AMERICAN MUSLIM COUNCIL THREATENS JEWISH

AMERICAN MUSLIM COUNCIL THREATENS JEWISH JOURNALIST: Howard Fienberg has the details on his Kesher Talk Weblog. Check out these quotes, from the Eli Kintisch, the journalist who was apparently threatened:

Could you imagine, I asked him, the outrage that would have followed if an official at a Jewish organization had kicked a reporter from an Arab paper out of an event? He apologized, saying he retracted any comment that I may have found threatening. “Sometimes people flare up,” he told me, referring to the crowd. “I just wanted to protect us, the council, and you from that.”

… Alamoudi may have been inclined to muzzle me because he’s “been burned” in the past himself. In 2000, he told a Washington rally that “we are all supporters of Hamas.” He added that he supported Hizbollah. Alamoudi says that he supports Hamas for its humanitarian efforts. In 1995 in The Washington Post, however, he defended Hamas leader Abu Marzook as “a moderate man on many issues. If you see him, he is like a child.” American authorities deported Marzook to Jordan in 1997 after an American judge found probable cause that he had he had helped plan 10 terrorist attacks against Israeli targets.

I wish my run-in with Alamoudi, mentioned in this week’s Weekly Standard, was an isolated case. But for all of my good relationships with officials at Arab-American organizations, Arab reporters and Arab diplomats, many members of the “other side” in town won’t speak to me. Some Arab reporters in town are unwilling to meet a Jewish reporter, and I’ve never gotten my calls returned from Saudi, Syrian or Iranian diplomats here.