, David Horowitz and Craig Snider of the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
I was delighted to find Simon Deng, a South Sudanese freedom fighter in the green room with us prior to the Columbia event. He had interesting comments on possible secession of the South Sudan. I had the pleasure of meeting the deputy florr leader of Wilders' Freedom Party in the Hague Parliamnent, Ms. Fleur Agema and associate Johann. Good to see young Dutch engaged in an important endeavor to save their country from Islamization and to preserve the Western values of liberty, free speech and freedom. We talked about what might trigger a snap election in the Hague Parliament and possible formation of a ruling coalition led by Wilders, given his number one poll position. It was an exhausting, but uplifting day in Manhattan for a worthy cause.
Wilders used a metaphor in his speech of Israel as the "canary in the mines of Jihad" fighting for the survival of Western civilization. He noted:
Islam forces Israel to fight, and Israel is not just fighting for itself. Israel is fighting for all of us, for the entire West. Just like those brave American soldiers who landed in Sicily in 1943 and stormed the Normandy beaches in 1944, young Israeli men and women are fighting for our freedom, our civilization.
Ladies and gentlemen, Europe ought to fully back Israel to the hilt in its relentless fight against those that threaten it, whether it is Hezbollah, Hamas or a nuclear Iran. Also, because of its history, Europe certainly has the moral obligation to prevent at all cost another Holocaust against the Jewish people. But most important of all: Israel is fighting the jihad that is meant for all of us. So we all should defend Israel. We all are Israel.
Geert Wilders and Benjamin Netanyahu, PM of Israel are the only true political leaders of the West. Kol hakavod (all honors) to Wilders and Netanyahu.
