About Talking Tachlis

Monday, April 4, 2011

Wednesday Program to Feature Humanitarian Hero and Israel Advocacy Icon Charles Jacobs

COME HEAR LEGENDARY CHARLES JACOBS
THIS WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6
7:30 PM AT CONGREGATION SHAAREY ZEDEK, SOUTHFIELD

Come meet a true "tzadik" in the flesh this Wednesday night when ZOA presents humanitarian icon and Israel advocacy giant, journalist and Harvard Phd Dr. Charles Jacobs. He was honored by the Forward as one of the nation's top 50 most influential Jewish leaders.

Dr. Jacobs is just back from the Sudan, whose genocide he was among the first to expose in such publications as the New York Times two decades ago. He has been to the Sudan many times to secure the freedom of more than 2,000 slaves and to chronicle the slaughter, torture, rape, and other human rights abuses suffered at the hands of the North Sudan Arab and Darfuri slavemasters. His account of his previous trip in January to free hundreds more slaves and to document the historic vote of South Sudan to secede from the North was featured in the Wall Street Journal.
A film crew also recorded his interviews with the slaves in this stirring YouTube Video .

Jacobs was honored by Coretta Scott King and the Mayor of Boston for first ever Boston Freedom Award for his abolitionist work and was invited to the White House for signing of Sudan Peace Act.

Though his name unfortunately isn't a household word, American Jewry has benefited greatly from his genius and his commitment to our people. Jacobs, along with Andrea Levin, co-founded CAMERA, the pre-eminent watchdog of media reporting on the Middle East which exposes and redresses media bias against Israel. In response to the alarming escalation of anti-Israel hostilities on our college campuses, Jacobs founded the David Project to arm students and train teachers how to most effectively rebut anti-Israel polemics in the classroom and on campus.

Jacobs's work has had a direct impact on our Detroit community. Not only have local educators and students attended David Project training seminars, Jacobs sent a coach to advise U-M students challenging the faculty-initiated divestment drive a few years ago. He also sent a research analyst to brief residents of Franklin on the individuals and organizations behind the Huda School and their worrisome ties to the North American Islamic Trust and the Muslim Brotherhood. Jacobs was among several prominent individuals who challenged the Islamic Society of Boston and exposed its radical ties.

It was about at this time that Jacobs founded, along with Dennis Hale and Sheikh Ahmed Mansour -- Americans for Peace and Tolerance. APT works to expose and challenge radical Islamic organizations and to support moderate Muslims in America. Dr. Mansour is an Al Azhar-educated reformist Islamic scholar who fled his native Egypt after persecution by radical Islamists and imprisonment by Egyptian authorities. He is the spiritual leader of a reformist movement of Islam called the Quranists. He was a fellow at Harvard’s Scholars at Risk program and is a member of the Free Muslims Coalition. Dr.Dennis Hale is a lay eucharistic minister in the Episcopalian Church and a professor of political science at Boston College, where he was Chair of the Department of Political Science for eight years.
Jacobs was key to helping secure the testimony for Rep. Peter King's recent hearings on homegrown terrorism of Melvin Bledsoe, an African-American Baptist father whose son, Carlos, an all American boy, converted to Islam, went to Yemen to train as a jihadist, and returned to bomb a rabbi's home and kill a young US marine at the Little Rock, Arkansas recruiting center. Here is the link to the trailer of the forthcoming documentary APT will be releasing, "Losing Our Sons."


“Losing Our Sons” is a documentary film that, according to its press release, " reveals how radical Islam dominates the leadership of the Muslim American community in Nashville; and how misguided government and university officials, the media, as well as civic and religious leaders failed to acknowledge, intervene, or report clear indications of Islamist radicalization in the community

"APT has been working with grassroots community groups in support of local efforts to educate the public about the threat to American civil society from the radicalization of America’s historically moderate Muslim community. This effort includes empowering truly moderate Muslims to reclaim their community."

Jacobs has been at the forefront of the crusade to awaken and educate the Jewish community about the threats posed most immediately to us by the Muslim Brotherhood and the critical importance of rigorous due diligence by Jewish communal leadership prior to engaging in interfaith dialog and partnerships.

Talking Tachlis admires the courage and principled outspokenness of this inspiring, ennobling tzadik. We have featured Dr. Jacobs' commentaries here on the failure of Jewish organizations to support students on campus who are facing untenable anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism.

For more information on his organization, Americans for Peace and Tolerance, check out his website.



No comments:

Post a Comment