And the San Francisco Chronicle prints it...

The Middle East is the land of 1000 Conspiracies (a figure of speech, the real figure is much higher). Closed, tribal societies and police states breed such things. Sure, we have them, too, but in a free society with the open exchange of ideas, such things are far more muted.

In the Middle East, this stuff is used by demagogues to inflame the masses. In the Middle East, this stuff gets people killed. In the Middle East, this is what keeps whole societies in the gutter.

If you ever needed a good indicator of the poison-carrier the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) represents for us, just read this SF Chronicle piece and understand that nothing Omar Ahmad says in it is accurate. Nothing: On Old Jerusalem Chipping at foundations of belief - Excavations threaten mosque.

Let's do a rapid-fire fisk of the entire thing.

First, the Mugrabi Ramp excavation does not threaten the foundations of anything on the Temple Mount. That is the prime slander here. Anyone who can view a photograph or read a map can see it couldn't possibly do so, and further, this is a reversal of truth, since in fact it's the Islamic Waqf that has taken bulldozers to guts of the Temple Mount and literally thrown its Jewish archaeological record into the garbage and caused its walls to bulge -- literally "threatened its foundations." Ahmad complains about Israeli treatment of Jerusalem since 1967, and tries to portray history as universal brotherhood, but he doesn't tell you that the Arabs kicked the Jews out in 1948 and destroyed their Temples, that the Jordanians used the Wall as a garbage dump and Jewish gravestones as pavers. He describes various conspiracies against the Mosque and the Dome, but doesn't point out that these were all foiled by ISRAEL. He claims that Israel covered up an archaeological find, but doesn't point out that the fact is that Israeli scientists hadn't studied the find and released their results -- no conspiracy, just science and careful announcements with regard to sensitive sites.

Finally, it's a laugh in the extreme to hear Ahmad try to claim that it's Israel that violates religious rights, when in fact, Israel is the only defender of others' religious rights in the region.

Honest Reporting has a release on this, here: Israeli Freedom of Religion Attacked in San Francisco Chronicle

It's important to keep reminding people that Omar Ahmad was the President of the Hamas-front Islamic Association for Palestine, and along with former IAP officials Nihad Awad and Ibrahim Hooper, founded CAIR.

After the IAP had its assets frozen for funding terrorism, these guys got smart and put a new face on their efforts...thus CAIR. Want to see their real face? Watch the video of IAP's 1989 convention in Kansas City. I posted this before (original source: Shoebat.com), but nothing gets the point across like moving pictures. Total running time of both of these videos is about six and a half minutes. After reading Ahmad's op-ed, his and his groups' background, and watching this video...why would anyone choose CAIR as a legitimate partner for interfaith dialog? That's just not what they're about.

BTW, the Sheik Qaradhawi in the video is the same guy so idolized by our own Islamic Society of Boston...