On the Mosque near Ground Zero, Tolerance, Bigotry, Decency, and Questionable Intentions

Raise pertinent questions about the construction of the mosque near Ground Zero, or dare to object to the project and you're immediately labeled a bigot, Islamophobe, and anti-democratic. But the game is rigged.
I've referred people to thoughtful arguments made by Christopher Hitchens here and Charles Krauthammer, Sacrilege at Ground Zero, Mark Helprin, The World Trade Center Mosque and the Constitution , Andrew McCarthy here and Charles Jacobs here. The response is usually that 'they're cranks, right wing nuts, fanatics, etc.'
Well, here's Judea Pearl on why the mosque may not be such a stellar idea.
Hard to throw him to lions as a man of intolerance!
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The psychology behind the Ground Zero mosque
By Judea Pearl
Overall, the message that emerges from this discourse can hardly be missed: When Muslim grievance is at question, America is the culprit.
I have been trying hard to find an explanation for the intense controversy surrounding the Cordoba Initiative, whereby 71 percent of Americans oppose the construction of an Islamic Center and a Mosque next to Ground Zero. I cannot agree with the theory that such broad resistance represents Islamophobic sentiments, nor that it is a product of a recent “right wing” blitz against one Imam or another.
Americans are neither bigots, nor gullible.

Deep sensitivity to the families of 9/11 victims was cited as yet another explanation, but, this, too, does not answer the core question. If one accepts that the 19 fanatics who flew planes into the Twin Towers were merely fake Muslims who, by their very act, proved themselves acting against the tenets of “true Islam,” then building a Mosque at Ground Zero should evoke no emotion whatsoever; it should not be viewed differently than, say, building a church, a community center or a druid shrine.

A more realistic explanation is that most Americans do not buy the 19-fanatics story, but view the 9/11 assault as a product of an anti-American ideology that, for good and bad reasons, has found a fertile breeding ground in the hearts and minds of many Muslim youngsters who see their Muslim identity inextricably tied with anti-Americanism.

The Ground Zero Mosque is being equated with that ideology, not with the faith or religious practices it aims to house. Public objection to the mosque thus represents a vote of no confidence in mainstream American Muslim leadership which, on the one hand, refuses to acknowledge the alarming dimension that anti-Americanism has taken in their community and, paradoxically, blames America for creating it.

American Muslim leadership has had nine years to build up trust by taking proactive steps against the spread of anti-American terror-breeding ideologies, here and abroad. Evidently, however, a sizable segment of the American public is not convinced that this leadership is doing an effective job of confidence building.

In public, Muslim spokespersons praise America as the best country for Muslims to live in and practice their faith. But in sermons, speeches, rallies, classrooms, prisons, conferences and books sold at those conferences, the narrative is often different. There, Noam Chomsky’s conspiracy theory is the dominant paradigm, and America’s foreign policy is one long chain of “crimes” against humanity, especially against Muslims. Affirmation of these conspiratorial theories sends mixed messages to young Muslims, engendering anger and helplessness: America and Israel are the first to be blamed for Muslim failings, sufferings and violence. Terrorist acts, whenever condemned, are immediately “contextually explicated” (to quote Tariq Ramadan), Spiritual legitimizers of suicide bombings (e.g, Shaikh Yusuf Qaradawi of Qatar) are revered beyond criticism, Hamas and Hezbollah are permanently shielded from the label of “terrorist,” Overall, the message that emerges from this discourse is implicit, but can hardly be missed: When Muslim grievance is at question, America is the culprit and violence is justified, if not obligatory.

True, we have not helped Muslims in the confidence-building process. Treating home-grown terror acts as isolated incidents of psychological disturbances while denying their ideological roots has given American Muslim leaders the illusion that they can achieve unreserved public acceptance without engaging in serious introspection and responsibility sharing for allowing victimhood, anger and entitlement to spawn such acts. Opponents fear the construction of the Ground-Zero Mosque would further prolong this illusion and thus impede, rather than promote healing and reconciliation.

If I were New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg I would reassert Muslims’ right to build the Islamic Center and the Mosque, but I would expend the same energy, not one iota less, trying to convince them to consider an alternative project: a community-run multi-faith center in honor of the 9/11 victims. Given the current intensity of emotions, fellow Muslim Americans will benefit more from co-ownership of consensual projects than sole ownership of confrontational projects.

Judea Pearl is a professor at UCLA and president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, named after his son. He is a co-editor of “I am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl (Jewish Light, 2004), winner of the National Jewish Book Award.

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Of Boycotts, Selective Products and Selective Memory: published as long lte in Seattle's JT News: original version below that

August 20th, 2010
Letters
Dubious distinction


The Olympia, Washington Food Co-op has the dubious distinction of being the first within the grocery co-op movement in America to boycott Israeli-made products. This is unsurprising, because Olympia is a beehive of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist activities, from the classrooms of Evergreen State College to its churches and town hall. With no public notice to its members, let alone a healthy debate about the merits of such a motion, on July 15 the Olympia Food Co-op damned Israel, in effect placing the entire onus of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Israel. Nothing short of the “right of return” of all Arab refugees from the 1948 War — a war initiated by five Arab armies and the Arab leadership of Palestine at that time—will suffice to end the boycott. Of course, this is code for the “disbanding” of the Jewish State of Israel.Never mind that Israel is being singled out as the one country whose wickedness and depravity is so great that its very existence is deemed a topic demanding of discussion. Not so with North Korea, Sudan, Libya, China, Russia, Syria or scores of other countries whose human rights abuses are apparently so commonplace as to be unworthy of mention.Never mind that Israel has shown itself willing to make painful sacrifices for peace, from its withdrawal from all of Sinai, its evacuation of all Jews from Gaza and other settlements in the disputed territories of the West Bank, to Ehud Barak’s and later Ehud Olmert’s offers to relinquish upwards of 96 percent of the West Bank in return for peace with its neighbors. Never mind that an economic boycott sends exactly the wrong message to both Israelis and Palestinians striving to reach an accord, because it penalizes Israeli Christian and Muslim Arabs (who comprise 20 percent of Israel’s population), emboldens Palestinian extremists to adhere to maximalist demands, and makes it less likely that Israelis will trust that the international community that supports one-sided boycotts is acting in good faith.If the boycotters and their supporters were to really act in good faith, or at least to be consistent, they wouldn’t stop at boycotting grocery products. They’d boycott Israeli products across the board. This would include most computers, since Israel helped to develop the Intel Pentium chip, Windows MP, XP and Vista as well as Microsoft Office. They’d have to boycott Google and cell phones developed in Israel by Motorola, as well as voice mail and camera phones. Thousands of products that were developed through technological innovations in Israel, in agriculture, aerospace, energy, pharmaceuticals, and bio-medicine would also be off limits. But naturally, the self-righteous boycotters and their legions of supporters aren’t interested in such banalities. Because their intentions are much grander and insidious. The boycott is part of a broader movement to ostracize Israel from the family of nations, to demonize the Jewish State, and ultimately set the stage for either its destruction or its dissolution.
David Brumer
Seattle


The Olympia, Washington Food Co-op has the dubious distinction of being the first within the grocery co-op movement in America to boycott Israeli-made products. This is unsurprising, because Olympia, Washington is a bee-hive of anti-Israel, anti-Zionist activities, from the classrooms of Evergreen State College to its churches and town hall.
With no public notice to its members, let alone a healthy debate about the merits of such a motion, on July 15th the Olympia Food Co-op damned Israel, in effect placing the entire onus of the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict on Israel. Nothing short of the “right of return” of all Arab refugees from the 1948 War--a war initiated by five Arab armies and the Arab leadership of Palestine at that time—will suffice to end the boycott. Of course, this is code for the “disbanding” of the Jewish State of Israel.
Never mind that Israel is one of the few modern states with internationally sanctioned legitimacy, first from the League of Nations nearly 100 years ago and more recently by United Nations Resolution 181, on November 29th, 1947.
Never mind that Israel is being singled out as the one country whose wickedness and depravity is so great that its very existence is deemed a topic demanding of discussion. Not so with North Korea, Sudan, Libya, China, Russia, Syria or scores of other countries whose human rights abuses are apparently so commonplace as to be unworthy of mention.
Never mind that the current, fractured Palestinian leadership is incapable of even sitting down in direct face to face talks with the Israelis. Or that this leadership doesn’t even represent half of its constituents, the residents of the Gaza Strip who are ruled by the anti-nationalist Islamists of Hamas.
Never mind that Ariel Sharon’s government evacuated every last Jew, dead and alive, from Gaza in the 2005 Israeli withdrawal, only to be answered with over 10,000 missiles and rockets fired from Gaza into Israeli population centers over the internationally recognized blue line.
Never mind that Palestinian Media Watch documents weekly examples of incitement to violence and hatred against Jews on Palestinian state sponsored television, in their mosques, and in school textbooks, where the State of Israel cannot be found on a map.
Never mind that Israelis, perhaps more than any other people on earth yearn to raise their children in peace because they have known war and terrorism and bloodshed almost unceasingly in the modern Jewish State’s 62 years of existence.
Never mind that Israel has shown itself willing to make painful sacrifices for peace, from its withdrawal from all of Sinai, its evacuation of all Jews from Gaza and other settlements in the disputed territories of the West Bank, to Ehud Barak’s and later Ehud Olmert’s offers to relinquish upwards of 96% of the West Bank in return for peace with its neighbors.
Never mind that an economic boycott sends exactly the wrong message to both Israelis and Palestinians who are striving to reach an accord, because it penalizes Israeli Christian and Muslim Arabs (who compromise 20% of Israel’s population), emboldens Palestinian extremists to adhere to maximalist demands, and makes it less likely that Israelis will trust that the international community that supports one-sided boycotts is acting in good faith.
In fact, if the boycotters and their supporters were to really act in good faith, or at least to be consistent, they wouldn’t stop at boycotting grocery products. They’d be boycotting Israeli products across the board. This would include most computers, since Israel developed the Intel Pentium chip, Windows MP, XP and Vista as well as Microsoft Office and AOL. They’d have to boycott Google and cell phones that were developed in Israel by Motorola, as well as voice mail and camera phones. Thousands of products that were developed through technological innovations in Israel, in agriculture, aerospace, energy, pharmaceuticals, and bio-medicine would also be off limits.
But naturally, the self-righteous boycotters and their legions of supporters aren’t interested in such banalities. Because their intentions are much grander; and insidious. The boycott is part of a broader movement to ostracize Israel from the family of nations, to demonize the Jewish State, and ultimately set the stage for either its destruction or its dissolution.
Unlike the “peace activists” on the Turkish flotilla last month who brandished knives, clubs, sticks, and pipes, the boycotters’ weapons are “non-violent” ones. They are wielded with more cunning but no less deadly intent.
db

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Skip the Lecture on Israel's "Risks for Peace"

George Will puts it well.
The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state. In the 62 years since Israel was founded on one-sixth of 1% of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.

Skip the Lecture on Israel's "Risks for Peace" -
George F. Will (Washington Post)
In the intifada that began in 2000, Palestinian terrorism killed more than 1,000 Israelis. As a portion of U.S. population, that would be 42,000, approaching the toll of America's eight years in Vietnam. During the onslaught, Israeli parents sending two children to school would put them on separate buses to decrease the chance that neither would return for dinner. Surely most Americans can imagine, even if their tone-deaf leaders cannot, how grating it is when those leaders lecture Israel on the need to take "risks for peace."
There was a time when taking risks for peace meant swapping "land for peace" - Israel sacrificing something tangible and irrecoverable, strategic depth, in exchange for something intangible and perishable, promises of diplomatic normality.
Before the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel within the borders established by the 1949 armistice was in one place just nine miles wide, a fact that moved George W. Bush to say: In Texas we have driveways that long. Israel exchanged a lot of land to achieve a chilly peace with Egypt, yielding the Sinai, which is almost three times larger than Israel and was 89% of the land captured in the process of repelling the 1967 aggression.
Israelis are famously fractious, but the intifada produced among them a consensus that the most any government of theirs could offer without forfeiting domestic support is less than any Palestinian interlocutor would demand. Furthermore, the intifada was part of a pattern. As in 1936 and 1947, talk about partition prompted Arab violence.
The creation of Israel did not involve the destruction of a Palestinian state, there having been no such state. In the 62 years since Israel was founded on one-sixth of 1% of the land of what is carelessly and inaccurately called "the Arab world," Israelis have never known an hour of real peace. Patronizing American lectures on the reality of risks and the desirableness of peace, which once were merely fatuous, are now obscene.

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