Jewish Peace Activists 5

NOTE TO OUR SUPPORTERS
We do not usually send out articles that are not directly focused or have an
impact on Palestine, but with the controversy raging around the proposed
Islamic community centre in New York and the hate campaign that has sprung
from it, Rabbi Bruce Warshal’s words of wisdom seemed most appropriate to
convey far and wide.  He says that right-wing Jews  “think that they are
doing Israel a favour by painting Islam as a terrorist religion” because
then Israel does not need to negotiate with the Palestinians, and he explains
that the tool they are using is the concept of collective guilt.  He is
outraged that ADL Director Abe Foxman dared to use the Holocaust to justify
prejudice when he said “Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings
that are irrational.”  And he refers to Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria response
“Does Foxman believe that bigotry is OK if people think they’re victims?
Does the anguish of Palestinians, then, entitle them to be anti-Semitic?”
Like Rabbi Warshal, we should all shudder to think where we are headed.

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http://www.australiansforpalestine.com
Sonja Karkar
Editor
Australians for Palestine
Shame on America, Jews and the ADL
by Rabbi Bruce Warshal
The Florida Jewish Journal
30 August 2010

To begin, the mosque controversy does not involve a mosque.  It is planned
as a 13-story community center encompassing a swimming pool, 500-seat
performing arts center, gym,  culinary school, restaurant and, yes, a prayer
space for Muslims, which already exists in the current building.  A formal
mosque would forbid eating or the playing of music on the premises. I guess
that we are now at the point in America where Jews can have our JCC’s and
Christians their YMCA’s, but Muslims are not wanted.

There is also the controversy over the proposed name, Cordoba House.  The
hate-mongers have described this as a reference to Muslim designs to attack
western culture, hearkening back to the Muslim-Christian wars of domination
in medieval Spain.  The name was chosen for precisely the opposite reason.
In the tenth century Cordoba was the center of the most liberal and
sophisticated Caliphate in the Islamic world.  All religions were not merely
tolerated but respected.

The caliph, Abd al-Rahman III, had a Jew as his foreign minister and a Greek
bishop in his diplomatic corps.  He also had a library of 400,000 volumes at
a time when the largest library in Christian Europe numbered merely 400
manuscripts.  There were also 70 other smaller libraries in Cordoba. The
very reference to Cordoba reflects the sophistication and liberality of the
Muslims behind this project.  They have changed the name of the center to
the address of the building, Park 51, to deflect criticism.  This was
unfortunate, since nothing will quiet a hate-monger.

Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Imam behind the proposed community center, has been
attacked as an Islamic terrorist, even though he is a practitioner of Sufi
Islam, which reaches out to all other religions as manifestations of the
Divine.  My God, the conservative Bush administration utilized Rauf as part
of an outreach to the Muslim world.  You can bet your life that he was
thoroughly vetted by our government.  He is currently being used by the
Clinton State Department as well in the same capacity.  Fareed Zakaria of
Newsweek and CNN succinctly put it, “His vision of Islam is bin Laden’s
nightmare.”

And what is Rauf’s sin?  He will build a Muslim community center two blocks
away from Ground Zero, variously described as a “hallowed battlefield,”
“holy ground,” and a “war memorial.”  Even President Obama in his defense of
religious freedom commented that, “Ground zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.”
I beg to differ.

If Ground Zero is holy ground, then the railroad station in Madrid, the
Underground in London, the federal building in Oklahoma City, the Pentagon
(where there is presently a prayer space for Muslims – yes, patriotic,
religious Muslim Americans work at the Pentagon) and every other physical
location that has been the object of terrorism is holy ground.  If Ground
Zero is holy space why plan for it to be developed with office buildings (in
which the object will be to amass money – obviously a holy pursuit), a
shopping center (in which consumer goods will be peddled to continue to
gorge the American appetite for material possessions), and with a theater
for modern dance (a project to which I personally look forward as a devotee
of the Joyce, the modern dance Mecca of New York)?  I’m sorry, but someone
has to tell America that this designation of holy space is merely part of a
mass hysteria that really scares me.

The question which must be asked is why this hysteria?  The impetus comes
from a triumvirate of right-wing Christians, Jews and politicians.
Fundamentalist Christians are still fighting the crusades, still vying to
convert the world to their truths.  Islam is the fastest growing religion in
the world, to the distress of these Christian proselytizers.  What better
way to win this battle than to brand all Muslims as terrorists?

Right-wing Jews think that they are doing Israel a favor by painting Islam
as a terrorist religion thereby proving that Israel need not negotiate with
the Palestinians.  The idea is to project the concept that we are civilized
and they are not.  This theme is picked up in the right-wing press of
Israel.  Commenting on the New York proposed “mosque,” a columnist in the
Jerusalem Post declares that “Islamism is a modern political tendency which
arose in a spirit of fraternal harmony with the fascists of Europe in the
1930’s and ‘40’s.”  Ground Zero isn’t Israel’s “holy ground.”  Why would he
be involved with this discussion?  Simply because right-wing Jews in Israel
as well as the United States believe that demonizing the religion of 1.3
billion people is good for Israel.  God help us.

Right-wing politicians join the fray.  On Fox News Newt Gingrich compares a
mosque at Ground Zero to Nazis protesting at the United States Holocaust
Memorial.   The Democrats are cowed by the American outpouring of hate and
even Harry Reid voices disapproval of the Park 51 site.  It’s a perfect
storm of hate.

Periodically we go through this in America.  The anti-Catholic No-Nothing
party ran ex-President Millard Fillmore in the presidential election of 1856
and garnered 27 percent of the votes.  We deported over 10,000 people during
the First World War because they opposed our entry into that war and we
incarcerated loyal Japanese Americans during the Second World War.  Now
during this “war on terror” I shudder to think where we are headed.

The tool used in this hate campaign is the concept of collective guilt.
Based on that, all Jews are traitors since Ethel and Julius Rosenberg sold
out this country.  All Christians are terrorists since Timothy McVeigh
attacked the federal building in Oklahoma City.  Neither are all Muslims
traitors nor terrorists.  Islam is not monolithic.  Its forms are as varied
as Judaism or Christianity.  I do not practice Judaism the same as a Satmar
Hasidic Jew.  A Catholic does not practice Christianity the same as a
Jehovah Witness.  Imam Rauf does not share the same Islamic beliefs as bin
Laden.

Of all people Jews should beware of collective guilt since we have suffered
from it for millennia.  Yet the organization that started this hysteria is
headed by a right-wing Jewish supporter of Israel by the name of Pam Geller.
She is quoted in the mainstream media (including the Jewish Journal) as if
she is a legitimate political voice.  Yet on her blog, Atlas Shrugs, she has
declared that “Obama is the illegitimate son of Malcom X.”  She has written
that we have “an American-hater for president.”  She has proposed that
devout Muslims should be prohibited from military service.  She asks, “Would
Patton have recruited Nazis into his army?”  To all of the rabbis quoted in
the Jewish Journal urging that the “mosque” be moved, know who is pulling
your strings.

Finally, to the role of the Anti-Defamation League and its director, Abe
Foxman.  The world was literally “shocked,” that’s the word used by the
Associated Press, by ADL’s call for the mosque to be moved.  Fareed Zakaria
called it a “bizarre decision.”  Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, said,
“Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational.”
Referring to loved ones of the September 11 victims, he continued: “Their
anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as
irrational or bigoted.”

How dare Foxman use the Holocaust to justify prejudice.  He does blasphemy
to the memory of Jews and other oppressed minorities whose lives were
sacrificed on the altar of bigotry.   Zakaria responds: “Does Foxman believe
that bigotry is OK if people think they’re victims?  Does the anguish of
Palestinians, then, entitle them to be anti-Semitic?”

Five years ago the ADL honored Zakaria with the Hubert H. Humphrey First
Amendment Freedoms Prize.  Incensed over ADL’s succumbing to bigotry, he has
returned the award with the $10,000 honorarium that came with it.

The last word was recently written by Daniel Luban, a doctoral student at
the University of Chicago, in Tablet Magazine: “While activists like Pam
Geller have led the anti-mosque campaign and the broader demonization of
Muslims that has accompanied it, leaders like Abe Foxman have acquiesced in
it.  In doing so they risk providing an ugly and ironic illustration of the
extent of Jewish assimilation in 21st-century America.  We know that Jews
can grow up to be senators and Supreme Court justices.  Let’s not also
discover that they can grow up to incite a pogrom.”

Rabbi Bruce Warshal is publisher emeritus of the Jewish Journal of South Florida.
He can be contacted at brucewarshal@comcast.net