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Some Zionist Groups Stoke Fear Of Islam for Political Profit
By Matthew Duss

After the last several months, it should be clear that the controversy over the Park 51 Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero is about more than sensitivity to the families of the 9/11 victims and the sacredness of the site where their loved ones were murdered. In places as far from Lower Manhattan as Murfreesboro, Tenn., and Temecula, Calif., Muslim houses of worship, and the people who pray in them, have come under attack by conservative activists as representing an American beachhead for Muslim extremism.

Whether it’s Newt Gingrich peddling false stories of “creeping sharia” (strict Islamic law) to an audience of very serious people at the American Enterprise Institute, or the Washington Times running endless editorials and op-eds from conspiracy theorists like Frank Gaffney warning that President Obama “may actually still be a Muslim,” or Bill Kristol and Liz Cheney shamelessly and falsely asserting that Park 51 leader Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf has “terror-related connections,” it’s clear that quite a few conservative elites see political profit in stoking Americans’ fear of Islam.

Such hostility toward Muslims is unfortunately not marginal in the pro-Israel community — unless one is prepared to define the huge annual policy conference of one of Washington’s foremost lobbies as “marginal.” At an AIPAC conference in March 2009, to take just one example, terrorism expert Steve Emerson spent 40 minutes stoking the worst fears of the mostly elderly attendees with a talk called “Tentacles of Terror: The Global Reach of Islamic Radicalism.” It could just as easily have been called “Scaring the Living Crap Out of Bubbe and Zayde.” As long as Jews are encouraged to believe that scary Muslims are hiding under every American bed, the idea is perpetuated that support for the Jewish state is a zero-sum contest between favoring Israel and favoring Arabs and Muslims. For too many American Jews, smearing Islam is seen as a legitimate expression of Zionism.

Groups like The Israel Project, the Middle East Media Research Institute and Middle East Forum seem to exist for no other reason than to spotlight the very worst aspects of Muslim societies. Magazines like Commentary and the Weekly Standard regularly traffic in the crudest stereotypes of Arabs and Muslims, and promote the harshest measures for dealing with them. Musing over the appropriateness of targeting Palestinian civilians during the Gaza conflict, Standard contributing editor Michael Goldfarb wrote approvingly, “To wipe out a man’s entire family, it’s hard to imagine that doesn’t give his colleagues at least a moment’s pause.”
Martin Kramer, a fellow at the Washington Institute of Near East Policy, president of the Shalem Center in Jerusalem and frequent AIPAC panelist, took things even further, suggesting that Israel’s siege on Gaza, could, by depressing population growth, “crack the culture of martyrdom, which demands a constant supply of superfluous young men.”

In 2007, in what could be seen as a precursor to the current uproar over the Park 51 Islamic cultural center, Middle East Forum Director Daniel Pipes played a key role in flaming controversy over the Khalil Gibran International Academy, a planned New York City public school emphasizing the study of Arabic language and culture. Pipes asserted that such a school represented a potential threat simply by virtue of teaching Arabic.
It would be wrong, however, to pretend that these sorts of smears have been the work solely of conservatives. Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, a liberal who promotes himself as Israel’s leading public defender, regularly rehearses the most clownish calumnies against Israel’s adversaries, real and perceived. Citing the Grand Mufti Amin al-Husseini’s collaboration with the Nazis, Dershowitz wrote, “the Palestinian leadership, supported by the Palestinian masses, played a significant role in Hitler’s Holocaust.” The obviously ahistorical stupidity of that claim aside, it hardly needs pointing out that a similar attempt to lay collective blame upon Jews would be immediately — and rightly — condemned, by Dershowitz and others.
Hatred of Arabs has also had a home in one of America’s oldest and best-respected liberal magazines, The New Republic, for over three decades, courtesy of owner and editor-in-chief Marty Peretz, who never seems to tire of identifying ways in which Arab society is “hidebound and backward,” as he wrote in 2007.

Observing the devastation in Iraq, Peretz wrote: “I actually believe that Arabs are feigning outrage when they protest what they call American (or Israeli) ‘atrocities.’ They are not shocked at all by what in truth must seem to them not atrocious at all. It is routine in their cultures.” Peretz reiterated that view in September of this year. “Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, especially for Muslims,” he wrote. “This is a statement of fact, not value.”

While it’s tempting to dismiss Peretz as a racist old kook, he does serve as editor-in-chief of a major magazine, and he has been able to help define the boundaries of acceptable liberal discourse for 30 years. And he has chosen through those years to place the most retrograde anti-Arab, anti-Muslim bigotry — including constant denials of Palestinian nationhood — within those boundaries.

It wasn’t so long ago that Jews in America were targets of similar slander and knee-jerk opposition. Liberal American Jews have been at the forefront of all of America’s struggles against bigotry, but they need to do a better job of calling out the hate in their own communities. Moderate Muslims are often called upon to condemn the extreme rhetoric of their co-religionists. It is not too much, at long last, to call upon moderate Zionists to do the same.

Matthew Duss is National Security Editor at the Center for American Progress.

moorishamerican Says:

What’s sad is that whenever you read something rational and level-headed by one Jew, just scroll down to the comments; you’re bound to find the rantings of hundreds of other Jews clamouring for the annihilation of all Muslims. When are moderate Jews going to stand up and speak out against this rabid Islamophobia that permiates their society?

Christian Zionism Exposed Says:

Moorishamerican,

do you have specific examples? how do you know the commentators are Jews? Most American far right Zionists are Messianic (southern baptists pretending to be Jews) or Evangelicals, The fans of the loons we expose here are not in the Jewish community, Geller, Pipes, and all the loons above, have their largest fan base amongst the Christin Right, Why do you think Geller is calling for Palin or Allen West (Christian Zionists) to be President?

http://www.christianhegemony.org/christian-zionism
More recently Christian Zionists in the U.S. have undermined peace talks by supporting Israel’s “right” to all of the West Bank and Gaza. Christian Zionists have also been very successful at maintaining on-going, large-scale public support for Israel’s occupation of Palestine through sermons, tours, exhibits, amusement parks, books, and radio and TV broadcasts.

Perhaps most disturbing, Christian Zionists have popularized Islamophobia and anti-Arab oppression through the media (such as the “Left Behind” books) and through their lobbying efforts. They have also supported belligerent U.S. foreign policy options directed towards Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria because of these countries’ “threats” to Israel.

Focusing mainly on the Jewish lobby, the mainstream media has provided little coverage of the role of Christian Zionists in undermining peace efforts in Israel/Palestine. This film, With God on Our Side, is a useful resource for breaking that silence by highlighting the voices of Palestinian Christians. Although it does not challenge Christian dominance and claims that Christians can provide solutions to the conflict, it can help Christians reexamine their uncritical support for aggression, expansion, and inflexibility

Christian Zionism Exposed Says:

Moorish American, the below two links are for you.

Loon Watch,

So many people (amongst Muslims) equate Islamophobia and Zionism (which is certainly linked) as being Jewish only, in fact it’s the Christian Zionism that is the problem.

It may be an idea if you devoted a section specifically to Christian Zionism Islamophobia, so that people can learn where the poison is coming from and why. Muslim bloggers that understand this problem are few, they concentrate on the Israel Lobby, and Jewish extremists, but none realise the Christian Zionists are bedrock that props them up.

It doesn’t help that Muslim bloggers and writers who are obsessed with Zionism havn’t a clue about it really, and just blindly blame the “jewish lobby” for it.

It would be fantastic if Loon Watch had a few journalists who concentrated soley on Hagee, Tim La Haye, Joel Rosenberg, and their millions of lunatic followers. Inconnu does a good job but we need a specialist. Someone who goes straight for the jugular, like Max Blumenthal does. I’ve yet to see a good Muslim writer who understands the Christian Zionist role in Islamophobia.

Meet the Evangelical Zionists
justworldnews.org/archives/002592.html
I think it’s been the case for a while now that the Christian Zionists– who have very, very long roots in this country– have been a stronger base of support for Israel here than the Jewish-American Zionists. And of course, given that the beliefs of many of these Evangelical Zionists are that at the time of “Armageddon” all the Jews will either become converted to Christianity or get consumed by fire, there are many Jewish Americans who are still fairly wary about the Evangelicals’ strong support for Israel.

The game plan for these Evangelicals (as also laid out lovingly in their extremely well-selling though in practice almost unreadable novels about “the End Time”) is that first, the Jewish people all need to be “ingathered” into Israel, and then soon after there will be “Armageddon” and the “Second Coming.” And along the way there, there’ll be great fighting against “Babylon” (or Baghdad) and perhaps even some nuclear war…

————–

Christian Zionism: The Root of All Evil?
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_arti ... p?id=16204
Christian Zionism justifies the killing and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians to this day. Plymouth Brethren minister John Nelson Darby (1800-1882) popularized the doctrine under the name “dispensationalism,” which was further spread by the Scofield Reference Bible published in 1909. That edition contained copious footnotes instructing readers how to interpret Bible verses and prophecy centered around the re-establishment of Israel as a modern nation-state.
Thus the Zionist heresy was mass marketed to a largely ignorant populace who are convinced they do not have enough sense to read the Bible for themselves. Today, support for Israel has gained momentum through apocalyptic preaching by televangelists who make large profits for supporting Israel. They have co-opted Christian laypeople into thinking they can bring about Christ’s return, ending suffering on earth.
It would be scary enough if such ideas were confined to churches, but Zionist Christians have organized political lobbies such as Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Arguably, they have considerable influence over US foreign policy, particularly effective with neo-conservatives as witnessed during the George W. Bush administration. Numerous Christian groups encourage Jewish immigration to what is now called Israel through financial contributions while assisting ultra-orthodox Jewish groups to promote settlement expansion on Palestinian land.

You do realise that the article was from a Jewish magazine in the US?

your assertion that Muslim critical self examination is missing is a reflection of your insistence that 'Jihadwatch' is correct in it's world view.

There are indeed many Muslims are hyper-critical of silly fatwas and extremist interpretations of Islam.

So, we have an article about the political aspects of Islamophobia by a Jewish author in a Jewish magazine.

The loons are in denial of this majority