Fear and hate-mongering can be useful for building political movements. Sarah Palin seems to be making a very good living at that.
The ADL's recent decision to tell a Muslim group to "build it elsewhere" in regard to the planned Muslim Mosque and community center near the site of the WTC buildings destroyed in 9/11 and their coming out on the side of bigots is not such a new thing. A look back and then a look again at the current decision.
This is part of a disturbing trend within the anti-Palestinian Lobby to make firmer alliances among the hard Right, in part, i think, to make up for its losses among liberals and progressives.
We know about Rev. Hagee and his extremism... But no matter, the ADL, that calls itself the Anti-Defamation League, stood by Hagee at his times of need.
"I think there is a role for [Pastor John Hagee]. He has earned a certain recognition with the community because of his support for Israel."
--Anti-Defamation League national director Abe Foxman, 3/9/07
Yes, there is a place for those who bring up the very worst of stereotypes about Jews, who Hagee firmly believes are going to rot in hell, because, after all, his views of Arabs is very useful. (Hagee believes that Palestinians should have little or no rights in "Greater Israel", including the West Bank). Who cares, the thinking goes, what he thinks his god is going to do with Jews in the next life, what's important is that he wants the US to be generous to Israel now and treat Arabs harshly in this life. (It's amazing, and quite a sad commentary on our society, that it's been only Hagee's contemptible statements about Jews that has made him so very controversial, and not his equally contemptible statements about the Arabs/Muslims of Middle East)
Hagee's outfit, the Christians United for Israel, has been made a permanent partner with aipac. Since Hagee's keynote address to aipac in 2007, aipac and CUFI has had speakers at each others annual conventions. It's people like Foxman who made this partnership possible. The Defamation League at work. Think about that the next time your congresscritter attends the next aipac event. Just why are they hooking up with racists?
Yet the story of ADL's decline goes back more than that. Back in the 1980's/early 90's the ADL was involved in a scandal relating to spying, using some illegal means, of activists involved in fighting apartheid in South Africa, and fighting against Israel's occupation of Palestinian land.
In 1993, the District of Attorney of San Francisco released 700 pages of documents implicating the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that claims to be a defender of civil rights, in a vast spying operation directed against American citizens who were opposed to Israel's policies in the Occupied West Bank and Gaza and to the apartheid policies of the government of South Africa and passing on information to both governments.
Under great political pressure, Smith later dropped the charges. One wonders what would have happened had an Arab-American or Muslim organization been caught spying with the names of 10,000 people and 600 organizations in their files.
Not only were critics of Israel under ADL's surveillance,including thousands of Arab-Americans, but labor organizations such as the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, and the Oakland Educational Association, and civil rights groups such as the NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council and the Asian Law Caucus were also found in the "pinko" files of ADL's undercover operative, Roy Bullock. ...
Bullock, the ADL's top "fact finder" had sold confidential information to a South African intelligence agent in San Francisco for $15,000.
Ten days before he was assassinated in South Africa, Chris Hani, the man who would have succeeded Nelson Mandela as the country's president, was trailed by Bullock on a trip through California who reported on it to the South African government...- here
Israel, of course, was South Africa's most useful and strongest ally.
Yet another sign that the ADL acts not as a human rights organization, but acts primarily as a PR organization for the Israeli government. It has changing views on the Armenian genocide carried out by the Turkish government in the early 20th century. Its stance has always depended on how helpful it will be for Israel, not on the actual events in 1915. It has worked hard to oppose a Congressional resolution when Turkey's relationship was good with Israel, but now that it has deteriorated, they seem to have switched sides. It's not like events of 1915 has changed. (powerful article by Armenian-American here)
Which brings us back to today's news, that some people were inexplicably, in my view, shocked by.
The statement put out by the ADL contradicts itself. It says this:
We categorically reject appeals to bigotry on the basis of religion, and condemn those whose opposition to this proposed Islamic Center is a manifestation of such bigotry.
Yeah, um, right. But then it says this:
In recommending that a different location be found for the Islamic Center, we are mindful that some legitimate questions have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it, and what connections, if any, its leaders might have with groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values.
Read more: http://blog.beliefnet.com/...
so while first condemning bigotry, it then promotes it, and suspicions about anything Muslim. Fear of Muslims and terror.
This is all part of the trend. The anti-Palestinian Lobby is abandoning its traditional source of support... Liberals... And pandering (yes, they pander too) to the extreme right (now that much of the extreme Right's main target of hate is no longer Jews, but Arabs and Muslims).. This is probably in large part because they see what is happening. Where is support for Israel coming from these days, especially among the grassroots. Israel policies may have unquestioned support (or at least silence) among most liberals in congress, but if you look at the polls, even ones that show great support overall for Israel, grassroots democrats have the highest negatives regarding Israeli policy.
ADL and AIPAC may see the extreme right... The Palins and the Hagees and their followers as an opportunity to make up for their losses among liberals. It is pure political (mis-)calculation, at the expense of principled support for human and civil rights. It does make it easier for us to build support for Palestinian rights among liberals... as the so-called "pro-Israel" Lobby lurches far rightward, as does Israeli society, busy with demolishing peace on a daily basis. Yet this also means that the far-Right is also getting another ally. A very disturbing trend and dangerous for all of us.
the most important thing we should have learned in the 20th century is that for each of us to be safe we have to look out for one another. That was the tradition of the old ADL. That organization no longer seems to exist. May it rest in peace.