Use Your Seichel
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
There’s a Yiddish word called “seichel,” which is hard to match in English but which connotes a combination of intelligence, wisdom, and street smarts. It’s the quality Mayor Bloomberg was missing when he decided to name to the city’s Human Rights Commission a man, Omar Mohammedi, who serves as general counsel to the New York chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. Mr. Mohammedi may be a fine person. But with respect to Jews, CAIR is an organization of almost singular malevolence. It poses as a responsible, centrist institution concerned with improving relations between America and the Islamic community. Its members have met at the White House with the president. Its apologists will try to deny the old hatreds, claiming its criticisms are directed only at Israel. That will wash with some people, but the war against Israel is a war against all Jews.
This has been stated plainly by such enemies as Hezbollah, whose Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah was quoted the other day in the Star newspaper in Lebanon as saying that it would be a good thing for more Jews to come to Israel so that Hezbollah will not have to hunt them down in other countries. Hezbollah, incidentally, is one of the organizations that members of CAIR have praised as doing good works. CAIR has also defended such organizations as the Holy Land Foundation, the Global Relief Foundation, and the Benevolence International Foundation, all of which have been shut down by the American government on suspicion that they are funneling money to terrorist groups in the Middle East.
A page on the Web site of CAIR’s New York chapter has a petition asking that these groups be reactivated. The site also also has a petition that suggests someone “impersonated” the Muslim hijackers on September 11 and speculates on who was really behind the attack: “[who] could ‘benefit’ from this horrific tragedy?” In 1998, CAIR was a co-sponsor of the notorious rally at Brooklyn College where a crowd reportedly was led in a chant of “No to the Jews, descendants of the apes.” CAIR refuses to return calls inquiring about all this. The mayor’s office has claimed, “We are appointing an individual, not an organization.” In the wake of the attacks on America of September 11, the city’s Human Rights Commission and the people of the city deserve better.
