All Entries Tagged With: "Holocaust"
A putsch against war
Generals and secret police chiefs get together for an attack on the politicians.
Hamas Wouldn’t Honor a Treaty, Top Leader Says
Abu Marzook Says He’s Open to a New Israel Relationship
Christians Called To Serve Jewish Settlers
Evangelicals Volunteer on West Bank Because the Bible Says So
Bribing Israel
The bully came to Washington. The American president told him in no uncertain terms that the United States would not support a military attack on Iran at this moment.
Shame on ADL for opposing Mosque 2 blocks from Ground Zero
By Rabbi Michael Lerner*
The ADL (Anti-Defamation League) publicly opposes the construction two blocks from Ground Zero of the Cordoba House (also known as Park 51), which the planners imagine as hosting a range of activities similar to those offered at the 92nd Street Y, and including a Mosque at which Muslims could worship. The plan, supported by Mayor Bloomberg, is opposed by some who have consistently used the attack on the World Trade Center as justification for war and fear+hatred of Muslims.
ADL leader Abe Foxman presented the position of this organization that claims to oppose discrimination by reading a formal statement that seemed to be a perfect example of "shooting and crying" (first you attack brutally, then you cry about how sad it is to be put into this difficult position, often blaming the victims for having "forced" us to attack them). The key to that statement was this:
"Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right."
This kind of argument is deeply mistaken. It was not "Muslims" or Islam that attacked the World Trade Center, but some Muslims who held extreme versions of Islam and twisted what is a holy and peace-oriented tradition to justify their acts and their hatred. We see the same thing happening in the name of Christianity (many of those who justified the war in Iraq were Christians who felt they were acting from a Christian ethical perspective) or in the name of Judaism (the immoral behavior of some of the settlers who use Judaism as their cover for stealing land and destroying the olive trees of their Palestinian neighbors). Just as we would rebel against others dismissing Judaism or Christianity, or prohibiting Jews and Muslims from constructing our holy places of worship or community centers where we wish because some of those who had suffered from the immorality of some Jews or some Christians had decided that it was painful to them to see the presence of these institutions near the site of previous suffering, so we reject this claim.
Arthur Waskow asks us to imagine how we would feel if some group of Muslims in the US, identifying with the suffering of Palestinians, and including within them some who had lived in Israel and had to leave to protect themselves from the oppression of Occupation that they labeled as "Jewish oppression," had opposed the construction of a synagogue in their predominantly Muslim neighborhood because it would cause some of the victims of Israeli policy to experience more pain. Would we accept that? Certainly not.
Underlying the ADL position is its references to the Holocaust and the need to respect the feelings of its survivors. Sadly, the memory of Jewish suffering is appropriated by right-wing forces to justify special privilege for Jews in general and Israel in particular, now is to be extended to victims of 9/11 (but not, for example, to the survivors of US military assaults on civilians in Vietnam,Cambodia, Laos, El Salvador, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Iraq, or Afghanistan). The aggression of others is always evil, ours always justifiable, to the political right. That's bad enough. But shame on ADL in particular for now using our suffering in the Holocaust to justify discrimination toward others, whether in Israel or in the U.S.
Actually, to those of us who take seriously the Torah command to "love the stranger" (the Other), it seems clear that the rebuilding of Ground Zero should include the construction of an interfaith center in which all of the world's religions could be represented, particularly that of Islam as a way of affirming and supporting those many Muslims who do not adopt an extreme anti-American or anti-Jewish perspective.
The American Jewish Committee tried to adopt a more nuanced position, but wanted to withhold endorsement till they can establish that the source of money for this building did not come from extremist elements in the Muslim world. Yet how would we feel if construction of a Jewish center was similarly conditional? Would money from those who support the settlers or others who believe that Jews have a right to all of the Biblical Land of Israel and have a right to use violence to achieve that end be sufficient reason to prevent the construciton of a Jewish center? Would a Church that received money from sources in the Christian community that believed it appropriate to engage in violence to create the world they wanted (e.g. to support a US military intervention in Iran) be sufficient reason to deny them the right to build their Christian center? I don't think so.
No wonder, then, that we at Tikkun–seeking to build a world in which animosities among religions can be dramatically reduced so that all of us can recognize our common humanity (or what we Jews call "being created in the image of God") and recognize the immediate global environmental emergency to overcome national and religious antagonisms so that we can work together to save the planet and its peoples from destruction–strongly endorse and support the construction of the Muslim community center/mosque a few blocks from Ground Zero.
Shame on ADL and the American Jewish Committee for not understanding the moral imperatives of this moment! They not only betray Jewish values ("do not do unto others what you would not wish them to do to you") and American values (government should not interfere with the operations of religious communities), they unintentionally but nevertheless certainly increase the tensions between Jews and Muslims at a moment when all sane people in both communities recognize the need to build bridges of understanding, friendship and mutual caring as a prelude to supporting peace in Israel. Given that both ADL and the AJCommittee have consistently supported the most outrageous actions of the Israeli government toward Palestinians, is it possible that unconsciously they are taking these kinds of stands because they do not see the supreme importance of creating caring and sensitivity to the needs of the other? Yet it is this sensitivity which is the necessary prerequisite for a lasting peace with justice and security for both sides in the Middle East conflict. And that peace would be a major step toward undermining the support that terrorists have been able to amass, in part because such a peace is absent.
* Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine www.tikkun.org, chair of the interfaith Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org, rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in Berkeley, Ca. and author of eleven books, most recently the national best-seller The Left Hand of God: Taking Back our Country From the Religious Right. If you wish to support this kind of thinking, please join our Network of Spiritual Progressives at www.spiritualprogressives.org.
Muslims need to tackle Jewish Islamophobia
Directed from GMBDR?
Please read this: Anti-Semitism!! Seriously??
By Khalid Amayreh
From Sydney to California , Zionist Jews are spreading venomous hatred against Islam. A few years ago, we were witnessing mere instances and isolated occurrences of Jewish hatred and/or fear of Islam and Muslims. Now, it is very much morbid mass hysteria sustained by rampant and unrelenting incitement and distortion of facts.
In New York , for example, fanatical Zionist Jews don’t stop invoking the 9/11 events to generate hatred against Muslims as if Islam and its estimated 1.6 billion followers condoned the diabolical terrorist acts.
In recent weeks, the sick supremacists have been at the forefront of a maliciously racist campaign aimed at inciting local politicians and officials to outlaw the planned construction of a Muslim house of worship in the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural melting-pot city of eight million people.
The Jewish supremacists’ message is as hateful as it is brazen: Islam is terror and Muslims are terrorists. This is the same message the Third Reich disseminated against European Jewry prior and during the Second World War.
Of all people, Jews ought to realize that vilifying and dehumanizing an entire religious or ethnic community of people can lead to genocide, since incitement generates hatred and hatred can easily lead to murder. Words do kill.
This virulent Jewish Islamophobia is by no means confined to the American arena, where the Jewish-controlled media and show biz have been inciting against Islam for ages.
In Europe, Zionist Jews have been encouraging European neo-fascism as long as the ultimate target is Muslims, not Jews. The messages go like this: Islam is about to take over Europe, wake up before it is too late!!
In many instances, Zionist agents fabricated anti-Semitic incidents, like scrawling anti-Jewish epithets or even setting Jewish property on fire, and blamed it on Muslims
More to the point, Zionist Jews are using the media, which gives them ample space to spread their hateful messages, to spew their poison everywhere. The ultimate message they are trying to communicate is “kill the Muslims, kill the terrorists.”!
Moreover, in many instances certain Jewish circles have courted Muslim renegades, given them money, in order to use them as mouthpieces to malign Islam. This is very much similar to Jewish apostates who converted to Christianity in medieval Europe and were used by the Church to malign Judaism and its practices, ultimately leading to pogroms against Jewish communities.
Jewish Islamophobia is much more than a mere protest phenomenon against Muslim opposition to Nazi-like Israeli policies in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and South Lebanon . It is actually a deliberate, organized effort aimed at besmirching Islam and hurting the feelings of Muslims by vilifying Islam’s symbols such as the Prophet Muhammed (Peace be upon him). Just think of any Islamophobic group anywhere in the world today, and you will find that some Zionist Jews stand behind it in terms of financial backing or political support.
But organized Zionist-Jewish hatred of Islam is not going to benefit Israel, or Jews in the long run. Alienating hundreds of millions of Muslims, by calling them terrorists, will sooner or later boomerang on Israel and generate hostile reactions from the Muslim community.
The boomerang effect is actually already occurring. Just think of Turkey, the secular Muslim country and Israel’s erstwhile most important regional ally. The anti-Islam policy on the part of Israel, which manifested itself in the Gestapo-like approach toward helpless Muslims in Gaza and southern Lebanon, has already infuriated millions of Turks. Now, Israel is the most hated country in Asia minor.
Apart from the bleeding Palestinian wound, there are really no intrinsic contentious issues between Muslims and Jews.
Indeed, contrary to common misunderstandings, Islam is not against Jews as Jews. Islam never lumped Jews in one category and has always sought to make a careful distinction between good Jews and bad Jews, e.g. God-fearing Jews who truly follow the teachings of the Torah, on the one hand, and, on the other, those duplicitous, dishonest and disobedient Jews who views the rest of mankind as cattle.
In the final analysis, we all know that Jews lived their golden age under the rule of Islam whether in Egypt, or Iraq or southern Spain. This situation, more or less, continued until the advent of the cancer of Zionism in the 20th century. The creation of the evil state of Israel in Palestine in 1948 helped spread this cancer in the Middle East and beyond as most Jews were effectively transformed by Zionism into worshipers of the modern golden calf known as Israel. This satanic calf has effectively morphed Jews, or most Jews, into mass murderers, certified war criminals, child killers, land thieves and pathological professional liars.
Today, Israel and its hasbara agents and barking dogs around the world leave no opportunity without vilifying Muslims. In some countries, like in the Netherland, Zionist-induced anti-Islam neo-Nazism is reaching unbearable proportions. Nazi-minded populist leaders are cordially welcomed in occupied Jerusalem by Israeli political and religious leaders.
In short, a real alliance is being forged between Zionism and European neo-Nazism. It is a marriage of convenience between the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of Jews who perished during the holocaust on one side, and on the other side, the ideological children, grandchildren and great grandchildren of the exterminators of Jewish victims.
In the final analysis, it makes no difference whether the ultimate target of fascism is Muslims or Jews or others.
Of course, Jews can’t all be blamed for the evils of Zionism. But it is also true that the task of neutralizing and ultimately defeating Jewish fascism can’t be left to a small minority of conscientious Jews who oppose Zionism on moral and religious grounds. Such a task is simply beyond these good people’s ability.
And while this minority ought to be complimented, even saluted, for their moral courage to openly denounce the moral apostasy of Zionism, it is obvious that the direct would-be victims must do much more than just be on the receiving end of Zionist hatred and venom.
We must therefore counterattack, using the smartest weapons available. We should flood the internet with billions of messages that would communicate to the world the truth and the facts about Israeli Nazism. We must expose Israel for what it is, a Nazi-like state that is based on murder, ethnic cleansing and lies.
Today, Israel’s image around the world is suffering the most since the mid 1970s when most nations viewed the deformed entity as akin to other racist entities such as the defunct apartheid regime in South Africa.
We, Muslims, along with honest and conscientious people from every creed and race under the sun, including Jews who are opposed to oppression, must make every possible effort and go to any extent necessary to expose Israeli Nazism to all peoples. Zionism can’t be defeated by prayers alone.
Israeli Nazism has a fixation, namely controlling the world by controlling governments and regimes, as is already the case in the United States, Canada and several other western countries.
Needless to say, the main obstacle hindering the consummation of Zionist global hegemony is the Muslims the world, or more correctly the vital Muslim forces that are mindful of the task of shielding the dignity of Muslim peoples from the ghoul of Zio-Nazism.
The battle against evil Zionism is going to be anything but easy. It will take years or even decades of bitter struggle, and there will be ups and downs. But Zionism is not omnipotent and will be destroyed eventually.
Evil powers can’t sustain themselves for ever. ?