The Boston Jewish Establishment’s War on Dissent

In an effort to stay relevant and powerful in an increasingly different world than the one they grew up in, Jewish establishment leaders in Boston have developed a distinct pattern of response. When anyone with a dissenting opinion raises the alarm on an issue that the establishment feels uncomfortable discussing – such as Left-wing anti-Semitism and Islamic extremism – they smear them. They try to shut down discussion by saying that opinions opposing their own are not valid and cannot be tolerated.

One notable leader of the opposition is Dr. Charles Jacobs. Instead of engaging with him, the Jewish establishment labels him and his supporters McCarthy-ites and Islamophobes.

And then, just when they figure out that Jacobs was right, the establishment embraces his battles, stepping onto the field at exactly the right moment before ultimately claiming victory for themselves. It’s a brilliant tactic, but one that will serve the establishment’s purposes only for so long.

A Pattern Revealed

When Charles Jacobs wrote an op-ed in the Boston Jewish Advocate in 2010 questioning the wisdom of Rabbi Eric Gurvis’ embrace of Bilal Kaleem of the Muslim American Society, seventy Massachusetts Reform rabbis signed a letter condemning him, and smearing him with the brush of Islamophobia. They called upon him to “discontinue his destructive campaign against Boston’s Muslim community, which is based on innuendo, half-truths and unproven conspiracy theories.”

Federal prosecutors had by then called Kaleem’s Muslim American Society an overt front for the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim American Society is also the parent organization of the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Roxbury – where extremist speakers regularly appeared, and whose trustee for 8 years was Yusuf al Qaardawi, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood – as well as the Islamic Society of Cambridge mosque, a mosque regularly attended by the Boston Marathon bombers. So much for unproven conspiracy theories.

In 2012 Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), the organization that Jacobs heads, called attention through a series of videos to the viciously anti-Semitic and anti-Israel activities of a number of professors and student organizations at Northeastern University in Boston. Holocaust Awareness Week at Northeastern, created to ensure that future generations not forget about the Holocaust, had been hijacked and transformed into a week-long Israel bashing event where Israel was routinely compared to Nazi Germany and featured speakers such as the notorious Norman Finkelstein, author of The Holocaust Industry.

A second video documented the radical Muslim activity taking place at Northeastern University. On tape was the university’s Muslim chaplain, Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, also a Muslim American Society associate, calling upon congregants at a Brighton mosque to “take up the gun and the sword” in the service of Allah and to support convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui.

A third video showed Northeastern’s Professor Denis Sullivan lauding the Hamas terror organization’s kindergartens and healthcare, and Northeastern economics professor Shahid Alam telling students that they “should laugh away accusations of anti-Semitism” and wear them as a badge of pride. Students spoke on tape, some with their faces and voices altered to avoid retribution, about the atmosphere of fear that any pro-Israel student faced on campus and in classrooms.

And yet at the time, the leadership of the Boston Jewish community, organizations that had been founded to stop the defamation of Jews in the public sphere – such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) – did nothing, attempting only to pressure Jacobs and his allies to lay-off of Northeastern University. “Don’t make this a public fight,” they told him.

“We called up Northeastern administrators and asked them, ‘do you know about Imam Faaruuq?’” explains Jacobs in an interview with the Jewish Russian Telegraph. “The university lawyers called us back and asked us to see the raw footage, which we sent them.

“A day later Imam Faaruuq’s bio was erased from Northeastern’s website. He was dismissed from his post – the first time I can recall a university Imam being dismissed.”

As more and more damning information regarding Northeastern came out, the tide of public opinion turned, as did the approach of the Boston Jewish establishment. Gone were the furtive phone calls to Jacobs and his allies to stand down from their campaign against Northeastern, and in came the establishment to negotiate a victory instead. On November 11, 2013, the ADL and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies (CJP) issued a joint statement:

“Over the past several years, students and faculty at Northeastern University have raised concerns regarding what they have described as virulent and intimidating anti-Israelism, or even anti-Semitism, on campus. Over the past year we have worked closely with officials at Northeastern regarding those concerns…

… Anti-Semitism posing as anti-Israelism is indeed a significant problem on certain campuses. At the same time, academic freedom and the right of free expression are vital to any academic setting. We applaud Northeastern for its statement to faculty and for the work it is doing to promote an atmosphere premised on civility and respect.”

Notably missing was any mention of APT or the Zionist Organization of America, whose legal director Susan Tuchman created a shocking report based on interviews she had done with dozens of students about their experience with anti-Semitic and anti-Israel professors at Northeastern. To the uninitiated, the ones who deserved credit for any changes put in place at Northeastern were the ones who for so long had fought to silence any criticism of the school – the leaders of the Boston Jewish establishment.

Newton Public Schools

White-washing Newton

The campaign to discover exactly what was being taught in Newton Public Schools and who had authorized it has recently run a similar course. Two years ago Newton parent Tony Pagliuso was asked by his daughter whether it was true that Arab women were being killed in Israeli jails by the hundreds, as she had read in The Arab World Studies Notebook. Horrified by the specter of his children being taught anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic lies in his city’s public school system, Pagliuso went to the school to find out what was going on. The school promptly dismissed his complaints.

As the story gained publicity, more parents and students began coming forward with disturbing allegations of anti-Israel propaganda being taught in Newton schools. At school committee meetings, the committee was confronted by parents and concerned Newton citizens with some of the materials being used in the curriculum. The board responded by stone walling and accusing the parents of “McCarthy-ite” tactics.

In fact, one of the materials used, The Arab World Studies Notebook, was described in a 2007 report by the American Jewish Committee as “a text that appears largely designed to advance the anti-Israel and propagandistic views of the Notebook’s sponsors, the Middle East Policy Council (MEPC) and Arab World and Islamic Resources (AWAIR), to an audience of teachers who may not have the resources and knowledge to assess this text critically.”

After a full year of pushback from Newton public schools, some of the materials were removed from classrooms. But instead of apologizing and promising a full investigation into what else was used and how it got there in the first place, Newton Public Schools Superintendent David Fleischman said that Newton Schools had discontinued the use of the Notebook because it had been deemed “outdated.”

“What was the process used that allowed these publications into the schools?” asks Jacobs. “Nobody, not us, not the parents, has received any explanations.”

In October of 2013 APT placed advertisements in the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Jewish Advocate, and the Newton Tab, quoting from the questionable materials and asking parents and citizens to contact the School Committee. Among the responses to the ads were accusations that passages had been taken out of context and that some of them, such as a false claim made in the Muslim Primer used in Newton that astronaut Neil Armstrong had converted to Islam, were taken from a part of the book not taught to students.

“What if Mein Kampf had a chapter on vegetarianism – Hitler was a vegetarian, you know –  would you make copies of that chapter, and ignore what the rest of the book says?” asks Jacobs.

Other handouts distributed to students included a series of maps showing the shrinking lands of the Palestinians, maps that appear to be exactly the same as ones produced by the PLO and which were used in anti-Israel ads placed on the MBTA in October.

“We have all of the maps given out by the school,” says Jacobs. “There is no map of tiny Israel surrounded by masses of Arab countries. There is no map of Historical Palestine including Jordan, which the Balfour declaration included. So there is no Jewish viewpoint to counter the Arab propaganda. We later learned that the maps in the Newton schools were created by the PLO.”

While the ADL’s Robert Trestan called the MBTA ads “intentionally designed to mislead the public, and…part of an ongoing anti-Israel campaign that distorts the issues by oversimplifying the facts around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” the ADL has not said nothing of the sort with regards to Newton Public Schools.

On November 6, 2013, the ADL and the CJP released yet another joint statement, this one taking aim at Charles Jacobs and defending the Newton School Committee: “Based on a careful review of the materials at issue by ADL and JCRC, there is substantial reason to believe that the allegations made in the ad are without merit. The ad misinterprets certain elements of the materials and lacks reasonable context. The Newton School Committee and its leadership have been responsive, and have addressed the questions posed to them in a thoughtful, constructive way…”

As noted in a series of recent Jewish Advocate stories by Alexandra Lapkin, the review of Newton teaching materials that the ADL claims to have made has not been made available to the public, and details of its methodology and findings – if it even exists – have remained murky at best.

Paul Beran

Who’s teaching the teachers?

In truth, the allegations regarding the Newton School system run deeper than merely a few teachers using skewed teaching materials to either intentionally or unintentionally indoctrinate Newton’s young public school students.

Explains Jacobs: “The Newton schools sent their teachers to a workshop at the Harvard Center for Middle East Studies (CMES) community outreach. The CMES is funded by a $20 million gift from Saudi prince Alwaleed Bin Talal.

“The program requires the staff at the CMES share their scholarship with public school teachers. So who led the 80 Newton public school teachers in their workshop? None other than Paul Beran, who was an important leader of the BDS movement in Somerville. The teachers then took what they learned there and brought it to Newton.”

Instead of investigating and denouncing what Newton teachers were taught by radical leftists such as Paul Beran, the ADL, which incidentally was labeled as the “modicum for high-browed Zionism” by Beran himself, wishes to wash itself clean of the Newton issue and return to the rightwing neo-Nazi threats of the past.

“At this time the ADL is not even supporting our Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for information from Newton,” says Jacobs.

“Jeff Robbins, the head of the ADL here, was the attorney for the David Project when we were sued by the Islamic Society of Boston,” explains Jacobs, referring to the organization he headed prior to founding APT. “He [Robbins] knows what kind of threat this is, and he hasn’t said a word as the head of the ADL. He hasn’t made a concerted effort to educate the community.”

“When he first knew about Northeastern he didn’t say anything either. They know there is a national effort to influence public schools; do they think Newton will be immune?”

Shutting down debate

One common thread that runs through the establishment’s varied attacks on Jacobs is shutting down debate by accusing him and anyone that stands with him of being McCarthy-ites, Tea Party extremists, or Islamophobes.

When the 70 Massachusetts rabbis signed their Jewish “fatwa” against Jacobs, they accused him of waging a destructive campaign against Boston’s Muslims. Contrary to their supposition, Jacobs has actively reached out to moderate, reformist Islamic scholars. Sheikh Dr. Ahmed Mansour is a reformist Islamic scholar who fled Egypt as a result of persecution by radical Islamists and today serves on the board of directors of APT.

As co-founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group, Jacobs has helped to free thousands of slaves in South Sudan, many of them Muslims. To accuse a man who has travelled to one of the most dangerous parts of the world to free Muslim slaves of waging a “destructive campaign” against Muslims seems imprudent.

The October ads that APT placed in local newspapers caused a furor among the establishment as well. The ads included contact phone numbers, taken from the Newton School Committee’s own website, for both Superintendent David Fleischman and School Committee Vice Chair Matt Hills. It turned out that Hills had published his own home phone number as his contact number. All hell broke loose as Hills got his congregation’s leadership to accuse Jacobs of purposely putting the Hills family in danger. APT removed the phone number the next time the ads were run.

“The police,” Hills told the Boston Globe, “were wonderful and continue to be wonderful in providing security to our home.”

While Hills did not elaborate as to what kind of threats, if any, he had received, Jacobs, when he led the movement to free slaves in Sudan, was subject to multiple death threats from Muslim extremists.

126 High St. Credit: Google 

Faltering empire

The Boston Jewish establishment, the CJP and the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC), raises millions upon millions of dollars a year, and has undoubtedly accomplished great things for the Boston Jewish community. The CJP’s Boston Birthright-Israel trip has encouraged young members of the Jewish community to explore their connection to Israel, and the Boston-Haifa partnership has fostered a growing relationship between the two communities. The JCRC’s valuable work for the Jewish community’s poor and elderly can not be negated either.

Yet these facts only serve to strengthen the question: Why would the Boston Jewish establishment, the ADL and the CJP, go out of its way to attack and vilify Charles Jacobs, or anyone else who voices a different opinion than their own? Are they not trying to accomplish the same thing as Jacobs?

The answer is that while this empire of bureaucrats presents plans and writes reports, they have not been able to pivot towards the new threats that face the Jewish world. When Boston Jewish leaders Lenny Zakim and Steve Grossman tried to get the ADL to support or even adopt the media-watchdog CAMERA when it was formed decades ago, the ADL refused. According to Jacobs, “it is easier for the ADL to be against Nazis than to expose leftists in the media who promote the Palestinian cause in their ‘news reports.’”

Unable to drop the niceties of political correctness and some of their own left-wing ideologies – not to mention some of their donors’ – the multi-million dollar establishment has found itself in the position of playing catch-up with Charles Jacobs.

“We are getting more and more information from Newton parents and students, and we will be releasing it,” says Jacobs. “I believe eventually they will have to jump on the band wagon here as well.”

But is jumping on the band wagon enough? In 2010 representatives of Boston’s Russian Jewish community, led by the Russian Jewish Community Foundation’s President Ary Rotman, signed a letter in the Jewish Advocate taking to task the establishment’s attack on Jacobs.

“Our Jewish leaders, who were tame as lambs in front of the Islamists, roared as lions against this brave and lonely voice of dissent,” the letter read.

“Back in the Soviet Union, authorities would put a man like Jacobs behind bars for anti-Soviet propaganda. In the United States we are dismayed by attempts to ostracize and silence him.”

Thankfully we do not live in the USSR and Jacobs and others can continue their valuable work. One lesson that can be learned from the Soviet Union is that empires do not last forever. But the question remains: what replaces these organizations? What should we as a community be doing to prepare ourselves for the inevitable transition? In an age when the Jewish community faces existential threats, leading from behind simply does not work anymore.