Critics Cost Jewish Educator Her Dream School
Mon Apr 28, 2008 at 08:12:06 PM PDT
While we debate endlessly about the race card in the Dem primaries, it's alive and well on other fronts: There is an anti-Semitism already strong in this country that now targets Arabs instead of Jews.
Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”
Yesterday's New York Times shows how Arab educator Almontaser and the Kahlil Gibran International Academy were sabotaged by the Sun and the Post, and, yes, the Department of Education. The future of our world, and our hopes for peace and understanding, rest with our seeing other people as people, and not as inherently worse than we are. This kind of racism is affecting all of us. read the article, substitute "Jew" for "Arab," and you'll see what I mean.
Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School
More below the fold.
In much the same way as Jews were (and sometimes still are) painted as somehow inherently different from "us," ie, whoever those with the most power and those who look like them, Arabs are now portrayed as being inherently different from "us." Chief among those leading the charge, and one of those largely responsible for the sabotage of the Kahlil Gibran Academy, is Daniel Pipes:
Mr. Pipes places Muslims in three categories, he said: those who are violent, those who are moderate and those in the middle. It is this middle group, he argued, that now poses the greatest threat to American values.
“Are these people who are not using violence but who are not fully enthusiastic about this country and its mores, its culture — are they on our side or are they on the other side?” he asked.
Those "values" used to be freedom of religion, freedom of association, other Constitutionally approved freedoms, and--whatever served Christian, white, Northern European, moneyed interests. Unfortunately for the American Arabs under attack, these values/interests are now also "understood" to comprehend blanket approval of Israel and its occupation.
Mr. Pipes, 58, has emerged as a divisive figure in the post-9/11 era. An author of 12 books who has a doctorate in history from Harvard, he has made a career out of studying and critiquing Islam. His research group, which he established in downtown Philadelphia in the early 1990s, “seeks to define and promote American interests in the Middle East,” according to its Web site....
Mr. Pipes is perhaps best known for Campus Watch, a national initiative he created to scrutinize Middle Eastern programs at colleges and universities. The drive has accused professors of, among other things, being soft on militant Islam and sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. It has stirred widespread controversy and, in some cases, may have undermined professors’ bids for tenure.
To balance Campus Watch, one critic of Pipes and his ilk, David Horowitz, founded Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, aimed at college campuses. According to him, monitors of radical Islam are increasingly targeting nonviolent Muslim-Americans. Their tactics are to make them look extremist and threatening. For example, In Daniel Pipes' article in the Sun,
he referred to Ms. Almontaser by her birth name, Dhabah [which she hasn't used since she came to the US at 3], and called her views “extremist.” He cited an article in which she was quoted as saying about 9/11, “I don’t recognize the people who committed the attacks as either Arabs or Muslims.” (As The Jewish Week later reported, Mr. Pipes left out the second half of the quote: “Those people who did it have stolen my identity as an Arab and have stolen my religion.”)
Daniel Pipes and others are delighted to stoke the "Clash of Cultures" mythology, because it shores up blanket Western support of Israel and its occupation. In this mythology, hordes of violent Arabs/Muslims (because the two are always the same, aren't they? Forget Lebanese Christians, Palestinian Christians, Moroccan Jews, Pakestani Muslims) want to put your daughter in a burkha and forbid circumcision and stop you from voting, and so-called moderate Arabs like Debbie Almontaser exist solely to provide them with coverage--to soften our brains until it's too late and we wake up one morning with all our churches and temples burned and all the world's oil in their hands...
Daniel Pipes is a hateful man, beneath contempt. If I were to make any ridiculous classification of Jews into three types, he'd be howling for the AntiDefamation League. This kind of racist oversimplification reminds me of Nazi Germany. But if you read the article, you see that many "moderate" Judeo-Christians pander to the violent Mr Pipes (how can I call him violent when he merely stokes rage and fear with his lies? has the man ever used a gun?) and give him the cloak of respectability he is so worried Ms Almontaser gives violent Arab/Muslims. These include the NY Department of Education and the Mayor himself.
The upshot of this painful story: Ms Almontaser was eased out of the school she had conceived and put together and replaced with:
A non-Arabic speaking male principal. Who is also--Jewish.
To understand the absurdity, imagine a Turkish school that the Armenians objected to, having its Turkish founder be replaced by a non-Turkish speaking principal who is from the same background as his most vociferous critics: Armenian.
Peace in the Middle East, and here at home, can only be achieved through understanding, and that includes understanding other languages and cultures. The replacement of Ms. Almontaser with a non-Arabic speaking and Jewish principle was simply a bizarre decision. Does Mr Pipes feel safe enough now? Does the mayor feel he has offered enough appeasement?
Are there no Arab educators "safe" enough to head a school centered around Arabic language and culture?
Mr Pipes sees the dark cloak of Sharia behind that which he fights: Muslim cabdrivers in Minneapolis who have refused to take passengers carrying liquor; municipal pools and a gym at Harvard that have adopted female-only hours to accommodate Muslim women; candidates for office who are suspected of supporting political Islam; and banks that are offering financial products compliant with sharia, the Islamic code of law.
Mr Pipes cannot see what stares him in the face: That Harvard Hillel had
The danger, Mr. Pipes says, is that the United States stands to become another England or France, a place where Muslims are balkanized and ultimately threaten to impose sharia.
“It is hard to see how violence, how terrorism will lead to the implementation of sharia,” Mr. Pipes said. “It is much easier to see how, working through the system — the school system, the media, the religious organizations, the government, businesses and the like — you can promote radical Islam.”
Mr. Pipes refuses to see how selective his targets are. Outrageous--those hours for Muslim women in the pool. Not Outrageous: Harvard Hillel House, a fixture at the old Radcliffe campus for decades.
I don't know anything about Sharia banking practices--are they more outrageous than the Judeo-Christian credit card interest that tops 25% and subprime mortgages sold to the ignorant? Perhaps...not my call...
The critics of Daniel Pipes and his kind number as many Jews as Christians, and the younger generation of Jews is trying for a more balanced dialogue on Israel. From that very Hillel House at Harvard:
http://www.muzzlewatch.com/...
We reported earlier on the Breaking the Silence tour featuring the powerful voices of Israeli veterans talking about the price both they and Palestinians pay for the occupation. Last year, the Zionist Organization of America tried (unsuccessfully) to expel the Union of Progressive Zionists from the an Israel on Campus Coalition for sponsoring the Breaking the Silence tour.
This year, the tour is back but with more institutional Jewish co-sponsors than ever. The ZOA, known for their old-school take-no-prisoners tactics, tried another approach, since they found little support for their expulsion campaign last year. They issued a press statement titled “Dershowitz and Sharansky: Israel Has Best Human Rights Record,” demanding the immediate cancellation of the exhibit and all future showings in Hillels:
This exhibit at the Harvard Hillel not only doesn�t present all the facts, but promotes an anti-Israel lie. It focuses on isolated events and aberrations. Those who see the exhibit will not be in any position to discuss the Middle East conflict knowledgeably and intelligently. Instead, they will be left with one biased and false conclusion: that Israelis and Israeli soldiers regularly and deliberately commit human rights violations against Palestinian Arabs, and that Israel is a brutal and callous oppressor. Those who know the context and history of the conflict in the Middle East know that nothing could be further from the truth.
Pulling no punches, ZOA goes on:
�The Harvard Hillel is sponsoring an exhibit that encourages anti-Semitic hate and bigotry, and giving it credibility and legitimacy that it doesn�t deserve. The exhibit will not build Jewish identity and love for Israel. Jewish students may even feel threatened personally and distance themselves from their identity as Jews. Some may even feel an unwarranted sense of shame about Israel and the brave soldiers who are committed to defending it, while doing all they can to protect Palestinian civilians under extremely difficult circumstances.
The director of the Harvard Hillel, himself an IDF veteran, fought back in an open letter defending their decision to sponsor the exhibit. It’s interesting to note that the idea to mount the exhibit inside of Hillel and at certain times, instead of in a more prominent location on campus, was originated by the Harvard Students for Israel group which had grave concerns about the Progressive Jewish Alliance’s decision to bring the exhibit to campus. The Hillel steering committee decided that campus controversy could be better controlled or avoided if the exhibit were brought inside the Hillel, complete with lengthy statements critical of the exhibit by other IDF veterans.
This diary is not eloquent enough to say what I want, which is basically: the powers that be usually find new ways to work things in their interests. By "powers that be," I mean US economic powers. Those who want the oil, who want the world hegemony that we have effectively achieved through Army bases and aid packages more than they want anything like justice or equal treatment for the peoples of the world.
I don't believe demonizing Arabs/Muslims is helpful to the cause of anyone, including Jews and Israelis. Perpetuating the status quo with respect to Israel's occupation of Palestine or US belief in its inherent right to bomb and control countries half a world away hurts us all.
Permalink | 13 comments