The Bevvie of Choice at Squishy Interfaith Repasts--Why, It's Kool-Aid, of Course

Phyllis Chesler attended one of those festive "withhold-the-rancor-and-pass-the-tasty-samosas" gatherings and recorded her dismay. Bruce Bawer recounts the unpleasantness for FrontPage Magazine:

Chesler quotes the self-important rabbi [Mark Schneier] as saying that “seven years ago, my friend, Russell Simmons, challenged me to close the divide, narrow the chasm between Muslims and Jews. And now, we are now the international address for Muslim-Jewish relations.” So what have the name-dropping rabbi and the deceptively charming imam accomplished together? Well, one thing they’ve done is to jointly protest Rep. Peter King’s extremely important hearings about radicalism among American Muslims. They’ve also sponsored so-called “twinning” programs, each of which brings together members of one synagogue and one mosque on an annual basis, presumably to talk about peaceful co-existence and such. As Chesler notes, these programs take place in North America and Europe but not, ahem, “in the Arab Middle East or in Muslim Asia.” Chesler also mentions “the colossal failure of their Buffalo ‘twinning’ program,” which apparently led to an unpleasant confrontation between some “well-intentioned Rabbis” and a “Jew-hating radical Sheikh.” Gee, who’d have expected that?

Ultimately, Chesler found the evening at the Jewish Community Center “disappointing” and “boring” because “too much was avoided. Too much ‘feel good’ Kool-aid was passed around. Everyone seemed to be drinking it. What was not said was far more important than what was said.” Chesler is far less rough on the imam than she is on the rabbi, whom she describes, not (it appears) without ample justification, as “a dangerous Court Jew who is profiting from the gravy train of the ‘interfaith’ business. He is profiting from his fiddling while Israel and the world burns. He is part of a grand taqiyya effort to present Muslims in a time of Islamism as peaceful partners. He is on a mission to persuade Jews to become agreeable dhimmis ‘for their own good’; otherwise, things will go badly for them...

Suggested conversation at said gatherings: "These samosas are delicious, imam." Also--"Could you kindly pass the purple Kool-Aid?" Topics to avoid like the plague: Israel, Zionism, taquiyya, dhimmitude, jihad, sharia.