This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3120
August 23, 2007
Does KGIA Supporter Michael Feinberg Also Support Hamas?
By William Mayer and Beila Rabinowitz
August 22, 2007 - San Francisco, CA - PipeLineNews.org - A rally was held on the evening of August 19 at the NYC Department of Education in front of the Tweed Courthouse on Chambers Street, by supporters of the Khalil Gibran International Academy.
The purpose of the rally was ambitious; attempt to put the face of moderation on the school after its principal Dhabah Almontaser was forced to resign over her support of the sale of "Intifada NYC" t-shirts by a group, AWAAM - Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media - with which she was affiliated.
Almontaser's dissembling on the matter and her making light of the Palestinian terror campaign against Israeli civilians resulted in a public uproar which forced her out as KGIA's principal.
While at first blush the rally appeared to be exactly what its planners had hoped, in reality it was merely another effort by those associated with KGIA to deceive New Yorkers into thinking that the Arab school will not become a madrassah, an Islamist indoctrination center.
The two main organizers and sponsors of the rally were AWAAM, the Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media, the same group that was caught hawking [and still defends] the "Intifada NYC" t-shirts, and the New York chapter of CAIR, the Saudi funded, Hamas front group which was recently named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation Hamas fundraising prosecution.
One of the prominent speakers at the assembly was "rabbi" Michael Feinberg, the executive director of the Greater New York Labor Religion Coalition, a consortium of hard leftists, pro-open border advocates and radical environmentalists.
Feinberg presented a much-needed, decidedly non-Muslim PR face for the event, a model of inclusiveness which found him gushing that KGIA, "represents a gift of vision, a vision of tolerance of cooperation of community understanding, that is what New York is about..."
However a few months previous to that reasoned charade, Feinberg in another New York setting was anything but "a vision of tolerance."
At a May 5 demonstration against CAIR New York conducted by the terrorism watchdog group Americans Against Hate [AAH, www.americansagainsthate.org] the group's chairman, Joe Kaufman was accosted by the same Michael Feinberg.
As the below video demonstrates, Feinberg's frenzied confrontation bordered on assault, with him shoving towards Kaufman, hitting his camera, while calling Kaufman a Nazi, one of his associates a "right-wing nut job" and signing off by telling Kaufman, a New York native, "Go home you thugs!"
Feinberg - who refused to reveal his identity at the time - stated on camera that he was invited to speak at the CAIR fundraiser and his presence there has given rise to speculation that he supports Hamas, since CAIR's ties to Hamas are irrefutable/
Editor's note: in an email communication to PipeLineNews dated 8/25/07, Mr. Feinberg denies that he supports Hamas stating, "I have neither support for nor any connection to Hamas whatsoever."]
Feinberg is no stranger to supporting terror friendly groups, in 2002 he attended a rally organized by "Not in our Name" which was addressed by representatives of CAIR, the suicide bomber supporting International Solidarity Movement [ISM] and attorney Lynne Stewart.
Stewart acted as counsel for terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who was convicted in 1996 for masterminding the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. She was convicted of passing messages from Rahman, while he was in custody, to his Muslim terror group in Egypt which included Rifai Taha, an associate of Osama bin-Laden.
Lies, half-truths, stonewalling, subterfuge...that has been the stock-in-trade of KGIA supporters as they hope to dupe New York City parents into the belief that the school will be anything but a continuing problem and a hotbed of radical Islamist activism, with Mr. Feinberg's Jekyll and Hyde performance being only the most recent in a long series of glaring demonstrations. http://www.pipelinenews.org/index.cfm?page=kaufman82207%2Ehtm
MIM: Click on link to see a video of Feinberg's attack on Joe Kaufman the Chairman of Americans Against Hate.
This item is available on the Militant Islam Monitor website, at http://www.militantislammonitor.org/article/id/3120