Please note that she won a lawsuit against Rabbi Seidler Feller

Gary, that was me you spoke to yesterday. I was trying to be so careful not to impugn the AJCongress (nor you as regional director) along with Neuwirth herself. And now you’ve almost made me regret my conservatism. You are wrong. She did not “win a lawsuit” against him. The suit never went to trial. There was a settlement that undoubtedly Seidler Feller was pressured into agreeing to in order to regain his career and whatever was left of his tattered reputation after Neuwirth savaged it so unjustly.

How can the writer of this article accuse her of anything but being a victim

This is precisely the problem both with Neuwirth and those like this AJCongress official who only aid & abet her strange personality. Of course she is a victim. Just like the Jewish people and Israel are victims. Always the victim. Always aggrieved. Always beset upon on all sides by aggressors.

Gimme a break. She is no more a victim than I am. She provoked the altercation she had with Seidler Feller just as she goads Jewish peace activists here in the States and Israel. The evidence is there for you to see in plain sight yet you continue to defend this bully and abuser (yes, I deliberately use these terms since you and she have done such a “good” job of making the same outrageous accusation against Seidler Feller).

Seidler-Feller that should and has fessed up to his hostility to fellow Jews.

Excuse me, if he was hostile he was hostile to someone who accused him of being a “kapo” (& Neuwirth herself freely admits she taunted him with this epithet), that is someone who helped murder his fellow Jews during the Holocaust. If you were halfway intellectually honest you’d admit that you’d react the same way if the shoe was on the other foot & you were tarnished with the same abuse.

It seems that the tone you’ve adopted here is entirely different than the phone conversation we had yesterday in which you told me that you and the AJCongress were glad to be rid of Neuwirth. That you told her a “million times” to remove the reference to being a board member of the AJCongress from the multiple websites where it now appears. No outrage in your comment today on that score. What changed your opinion? Or has it changed? Yesterday, I respected you because you seemed to be distancing yourself from the outrages perpetrated by Neuwirth and Rowen Taylor. But today you embrace them once more. It makes one question your judgment as regional director of the AJCongress.

As for Allyson Rowen Taylor, she is a dedicated fighter and advocate for Israel and the Jewish people.

Boy, that’s different than the last statement you made to me about her in which you as much as said you found her to be a loose cannon and were happy she left your organization. You sure changed your tune in your public statements.

As for whether she is a “dedicated fighter for Israel” or a verbal bully, I’ll let my readers be the judge after they read my exposes on her outrageous behavior in my other posts about her. She is not an “advocate for Israel and the Jewish people.” She is an advocate for a narrow form of ideological nationalism that represents the far right end of the Israeli political spectrum.

in the heat of an argument she may have said some words she regrets

Nah, she doesn’t regret anything she said to Adam Horowitz. She only “regrets” that I exposed her hate and that she was forced to eat her words when The Forward reporter “called her” on it. Besides, she like Neuwirth is a serial bully who’s spread her hate all over the internet. Just do a Google search on her name or go to her Amazon.com profile & find many more similar outrageous statements that she’s made. How can she possibly apologize for all of them?

all the good she has done.

The fact that a senior AJCongress staffer can say that someone who accuses Jimmy Carter of “being in cahoots with Islamofascism” indicate either your depraved indifference to the truth of that of your national organization if it endorses your views. Someone should ask Neil Goldstein, your national director, whether he feels that Allyson Rowen Taylor represented the best of AJCongress when she made that statement (at a time, btw, when she WAS employed by AJCongress).

she has a son who put his life on the line by serving in the IDF and can personally attest from his accounts as to the real reality in Judea and Samaria.

There are thousands of Israelis who have served in the Occupied Territories who share an entirely different perspective on the brutal Israeli Occupation. Rowen Taylor has no monopoly on the truth merely because her son served in the IDF.

How many of those who made comments against her say that they had children serving in the IDF??

If we follow your logic then the only people who can criticize the U.S. war in Iraq are those whose children have served there. How many people consider this a valid argument?

personally have tried to work with Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller asking him to co-sponsor some speakers in spite of our differences, but he did not even have the courtesy of a response.

Who were the speakers you were trying to foist upon him? I’ll bet they were of the ilk of Nona Darwish, Tawfiq Hamad and Walid Shoebat or other far-right Israeli and Arab cranks who represent little more than themselves and a thin slice of other malcontents.

His most recent comments about the movie “Obsession” in the New York times on Feb 26th are shocking in their naivete.

Those who read the NYT article will recognize Obsession as a piece of agitprop filmmaking designed to elicit sympathy for a far-right political viewpoint on the Israeli Palestinian conflict. Seidler Feller is by no means alone in his judgment of this piece of political propaganda. I’m guessing from your defense that the AJCongress must be part of the national campus campaign to distribute this film widely on college campuses. If so, for shame. You’d do better to promote West Bank Story, an Israeli American film which posits a far more positive & hopeful view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

IN FACT, THE JEW ‘BAITER’ AS DESCRIBED IN DICK SILVERSTEIN’S EM SOUR GRAPED AND DISTORTED ARTICLE ABOVE IS A REFLECTION THAT APPLIES TO HIM AND HIS ILK. ALL ADJECTIVES ARE PERFECTLY APPLICABLE TO SILVERSTEIN’S MIND SET.

THIS CAN ONLY COME OUT OF A SICK MIND SUCH AS RICHARD SILVERSTEIN POSSES.– TRULY ROTTEN.

THIS “RABBI’, DICKIE AND STEFFI SCHAMESS ARE SHAMELESS AND MADE OUT OF THE SAME CLOTH, SHEMATES, in Yiddish, dirty rags!

DICKIE AND STEFFI, TAKE A SHOWER, YOU STINK!

How can the writer of this article accuse her of anything but being a victim of a “Rabbi” who had to undergo anger management. It is Seider-Feller that should and has fessed up to his hostility to fellow Jews. Whatever Rachel’s views are she is entitled to and if one believes in freedom of expression, I dont understand how one can attack her.

As for Allyson Rowen Taylor, she is a dedicated fighter and advocate for Israel and the Jewish people. Maybe in the heat of an argument she may have said some words she regrets, but that does not take away from all the good she has done. She did not physically attack any person. Also, she has a son who put his life on the line by serving in the IDF and can personally attest from his accounts as to the real reality in Judea and Samaria. How many of those who made comments against her say that they had children serving in the IDF??
I personally have tried to work with Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller asking him to co-sponsor some speakers in spite of our differences, but he did not even have the courtesy of a response. So who is trying to work together on behalf of the Jewish people. Not the Rabbi.
His most recent comments about the movie “Obsession” in the New York times on Feb 26th are shocking in their naivete.
Gary Ratner

Dickie SIlverman is just one more clueless leftist idiot who hates Israel and looks forward to a new Shoah of Jews.

This must be the kind of “love of the Jewish People” that Allyson was referring to. You see, she doesn’t need to accuse me of favoring killing my fellow Jews when she can have her anonymous allies do it for her. I’d sure like to unmask Treason Watch since he or she is too chicken shit to use a real name. In case any other progressive bloggers read this pls. check your troll IP addresses and let me know if you’ve received comments from this IP and ISP: 84.109.62.17 bezeqint.net. For sure the comment originates in Israel.

UPDATE: Treason Watch must somehow have gained access to the Alef list and discovered my post there.

I gues my love for the Jewish People, our indiginous homeland and the right for self determination makes me “creepy”.

I am surprised you were able to write a comment here without pulling a “Horowitz” and accusing me of supporting the murder of my fellow Jews. I commend you for that.

Your supposed “love” for the “Jewish People” does not make you creepy. But your hate for many of your fellow Jews does. You love the “Jewish People” in theory. But you do not love Jews. In fact, you hate many Jews. Any Jew who hates as many of her fellow Jews as you do does not have the right to say she “loves the Jewish People.” A Jew who truly loved her fellow Jews would, even if she disagreed with them, find a way to include those Jews she disagrees with within her love for her fellow Jews. You do not.

I support democracy

You support democracy in the same way George Bush or Ehud Olmert do. When the democracy suits you, you support it. When it doesn’t (Lebanon, Hamas) then you don’t. That’s not “supporting democracy.” That’s supporting what’s in your perceived interest & ignoring the rest.

And when you can argue with your fellow Jews without believing them to be pure evil then I can take you seriously.