Elly Bulkin and Donna Nevel have published a massive and important article on Alternet that is going to be the cause of much discussion regarding the ADL’s role in fueling Islamophobia.

As has been noted previously on Loonwatch, the ADL’s record on Islamophobia has been very “mixed,” and indeed they have fueled and or supported bigots and Islamophobic causes.

I have more thoughts on the article and the points it presents that I hope to add in an update.

With Liberty and Justice For Some: How the Anti-Defamation League Fuels Islamophobia

(Alternet)

February 1, 2013  |    The Anti-Defamation League bills itself, and is typically seen by many in the mainstream Jewish community and beyond, as the “nation’s premier civil rights/human relations agency.”[1] In fact, the ADL’s conduct over the years is at odds with this one-dimensional view of the group as a long-time champion of civil liberties. The ADL mission statement, for instance, describes it as a group that “fights all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects civil rights for all.”[2] Yet, a record going back decades shows something very different, including a shift “from civil rights monitoring to espionage and intelligence gathering.”[3] Mistrust of the ADL among those concerned about civil and human rights has deep roots.

In the 1970s, the ADL, which had been tracking neo-Nazis and other right-wing U.S. groups, began to also focus on critics of Israeli policies.[4] Since the 1970s, the ADL and its chapters have issued numerous publications to expose alleged “Arab propaganda” on university campuses and to silence and intimidate Arab Americans and others who did not share their perspective on Israel.[5] Branding any criticism of Israel as “anti-Semitism,” ADL publications like Pro-Arab Propaganda in America: Vehicles and Voices, a Handbook (1983) effectively developed a “blacklist” of faculty, staff, and campus groups.[6] The Middle East Studies Association singled out “the New England Regional Office of the ADL for circulating a document on college campuses ‘listing factually inaccurate and unsubstantiated assertions that defame specific students, teachers, and researchers as ‘pro Arab propagandists.’”[7]

Front-page investigative reports in the San Francisco Examiner during the winter and spring of 1993 revealed that the ADL had been carrying out surveillance of almost 10,000 people and 950 organizations.[8] The Examiner reported that the ADL particularly targeted Arab Americans and Arab American organizations and also spied on such groups as the ACLU, ACT UP, Artists Against Apartheid, Americans for Peace Now, Asian Law Caucus, Greenpeace, NAACP, New Jewish Agenda, and the United Farm Workers, as well as three current or past members of Congress.[9] The FBI had also found that the ADL had been sending surveillance information on U.S. anti-apartheid groups to South Africa (which was an ally of Israel).[10]

The San Francisco Examiner exposé revealed that the ADL’s domestic spying involved a San Francisco police officer and a “full-time salaried undercover investigator,” who had been working for the ADL for 32 years.[11] Running “a public/private spying ring,” the ADL received aid from local police and federal agencies.[12] The Examiner reported that “FBI documents released through the Freedom of Information Act show that special agents in charge of FBI field offices throughout the nation were explicitly ordered by Bureau headquarters in Washington, D.C. during the 1980s to cooperate with the ADL.”[13] Six years after the filing of a class action suit coordinated by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the ADL was fined in 1999 and “under the permanent injunction issued by Federal Judge Richard Paez . . . [was] permanently enjoined from engaging in any further illegal spying against Arab-American and other civil rights groups.”[14] As Nabeel Abraham has written in “Anti-Arab Racism and Violence in the United States,” “The overall effect of the ADL’s practices is to reinforce the image of Arabs as terrorists and security threats, thereby creating a climate of fear, suspicion, and hostility toward Arab-Americans and others who espouse critical views of Israel, possibly leading to death threats and bodily harm.”[15]

*****

The ADL’s anti-Arab, staunchly pro-Israel mindset, which was behind decades of illegal spying, enabled it to easily incorporate an anti-Muslim worldview that has become increasingly pervasive after 9/11.[16] This has been a period of growing popularity for the “clash of civilizations theory,” which characterizes the causes of conflict in the post-Cold War world as fundamental “cultural” differences between Islamic and Western civilizations, rather than history, politics, imperialism, neo-colonialism, struggles over natural resources, or other factors.[17] Further, the Islamophobic belief that all Muslims were responsible for the 9/11 attacks and that all Muslims, as well as Arabs and South Asians, should be targeted provides a dominant U.S. narrative that brands all members of these groups as “terrorists,” “potential terrorists,” or “terrorist-sympathizers.”[18] Like others within and outside the Jewish community, the ADL views the U.S. focus on the domestic and global “war on terror” as integral to ensuring Israeli security and maintaining the United States’ “special” relationship with Israel.

During the post-9/11 period, the ADL engaged in a number of actions that targeted Muslims and Arabs. It also marked a time when the ADL, with allies like Daniel Pipes’ Freedom Forum, was busily labeling mainstream Muslim community groups as “terrorist sympathizers” and trying to exclude them from the public sphere.[19] Although the ADL was rebuffed, it brought pressure to prevent representatives from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the country’s largest Muslim civil liberties group, from speaking at the November 2001 Florida Commission on Human Relations annual conference, “Day of Dialogue Across Ethnic, Cultural and Religious Lines,” and then, around a month later, at a public hearing of the State of California Select Committee on Hate Crimes. [20]

In 2003, an ADL press release praised President George W. Bush for appointing Daniel Pipes to the board of the United States Institute for Peace.[21] Pipes believes that “militant Islam” is “infiltrating America” and supports student monitoring of professors for their views on the Arab-Israeli conflict. [22] While the ADL commented on Pipes’ “important approach and perspective,” Muslim and Arab American leaders characterized his appointment as “a slap in the face for Islam” and described him as “a bigot” who “promotes fear and hatred of many communities, not just Arabs and Muslims.” [23] As a result of strong opposition to Pipes by Senator Edward Kennedy and other Senate Judiciary Committee members, President Bush had to resort to a recess appointment of Pipes.[24]

Read the rest…

by Garibaldi

We recently posted an article written by Bob Pitt of Islamophobia-Watch concerning controversy over Islamophobic remarks by anti-Muslim speakers that led to several walk-outs at a symposium in London sponsored by the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (JSA).

The walk-outs are a welcome development but a few of the condemnations of the disgusting and blatantly anti-Muslim remarks by speakers Bat “Eurabia” Ye’or (whose insane hatred of Islam and Muslims Danios covered) and Manfred Gerstenfeld left much to be desired. Take Dave Rich of the Community Trust’s response to Ye’or’s statements; Rich said Yeor’s words “could be construed as Islamophobic.”

No, Rich, they can’t be construed as Islamophobic, they are Islamophobic,

The controversy was prompted by contributions from two of the speakers. One was Bat Ye’or (the pen name of Gisèle Littman) who informed her audience that the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation is “the source of antisemitism” and that “Islam is denying the root of Judaism and Christianity with a profound belief in Jihad”

Manfred Gerstenfeld for his part “asserted that Muslim culture is inferior to Western culture.” In response to the controversy the JSA has this post on its home page: Drs. Richard Landes and Manfred Gerstenfeld’s responses to the British Left’s walkouts and criticisms. London Dec 2 2012.

What is the esteemed doctors’ response? An article with the tired, cliched supremacist title Why the West is Best that reads like it was picked out of the terrorist Anders Breivik’s manifesto. A little less than one hundred years ago the reasons White Westerners were giving for why the “West is best” was the racist claim that they were genetically and racially superior to non-White, non-Westerners, an idea that in part was central in leading to the Holocaust.

A strange thing to publish in a journal that is supposedly devoted to analyzing one of histories most pernicious forms of bigotry don’t you think?

Another fact that remains unanswered and which has been brought up by critics of the symposium is: why, when loony bigots such as Bat Ye’or and Manfred Gerstenfeld were invited, and displayed prominently on the blurb for the symposium, did those who eventually walked out even attend? Why didn’t they protest and demand the bigots’ exclusion beforehand?

Pitt noted,

Yet Dave Rich, Mark Gardner, David Hirsh and others happily attended a seminar that included these speakers. It’s not difficult to imagine how different their response would be to a seminar featuring individuals who asserted that Jews are conspiring to take over Europe or made claims about the inferiority of Jewish culture. The CST would demand that the speakers should be banned or that the institution hosting the event should cancel it. But when it’s a case of Zionist extremists promoting bigotry against Muslims, then the CST evidently thinks it’s enough to go along to the seminar and politely raise their “concerns” that such hate-speech is “incorrect, unacceptable and self-defeating”.

Jews Sans Frontiers also commented in a different article covering the event,

And here’s the bit I just don’t get.  Mark Gardner, David Hirsh and Dave Rich must have known about the other speakers because they were listed in the information blurb for the event.  How offended can they really have been when they only heard what they must have expected to hear?

…

the bottom line of what the symposium was all about: “At the end of the event, the former Labour MP, Denis MacShane, was given an award for his work in fighting antisemitism”. Yup, that Denis MacShane.  No walkouts on him reported.  There’s a certain consistency to that inconsistency.

It’s brought to our attention later in Pitt’s article that the editorial board of the JSA is staffed, through-and-through, by a familiar cast of anti-Muslim bigots and anti-Arab racists,

Gisèle Littman was hardly some randomly invited speaker. She is on the editorial board of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism (along with the likes of Daniel Pipes, Andrew Bostom – and Philip Spencer, for that matter).

The combined effect of this disturbing information led me to research a little more into the JSA, and what I immediately learned was very problematic. One does not have to go far to see that the true intent of the JSA is unfortunately to demonize Muslims and Islam and to forward a narrative on the so-called “New Antisemitism,” that couches in academic terms what loons such as Pamela Geller spout daily in their crazed rants about Muslims. The “New Antisemitism” narrative reflects a cottage industry of “experts” who often present out-of-context and or exaggerate the degree/extent of “Muslim antisemitism,” specifically the role of “Mufti Haj Amin Al-Husseini,” in effect providing fodder and intellectual cover for the Islamophobia Movement. I will say more about this aspect of the “New Antisemitism” in a future article.

What I will note is the contradiction that is apparent between the actions of mainstream Jewish leaders in the UK during the 2012 symposium and their counterparts in the USA with regards to association and participation in events with the JSA.

In the United States, in 2010, a conference held by the JSA specifically on the topic of “Muslim antisemitism” featured well known anti-Muslim bigots and anti-Arab racists alongside mainstream Jewish leaders from organizations such as the ADL, Simon Wiesenthal Center, Anti-Israelism Initiative for the Institute for Jewish & Community Research, Baruch College and the American Jewish University.

First Annual Conference on “Muslim Antisemitism”: October 2-3 2010 at the Doubletree Hotel, NYC

At this 2010 JSA conference you had several individuals who featured prominently in the anti-Muslim movie produced by the Clarion Fund and director Rabbi Raphael Shore titled, “Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” as well as noted right-wing, anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist Melanie “Mad Mel” Phillips:

Awards

• Richard Rubenstein Best Book: Muslim Antisemitism
  Jihad And Genocide (Rowman & Littlefield)
• Anthony Julius Best Book: Uk Antisemitism
  Trials Of The Diaspora (Oxford University Press)
• Kenneth Marcus: Best Book: Jewish Civil Rights
  Jewish Identity And Civil Rights In America (Cambridge University Press)
• Melanie Phillips Best Book: Anti-Zionism
  The World Turned Upside Down (Encounter)
• Robert Wistrich Best Book: Historical
  A Lethal Obsession (Random House)
• Martin Gilbert Best Book: Forgotten Refugees
  In Ishmael’s House (Yale University Press)
• Efraim Karsh Best Book: Israel
  Palestine Betrayed (Yale University Press)
• Paul Berman Best Book: Overview
  Flight Of The Intellectuals (Melville House)

As Well, JSA Would Like To Honor The Following JSA Writers:

• Best Original Article:
  The Jewish Genocide Of Armenian Christians And Other Outrageous Claims Of Christopher Jon Bjerkness. Steven L Jacobs
• Best Original Essays:
  Riga And Remembering Clemens Heni
  Silencing Canadian Jews Andrew Bostom
• Best Book Review:
  A Lethal Obsession Frederick Schweitzer
• Best Film Short:
  The Mufti David Sokol

The titles of the books, articles and movies as well as the individuals mentioned as part of the conference are quite revealing. However the details of the 2010 conference are even more disturbing as we see Oren Segal who is “director of Islamic Affairs and terrorism expert at the Anti Defamation League,” Kenneth L. Marcus of “Baruch College and director of the Anti-Semitism & Anti-Israelism Initiative for the Institute for Jewish & Community Research,” and Mark Weitzman of the “Simon Wiesenthal Center and director of the New York Tolerance Center” sharing the stage with the likes of Daniel Pipes, Bruce Bawer, Andrew Bostom, Phyllis Chesler and other professional hate-mongers.

Details from the 2010 Conference:

Panel Participants: Steve Baum, Paul Bartrop, Bruce Bawer, Michael Berenbaum, Andrew G. Bostom, Phyllis Chesler, Florette Cohen, Sam Edelman, Clemens Heni, Daniel Goldhagen, Steven L. Jacobs, Gil Kahn, Lesley Klaff, Neil J. Kressel, Richard Landes, Alyssa Lappen, Kenneth Lasson, Elizabeth Midlarsky, Marcia Sachs Littell, Kenneth L. Marcus, Daniel Pipes, J. Christopher Pryor, Neal E. Rosenberg, Richard L Rubenstein, Frederick Schweitzer, Oren Segal, David Sokol, Marcia Sokolowski, Mark Weitzman.
Panel Biographies
Paul Bartrop is teaches comparative genocide studies at Bialik College, Melbourne. His latest book is Fifty Key Thinkers on the Holocaust and Genocide (Routledge, 2010).BARTRP@bialik.vic.edu.au

Steven K. Baum is co-editor of the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. His book Antisemitism Explained (UPA/Rowman & Littlefield) is scheduled for release at the end of the year. www.stevebaum.com

Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept (Anchor, 2007) was a national bestseller. His latest book is Surrender:Appeasing Islam Sacrificing Freedom (Anchor, 2010) www.brucebawer.com

Michael Berenbaum is a rabbi, director and professor of Jewish Studies of the Sigi Ziering Institute at the American Jewish University. He is the author of The World Must Know (Johns Hopkins 2005) and editor of Not Your Fathers Antisemitism (Paragon, 2008) and the Encyclopedia Judaica. www.berenbaumgroup.com

Andrew G. Bostom is a professor of medicine at Brown University and the editor of Legacy of Jihad and Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism (Prometheus, 2008).www.andrewbostom.org

Phyllis Chesler is director of the Phyllis Chesler Foundation. She is emerita professor of psychology and women’s studies at CUNY. Her books include The New Antisemitism (Jossey-Bass, 2003) www.phyllis-chesler.com.

Florette Cohen is an assistant professor of psychology at College of Staten Island/CUNY. She is lead researcher with Lee Jussim and others of: Modern antisemitism and anti-Israeli attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2009, 97, 290-306.florette.cohen@csi.cuny.edu

Sam Edelman is executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East (SPME). He is former dean at American Jewish University and emeritus professor at California State University, Chico. www.spme.net

Daniel J. Goldhagen is a political scientist at the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University. He is the author of Hitler’s Willing Executioners (Knopf 1996), A Moral Reckoning (Knopf 2002) and Worse Than War (PublicAffairs 2009) which served as the basis for the PBS special of the same name released this year. He is currently writing a book on antisemitism. www.goldhagen.com

Clemens Heni is a Berlin based political scientist who is a regular contributor to Journal for the Study of Antisemitism and has published in Jewish Political Studies Review. He has two books on German antisemitism. His first English language edition Antisemitism – A specific phenomenon will be published shortly. His latest work is a MEF funded project of German Middle Eastern Studies and Islamism after 9/11.

Steven L. Jacobs is a rabbi and associate professor in the Dept. of Religious Studies University of Alabama. He has written Dismantling the Big Lie (Ktav 2003) and Fifty Key Thinkers in Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Routledge, 2010). sjabobs@bama.un.edu Gil Kahn is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Kean University, in Union, NJ. His academic interests focus on decision-making with an emphasis on executive-legislative relations and the institutional tensions between Congress and the President. Kahn has been a consultant to the Council for the Rescue of Syrian Jews, the domestic affairs department of Hadassah, the Synagogue Council of America and Shvil Hazahav. gkahn@kean.edu

Lesley Klaff is a senior lecturer in law at Sheffield Hallam University, England, and an affiliate professor of law at Haifa University, Israel. She advises mulit-faith chaplaincy on issues of Jewish religious observance and serves as the book review editor for the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. Her article, Anti-Zionist Expression on the UK Campus: Free Speech or Hate Speech? appears in the Jewish Political Studies Review Fall 2010.

Neil J. Kressel is a professor of psychology and director of the Honors Social Science Program at William Paterson University. His latest book is Bad Faith: Dangers of Religious Extremism (Prometheus Books, 2009). kresseln@wpunj.edu

Richard Landes is a professor of Medieval History at Boston University. His forthcoming books include Heaven on Earth: The Varieties of the Millennial Experience, and The Paranoid Apocalypse: The Protocols of the Elders 100 Years Later co-edited with Steven Katz.rlandes@bu.edu

Alyssa Lappen is as free lance journalist who specializes in Islamic history. Her book reviews and articles such as What Really Happened in Mumbai? have appeared in the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism.

Kenneth Lasson teaches law at University of Baltimore. His latest book includes Trembling in the Ivory Tower, (Bancroft, 2003) and related articles: Bloodstains on a “Code of Honor” The Murderous Marginalization of Women in the Islamic World, 30 Women’s Rights Law Reporter 407 (2009). klasson@ubalt.edu

Marcia Sachs Littell, is a professor and founding director of the MA Program in Holocaust & Genocide Studies at Richard Stockton College of NJ and Executive Director of the Annual Scholars’ Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches. DrLittell@aol.com

Kenneth L. Marcus is the Ackerman Chair in Equality & Justice in America at the School of Public Affairs, CUNY/Baruch College and director of the Anti-Semitism & Anti-Israelism Initiative for the Institute for Jewish & Community Research. His book Jewish Identity and Civil Rights in America (Cambridge University Press) was published in September 2010.klmarcus@aim.com

Elizabeth Midlarsky is a professor of psychology and education at Teachers College Columbia University. Her publications include Personality correlates of heroic rescue during the Holocaust. Journal of Personality (2005) 73, 907-934. and Courageous rescue during the Holocaust. Journal of Positive Psychology, (2007) 2, 136-147. em142@columbia.edu

Daniel Pipes is Director of the Middle East Forum, which publishes the Middle East Quarterly and DanielPipes.org. He is a Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University His books include Militant Islam Reaches America (2002)www.danielpipes .org

J. Christopher Pryor holds a J.D. from Ave Maria School of Law and is practicing civil litigation in Kansas City. He has written on Bishop Richard Williamson and is a contributor to the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. jcpryor@hotmail.com

Neal E. Rosenberg is an attorney with an MA in Holocaust and Genocide Studies He co-edits the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism. nerosenberg@aol.com

Richard L Rubenstein is a rabbi and president emeritus University of Bridgeport. He is the author of the critically acclaimed After Auschwitz. His latest book is Jihad and Genocide (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010). rlr@bridgeport.edu Frederick Schweitzer is a professor emeritus of history at Manhattan College and is co-author with Marvin Perry of Anti-Semitism (Palgrave,Macmillan 2005) and Antisemitic Myths (Indiana Univ, 2007)frederick.schweitzer@manhattan.edu

Oren Segal is Director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, and oversees the Islamic Affairs Department. He edits Terrorism Update, ADL’s Web site and newsletter dedicated to domestic and international terrorist activity, and trains federal, state and local law enforcement on homegrown Islamic extremist issues. osegal@adl.org

David Sokol received his M.A. in psychology from Sonoma State College, Rohnert Park, California. He has held teaching positions at Goddard University and University of Vermont Medical School. In 1998 he retired from psychology to become an artist and write and has since published the critically acclaimed short animation The Mufti. He also has written The Golem Church Street: An Artist’s Reflection on the New Anti-Semitism. davidsokolo@aol.com

Marcia Sokolowski is an ethicist at Baycrest Centre for Geriatric Care and the Joint Centre for Bioethics, University of Toronto. She is an Ontario psychotherapist and serves as ethics consultant for the Journal for the Study of Antisemitism.

Mark Weitzman is the Director of Government Affairs and of the Task Force against Hate and Terrorism for the Simon Wiesenthal Center and Chief Representative of the Center to the United Nations and Founding Director of the SWC’s New York Tolerance Center. Weitzman is a member of the official US delegation to the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research. He was lead co-editor for Antisemitism, the Generic Hatred which won a National Jewish Book Award. His latest Magical Logic is available. mweitzman@swcny.com

One has to question whether the purpose of the JSA is to fight Antisemitism or to promote anti-Muslim Islamophobic propaganda. If their board and past events are any indications then there is no doubt their purpose is to push anti-Muslim propaganda.

An important question that must be raised is that: while in London David Rich, Mark Gardner and David Hirsh walked out or condemned the Islamophobes what is the excuse of mainstream Jewish American leaders such as Oren Segal, Kenneth Marcus and Mark Weitzman who participated on a similar panel with noted racists and bigots? Why did they attend and why didn’t they walk out? What do the organizations they represent have to say?

Antisemitism is a real scourge and the way to combat it is not to align yourself with another growing phenomenon of hate: Islamophobia.

UPDATE 1/7/12: Oren Segal of the ADL responded to our article, saying,

I declined the invitation to attend the conference and did not participate in the event in any capacity.

If that is the case Mr.Segal should contact the JSA and ask that his name be taken off the list of those who participated in the 2010 conference.

A very good article from Bradley Burston of Haaretz.:

Islamophobia, not Islam, will be the end of Israel

by Bradley Burston (Haaretz)

SAN FRANCISCO – Everyone knows how it works. Everyone knows what it sounds like. Everyone knows how easy it is to get away with it.

Everyone knows, deep down, that hatred feeds on tolerance. That however well-intentioned, a society’s forbearance for the toxic slur, for the poison of ethnic or religious or racial prejudice, does hatred invaluable service.

No one knows this better than professional bigots. People like Pamela Geller, who pass themselves off as supporters of a worthy cause even as their hatred and prejudice stain and undermine anything and everything worthy about that cause.

For years, in the guise of supporting Israel, Geller has engaged in promoting hatred of Islam. In recent weeks, in a campaign timed to coincide with Muslims’ observance of the sacred month of Ramadan, her American Freedom Defense Initiative has run caustic, self-styled “pro-Israel” advertisements on the sides of public transit buses in San Francisco.

“In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,” the ads begin, white letters on black. Below it, in blue letters flanked by Stars of David, it read “Support Israel” and below that, in red, “Defeat Jihad.”

Last year, when Geller’s group tried to place the ads on public buses in New York, the city’s Metropolitan Transit Authority rejected them as violating its prohibition on messages that demean individuals or groups. But in July, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that the Geller group had been denied First Amendment guarantees of free speech. That same day, the ads went up in San Francisco.

Geller told ABC News that the purpose of the ads was to counter “fallacious and dangerous” ads on San Francisco area transit trains a year ago, urging cuts in U.S. aid to Israel. “If I had my way, the (“support Israel” ads) would be in every city in the United States of America, and if I can get the funding, that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

To its credit, Muni, the San Francisco transit agency, did more than simply mount Geller’s message. It condemned the ads. Alongside them. In bus ads of its own.

In a move without precedent, Muni said in the new ads that its policy “prohibits discrimination based on national origin, religion, and other characteristics, and condemns statements that describe any group as ‘savages.’”

Muni spokesman Paul Rose said that while Muni is bound by the First Amendment, “Obviously we think the [Geller-sponsored] ads in place right now are repulsive and they definitely cross the line.”

Of late, in tandem with anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab attacks by radical settlers and Arab-hating Jewish youths in Israel and the territories (“He’s an Arab. He deserves to die,” a 14-year-old assault suspect told a court on Monday), there are troubling signs in America of a tendency to conflate hatred of Muslims with support for a Jewish state.

“The Arabs are one of the least developed cultures,” a “pro-Israel” NGO called the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights quotes Geller’s ideological inspiration as having said in a 1974 speech. “Their culture is primitive, and they resent Israel because it’s the sole beachhead of modern science and civilization on their continent. When you have civilized men fighting savages, you support the civilized men, no matter who they are.”

In this light, Bay Area Jews are to be especially commended for denouncing Geller and her works. J., the community newspaper, said that “any right-thinking person, Jewish or not, must oppose these ads.” The Anti-Defamation League called the ads “highly offensive and inflammatory,” and the Jewish Community Relations Council and the American Jewish Committee issued a similar denunciation.

At root, this is what Geller denies: Israel can only exist as a democracy if it continually acts to foster and equalize the rights of its Arab citizens, not abrogate and dismiss them. It can only exist as a democracy if it actively works to end the unperson status of the Palestinians of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. A true democracy cannot treat bigotry with understanding. It has to fight it, or its sense of democracy has no meaning.

At root, the Geller and pro-Kahane brand of “support of Israel,” is little more than a slash and burn Arab–hate that, if left unanswered, will tear apart the Israel and the Jewish community from within. It blinds people to solutions. It convinces people that there are no solutions. It persuades people that there are no options apart from violence, both of word and deed.

Israel has elaborate defense systems against military attack and terrorism. Its defenses against its own extremists are much more porous.

The Gellers and Kahanists attack Israel at the root. An Israel torn apart from within doesn’t need an external enemy to destroy it. The enemy is right here.

Settler Attacks

“Price-tag” attacks against Palestinians continue and are likely to increase.

According to Reuters,

The U.N. World Court considers the settlements illegal but Israel, citing historical and Biblical links to the territory, disputes this.

Pro-settler vandals suspected in anti-Arab assaults

(Reuters) – Suspected Israeli pro-settler activists vandalised Palestinian cars in Jerusalem on Monday, their second attack in a week in apparent retribution for plans to move 30 settler families from illegally built homes.

Israeli police are concerned there could be further attacks before a July 1 deadline to move the families.

“The main suspicion we are looking at is that it is a ‘Price Tag’ (attack),” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said, referring to violence by militant settlers who have vowed to exact revenge for any attempt to curb settlement in the occupied West Bank.

Palestinians fear Israeli settlements, built on land Israel captured in a 1967 war, will deny them a viable state, and they refuse to return to peace talks frozen since 2010 until their expansion is halted.

The U.N. World Court considers the settlements illegal but Israel, citing historical and Biblical links to the territory, disputes this.

The name “Ulpana”, an area in Beit El settlement where the Supreme Court found that five apartment houses had been built illegally on private Palestinian land, was daubed on one of seven vehicles whose tyres were slashed in East Jerusalem.

On Friday, anti-Arab slogans were spray-painted on vehicles in Neve Shalom, a community of Jewish and Arab peace activists in central Israel.

Police suspect “Price Tag” activists were responsible and appointed an investigative team, but have not made any arrests.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu angered settlers last Wednesday when, at his urging, parliament defeated an attempt by ultranationalist lawmakers to legalise the Ulpana dwellings and thousands of others erected on Palestinian-owned tracts.

Netanyahu, a right-wing leader, has long banked on the support of settlers and their backers. His opposition to the attempt by the far-right to circumvent the Supreme Court over Ulpana, has left a reservoir of resentment among settlers.

The government plans to move the 30 families in Ulpana to alternative housing in a nearby military zone. In an apparent bid to placate settlers it said it would build 851 new settler homes in the West Bank, drawing Palestinian and international condemnation.

Danios wrote recently about Ashton Kutcher’s putting on ‘brown face,’ and ridiculing Indians in a Pop Chips commercial. He pointed out that though Kutcher’s ad was pulled we still have Sacha Baron Cohen’s anti-Arab minstrel show proceeding without much protestation or discussion–until now.

Muslim comedian Dean Obeidallah has weighed-in now, and if I didn’t know any better he must have read our article because he raises similar arguments,

To me, this is essentially the same as white performers in blackface portraying black people in buffoonish negative stereotypes for the enjoyment of white America.

But I am not advocating a ban on offensive comments or the telling of culturally insensitive jokes. I certainly am not calling for more PC comedy. I’m not calling for a boycott of anyone nor asking for one more insincere “I’m sorry to all those who were offended by me” from a celebrity.

I’m in no way arguing that Arab culture is off-limits or cannot be mocked. I’m a comedian of Arab heritage and have performed comedy shows not only for Arab-American groups across the United States, but also in the Middle East, from Egypt to Qatar to Saudi Arabia. I find the biggest laughs are elicited when performers hold up a comic mirror to Arab culture.

But for some reason, the entertainment industry appears to truly enjoy ridiculing “brown” people, Arabs and Indians, and has no qualms about casting people not of our heritage to portray us. Indeed, just last week Popchips snack company found itself embroiled in a controversy because an ad showed Ashton Kutcher playing an Indian character in brownface, similar to what Cohen is doing in “The Dictator.”

Sacha Cohen’s movie a minstrel show

by Dean Obeidallah

(CNN) – Sacha Baron Cohen’s new movie, “The Dictator,” is a modern-day minstrel show judging from the trailer and Cohen’s comments promoting the film while dressed as the film’s star, “Gen. Shabazz Aladeen,” the leader of a fictitious Arab country.

Cohen, who is not of Arab heritage, plays this Arab character while sporting a long fake beard and speaking in a strong Arabic accent, which would be fine, except the character is showcasing the worst stereotypes of Arabs.

For example, at a news conference in New York City this week promoting his film, Cohen exclaimed: “Welcome devils of the Zionist media and death to the West.” He then joked about liking TV shows that showed Arab terrorists killing Americans and admiring fashion designer John Galliano for hating the Jews.

To me, this is essentially the same as white performers in blackface portraying black people in buffoonish negative stereotypes for the enjoyment of white America.

But I am not advocating a ban on offensive comments or the telling of culturally insensitive jokes. I certainly am not calling for more PC comedy. I’m not calling for a boycott of anyone nor asking for one more insincere “I’m sorry to all those who were offended by me” from a celebrity.

I’m in no way arguing that Arab culture is off-limits or cannot be mocked. I’m a comedian of Arab heritage and have performed comedy shows not only for Arab-American groups across the United States, but also in the Middle East, from Egypt to Qatar to Saudi Arabia. I find the biggest laughs are elicited when performers hold up a comic mirror to Arab culture.

But for some reason, the entertainment industry appears to truly enjoy ridiculing “brown” people, Arabs and Indians, and has no qualms about casting people not of our heritage to portray us. Indeed, just last week Popchips snack company found itself embroiled in a controversy because an ad showed Ashton Kutcher playing an Indian character in brownface, similar to what Cohen is doing in “The Dictator.”

Read the rest here…

Omar Baddar and a host of other organizations responded to the hateful anti-Islam and anti-Arab conference put on by professional bigots Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer. The founders of SIOA crassly titled the event, “Jessica Mokdad Human Rights Conference.” Seeking to manipulate and abuse the memory of a young Muslim girl who was murdered by her step-father.

Her murder had nothing to do with Islam, but the hate-mongerers insist on trying to smear Islam at any opportunity.

In the following video we get the facts. We see how discriminatory and racist to the core the anti-Islam brigades behind the “conference” really are! We also see how scared they are of confrontation and being challenged on their hateful bigotry:

Israeli settlers attack Palestinians daily

Something tells me the below numbers are very conservative:

Israel Fails To Rein In Jewish Extremists: Report

by JTA (Forward)

Israel is not doing enough to stop the large increase in attacks on Palestinians by Jewish extremists, according to an internal European Union report.

The report by the 22 heads of mission of EU countries’ ambassadors in Ramallah said there were 411 assaults in 2011, compared to 266 in 2010 and 132 in 2009, according to Euobserver.com, which saw the report. The Netherlands was the lone country that refused to endorse the report.

The attacks ranged from throwing stones to gunfire, and uprooting olive trees to burning mosques. Three Palestinians were reported dead and 183 injured by the attacks.

Eight Jewish settlers, including five members of the Fogel family, were killed and 37 injured.

The report said that a small “hard-core” group of Jewish settlers carried out the attacks, according to Euobserver. But the diplomats also called the settler attacks part of a broader Israeli campaign to get rid of the Palestinians, saying they “effectively force a withdrawal of the Palestinian population away from the vicinity of settlements, thereby increasing the scope for settlement expansion.”

The EU report said that more than 90 percent of complaints filed by Palestinians ended with no indictment.

Israel has set up a police task force to stop settler attacks and Israeli leaders have roundly condemned such attacks, an Israeli official told Euobserver. The EU report also acknowledged that Israeli soldiers helped prevent attacks during the Palestinian olive harvest last year.

Wouldn’t it be interesting if the equivalent of MEMRI were created to monitor Hebrew news outlets and politicians. The selective editing and faulty translations wouldn’t even be necessary:

MK Hasson to Arab MKs: You’re the devil

Moran Azulay, (Ynet News)

The Knesset plenum convened Wednesday for a special session titled “the political, economical and social failures of Netanyahu’s government.” The session was called after 40 Knesset members signed a bill mandating the prime minister to face the House.

MK Limor Livnat shouted at her “You shouldn’t even be here!” and MK Ofir Akunis (Syrian parliament.” Culture and Sports Minister Limor Livnat shouted at her “You shouldn’t even be here!” and MK Ofir Akunis (Likud) added, “You have some nerve.” MK Zion Fanian (Likud) urges Zoabi to “go and join the Syrian parliament.”

MK Yoel Hasson’s (Kadima) speech went a step further: Addressing all Arab MKs, he said, “You are the ones impeding coexistence. You’re the devil. You’re the hurdle. Just wait and see – you will lose.”

He then turned his attention to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and urges him to end Hamas‘ rule of Gaza Strip and strike peace with the Palestinians.

MK Ofir Akunis (Likud) took the podium next, defended the Coalition and blasted the Opposition – especially the “self-hating Kadima Party.” MK Afu Aghbaria (Hadash) interrupted him and was answered with “You hate Israel – go to Gaza.”

MK Alex Miller (Yisrael Beiteinu) also defended the Coalition, saying that the crisis in Syria, the Iranian threat and the volatile political situation in Egypt, “All constitute very serious problems – and dealing with serious problems requires serious people.”

MK Amir Peretz (Labor) surprised the plenum by defending the government’s actions vis-à-vis the latest round of escalation in the south: “To all those who say – ‘let’s topple Hamas’ rule, let’s take Gaza’ – ask yourself one question: what will happen afterwards?

“We could pay a heavy price. The IDFis capable of executing such an order, the question is – do we want the IDF to rule the Strip?”

Peretz also lauded Iron Dome, and urged the Netanyahu to put an end to the Defense Ministry and Treasury’s debate over its budget.

Crockett Keller is a right-wing gun-nut in Texas who owns Keller’s Riverside Store.  Keller is certified by the Department of Public Safety to teach people how to obtain and use a Concealed Handgun License.  He paid for an “interesting” radio ad, which ran for six days, in which he specifically says he refuses to teach “socialist liberals” and “non-Christian Arab[s] or Mozlem[s].”  In the ad, Crockett Keller says:

If you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim, I will not teach you the class with no shame; I am Crockett Keller, thank you and God bless America.

He said later:

The fact is if you are a devout Muslim then you cannot be a true American. Why should I arm these people to kill me?  That’s suicide.

KVUE-TV News notes:

It’s a stance Keller isn’t alone on. During this interview the instructor fielded nearly 40 calls congratulating him for the ad.

In fact, Keller’s anti-Arab and anti-Muslim bigotry will no doubt be a boon for business, something that speaks volumes about how prevalent Islamophobia has become.

Keller and his supporters claim he has a right to discriminate against Muslims, but the Department of Public Safety, the same government agency that certified him to teach, says otherwise; they released the following statement:

The Texas Department of Public Safety certifies individuals to teach coursework and provide training required to be taken by individuals seeking to qualify for a Texas concealed handgun license. Certified instructors are required to comply with all applicable state and federal statutes. Conduct by an instructor that denied service to individuals on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion would place that instructor’s certification by the Department at risk of suspension or revocation. The Department became aware of the statements in question yesterday and has begun an investigation into the matter. The Department will take appropriate administrative action based on the findings from the investigation.

Here’s a video of the ad, which would normally be amusing but we must take seriously the fact that many Americans feel the same way as him:

What’s not getting as much attention is the fact that this radio ad is shamelessly being promoted by radio host Michael Berry:

Berry gushed over this ad, calling it “the best gun commercial ever” and promised viewers “you’re gonna love it.”  This is the same Michael Berry who said he hoped someone would blow up a mosque.  Can you imagine, just for a second, a Muslim-American radio show host still on the air if he said he thought a synagogue should be blown up or if he promoted the same radio ad except it was “Jews” instead of “Muslims?”  How fast do you think such a person’s career would be over?

Ornament of the World: How Muslims, Jews, and Christians Created a Culture of Tolerance in Medieval Spain, by Maria Rosa Menocal, ISBN-13: 978-0316566889

Maria Rosa Menocal published this gem of a book just before the events of September 11th, 2001, when a cadre of young Arab Muslim men driven by the politics of occupation, empire and rage combined their grievances with a religio-ideological veneer and flew out of a clear blue sky into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.

The infamous day was seared into our collective conscious just as deeply as the burning aftermath that smoldered into the earth at Ground Zero, and with it a whole new era was upon us. One in which our confidence, our ideas, our principles and our policies were shook in a seismic way.

How did we react as a society and as a nation?

We clamped down on civil liberties, expanded surveillance on citizens to unfathomable and previously unheard of levels. We compromised the Constitution, built and invested even more in the Military Industrial Complex and invaded two nations while outsourcing torture. We paid lip service to Democracy while compromising with despots and apartheid regimes.

Initially, politicians, including President George W. Bush made statements to the effect that “we aren’t at war with Islam” and “Islam is a religion of peace.” Despite these fluffy statements, Islamophobia increased and cynical politicians and organizations oiled the machinery that would churn out the new bogeymen: Islam and Muslims.

Fear-mongering, especially amongst the Right continued apace and was given a new impetus with the election of Barack Hussein Obama (the “secret Mooslim”). This past summer 2010 saw the greatest backlash against Muslims since 9/11, the scene once again was Ground Zero.

A group of Muslim developers led by Sharif El-Gamal and Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf created a project that according to them would mirror all the best in Islamic values, while also being an inclusive space that welcomed all faiths. It would be designed to facilitate events, programs, lectures, debates, studies, and in theory would be quite similar to the 92nd StreetY– they named the project Cordoba House.

Cordoba House was the perfect name for a project with such lofty aims. It immediately evokes images of the beautiful palm-like arches of the Cordoba Mosque and stirs the memory of Andalusia.

Anti-Muslims opposed to the mosque raised hackles at the name Cordoba, and with their usual blustering ignorance and foolhardy arrogance put forward the bizarre and illogical lie, that, by using the name Cordoba for their project, the developers were trying to build a “triumphal mosque” to mark the conquest of Islam.

Such mendacity is dangerous because it seeks to alter reality by revisiting history and washing it of truth so as to fit a particular agenda. Cordoba was the capital of Andalus, a culture, in fact a civilization that stands as a beacon and a warning to humanity.

Menocal’s book deals with this subject, and in contradistinction to the Islamophobes, relates that Cordoba and Andalus was for a moment in history the epitome of tolerance, culture, civility and harmony.

The story of Andalus is about,

a genuine, foundational European cultural moment that qualifies as “first rate,” in the sense of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s wonderful formula (laid out in his essay “The Crack-Up”)–namely, that “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time.” (p.10-11)

Cordoba is therefore not separate from the West, it is not the “other” as some wish to cast it, but rather it is quintessentially Western.

Andalusian culture viewed contradictions within oneself and ones culture as having the possibility of being “positive and productive.” These contradictions consisted of differing religions, philosophies, languages, races, etc. Something which we take for granted in our societies but which is under pressure from fanatical and retrograde forces who mirror the forces that brought down the Andalusian civilization.

The founding stone of this culture was one of the last survivors of the Umayyad dynasty, Abd al-Rahman who traversed from Damascus to Muslim Spain “Aeneas-like,”  to become “the first, rather than the last, of his line.”

His arduous journey and homesickness for his native land were evident throughout his life. He wrote in verse his feelings of “exile”:

A palm tree stands in the middle of Rusafa,

Born in the West, far from the land of palms.

I said to it: How like me you are, far away in exile,

In long separation from family and friends.

You have sprung from soil in which you are a stranger;

And I, like you, am far from home. (p.61)

Not for much longer were his descendants to feel like “strangers.” Andalus and its jewel, Cordoba became home to a glorious civilization in which everyone, Muslims, Jews and Christians alike took part:

It was there that the profoundly Arabized Jews rediscovered and reinvented Hebrew; there that Christians embraced nearly every aspect of Arabic style–not only while living in Islamic dominions but especially after wresting political control from them; there that men of unshakable faith, like Abelard and Maimonides and Averroes, saw no contradiction in pursuing the truth, whether philosophical or scientific or religious, across confessional lines. (p.11) (emphasis mine)

Andalus produced such prominent Jewish poets, military leaders, governmental leaders, philosophers, theologians, architects, and intellectuals as: Dunash Ben Labrat, Hasdai Ibn Sharput, Maimonides, Samuel the Nagid, Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Moses of Leon and a plethora of others. I cannot do justice to their contributions to humanity in this short review, for more on their works and lives read Menocal’s book.

These Arabized Jews ushered in a Jewish Golden Age and contributed to the redemption of Hebrew which had become a near dead language, relegated to the realm of liturgy,

The brilliance of the Golden Age came from Hebrew’s redemption from its profound exile, locked inside temples, never speaking about life itself. Maimonides, born in Cordoba just five years before Halevi left al-Andalus, described this post-exilic, pre-Andalusian state of things in his Laws on Prayer: ‘When anyone of them prayed in Hebrew, he was unable adequately to express his needs or recount the praises of God, without mixing Hebrew with other languages.’ It was not that Jews should speak other languages but that the Hebrew they spoke was no longer the language of true love, of complex emotion, of seemingly contrary ideas and feelings: maternal, erotic, spiritual, material, transcendent. Maimonides, Andalusian that he was, believed that God needed and wanted to be spoken to in a language alive with that whole range of possible emotions. It was an attitude that later allowed English to find its voice in the love sonnets of Shakespeare as well as in the prayers of the King James Bible. The prayers prove more satisfying, perhaps even more true, for being in the language of the love songs.

Hebrew’s redemption had come at the hands of writers who were masters of Arabic rhetoric, the Andalusian Jews, men as thoroughly and successfully a part of the cult of Arabic grammar, rhetoric, and style as any of their Muslim neighbors and associates. A century before Halevi took his final leave to find Jerusalem, Samuel the Nagid had first made Hebrew perform all the magic tricks that his native tongue, Arabic, could and did. He had been made vizier because his skill in writing letters and court documents in Arabic surpassed that of all others. He then went on to write poems in the new Hebrew style, among them verses recounting his glories leading his taifa’s armies to victory. In one fell swoop, Samuel’s Hebrew poetry, with its Arabic accents and prosody –the features essential to making alive for the Arabic-speaking Andalusian Jews–vindicated and completely exceeded all the small steps that others had taken in the centuries before him to revive the ancestral language, to reinvent it as a living tongue. Everyone, from Halevi to the nineteenth- century Germans who made the Andalusians into the noble heroes of Jewish history, knew that Hebrew had been redeemed from its exile thanks to the Andalusian Jews’ extraordinary secular successes, first during the several Umayyad centuries and then in the taifas. Because they had absorbed, mastered, and loved the principles that made Arabic easily able to sing to God and Beloved in the same language, they had been able to revive Hebrew so it could, once again, sing like the Hebrew of David’s songs, and Solomon’s songs. It was a great triumph…(p.161-62) (emphasis mine)

One of those whose story I found very intriguing was Judah Halevi who encapsulated all the contradictions and creativeness that was Andalusia. He was a profound poet, much admired by his peers and was considered one of the “greatest champions” of the Andalusian ethic. However, he transformed over time and turned his back on Andalusian culture, “he declared that it was all folly and inimical to Jewishness and had to be forsaken, in spirit certainly and — if possible, as he intended to do — physically. People were astonished, and some of them offended.”(p.163)

This sort of destructive change and move away from the Andalusian ethos afflicted Muslims and Christians as well.

[T]he first significant instances of cultural puritanism in the Iberian Peninsula were imported from places with little of the Andalusian experience. The Berber Muslims of North Africa never quite understood the Andalusian application of the dhimma, and they mostly disapproved of the syncretic culture that resulted from it. From the Berber sack of Cordoba at the beginning of the eleventh century on, a variety of “reform” movements swarming northward from across the Strait of Gibraltar always threatened to remake Andalusian politics and culture in their own image of Islam. At the same time, the Berber obtuseness was mirrored by the incomprehension with which the peninsula’s Christans were viewed by their coreligionists north of the Pyrenees. This was especially evident after Castile began to expand into territories that had been under Islamic rule for three and four centuries, and to incorporate their thoroughly Arabized populations, Muslims, Jews, and Mozarab Christians alike. An often stark difference in worldview separated the Roman Church as it had evolved outside the peninsula from the Christian communities within it. And these differences grew more profound in the decades and centuries that followed the Christian expansion southward…

During the second half of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth, more puritanical visions of these cultures converged in Iberia. The determinedly crusading forces from Latin Christendom and the equally fanatic Berber Almohads became influential parts of the landscape and inevitably met, head-on, on the plains between New Castile and old al-Andalus, at Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212, with disastrous results for the Almohads. The effects of the long-term presence of two expansive religious ideologies, each originally foreign to the Andalusian ethic, transformed the nature of the conflicts at hand. They made religious-ideological warfare a reality, cultural orthodoxy a real possibility, and monochromatic identity a realizable ideal.(267-68)

I have not recounted the amazing and spectacular contribution of Muslim scholars, philosophers, scientists, poets, musicians, theologians, architects, statesmen and leaders. This review would become very long if we recounted the lives of: Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Ibn Tufayl,  Ibn Hazm, Abd al-Rahman, Abd al-Rahman III, Muhammad Ibn Abbad, Ibn Arabi, Ibn al-Khatib, al-Idrisi and the many others.

AlCazar, the Church on top of the hill

Nor have I recounted the glorious arabized Christian production and contribution in this period: the Alcazar, the syncretic identity of the Mozarabs, the development of Mudejar architecture, the “for hire” activities and sagas of ElCid, Peter of Castile, the Abbot of Cluny’s Qur’an, the translations by Christians of Arabic works into European languages and how it effected the diffusion of knowledge in Europe and the age of exploration.

How can I do all this justice, when even Menocal’s book seems to only give us a tantalizing glimpse and a thirst for more?

The dynamic, intellectual, creative, unique output in regards to language, literature, philosophy, theology, politics, and science serves as an ultimate rebuke to the concerted effort of Anti-Arabs and Islamophobes who claim that Muslim peoples accomplished nothing, were intellectually bereft, culturally barren and uncreative. The well worn talking point that makes frequent rounds in Islamophobic circles, the idea that ‘anything of value that Muslims created or invented was stolen’ is forever put to rest and quietly mocked by al-Andalus.

Menocal’s book on Andalusia gives us insight into the possibilities of various religions, ideas, identities to not only coexist but to exalt in differences and to view them positively. It also warns us against the insular, narrow view of nationalism, fanaticism, supremacism, both religious and cultural. It is a warning that we would do well to listen to and comprehend for our own time and place.

For our readers to savor a bit of the Andalusian experience, I provide two beautiful examples of Andalusian Music:

Ibn Arabi–”Her Words Bring Me Back to Life”:

Mozarabic Chant: “Alleluia” and Mauritanian Samaa: