Here is another good example of yellow journalism and reporters working to advance the cause of Hamas-CAIR. This news article about last night’s spectacular event in Mesa isn’t journalism, it’s Hamas- CAIR propaganda. The reporter, Maria Polletta, emailed me asking if I would comment. I called her back and left her a message three hours before she filed the story but she made no attempt to reach me. [Update: Scroll down for Ms. Polletta’s tweets in response to my not being given the opportunity to comment — even though she was at the event and could have easily asked me anything there.]
The gist of Maria Polletta’s “reporting” is terror-linked CAIR’s press release trying to get about my lecture last night canceled. Polletta followed their lead and focused on my post assuring people that there would be armed security at the event in light of recent death threats made against my life by devout Muslims and supporters of the Islamic State.
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Maria Polletta never mentions the death threats, even though she refers to this post. Neither did CAIR’s press release. Maybe she never read it — maybe she just cribbed the CAIR presser, like the good little lapdog she is. She not only smears me, but attempts to smear the good people of the Red Mountain Tea party by association.
Does Ms. Polletta mean to suggest that we should not defend ourselves?
Headlined, “Mesa ‘tea party’ forum raises concern….” Concern? From whom? Terror-tied CAIR? Enemies of free speech?
In her “reporting,” she lifts whole parts of CAIR’s press release, making sure to include all of their smears. She refers to me as a “anti-Islamic” and “inflammatory,” and includes CAIR’s calling me an “Islamophobe” who runs a “hate blog” in its statement. She never mentions that I have more readers in one hour than her paper gets in a month.
Here’s a screenshot of my traffic that I just grabbed.
Polletta cherry-picks smears from the subversive hard-left Southern Poverty Law Center and the uber-left ADL, but fails to mention that I am a three-time author, columnist and human rights activist who works to save lives. Neither does she mention that I was awarded the Guardian of Freedom award by the Nassau County Federation of Republican Women. The Queens Village Republican Club, the oldest Republican club in America, honored me as the “American Patriot of the Year” in February 2013. That same month, the Creative Zionist Coalition gave me the Queen Esther Award for Jewish Heroism. Or that I received the Annie Taylor Award for Courage in 2010 from the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
Ms. Polletta, the United States Marine Corps presented me with the flag flown on September 11, 2011 over Camp Leatherneck, “amid the battlefields of Afghanistan during decisive operations against enemy forces in Helmand Province.”
None of that made it into Polletta’s pile of dirt.
Although it has received millions of dollars in donations from foreign Islamic entities, it has not registered as a foreign agent as required by the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), despite spreading Islamic supremacist propaganda within the United States.
And although it presents itself as a civil rights group, CAIR actually has numerous links to hateful and violent Islamic supremacist and jihad groups.
CAIR founders Omar Ahmad and Niwad Awad (who still serves as CAIR’s executive director) were present at a Hamas planning meeting in Philadelphia in 1993, where they and other Hamas operatives conspired to raise funds for Hamas and to promote jihad in the Middle East. CAIR has steadfastly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups.
Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror:
An anti-Islamic blogger’s speech at a “tea party” event in Mesa continued without protest Monday night, despite concerns raised by the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ Arizona chapter.
CAIR had urged officials at East Valley High School to cancel the event to protect students’ safety. The Red Mountain Tea Party had rented space at the public charter school for the event, which attracted an estimated 200 people.
An office manager at the school said she’d received “aggressive hate calls” on Monday.
The backlash came after the blogger and commentator, Pamela Geller, published an inflammatory post on her website Sunday promoting the speaking engagement.
“As for the troublemakers and those threats from Islamic thugs and goons — we have armed security, plus it’s a gun state,” she wrote, saying she’d also be armed. “Trust me — you are going down first.”
CAIR, which describes itself as “America’s largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization,” said in a statement it would be “irresponsible for school officials to allow an event at which the sponsors and the speaker may be armed.”
The statement cited a federal law that prohibits people from carrying weapons in school zones without authorization, saying it is “a violation for anyone other than a police officer or a school security guard to discharge a firearm in a school zone for any reason.” There are some exceptions to the guns-within-school-zones rule, but they are narrow.
CAIR also called Geller an “Islamophobe” who runs a “hate blog” in its statement.
A New York-based organization Geller founded, Stop the Islamization of America, appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Extremist Files,” which Geller has called a “badge of honor.” She also has said Adolf Hitler was inspired by Islam.
East Valley High School Office Manager Joy Dees said the school regularly rents the building for receptions, shows and meetings and doesn’t “have any control or say in terms of who can rent out for what.”
Dees said Monday afternoon students would be long gone by the time the 7 p.m. meeting began and that the forum would be “purely an adult thing.”
“Once we leave here and the doors are closed, what they do is what they do,” she said.
Dees said she had directed callers wanting the meeting to be canceled to the event coordinator for the Red Mountain Tea Party, also known as the Arizona Red Mountain Patriots.
Asked whether evening renters of the facility had to follow the same school policies East Valley High has in place during the day, Dees said she wasn’t sure because she wasn’t privy to the details of the rental contract.
“Fortunately or unfortunately, we live in America, and it’s freedom of speech,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do about that.”
Later that evening, Geller told the crowd she was surprised there were no protesters outside. “Maybe it’s because I gave a warning that this was a gun state,” she said.
Randy Hatch, who facilitated the event for the tea-party group, said security guards in plainclothes were on site. “We have no official policy regarding people bringing weapons. We’d hoped they would be responsible and not bring them,” he said.
UPDATE: AZ Central reporter Maria Polletta has tweeted:
@PamelaGeller Timestamp this AM is time it was moved to Mesa page. I attended event last night and listened to/live tweeted parts of speech.
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samrocksc
8 years ago
Is this an actual article? This was really badly written.
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