L.A. Jewish Federation Cancel Pam Geller ZoA Event due to Muslim Brotherhood Intimidation

Pamela Geller  at L.A. Jewish Federation Protest

Source:  The  Jewish Journal

If you want to know the impact of the Egyptian Presidential victory of Muslim Brotherhood Party candidate Mohammed  Morsi on America, look no further than what occurred Sunday in Los Angeles.  At the eleventh hour on Sunday, June 24th, within hours of the announcement of Morsi’s victory in Egypt, the L.A. Jewish Federation pulled the plug on a Zionist of America (ZoA) event at their building with Pam Geller of Atlas Shrugs and Stop Islamization of America. Her talk was about something that should concern Americans, whether Jewish or not, Islamic Antisemitism.  The venue for the Geller ZoA sponsored event was the Federation building where the ZoA region has offices. The event had been booked into a conference room for nearly two months.  The L.A. Jewish Federation press release simply noted that they were fearful of Muslim protests at the building. No Muslim protesters actually appeared.  It was only following protests by the ZoA and others that the L.A. Federation apologized for its error.  But the error was due in large measure to intimidation by left progressive and interfaith groups in league with Muslim Brotherhood fronts, Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC) who issued press releases over the weekend decrying Geller as being anti-Muslim and condemning the ZoA event.  The reality is that Geller  is concerned about the civilizational Jihad directed at Jews and all unbelievers which is at the core of Islamic doctrine.

The L.A. Jewish Journal account of the L.A. Federation cancellation noted the contretemps:

The Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles barred anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller from delivering a previously scheduled speech at its Wilshire Boulevard headquarters on Sunday, June 24.

Geller, who is Jewish, had been set to address the Western Region of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) with a speech titled “Islamic Jew Hatred: The Root Cause of the Failure to Achieve Peace.” The Sunday morning event, announced in early June, was abruptly canceled just hours before it was to take place.

The event was later moved to another location, the Mark in Pico-Robertson, but not before the 30 would-be attendees stood in protest on the sidewalk in front of Federation headquarters holding signs reading, “Jews! Don’t Silence Other Jews! Shame on the Jewish Federation.”

“I’m a proud, fierce Zionist,” Geller told the crowd, decrying the decision to cancel her event. “And the takeaway from this is that Zionists are not welcome at the L.A. Jewish Federation.”

According to ZOA National Vice Chairman Steven Goldberg, who said he spoke with Los Angeles’ Federation President Jay Sanderson early Sunday morning, the reason for the cancelation was fear that local Muslim groups might protest outside the building.
“They need spinal implants,” Goldberg said of Federation leaders, noting the absence of protesters.

Geller and Robert Spencer organized a gathering Saturday evening in Manhattan Beach with a crowd estimated at over 250 by eyewitnesses who had attended.  The event was sponsored by the Federal Defense Initiative, Stop Islamization of America and Former Muslims United.  It featured a panel of prominent apostates Dr. Wafa  Sultan, Nonie Darwish, Ibn Warriq and Walid Shoebat.  A young apostate, nearly killed upon his return to his native Morocco from the US,attested to his asylum triggered by a bus ad he saw back in New York that Geller had sponsored emblazoned with a 1-800 number if you wanted to leave Islam.  The call he made based on that bus ad led him to Darwish and help.

This Saturday evening gathering was a conscious rebuttal of a CAIR – sponsored civil rights family event at Redondo Beach. The Jewish Journal lavished attention on the CAIR event, the ADL spokesperson castigating Geller for her alleged extremism which motivated CAIR and MPAC, both Muslim Brotherhood front groups, to turn up the heat on the L.A. Federation:

Oren Segal, the director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Center on Extremism, said in an interview on Friday that while his group and others have concerns about radical Muslim individuals and groups, Geller goes further, to the point of xenophobia.

“The difference between [Geller and] legitimate criticism about the very serious threat of radical Islam,” Segal said, “is that she vilifies the entire Islamic faith by making assertions that there are conspiracies against American values inherent in Islam.”

Geller hinted at the threats she perceives in her remarks at another local event she organized on Saturday, June 23, the day before the Federation barred her from entering through its doors.

“You are at war and you are the soldiers,” Geller told a crowd of about 200 people who had come to a hotel in Manhattan Beach to hear from a panel of former Muslims. The event was designed as a protest to the Summer Night for Civil Rights event being held simultaneously less than three miles away by the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA).

“The people behind Islamophobia are being exposed,” CAIR-LA Executive Director Hussam Ayloush told the crowd, noting that groups like his are pushing back against those who target Muslims. “Muslims are becoming, I guess, assertive, proud, courageous and standing up for their rights and standing up for their identity.”

In an interview on Monday, Ayloush said that he hadn’t known Geller was Jewish until last week, and that his group had initially intended to say nothing about her June 23 counter-protest.  

“When we found out that she was actually speaking at the Jewish Federation, which is a mainstream organization, we couldn’t ignore that anymore,” Ayloush said.
    [. . .]

Salam Al-Maryati is president in Los Angeles of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, which took part in the interfaith coalition that sent protest emails to the L.A. Federation. He said on Monday that while he is happy to engage with Jewish groups, even groups like the ZOA, he appreciated Federation’s cancellation of the event, which he saw as taking a stand against Geller.
“Let’s start to make distinctions between those who are passionate and maybe even emotional at times, from extremists who are promoting ideological violence between our communities,” Al-Maryati said.
Asked whether the ZOA endorses Geller’s views on Islam, Goldberg, the national vice chair, demurred, and said Geller should have been free to speak at Los Angeles’ Jewish Federation headquarters.

“Even if you disagree, let her speak here,” Goldberg said. “What’s the harm? What’s the harm of freedom of speech?”

Geller indicated she welcomed the L.A. Federation’s apologies and looked forward to a possible event at their facility.

None of this surprises us given what we have written on the failure of American Jewish leadership to combat intimidation by Muslim advocacy groups.  (See our April NER article:  American Jews Who Support Shariah Imperil us all).  Jewish Federations are obsessed about engaging in relentless inter-faith dialogues with Muslim advocacy groups.  The ADL has been an unwitting  supporter of Muslim civil rights groups, as witnessed by what we saw during the debates surrounding adoption of the American law for American Courts legislation in Florida this past legislative session.  Foxman and his successor Deborah Lauter at the ADL apparently view protection of the Muslim Brotherhood campaign in America as more important than protection of their coreligionists.   They are intimidated by the rising Muslim Brotherhood threat to American and Western value.