Linda Sarsour is a pro-Sharia anti-Semite; that means the New York Times loves her.

Comments interspersed below.

“A Muslim-American Activist’s Speech Raises Ire Even Before It’s Delivered,” by Eli Rosenberg, New York Times, May 26, 2017:

Linda Sarsour, one of the most prominent Muslim-American activists in New York, says the messages have been arriving by the hour recently. “Your time is coming.” “A good Arab is a dead Arab.” “You’re getting two bullets in your head.”

She “says” she has been receiving threats. This is news as far as the New York Times is concerned, although “journalist” Eli Rosenberg apparently doesn’t make any attempt to verify her claim. Meanwhile, Pamela Geller is the target of a fatwa from the Islamic State (ISIS). The Times, when it speaks about her, never leads with that information. Apparently, some death threats are just fine with the New York Times, if their targets are the Times’ ideological enemies.

Ms. Sarsour, one of the lead organizers of the Women’s March on Washington, has tackled issues like immigration policy, mass incarceration, stop-and-frisk and the New York Police Department’s spying operation on Muslims — all of which have largely inured her to hate-tinged criticism.

Note that everything the Times list shows her to be working actively to impede and obstruct counterterror efforts. The New York City of Sarsour’s dreams is supine and defenseless before the advancing jihad.

But it is the commencement address she is to deliver next week to about 100 students at the City University of New York School of Public Health that she says has drawn the most hostility and ire she has ever experienced. “Linda Sarsour is a Sharia-loving, terrorist-embracing, Jew-hating, ticking time bomb of progressive horror,” the conservative media personality Milo Yiannopoulos said at a rally on Thursday outside CUNY’s main office, as protesters held signs with images associated with the often racist and anti-Semitic language used by what is known as the alt-right, a far-right, white nationalist movement.

Note that the Times makes no attempt to determine whether or not Milo’s charges are true (they are). It just quickly changes the subject to signs “with images associated with the often racist and anti-Semitic language used by what is known as the alt-right.” Associated by whom? Why, by the New York Times, of course. This paragraph is tantamount to saying, “Milo made some charges against Sarsour, but protesters were holding signs bearing images that we have previously smeared as racist.”

The controversy over Ms. Sarsour’s appearance is the latest dispute in a heated national dialogue over free speech on university campuses. But in this instance, the roles have been reversed. Other protests have largely pitted left-wing students against conservative speakers like Mr. Yiannopoulos, Ann Coulter, Gavin McInnes and Charles Murray. This time, conservatives are leading the charge against Ms. Sarsour.

This is false. The controversy is not over her appearance at CUNY. We who are routinely barred from speaking on college campuses, or shouted down by fascists when we do, would never dream of saying she should not allowed to speak. In fact, I would be happy to go to CUNY at my own expense to debate her. The controversy is over whether she should be celebrated and lionized, given the honor of delivering the commencement address, in light of her numerous hateful, anti-Semitic, and pro-Sharia statements.

Her critics are a strange mix, including right-leaning Jews and Zionists, commentators like Pamela Geller, and some members of the alt-right. They accuse her of sympathizing with terrorists, supporting Sharia law and anti-Semitism for statements she has made about politics in the Middle East.

And with good reason, although the Times never presents this evidence or bothers to debunk it.

The CUNY chancellor, James B. Milliken, has defended the appearance on the basis of free speech, and a group of CUNY professors, some prominent progressives and liberal Jewish groups have spoken in her support.

Free speech? Funny how universities seldom remember that principle when a conservative speaker comes around.

Fred Smith Jr., a constitutional scholar and assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law, said the controversy was a reminder of the bipartisan nature of the outcry over free-speech issues. “There are a few people who have been very effective in branding the left at shutting down free speech, but the moment they are confronted with leftist speech they don’t like, they are equally outraged and poised to suppress that speech,” he said. “I don’t think that’s the answer for either side. The more you try to suppress speech, the more the ideas of the suppressed speaker become salient to more people. It makes the person more well known and attracts more people to those ideas.”

Once again, this is off the point, and an apparently deliberate obfuscation. The controversy is not over whether or not she can speak. It is over whether or not she should be the commencement speaker.

The debate about Ms. Sarsour’s speech began last month with Dov Hikind, a conservative Democratic state assemblyman who represents a largely Orthodox community in Brooklyn. Mr. Hikind said Ms. Sarsour should not have been chosen, pointing to her recent appearance in Chicago with Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted in Israel of playing a role in the bombing of a supermarket that killed two civilians in 1969. Mr. Hikind also pointed to a picture Ms. Sarsour once posted on Twitter of a Palestinian boy standing across from police officers with rocks in his hands. Ms. Sarsour wrote that the photo was “The definition of courage.” Mr. Hikind said in a phone interview, “You can’t support a terrorist and then be the commencement speaker at a university that my taxes help pay for.”

Indeed. And there is no doubt that her speech will be a pep rally of anti-Israel, anti-American agitprop, with heavy helpings of self-righteousness and self-pity.

….Brad Lander, a Democratic city councilman from Brooklyn, described the accusations against Ms. Sarsour as “preposterous,” and pointed to her help in raising money to repair two Jewish cemeteries that were vandalized in St. Louis and Pennsylvania in February. “She’s been in my synagogue,” he said. “She and my rabbi are friends. There’s no doubt that part of what this is is backlash against the idea of having a Palestinian-American as a visible leader and inheritor of the civil rights movement.” He added, “One terrible feature of the Trump regime is that it threatens to tribalize all of us.”

The fact that she repaired these cemeteries does not negate her pro-Sharia or viciously anti-Israel statements. She even declared recently that feminists could not support Israel. Lander is taking an incident that was an obvious bid to wrongfoot her opponents as a reversal of her entire stance regarding Israel. It wasn’t.

At the protest, even Mr. Yiannopoulos briefly acknowledged Ms. Sarsour’s right to speak, before making a racially tinged joke about her getting paid in goats. He was more restrained in an emailed response to a question. “Unlike some of the other speakers, I don’t want Sarsour canceled,” he wrote. “I want as many people as possible to hear her odious thoughts. That doesn’t mean I can’t explain why she is dangerous and wrong.”

Once again: the problem is that she is the commencement speaker. She should be canceled as the commencement speaker. And brought back to debate with Pamela Geller or some other defender of freedom.

Ms. Sarsour said she had nothing to apologize about for her views. She said there were questions about the integrity of Ms. Odeh’s conviction many decades ago. The photo of the Palestinian boy was taken during a week when about 200 Palestinians had been killed, she said. And she said she had never planned to speak about Israel in the commencement address.

We’ll see about that. In any case, note how the Times gives Sarsour space to rebut the charges, and never bothers to check on her claims about Odeh’s conviction or the photo. The Times never offers this service to those who aren’t Leftists.

Ms. Sarsour said she believed she became a target for far-right conservatives in the days after the Women’s March, which she said was evidence of a larger “Islamophobia industry.”

The claim that there is a well-heeled “Islamophobia industry” churning out hateful material against Muslims is a staple of Leftist propaganda. Ironically, the organizations such as the Center for American Progress and others that have produced lavishly printed “Islamophobia” reports have budgets exponentially larger than those of the organizations they defame as “Islamophobic.” If there is any “industry” here, it is that of the truly well-heeled effort to defame and destroy those who oppose jihad terror and Sharia oppression.

She has hired two private bodyguards to accompany her to public events. She says she regrets that she has not been able to shield her three children, all teenagers, from the vitriol and threats she has received online. Still, she said, she does not plan to be silent. “I’m Muslim, I’m Palestinian, I’m a woman in a hijab,” she said. “I’m everything they stand against.” She added, “I have a bigger mission here.”

In reality, she is a foe of counterterror efforts, a supporter of the jihad against Israel, and a woman who normalizes and legitimizes the Sharia oppression of women. Indeed, everything we stand against.