After the firing of Helen Thomas for her imprudent remarks that Israel should get out of Palestine, it’s clear our nation has no more tolerance for bigotry. And so, in this new Zero Tolerance climate, I’m surprised by the tolerance shown to Abe Foxman of the now inaptly-named Anti-Defamation League.
Foxman recently sided with bigots in condemning Cordoba House, an Islamic community center patterned on Jewish Community Centers. Some gave Foxman the benefit of the doubt on his position, seeing in his weasel words a possibly nuanced view:
But ultimately this is not a question of rights, 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.
Unfortunately, right above this paragraph were his insinuations that Islamic radicals were behind the project, and highlighting the fact that these Islamic interlopers were not from the Judeo-Christian “shared values” club:
In recommending that a different location be found for the Islamic Center, we are mindful that some legitimate questions have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it, and what connections, if any, its leaders might have with groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values.
I wish Foxman were referring to the values most Americans share in condemning religious persecution.
But Foxman’s logic only works for Islamophobes. Jerry Haber points out that:
Perhaps some Christians are offended when those they consider to “Christ killers” wish to build a synagogue nearby? This sort of sensitivity we have to pay attention to?
On the ADL’s Interfaith web page there are a number of items taking various swipes at the Catholic Church, the Presbyterians, and Sabeel (a Christian Palestinian organization). According to Foxman, the Oberammergau Passion Play has not been sufficiently rehabilitated since Hitler’s time; the Presbyterians are still flirting with anti-Semitism, and Sabeel should not be opposing Israel-friendly Christian Zionists or supporting the BDS (Boycotts, Sanctions, and Divestment) movement. No mention of the ADL’s own Islamophobia.
None of this shocks since the ADL long ago stopped being an anti-defamation group and has now become principally a pro-Israel attack organization.
Almost from the beginning the ADL has displayed incredibly poor judgment. In the Seventies the ADL was implicated in spying on American citizens who opposed Israel’s and South Africa’s occupations and passing the information along to both countries. Foxman himself attended the funeral of Meir Kahane in 1990. Kach, Kahane’s organization, is listed as a terrorist organization by both the United States and Israel. Foxman equivocated on calling the slaughter of millions of Armenians by Turkey a “genocide” in 2007. Many Jews were not happy with this decision. And in 2006 Foxman sided with the Wiesenthal Center’s decision to build a museum on top of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.
These all were, if I may throw Foxman’s own words back at him, “not [just] a question of rights, but a question of what is right.”
Kamran Pasha, in a wonderful essay, calls on Foxman to rethink this position. Pasha reminds Foxman of Hillel’s dictum:
That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah, the rest is commentary.
Unfortunately, Foxman does not operate from either an ethical or a Jewish ethical framework.
While Abe Foxman’s position may be echoed by some number of Christian bigots, such as Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, or the FOX-based lunatic fringe, and Jewish bigots like David Harris or the David Project (a Boston-area group which opposed a similar community center), most Jews have no problem with Cordoba House. J Street, a Jewish PAC, condemned the ADL’s defamatory statement and mayor Michael Bloomberg, himself Jewish, has welcomed Cordoba House. Even Alan Dershowitz, the self-appointed one-man Israel Defense League, has condemned the ADL’s statement.
Speaking for New Yorkers, Bloomberg expressed nicely the reasons Americans should welcome Cordoba House:
If somebody wants to build a religious house of worship, they should do it and we shouldn’t be in the business of picking which religions can and which religions can’t. I think it’s fair to say if somebody was going to try to on that piece of property build a church or a synagogue, nobody would be yelling and screaming. And the fact of the matter is that Muslims have a right to do it too. What is great about America and particularly New York is we welcome everybody and I just- you know, if we are so afraid of something like this, what does it say about us? Democracy is stronger than this. You know, the ability to practice your religion is the- was one of the real reasons America was founded. And for us to say no is just, I think, not appropriate is a nice way to phrase it.
Foxman, who has been with the ADL for 45 years too long, has not only betrayed the ADL’s mission to fight against religious discrimination, he has unfortunately become a bigot himself. Having backed into the anti-Arab corner he finds himself in, Foxman is hopelessly out of touch with American values of religious tolerance and is also out of touch with mainstream American Jews and Jewish ethics.
It’s time for Abe Foxman to be forcibly retired. Now.
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