More on the Ground Zero Mosque
"For several decades, the Jewish establishment has asked American Jews to check their liberalism at Zionism’s door," wrote Peter Beinart in the New York Review two months ago. Last week, as if to prove him right, the ADL issued an appallingly mealy-mouthed statement on the so-called ground zero mosque. Categorically rejecting appeals to bigotry on the basis of religion, the ADL cloaked its bigotry with an appeal to "sensitivity." "Ultimately this is not a question of rights," it said, "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."I have been reading Henry Ford on the Jews these last few weeks. Ford, like the ADL, deplored all religious prejudice. But Anti-Semitism, Ford said, was a problem completely of the Jews' own making. If Jews would just stop trying to enslave the world, people would stop criticizing them."Some day," he wrote, "a prophetic Jew may arise who will see that the promises bestowed upon the Ancient People are not to be fulfilled by Rothschild methods and that the promise that all the nations were to be blessed through Israel is not to be fulfilled by making the nations the economic vassals of Israel; and when that time comes we may hope for a redirection of Jewish energy into channels that will drain the present sources of the Jewish Question. In the meantime, it is not anti-Semitism, it may even be found to be a world service to the Jew, to throw light on what purpose motivates certain higher circles. (The International Jew, Section 5)Foxman is saying much the same thing. It's not racist or prejudiced to take note of the atrocities that are daily perpetrated in Islam's name. Good Muslims should keep their heads down, lest they offend a world that rightly deplores their wicked leaders' wicked aims.Mayor Bloomberg did NYC proud yesterday. Like many others (The Atlantic Wire has links to his reviews), I was profoundly moved (and relieved) by the words of his speech.
We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that."For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes, as important a test. And it is critically important that we get it right.
Foxman has issued a second statement, in which he accuses his critics of demagoguery. How sad for us all that he gets it so wrong--and what a shonda that he claims to speak for the Jews. I'd almost rather have Henry Ford.
