ISLAMIC SOCIETY OF BOSTON SEES JEWISH CONSPIRACY

Jewish group charged with defamation by Islamic Society
The Islamic Society of Boston has charged a local Israel advocacy group with defamation and conspiring to violate its civil rights in a lawsuit filed in Suffolk County Superior Court Oct. 31. To a complaint filed in May against the Boston Herald and Fox 25 News, ISB added Anna Kolodner, the David Project’s director of education. It also named author and lecturer Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project, Steven Cohen and Dennis Hale of the group Citizens for Peace and Tolerance and William Sapers as defendants in the defamation lawsuit.

The suit also adds to charges of defamation allegations that the defendants conspired in “a concerted, well-coordinated effort to deprive the Plaintiffs, who are members of the Boston area Muslim community, of their basic rights of free association and the free exercise of religion.”

The 58-page complaint alleges an elaborate web of connections between the groups newly named in the suit and Fox 25 News and the Boston Herald, all aimed at undermining the ISB’s $22 million mosque and cultural center project under construction in Roxbury. Among the items cited as evidence of a conspiracy are meetings between Kolodner, Emerson and reporters for the Herald, and e-mails describing the need to find someone to file a civil complaint against the ISB. The suit alleges that this is how the suit filed by neighborhood resident James Policastro against the ISB in the fall of 2004 was originated.