[The following, by Kerry Hurwitz, appeared originally in Wicked Local, Newton.]

Newton -- The buzz about the aldermen's decision to invite a released Guantanamo Bay prisoner to live in Newton has died down, but the concerns it has raised have not. There are already residents of this fair city who share ideologies with terrorists and supporters of terrorists, and who act on these beliefs. So far, their actions have been legal and nonviolent. But be aware -- some of our neighbors are more sympathetic to terrorism than you would ever guess. Most do not fit the stereotypical image of terrorist supporters. They are not youthful jihadists, but seemingly ordinary citizens who claim to support "equality" and "freedom." Unfortunately, the facts belie their words.

Just a few weeks ago, a member of the anti-Israel, anti-American organization Code Pink held a fundraiser in her Newton home to benefit the "Gaza Freedom March," a Hamas-linked attempt to end the Israeli "occupation" in Gaza. (Note to Code Pink: Israel ended its presence in Gaza five years ago when it forcibly removed 8,000 Jews from their homes and businesses, thereby ethnically cleansing the area and making in Judenfrei).

The "Freedom March" is backed by a combination of radicals, anti-Semites and "useful fools," including the discredited George Galloway (banned from Canada, removed from the British Labour Party and suspended from Parliament), last seen handing bags of cash to Hamas for "political" purposes, and his group, Viva Palestina, which is designated a terrorist organization by Canada as well as investigated for theft and fraud in the U.S. and Great Britain, respectively. Every single one of the march's organizers, including its "official sponsor" Code Pink, wants to abolish the State of Israel and thereby subject its inhabitants to a regime which officially supports the genocide of the Jewish people. This aim is so horrible that it boggles the mind -- it's almost impossible to believe anyone would actually want this. But these groups do, although they disguise it in terms like "binational state" (where Jews would soon be a minority among peoples who voted into power the genocidal and totalitarian Hamas and the equally genocidal though slightly less totalitarian Palestinian Authority) and "right of return," which would permit each and every one the 4 million descendants of almost any Arab who left Israel or the West Bank for any reason after 1948, most of whom have no connection to the area at all, to not only become citizens but to expropriate land, buildings and businesses from Jewish and Christian Israelis. (About 6 million Jews and 1.5 million Arabs currently live in Israel.)

In addition to proposing the destruction of the only democracy in the Middle East and a "peace plan" that could lead to a second Holocaust, Code Pink is unabashedly anti-Semitic. They organized last October's anti-Israel demonstration in Brookline, when protestors deliberately routed their march past synagogues on a Shabbat and Jewish High Holy Day in an area they knew contained many elderly Holocaust survivors. Signs at recent Code Pink demonstrations urged "America Stop Fighting for the Jew" and "Victory to Hamas" and featured Hamas flags. And when asked whether they were concerned about Hamas' sponsorship of the Gaza Freedom March, both a participant and a pastor who had raised money for the event replied "no" (this occurred in a church, no less, St. Peter's Episcopal in Cambridge).

It was with this background that the fundraiser for "the struggle to liberate Gaza" took place at a West Newton home. The fundraiser was extensively advertised on the websites of "progressive" organizations such as United for Justice with Peace, an umbrella organization which includes both Code Pink and Newton Dialogues on War and Peace, which has co-sponsored events on the Middle East and other issues with the Newton Commission on Human Rights.

So here we have it. A Newton citizen, resident of a pleasant, tree-lined street, raising money for terrorists and genocidal fundamental Islamist groups. Not a pretty picture.

I'm sure that Code Pink will tell you that they are just trying to help the "oppressed." I'm sure that the woman who hosted the fundraiser will tell you that she's doing it for the cause of "human rights" as the St. Peter's marcher did. No doubt this woman's friends will say she is a lovely person, a former schoolteacher, and she may indeed be a pleasant, smiling grandmother serving tea and cookies. But despite her pleasant exterior and professed good intentions, that pleasant grandmother is raising money for groups that support religious persecution and implicitly condone genocide.

And this is happening right here. In Newton. Perhaps on your block.

Now, what are we going to do about it?