So Mayor Bloomberg sent his spokesman, Ed Skyler, out on Wednesday to denounce as “extremists” those who have criticized the selection of the general counsel of the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations, Omar Mohammedi, to sit on the city’s Commission on Human rights. Mr. Skyler also cited as reassurance the fact that CAIR sent the mayor a letter disavowing support for terrorism. Well, by the Bloomberg-Skyler definition, the “extremists” include 23 members of the New York City Council; the public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum; the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Coalition for Jewish Concerns-AMCHA, and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. All of them have expressed strong concern about the choice of Mr. Mohammedi. During his mayoral campaign, Mr. Bloomberg sent glossy direct-mail pieces to the homes of Jewish voters. “He learned from his parents,” the mailings said. “Mike Bloomberg for Mayor — Protecting Our Community.” The brochures boasted that Mr. Bloomberg “has been an active supporter of many volunteer and non-profit organizations,” then they went on to name the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee. Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign mail even bragged that he had been given the 1997 Herbert H. Lehman Award by the American Jewish Committee. Since the mayor campaigned on the basis of his support for these groups, it seems treacherous of him to denounce the groups as extremist for trying to do what Mr. Bloomberg himself promised to do when he was trying to get elected: protect the Jewish community.

The real extremists here are the Council on American Islamic Relations. A quick visit to the Web site of the New York chapter of CAIR makes this clear. It includes a statement claiming that three of the 19 suspected September 11 hijackers are still alive, and asks, “Why are Muslim Arabs been implicated in this terrorism? And, who could ‘benefit’ from this horrific tragedy?” A letter written by the executive director of CAIR’s New York chapter, Ghazi Y. Khankan, calls the prime minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, a “butcher/terrorist.” Mr. Khankan tells the American Jewish Committee in a letter, “we wish to let you know that among our objectives are to liberate the U.S. Government and Congress from your illegal bribes and disproportionate influence on America’s domestic and foreign policies.” Elsewhere, the CAIR New York chapter Web site seeks donations to place in American public libraries copies of a book that says the “pro-Israel bias of government leaders” is to blame for Hamas and Hezbollah being put on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations. The book gives positive descriptions of Hezbollah, the Iranian- and Syrian-financed organization, and the militant Palestinian Arab group Hamas — two groups responsible for the killing of Americans. As recently as Sunday night, at a conference at a hotel near La Guardia Airport, Mr. Khankan claimed, in the course of a tirade against the American Jewish Committee, that “Americans who control the media control the government.”

Mr. Mohammedi has so far refused to answer questions from the press about CAIR or about what he thinks of Hamas, Hezbollah, the American Jewish Committee, or the World Trade Center bombing. This is a city where thousands were killed by terrorists animated by the same anti-Israel views and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories that infect CAIR. The politicians and Jewish groups sounding an alarm about this appointment are doing the mayor and the city a service. It’s just shameful for Mr. Bloomberg to denounce them as extremists.