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Who is behind the Stop the Madrassa Coalition?
2007-08-25
by Fadi
The Khalil Gibran International Academy is one of several dual-language public schools in New York City. The school plans to supplement the general New York public school curriculum with Arabic language and Arab culture lessons. As a result, some residents of New York City, harboring a racist hatred of anything and everything Arab, created the Stop the Madrassa Coalition to pressure the New York City Department of Education to shut down the school before its inaugural semester this Fall. Though it appears that the school will open as planned, the Coalition has succeeded in forcing the resignation of Debbie Almontaser, the school's Principal, after Almontaser claimed that the word "intifada" means "shaking up." In fact, the word "intifada" does mean "shaking up." The campaign to expel Almontaser, like the mission of the Coalition, was entirely racially-motivated.
KABOBfest has discovered that a number of the Coalition's Board members have a long history of actual racism (as opposed to the fantasy allegations drummed up against the school's Board members) against Arabs, Muslims, and/or Blacks. For example, the Board includes notorious free-thought hater Daniel Pipes. Among Pipes's many racist declarations, perhaps the most instructive on the Coalition's motives is his belief that "increased stature, and affluence, and enfranchisement of American Muslims...will present true dangers to American Jews." Mind you, this is a man who has expressed support for the U.S.'s internment of Japanese during World War II.
Most illuminating, though, is the Coalition's Treasurer, David Yerushalmi. As an Israeli settler in the occupied Palestinian West Bank, Yerushalmi proudly and openly flouts the Fourth Geneva Convention. Among his accolades, Yerushalmi is the founder of the Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE). SANE recently published a policy proposal that shows just how poor of a lawyer (and racist) Yerushalmi is:
"[A]dherence to Islam as a Muslim is prima facie evidence of an act in support of the overthrow of the U.S. Government through the abrogation, destruction, or violation of the US Constitution and the imposition of Shari'a on the American People. . .It shall be a felony punishable by 20 years in prison to knowingly act in furtherance of, or to support the, adherence to Islam."Yerushalmi's website also states:
"There is a reason the founding fathers did not give women or black slaves the right to vote."-AND-
"Is there something unique about the Black American (or, at least the Black New Yorker) that leads him to murder so disproportionately and to most often kill and victimize his own? Do we see patterns of Black culture that arise out of Africa and the wanton murder of blacks by blacks there? Why have the colonized blacks of the African continent, after having acquired their freedom and independence, so willingly slaughtered their own and live in despicable disease and squalor despite a land of enormous riches while Indians of the Indian sub-continent have successfully moved from British rule to democracy and relative civility even in a country that still maintains social inequalities as a fact of their culture?"(tarboush tip: CAIR)
Though none of these sexist and racist declarations bothered his fellow Board members and friends, Yerushalmi's recently discovered anti-Semitic remarks have finally raised some eyebrows.
Notwithstanding, Board member Pamela Hall defends Yerushalmi's hatred of Jews with the same silly, stupid, and offensive logic of the Coalition that has me wondering, has racism against Muslims and Arabs in this country reached such a level that people are deferring to this (at least enough deference to generate a controversy over a harmless public school): “If he’s speaking of the radical liberal Jews who were at the [pro-school] rally Monday, then these people deserve to be criticized. These people are anti-America. These people are extreme, outrageous leftists. They work so hard to destroy this country ... and, sadly, many of them are Jews.”
This article was taken fromKabobfest