Sheherazad Jaafari — the former flunky of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and a silent accessory to the slaughter of 14,000 of her compatriots since Feb. 2011 — has a lot in common with PS 90 Principal Greta Hawkins, Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, and Barbara Walters.
All four have dumped on the United States.
Jaafari gained admittance to Columbia University with “much help” from Walters, who bagged a Dec. 2011 interview with Assad, thanks to the “dear girl,” who has yet to publicly denounce her barbarous government. The sit-down in Damascus transpired after Jaafari, in a show of deceit belying her 21 years, assured her thug boss that “the American psyche can be easily manipulated.”
The finagling flack was spot on.
Hawkins proved Jaafari’s point when she manipulated the psyche of her own kindergarten students by forbidding them to sing “God Bless the USA” because she deemed it offensive to other cultures. The snub earned her high marks from Walcott who shrugged, “It’s her judgment to make that decision.”
Reckless role models such as Greta Hawkins and Dennis Walcott contribute to the unflattering portrait of the disaffected American when they renege on Lady Liberty, while enjoying American lifestyles funded by American taxpayers. That leaves democracy-haters like Assad — and lackeys like Jaafari — free to wield the ugly stereotype to their advantage, ofttimes with help from our own media.
Vogue’s Feb. 2011 fawning spread on the Assads was a profile in ignorance, elevating the nation as “intoxicatingly close to the dawn of civilization” and elevating Asma al-Assad as a “glamorous, young, and very chic — the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies.” One blissfully oblivious, too, to her husband’s blood-stained mitts.
Walters’s ignorance of human decency is as icky.
The newswoman wasn’t able to pin a single atrocity on Assad despite his public record of grave abuses — particularly against defenseless children. That litany of horrors includes killing and maiming 9-year-olds, arresting them arbitrarily and detaining them, torturing and ill-treating them, abducting and raping them, and using them as human shields while turning their schools into soul-shattering detention centers and body-breaking military bases.
As an Assad aide, Jaafari was alert to the butcher’s bloodlust — and blind to it. Instead of shouting his evil from the rooftops, she helped him to hide it from Bab’s lax scrutiny, making her an accomplice to one of the worst reigns of terror in modern times.
Columbia, too, is a brute’s abettor. It’s prominent history of inviting authoritarians on campus has lent poisonous platforms to the likes of Iranian tyrant Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ethiopia’s savage Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. It can redeem itself — at least a tad — by kicking Jaafari’s keister out, ASAP. Ditto for the Department of Homeland Security, which should ship her out, forthwith.
The U.S. has nothing to gain by accommodating the unrepentant spawn of terror regimes, who have no problem furthering their studies in freedom while their countrymen aren’t allowed to live. There is everything to celebrate about America — for obvious reasons — and “Americans” such as Hawkins, Walcott, and Walters should be leading that charge. The alternative is a mind-set that makes life on earth hell. Just ask Sheherazad Jafaari — she manipulated her way into studying in the U.S. because her country is too busy spending money on carnage instead of colleges.
Reach reporter Shavana Abruzzo at sabruzzo@cnglocal.com or by calling (718) 260-2529.
