[The following, by Charles Jacobs, appears in The Jewish Advocate.]

Just days before the Gaza flotilla, Jews were attending to a smaller but more proximate fight: State Treasurer Tim Cahill, who is campaigning as an independent for governor, charged that Deval Patrick's May 22 visit to the Muslim American Society's (MAS) Saudi-funded Roxbury mega-mosque was a case of "pandering" - and of not taking the threat of terrorism seriously.

In response, the MAS - which is called by federal prosecutors "the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America" - gathered a few hundred people at the mosque and did what it does best when critics raise concerns about who are the trustees and what do mosque leaders teach Boston Muslims about Jews, gays, women, Christians and America. The mosque leaders ducked the questions and charged their critics with bigotry. The MAS lambasted Cahill.

As if on cue, media stenographers dutifully took down and reported the bigotry charge against Cahill as though it was obviously true. And, again as if on cue, prominently noted and photographed was kippah-wearing Rabbi Eric Gurvis, hugging Bilal Kaleem, who heads MAS.

The real story is what actually happened during the governor's visit?

Inside the mosque, the MAS asked Patrick to consent to seven "recommendations." With one reservation (it's not only Muslims whose bosses need to know about their prayer times), the governor accepted all seven. Most controversial is that the MAS ("overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood," please recall) handed over a $50,000 check to a member of state Attorney General Martha Coakley's office to fund a program to train Massachusetts police officers in "sensitivity."

Who handed over the check? Imam Abdullah Faarooq, who is a graduate of University of Massachusetts and an American convert to Islam. Faarooq is also a supporter of two Boston area radicals, one facing trial for and the other convicted of trying to kill Americans.

Aafia Siddiqui, a former member of Faarooq's mosque, is now in jail for shooting FBI agents in Pakistan. Tarek Mehana, a young Muslim arrested in Sudbury in October, is alleged to have sought terrorist training in Yemen and plotted to machine gun shopping malls in New England. You can see Patrick embracing Faarooq at the mosque in a seven-minute video made by my group, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (visit www.peaceandtolerance.org).

Also in our film is a sermon Faarooq delivered in a Brighton mosque in March. Faarooq teaches Boston Muslims that they are obliged by their religion to stand up for their co-religionists and urges them to support Siddiqui and Mehana. "If there's anyone that should be brave, it must be us," Faarooq said in the sermon. "You must grab onto this rope, grab onto the shovel, grab onto the gun and the sword. Don't be afraid to step out into this world and do your job."

Hmmm.... Will Massachusetts police be instructed to be more sensitive to Faarooq's friends? (Martha, give back the check!)

So what's with Patrick? A year ago, I gave him the stunning report in the Boston Phoenix, documenting the controversies over the near give-away of the public land to a controversial Muslim board of trustees. And I told him that the Jewish community was concerned. And Patrick lived in Sudan: He must know that the Muslim Brotherhood government there has slaughtered 2 million and enslaved hundreds of thousands of black Christians and animists in a self-declared jihad. He knows - or could easily know - that Faarooq denies that Arabs in Sudan enslaved blacks. And he could easily have been briefed by the heads of the Jewish organizations he works with here - the Jewish Community Relations Council and its parent Combined Jewish Philanthropies, both of which skipped the grand opening of the mosque precisely because of concerns they have about the mosque's leaders and ideology. (It is, however, unclear if Patrick was ever briefed by Jewish leaders on their concerns.)

Can it be that Governor Patrick, untutored about the facts, is simply naive? Cahill reminded the public that Patrick "attributed the 9/11 bombings to a 'failure of human understanding in America.'"

Finally, why does Rabbi Gurvis refuse to acknowledge what he has been shown in official documents: that the MAS is a Muslim Brotherhood organization; that the mosque was funded by Wahabbi Saudis, not known to fund moderate mosques; and that the MAS/ISB leaders have invited defamers of Jews and Christians to "educate" the historically moderate Boston Muslim community? Rabbi Gurvis knows all this. Maybe for him it's "my Muslim friends, right or wrong." Or maybe the rabbi's need to demonstrate his moral superiority by caring for the "other" - no matter how radical or extreme - trumps any foreseeable consequences.

Stay tuned. Long after the flotilla sinks from view, this will be with us.

Charles Jacobs is president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance.