Mad Jad’s Night on the Town

Last night President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran was honored by various pacifist religious groups with an Iftar dinner at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in New York. According to The Jerusalem Post:

Several hundred people — including a Jewish rabbi and a radical Muslim cleric — joined Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for a traditional breaking of the Ramadan fast Thursday before he left New York.

Outside, several hundred people gathered along 42nd Street across from the Grand Hyatt Hotel, next to Grand Central Terminal, waving Israeli flags and signs reading “No feast for the beast.”

Among the speakers addressing the demonstrators — and the crush of evening commuters who paused outside the train station to listen — was MK Aryeh Eldad, who exhorted his listeners not to “wait in vain” for a diplomatic solution to the Iranian threat.

“We know that we can trust no one but ourselves, and we will stop you, be sure, in whatever way we can,” Eldad cried. “Your end, your end, Ahmadinejad, will serve as a lesson for any anti-Semite.”

Inside, well-dressed guests lined up in the Hyatt’s plush lobby and chatted amiably while waiting to go through tight security on the way into the ballroom, where Ahmadinejad was scheduled to appear alongside the president of the United Nations’ General Assembly, Nicaraguan diplomat Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann.

The controversial event — an Iftar meal to break the Ramadan fast, held at the Grand Hyatt Hotel in Manhattan — was organized by a coalition of pacifist churches and billed as an interfaith dialogue on the topic of “the significance of religious contributions to peace.”

The “Stop Ahmadinejad” website has posted a report on the dinner — evidently the people who organized the rally had someone on the inside.

The most appalling fact to emerge is that one of the honored guests was Nihad Awad, the founder of CAIR and an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. Here’s what Stop Ahmadinejad has to say:

Below is a pdf of the Hyatt Ahmadinejad Iftar Dinner program (2 pages) distributed to attendees — text of the program here in html.

Page 1 of the 9-25 Hyatt Ahmadinejad Dinner: (title page, credits page) (pdf)

Page 2 of the 9-25 Hyatt Ahmadinejad Dinner: (Program and speakers) (pdf)

One of the featured keynote speakers was Nihad Awad, Founder and Executive Director of the Council on American Islamic Relations. CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial (newly re-started) on funding for terrorism. The Investigative Project reports extensively on Nihad Awad’s background as a supporter of Hamas, with strong evidence that Awad opposes Israel and does not support U.S. peace initiatives in the region. Before founding CAIR, Awad was public relations director for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) in 1993 and 1994. Review the Investigative Project's entire excellent 10-part series on CAIR; below is an excerpt from their profile on Hyatt keynote speaker and CAIR founder Nihad Awad:

“U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler found that the Islamic Association for Palestine (“IAP”) has acted in support of Hamas. Included in that support was the IAP’s publication and distribution of Hamas documents, including its virulently anti-Semitic charter. In November 2004, a federal magistrate judge held IAP civilly liable for $156 million in the 1996 shooting of an American citizen by a Hamas member in the West Bank. The judge found that IAP had “published and distributed an abundance of pro-Hamas documents.” The U.S. Appeals Court in the Seventh Circuit overturned the award in December 2007 after determining the Boims had not done enough to establish that the groups’ support for Hamas contributed, even indirectly, to their son’s murder. The case was sent the case back to the district court to allow for additional proceedings.

- - - - - - - - -

Evidence released in the 2007 HLF trial reveals that IAP was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “Palestine Committee” in the United States. According to an internal Brotherhood report, the Brotherhood created the IAP to “serve the cause of Palestine on the political and the media fronts.” An internal memo calls on the Palestine Committee members, to work to “increase the financial and the moral support for Hamas” to “fight surrendering solutions,” and to publicize and focus on “the savagery of the Jews.”

Given the opportunity to distance himself from IAP in September 2003 Senate testimony, CAIR Executive Director Awad instead chose to defend the group: “The Islamic Association of Palestine (IAP) is a grassroots organization which continues to function legally and has only been ‘linked’ through allusion and no charge of criminality has been brought against the organization.”

Keep an eye on Stop Ahmadinejad for more news on this topic as it develops.

The little soirée in New York last night was yet another instance of the Demonic Convergence, the merger of the extreme Left and radical Islam. Notice that for the occasion the Sunnis and the Shi’ites — Hamas and Iran — managed to shelve their differences in order to plot the ascendancy of Islam and the destruction of the infidels.

Once the West is vanquished and the World Caliphate is established there will be plenty of time for them to resume the slitting of each other’s throats. In the meantime, they’re ready to do business to their mutual advantage.

It is truly an indictment of the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, and the State Department that these agencies enabled — indeed, ensured — that CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial, met and presented with Ahmadinejad last night.

Apparently our government’s allegiance to the Saudis so exceeds their allegiance to the safety of the American people that we now have a new meaning for the 9-11 Report’s recommendation for “connecting the dots”.

It no longer means having better intelligence. Instead it means helping Ahmadinejad — the head of what the State Department identifies as a terrorist state — get connected with Nihad Awad. It means connecting the head of the Hamas front group CAIR, an unindicted co-conspirator for terrorism funding in the newly re-started Holy Land Foundation Trial, with a leader who calls publicly for the destruction of Israel.

Nice dots. Nice connection.


Hat tip: Lionel.