Pamela Geller, an activist and author who focuses on radical Islam, secured April 14 speaking engagements at synagogues in New York and New Jersey following the cancelation of her previously scheduled talk at Great Neck Synagogue on Long Island.
“Rabbi Yoseph Geisinsky of the Chabad, Great Neck and Rabbi Dr. Bernhard Rosenberg of Congregation Beth-El in Edison, New Jersey have both invited me to speak at their synagogues on Sunday—the same day I was scheduled to speak at the Great Neck Synagogue on Long Island until that synagogue caved to a leftist/Islamic supremacist smear and intimidation campaign,” Geller wrote April 11 on her blog, Atlas Shrugs.
Critics of Geller, co-founder of watchdog organizations including the Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America, say she promotes Islamophobia, but Geller says she is not anti-Islamic and only opposes “political Islam.”
Great Neck Synagogue said it canceled Geller’s talk, “The Imposition of Sharia in America,” due to legal and security concerns.
“As the notoriety and media exposure of the planned program this Sunday have increased, so has the legal liability and potential security exposure of our institution and its member families,” the synagogue’s board wrote in an email to members, The Jewish Week reported.
Geller wrote on her blog that the cancelation “was particularly craven and cowardly, as it sends the message that if leftists and Muslims defame those they hate loudly enough and for a long enough time, they will succeed in getting them silenced.”
The rabbis of Chabad of Great Neck and Beth-El in Edison, however, “are standing up for the freedom of speech and the defense of the Jewish people” by hosting Geller, she wrote.
“They’re saying no to thuggery and pressure tactics,” Geller wrote. “Above all, they’re standing up for the truth.”