Long-time English Defence League enthusiast Pamela Geller has broken with the group.
The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog reports:
Geller, who has been a steady booster of the EDL and even invited the thuggish group to join her at her rally last Sept. 11 against the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque,” only finally repudiated the organization in an item posted [June 30] on her “Atlas Shrugs” blog. “When the EDL first came on the scene, I noted their strong support of Israel: Israeli flags at their rallies, and forthright expressions of solidarity with the Jewish State in its resistance to the same relentless jihad that is advancing in Britain,” she wrote. “[T]he presence of the Jewish division was decisive.”
Geller admitted to having been “troubled” by images of EDL members giving the Nazi salute, but said she had been sure that the group was committed to expelling all anti-Semites and fascist sympathizers.
Similarly, I’m sure, “leftwing” apologists for Hezbollah like George Galloway and Andy Newman have been “troubled” by images like these. Or at least I hope they have been.
“However,” she wrote…, “it has become increasingly clear that the EDL has morphed and diverged from its original course. They now have clearly been infiltrated by the worst kind of influences, something that had successfully staved off for years, and they’re no longer staving it off. …Now that the person whom I most trusted in the EDL, Roberta Moore, has resigned, as she was increasingly uncomfortable with the neo-fascists that had infiltrated the administration of the group, I too am withdrawing my support from the EDL.”
However after authorities cancelled their planned rally in Strasbourg, France, Geller and her partner in anti-Muslim hysteria, Robert Spencer, announced plans to launch a “Freedom from Jihad aid flotilla,” which will they said will sail around the world rescuing non-Muslims from predominantly Muslim countries and regions– a scheme every bit as foolish and potentially dangerous as the flotilla to Gaza which Greek authorities have blocked from departing.
Update: Geller writes that after receiving assurances from EDL leader Tommy Robinson, she is not withdrawing her support for now, “but I continue to be deeply concerned and will be watching how events unfold.”
