Last week Daniel Luban had an important piece in the Tablet comparing the current wave of Islamophobia, spearheaded by the opposition to Park 51 in New York, with "many of the tropes of classic anti-Semitism." Luban notes the shameful, and given the comparison, ironic, role of Jews in this surge of hate:
While activists like Pam Geller have led the anti-mosque campaign and the broader demonization of Muslims that has accompanied it, leaders like Abe Foxman have acquiesced in it. In doing so they risk providing an ugly and ironic illustration of the extent of Jewish assimilation in 21st-century America. We know that Jews can grow up to be senators and Supreme Court justices. Let’s not also discover that they can grow up to incite a pogrom.
The video above shows a bit of what that pogrom might look like. It is from today's rally in New York city against Park 51. From the video's description:
A man walks through the crowd at the Ground Zero protest and is mistaken as a Muslim. The crowd turns on him and confronts him. The man in the blue hard hat calls him a coward and tries to fight him. The tall man who I think was one of the organizers tried to get between the two men. Later I caught up with the man who's name is Kenny. He is a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero. We discussed what a scary moment that was for him.
Lest you think this is an isolated event, check out this rundown sent out by the Council on American-Islamic Relations today:
CAIR-LA: Mosque Protests Louder in the Tea Party Era
Aaron Claverie, North County Times, 8/21/10Opposition to the construction of a mosque in Southern California is nothing new, but the tenor and the verbiage associated with the debate has intensified in recent years, according to area Muslim leaders. . .
According to [CAIR's] Syeda, there has been an uptick in what she called "blatant Islamophobia" in the last year, a period that coincides with the rise of the tea party movement and comments by leaders such as Sarah Palin, the former Republican Party vice presidential candidate who came out recently against plans for a mosque near ground zero. (More)
-----Rallies Over Mosque Near Ground Zero Get Heated
Verena Dobnik, Associated Press, 8/22/10NEW YORK - The proposed mosque near ground zero drew hundreds of fever-pitch demonstrators Sunday, with opponents carrying signs associating Islam with blood, supporters shouting, "Say no to racist fear!" and American flags waving on both sides. (More)-----Speaker Brings Anti-Islam Message to FL Tea Party Rally
Jeff Barker, Daily News, 8/21/10OKALOOSA ISLAND - Brigitte Gabriel, a prominent activist who says she's fighting to keep the United States from being overrun by Islam, asked local tea party supporters to join her cause Saturday. (More)-----CAIR Video: KY Protesters Aim to Stop Mosque ConstructionView the video.Protesters in Northern Kentucky are trying to stop the construction of a mosque. Flyers are circulating in Florence, Ky. asking that city government officials intervene. . .Karen Dabdoub, Council on American Islamic Relations, said "I think a lot is driven by the New York issue and if it wasn't for that and for election season, perhaps a lot of this wouldn't have happened." (More)-----CAIR-NJ: S. Jersey Had Own Fuss Over Mosque
Shruti Mathur Desai, Courier-Post Staff, 8/22/10As national debate focuses on an Islamic center and mosque planned two blocks from the site of the 9/11 attacks, local Muslims of different backgrounds agree on one issue: The Manhattan mosque has a right to its place. . .James Yee, a former Army chaplain and the new head of the New Jersey chapter of the Council of American Islamic Relations, said he understands the emotional associations with ground zero. But he is quick to add that Muslims died in the attack, too. (More)-----
The list goes on. This is a scary time in America. Ali Abunimah has written about how President Obama has failed to offer any leadership in the face of a nationwide hate movement. Who will be the ones to stand up? There was a counter rally today in support of Park 51 and against Islamophobia. I'm sure there are similar rallies in cities across the country where people are fighting back against this racism and intolerance. These are rays of hope in an increasingly dangerous time.
The video was actually relatively moderate, certainly capturing some bigotry.
It is relevant to continue to speak up opposing bigotry, and in terms that don’t lead to provocation.
Richard, what part of “Mohammed’s a pig” is moderate? I really went back and forth between whether to post your incredibly ignorant comment, but decided to in the end as I felt it pretty well reveals where you’re coming from. All I want to add is that if you had been the one surrounded in the middle of that crowd I doubt you would have found the situation “relatively moderate.”
The term was relatively moderate. There was not active violence, definitely some in your face posturing.
You’ve not seen really vicious demonstrations if the footage that you showed were considered an example of gravely abusive demonstration.
Again, at a “non-violent” Palestinian solidarity demonstration at the University of Massachusetts that I attended, at which I met up with my shul’s rabbi (we didn’t go together), a few rocks were thrown at the rabbi, and MANY far more vehement taunts.
If you read here, the equivalent of “Mohammed’s a pig” are posted and accepted, directed at Jewish religious practice (the part of it that is separate but literally harmless).
Your comment is abusive Adam. You should erase yours. I am NOT coming from your implication of support for bigotry. The EXACT oppossite.
You can’t seem to accept that even mild criticism of your comments is NOT advocacy for the opposite. You are smarter than that.
I felt for the guy. I couldn’t here much of the dialog, and was happy that there were some in the crowd that stood between antagonists and the individual. Didn’t you see that as well?
In out and out bigotry, those people do not step forward.
“but decided to in the end as I felt it pretty well reveals where you’re coming from.”
Are you serious? This is your understanding of what facilitation is comprised of?
Further,
This piece DID motivate me to make a stand against anti-Muslim bigotry.
Your reaction (reactionary) response is one of the noise that I have to swim upstream against to make that stand. I then have to take the position in spite of my otherwise allies’ comments (at least in opposing anti-Muslim bigotry).
Your comment is abusive Adam.
Actually, Richard, to use your own term, Adam’s comment was relatively moderate. He didn’t intimidate you or threaten violence against you, or verbally and menacingly insult your religion. He merely called your comment ignorant: a reasonable judgment on his part.
Your reaction (reactionary) response is one of the noise that I have to swim upstream against to make that stand.
Ah, brave, brave Sir Richard. To have to suffer criticism for his insensitivity, and still manage to make a milquetoast stand against anti-Muslim bigotry– unless of course its the “relatively moderate” variety. What a hero!
Adam is abusive but the demonstrators were “relatively moderate”. Can you really stoop any lower?
>> RW on August 22, 2010 at 7:35 pm
>> The term was relatively moderate. There was not active violence, definitely some in your face posturing. … I felt for the guy. I couldn’t [hear] much of the dialog, and was happy that there were some in the crowd that stood between antagonists and the individual.
I agree with this assessment. And I’m sincerely impressed by the fact that, unlike the initial post which set things off, this post reads like a human being (and not a slogan-generating machine) wrote it.
Probably because R’s never really read how it all started in the early 30s in Germany, Adam. Not only ignorant, but pathologically incapable of reading the danger signals. Can you imagine the lofty casuistic advice RW would be giving Jews in 1933?
You’re projecting MRW.
You are ranting at someone that did demonstrate against anti-Muslim bigotry after 911, and continues to when I see it.
You are ranting at someone that did demonstrate against anti-Muslim bigotry after 911, and continues to when I see it.
Yes, we have seen your “demonstration” “against anti-Muslim bigotry” here. Are there any other instances where you look at anti-Muslim outbursts, call them “relatively moderate,” and go on pretending to be a humanist?
According to the text accompanying the video, the man wasn’t Muslim, he was “mistaken as a Muslim.” Do you mean the bigotry of this crowd toward a man of color, toward a man in a hat perceived to be different from the approved apparel for the event, toward a man mistaken to have been Muslim or just random “bigotry,” or a mixture of these?
From my time working in public safety, from covering civil rights violence on the urban west coast, and Vietnam War demonstrations for radio, my take is that what appears, as you state, to be “relatively moderate” could have easily gone sour in an instant, had the man being assaulted used different body language.
Had there been five or six Muslim men seeking to be assertive, this crowd might have crossed the line. It didn’t.
“From my time working in public safety, from covering civil rights violence on the urban west coast, and Vietnam War demonstrations for radio, my take is that what appears, as you state, to be “relatively moderate” could have easily gone sour in an instant, had the man being assaulted used different body language.
Had there been five or six Muslim men seeking to be assertive, this crowd might have crossed the line. It didn’t. ”
Thankfully it didn’t. Horowitz described this as an example of a crowd that did go sour (it was already sour, but not yet violent), when it was a crowd that might have gone sour.
Noting that earned me “we know where you’re coming from”.
And, THAT is sour.
Richard, stop playing the victim card. It gets nauseating after a while (and I’m fasting).
“The video was actually relatively moderate”
Right, so next time we take that which is sacred and holy to you, whatever it be, and start cussing it, what we’re really trying to do is ‘moderately’, gently get the message across that we don’t really hate all Muslims, we just want to not have this CENTER OF TERRORIST RECRUITMENT 2 blocks, 3 blocks, or even 5 blocks from Ground zero.
Richard, your whole being is “sour”. Your extreme bias is showing, even through your word-games.
“Your whole being is sour”.
My bias is to defend the guy that was being confronted. You too are projecting.
Richard, I tend to agree with you on this one. There was no violence but there is something sinister going on. I is scary and can be seen as a parallel to the fate of some Jews in Nazi Germany. Alarm bells should be going off and our leaders of church and state should have already denounced it in the loudest and most public way possible.
Wow, Richard, if you felt that crowd wasn’t violent, I can only imagine the contempt you must feel for somebody who ran away from the US and even modern life on the basis of a few scribbles on a notebook.
No doubt you told him what a cowardly fool he was. I hope you weren’t too rough.
And not, you know, to defend the African American who had absolutely nothing to do with either side and got lambasted?
White flight soars, I guess.
Richard has to downplay anything that has to do with Muslims or Arabs. He wouldn’t be Richard without it.
“Some bigotry.”
Some humanist, huh.
This is an orchestrated campaign. If it were Jews being targeted, the federal government would be all over it.
Nice piece, Adam.
Here’s something else for you.
You or Phil ought to do a take-down analysis of Frank Rich at the NYT, who is I guess the most popular columnist in the U.S. these days. This guy just can’t bring himself to criticize any of this stuff, except in ridiculously mild terms when it’s obvious he can no longer totally avoid it. (Contrast his attitude toward Mel Gibson.)
I am serious. You guys should call him out on his Zionist leanings…
Contrast the way Mel Gibson is treated vs Geller.
That’s an excellent comparison potsherd.
Meanwhile Geller has a real bee in her bonnet about the Guardian saying she writes for a settler news organisation. They wrote:
“Geller writes for an Israeli media network based in the occupied territories that is the voice of the Jewish settler movement…”
I hate to bring down the tone of the place [again] by quoting her, but Geller “blogs”:
“They just make stuff up. I do? I don’t even know what they are talking about, but I would love to write for an Israeli media network — please point the way! The whole piece is ridiculous.”
link to atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com
Of course, on the very same page (in fact every page on her “blog”) there are links to seven of her “op-eds”, easily locatable by searching for the text “Israel National News”. Her “About” page even states:
“Her articles and op-eds have been published in The Washington Times, Big Government, Big Journalism, Human Events, The American Thinker, Newsmax, the Hudson Institute, NY, Pajamas Media, Israel National News, World Net Daily, FrontPage magazine, New Media Journal, and Canada Free Press, among other publications.”
Most hilariously, two days after the above article, Geller does another post at her “blog” claiming “The Guardian is at it again”, and that they’d written another anti-semitic smear piece on her. Except she just links to the same article. The Guardian only wrote one article. Welcome to Geller’s world.
What a whackjob.
Her ideal candidate for Pres 2016, a warmongering Kashmiri Hindu nationalist advocating the use of nuclear weapons to destroy Pakistan:
link to atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com
Geller coos “she gets it”.
Can you imagine the outcry if Nancy Pelosi lined up with Mel Gibson, after he had endorsed some anti-semites call for the nuking of Israel? But Newt Gingrich does the equivalent, and Fox & co. applauds. It’s just sick.
How much of this is the continuation of the racist images our media has been using for years to promote the notion that the Palestinians are the bad guys, the cause of all the US’s troubles in the Middle East. Nasty brown skinned Arabs and Muslims, to boot!
A lot of those images used to be used for Jews.
Recycling saves the Earth. Cheap, too.
Les
You hit it on the nose, in Hollywood movies the bad guys (terrorists) are Arabs, (they used to be Germansor South Africans remember those Die Hard movies) even in more subtle ways it is evident, like the choice of assassins in the movie the Bourne Supremacy. This is the product of decades of telling one side of the story, and even when the other side is told like when Jon Stewart hosted two peace activists, the media gets its knickers in a twist.
This will end badly I fear…..
Les, I think it plays a significant part.
Just sharing this link, for those who did not read/watch “Reel Bad Arabs, How Hollywood Vilifies a People”
link to video.google.com
Another book that’s an interesting read is “Covering Islam” by Edward Said.
What is new is the extreme and extent, not the actual fact of anti-Islamism, anti-Arabism, Islamo-phobia. After the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center, renowned defense attorney William Kunstler said that the climate of hatred of Arabs in the US was so great that any Arab could be convicted of any crime.
Whereas many forms of bigotry in the US have been systematically (if not entirely successfully) challenged, discrimination, hate-speech, bigotry directed at Arabs is generally accepted. If Dr. Laura had directed her diatribe at Arabs instead of African Americans, she would have felt little if any pressure to resign.
Thanks for this post, Adam. I hope you keep the headline and build on it (as in The new anti-Semitism I, II, III, IV) in the future as this is routed out, and to make good use of the search engines tying all your work in over time.
To a Non-Jew, me, who had the words ‘Never Again!’ etched onto every synapse since grade school, and understood it to apply to all people, watching this happen at the instigation of a rabid hater (Gellar) who happens to be Jewish (and uses it to her advantage when she can, which the NYC press indulges) gives me enormous pause.
Thanks. Just to clarify, the headline really comes from the Daniel Luban Tablet piece – link to tabletmag.com
It was even better in that context.
I usually read every link you give, Adam, before commenting. I didn’t in this case, because RW’s sophistry slammed my fingers onto the keyboard. Will go do that now.
Nevertheless, keep the headline as your own here and build on it. You are such a clear writer. You’re like a Mack truck on an open Oklahoma road with no other cars to stop you. I always know it’s your horn barreling down the pavement without looking at the byline. In the filigreed universe of internet search algorithms, what better way to coagulate commentary at the root level on an essential subject.
I think the headline is terrible.
It is terrible because it is inaccurate: Jews are not the victims here, Muslims are the victim.
Jews are the offenders here, they are not the victims. Don’t try to twist the narrative, Adam.
You missed the point. I’m not saying Jews are the victim.
Irony is always a tough sell on the web, for some reason.
I read so many worrisome religious and racial portends for the 2012 election from this video, I don’t actually know where to start from.
It was a very depressing experience and I’m too deflated at the moment to comment further.
But I’ll be back here laterz.
I dont have the smarts to put it into words—somebody far more brilliant than I could ever hope to be, will—but this is white head on the boil of anti-black racism in this country. I can’t remember where I read it, but the majority of American Muslims are black. So now that we have a black president, and outright racism at his color can be too easily dismissed by the press which is needed to carry it, this is the backdoor way of getting away with it.
Maybe this will open the eyes of the black “leadership” in congress that’s been selling out to AIPAC.
A call to everyone who supports liberty and justice for all to come out and express his or her support of first amendment rights, with the initial task that of safeguarding the first amendment rights of Muslems by way of making sure that an Islamic Center in Lower Manhattan comes to fruition, after which, hate-mongers are sure to be in total dissaray, a response to the racists’ never having contemplated the possibility that a racist attack might lead to a blowback, especially when that attack is directed at an officially designated scapegoat, in this instance, Muslems. What’ll happen is that said blowback will come to be seen as having marked the start of a new narrative, one in which images & symbols of love, peace and justice are what prevail. Censorship? No, just that there’ll be no making up stories, as per Fox News Corp. & the rest of MSM. The reason such will come to be is that hate-mongers are so all out in their effort to stop this Islamic Center. So far they’re having it their way. Not entirely, though, which gives us an opening. Ready everyone? One victory is all it’ll take!
Just read Luban’s piece. It should be required reading.
American bigotry knows no bounds! We really haven’t changed that much since the McCarthy era.
I do have a criticism of Luban’s piece, though. This part in particular.
In doing so they risk providing an ugly and ironic illustration of the extent of Jewish assimilation in 21st-century America. We know that Jews can grow up to be senators and Supreme Court justices. Let’s not also discover that they can grow up to incite a pogrom.
I don’t think it is right to blame the extent of Jewish participation in this kind of bigotry on “assimilation”. Jews as individuals or groups are just as susceptible to this kind of hateful and bigoted thinking and action as any other religious or ethnic group. Unassimilated Jews, particularly in Israel, have been capable of inciting and participating in pogroms without any help or instruction from any other group. To pretend that Jews are somehow different than anyone else in that respect is to indulge in a false Jewish exceptionalism.
It’s poorly phrased and poorly historicized–Jews have been “grown up enough” to commit pogroms for over 60 years. But there is a truth in it as well: the conversion of Jews as in part a weak community of suffering, vulnerable to the bigotry of the powerful, to something else altogether. As Yitzhak Laor put it,”What our leaders asked for, it seems, was not the Rights of Man, but the right to belong to the elite. We can now participate in violating the rights of others.”
They are not assimilated. If they were assimilated, they would not hold themselves as a separate group from the rest of society. They would stop being Jews, and they would no no more act as supporters of Jewish causes than Quakers from Minnesota do.
However, they are integrated.
Exactly, RoHa! The way assimilation is thrown about on this site makes the word meaningless or distorted beyond recognition. Assimilating means more than taking a soft stand on zionism, which is what supporting a two-state solution is.
Mobs are formed by irrational means and tactics: reckless rhetoric, irrationality, lies, distortions, fearmongering.
Luban’s piece is talmudic explication.
Dense and intricate layers of rationality and historical reference and nuance may make Luban and his cohort feel justified, but it’s a futile tactic to tame a riled mob.
“I don’t think it is right to blame the extent of Jewish participation in this kind of bigotry on “assimilation”. ”
It took 27 responses before this was pointed out! I don’t believe there was poor phrasing or historicization, either.
How many Jews were in the crowd? 4?
Richard, who knows how many Jews were in the crowd. No one took a survey. The point was made in response to this from Luban:
While activists like Pam Geller have led the anti-mosque campaign and the broader demonization of Muslims that has accompanied it, leaders like Abe Foxman have acquiesced in it. In doing so they risk providing an ugly and ironic illustration of the extent of Jewish assimilation in 21st-century America. We know that Jews can grow up to be senators and Supreme Court justices. Let’s not also discover that they can grow up to incite a pogrom.
In this case its not “assimilation” that’s behind the incitement. Its Pro-Israel extremists. And read Klein’s piece for further instances of such incitement in Boston. Jews are in no need of anyone else’s assistance to display the same kind of bigotry that everyone else is susceptible to. They aren’t morally superior to any other group, and so do not need to be “assimilated” to display a universal human failing. That’s the point.
“How many Jews were in the crowd? 4?”
Yeah, and Pam Geller is Catholic Priest, too.
Oh now you’re not critical of counting Jewish representation, huh.
I’m critical of racist demonization. “Jews” didn’t organize the bigotry, didn’t dominate it.
Quoting the full paragraph tree:
While activists like Pam Geller have led the anti-mosque campaign and the broader demonization of Muslims that has accompanied it, leaders like Abe Foxman have acquiesced in it. In doing so they risk providing an ugly and ironic illustration of the extent of Jewish assimilation in 21st-century America. We know that Jews can grow up to be senators and Supreme Court justices. Let’s not also discover that they can grow up to incite a pogrom.
The “they” is Geller and Foxman. I took Luban’s final sentence to be, most of all, a stinging criticism of Geller, the rabid religious zionist.
The problem is, nowhere in the article is Gelller’s jewishness or political ideology discussed in detail, she’s just referred to as a “right-wing blogger”. After reading Luban’s piece a few days ago, I decided that he had probably mentioned this in a draft, and at some point it was cut. But as is, the article’s conclusion, which could have been very powerful if Geller’s (and by extension Israel’s) toxic form of zionism had been confronted head-on, just ended up sounding a bit peculiar. I noted other comments also found the final paragraph a bit odd, like Luban was blaming only Foxman for the anti-mosque hysteria.
disgusting bigots.
There is an assumption that a new Kristallnact, perhaps already underway, will not be as bad as the original. Considering the vulnerability of America’s Muslims, I don’t share the optimism.
I couldn’t agree more with Glenn Greenwald that, “‘The “Mosque’ Debate is Not a ‘Distraction.’”
link to commondreams.org