The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), the Canadian branch of the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has written to Steven Harper, the Prime Minister of Canada, demanding that Rabbi Daniel Korobkin be removed from the PM’s delegation to Israel because the Rabbi attended and spoke briefly at my September talk in Canada.
Their letter charged that both Robert Spencer, who also spoke at that September event, and I “have a lengthy and clear record of promoting anti-Muslim sentiments and demonization.” In support of this, they listed a number of statements (wrenched from explanatory context, of course) that are demonstrably true and abundantly established by every day’s headlines. Do they think Harper, a strong defender of Israel, is so stupid as to be blind to the reality of Islamic jihad?
Whatever the nature of the things that I say, Rabbi Korobkin didn’t utter them and is not by any conceivable stretch of the imagination responsible for them. It is bitterly ironic that Islamic supremacist groups would label my efforts to defend the freedom of speech and equality of rights for all people before the law as “anti-Muslim.” That speaks volumes. However, whatever my work may be about, it is not Rabbi Korobkin’s work or his responsibility.
There is another strategy at play here: the message is being sent to every rabbi and clergyman, and everyone in the public square, that if you have anything to do in the public square with those fighting jihad and Sharia, they will come after you. You will be attacked in the media and labeled a racist and an Islamophobe. Whether Rabbi Korobkin goes to Israel or not, the goal has been accomplished: the jackboot of Sharia enforcement by smear, innuendo, and defamation. If the stealth jihadis of NCCM/CAIR had their way, they would destroy professionally and personally anyone who ever dared even to stand in the same room with Spencer and me.
The spectacle of Muslims going after another rabbi in Canada is despicable. If only these Muslim groups used their coercive intimidation to shut down hate imams who preach jihad and incitement to violence. No, but they attack those of us who do. Instead of fighting jihad and all those misunderstanders and hijackers of Islam, the NCCM is attacking… the Jews.
This is now a pattern. This not the first time these Islamic supremacists have intimidated a rabbi. When I was invited to speak in Canada a few months back, Muslim supremacist groups demanded that the York police strong-arm and threaten the rabbi hosting my event. The standing-room-only event went on despite the sharia goons (you can see my talk here). It was an amazing event. Despite the smear campaign by the Islamic supremacists at the NCCM, as well as by leftists and dhimmi Jews, upwards of six hundred freedom lovers came to hear me speak. Projectors had to be set up on separate floors to accommodate the overflow. My only regret is that so many were turned away.
A couple of months later, I was asked back to Canada to speak by the Jewish Defense League. These same Muslim groups tried to get that talk canceled as well – to no avail. Introducing Robert Spencer and me was Rabbi Korobkin, who had previously spoken out against the NCCM’s attempts to get the event canceled and even to get Spencer and me barred from entering Canada. Korobkin said, “I don’t believe that any moderate Muslim should have a problem with what Ms. Geller has to say,” recalling that the event organizer, Meir Weinstein, had requested a meeting with the NCCM but was rebuffed.
Korobkin also said, “I believe that she is raising a very legitimate issue, which is that there are extremists within the Islamic community [who] find there to be irreconcilable differences between Western democracy and Islam. Those people are waging what they call a jihad to Islamicize the Western world and they will not be satisfied until there is a caliphate that is formed where Shari’a is the prevailing law. Those are the people that Pamela Geller is opposed to… I see no reason why [the NCCM] should be opposed to her unless they sympathize with those sentiments.”
While I didn’t agree with some of the remarks the good rabbi made at the event (video here), I respected the fact that he didn’t pull out or cave to pressure from groups like the NCCM. Watch my response to the rabbi and my talk here.
In response, the great Prime Minister of Canada continued to set the standard that leaders should follow, most notably Barack Hussein Obama, and ignore these sinister supremacist thugs. Jason MacDonald, Harper’s director of communications, blistered the NCCM: “We will not take seriously criticism from an organization with documented ties to a terrorist organization such as Hamas.”
If only Barack Obama had that kind of clarity and fortitude.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of PamelaGeller.com and author of The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter here.
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