The Times’ Mark Barbaro and Paul Vitello did excellent reporting on the mosque controversy, and the role of Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League.
“It’s the wrong place,” Mr. Foxman said. “Find another place.”
Asked why the opposition of the families was so pivotal in the decision, Mr. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, said they were entitled to their emotions.
“Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational,” he said. Referring to the loved ones of Sept. 11 victims, he said, “Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.”
The statement is curious at a number of levels. First, Foxman is as noted a Holocaust survivor, born in 1940 in Poland, saved by his Catholic nanny, reunited with his parents after the war. So he is rationalizing his own bigotry? And by this logic are Palestinian victims of the Nakba entitled to be anti-Semites?
P.S. Here is Mayor Bloomberg in the same article: “What is great about America, and particularly New York, is we welcome everybody, and if we are so afraid of something like this, what does that say about us?” Mr. Bloomberg asked recently. “Democracy is stronger than this…"
