Gary Rosenblatt’s column, “Where Muslims, Jews Clash — And Hug” (Nov. 20) makes it quite clear why the MLI (Muslim Leadership Institute) founded by the Shalom Hartman Institute of Jerusalem and New York is considered “controversial” and has been kept “under wraps.”
Whereas MLI was set up as an experiment to “offer American Muslim leaders a deeper understanding of Jewish identity and history,” Rosenblatt writes that after his own weekend with the Muslim leaders, facilitated by the Hartman Institute, he is the one who has changed his views: “I wondered if and how I’d approach things differently now. … and perhaps make room for — ‘the other’s’ — truth,” he admits.
Just what is the Muslim “truth” that Rosenblatt has discovered? And why has he become concerned about how “some of the people I’d met would read the articles and opinion columns dealing with the Mideast conflict” — those, of course, that made Israel’s case?
This is the very dynamic that our vulnerable unprepared campus youth suffer, propagandized by well-trained anti-Israel pros. But when American Jewish leaders, those in a position to influence the Jewish community itself, fall into the same trap, they need to do the right thing: please leave — and make way for leaders whose support for Israel has not been compromised.
Manhattan
