Al Jazeera | By Ali Abunimah | 02.08.2011 | NEDERLANDS
Anti Defamation League director Abraham Foxman and his organisation opposed the building of the 'Ground Zero Mosque' because of the belief that it would 'cause some victims more pain' [GALLO/GETTY]
In a Washington Post op-ed last week, Abraham Foxman, the National Director of the Anti Defamation League, likened the hateful ideology that inspired Anders Behring Breivik to massacre 77 innocent people in Norway to the "deadly" anti-Semitism that infected Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.
This is a parallel that I, and many others who have been observing with alarm the rise of anti-Muslim incitement in the US and Europe, have made frequently.
Does this mean that Foxman - head of one of the most hardline and influential pro-Israel lobby groups - has found common ground with the Palestine solidarity movement?
That would be a good thing if it helped to fight the growing scourge of racist incitement. But by criticising the ideology that inspired Breivik, and pointing the finger at a few of its purveyors, Foxman appears to be trying to obscure the key role that he and some other pro-Israel advocates have played in mainstreaming the poisonous Islamophobic rhetoric that has now - Foxman himself argues - led to bloodshed in Norway.
Pointing the finger
Foxman describes, in his Washington Post article, "a relatively new, specifically anti-Islamic ideology" which Breivik used to justify his attack. "Growing numbers of people in Europe and the United States subscribe to this belief system", Foxman writes, "In some instances it borders on hysteria. Adherents of this ideological Islamophobia view Islam as an existential threat to the world, especially to the 'West.'"
"Moreover", Foxman explains, "they believe that leaders and governments in the Western world are consciously or unconsciously collaborating to allow Islam to 'infiltrate' and eventually conquer democratic societies."
Just such irrational beliefs underpin the hysteria about "Creeping Sharia" - the utterly baseless claim that Muslims are engaged in a secret conspiracy to impose Islamic law on the United States. So prevalent has this delusional belief become, that legislative efforts have been mounted in about two dozen American states, and have been passed by three, to outlaw Sharia law.
Foxman points the finger - as others have rightly done - at extreme Islamophobic agitators such as Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, co-founders of "Stop Islamisation of America" - whose hate-filled writings Breivik cited in his manifesto.
So far, Foxman has it right. But then he drops a clue about what really frightens him:
"One bizarre twist to Breivik's warped worldview was his pro-Zionism - his strongly expressed support for the state of Israel. It is a reminder that we must always be wary of those whose love for the Jewish people is born out of hatred of Muslims or Arabs."
Who does Foxman think he is kidding? There is nothing "bizarre" about this at all. Indeed Foxman himself has done much to bestow credibility on extremists who have helped popularise the Islamophobic views he now condemns. And he did it all to shore up support for Israel.
After Norway, Foxman may fear that the Islamophobic genie he helped unleash is out of control, and is a dangerous liability for him and for Israel.
Zionists embrace Islamophobia after 9/11
Many American Zionists embraced Islamophobic demagoguery after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Their logic was encapsulated in then-Israeli opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu's notorious assessment that the attacks - which killed almost 3,000 people - would be beneficial for Israel.
Asked what the 9/11 atrocities would mean for US-Israeli relations, Netanyahu told The New York Times, "It's very good", before quickly adding, "Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy" and would "strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we've experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror".
In order for Israel and the United States to have the same enemy, the enemy could not just be the Palestinians, who never threatened the United States in any way. It had to be something bigger and even more menacing - and Islam fit the bill. The hyped-up narrative of an all-encompassing Islamic threat allowed Israel to be presented as the bastion of "western" and "Judeo-Christian" civilisation facing down encroaching Muslim barbarity. No audience was more receptive than politically influential, white, right-wing Christian evangelical pastors and their flocks.
Sermons of hate
"Since the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon, on September the 11th, American politicians have tripped over themselves to state that the vast majority of Muslims living in the United States are just ordinary people who love America and are loyal to America. Is that true? Is that really true?"
That is the question Pastor John Hagee, leader of an evangelical megachurch and founder of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), posed to his followers whom, he said, were becoming more concerned as "mosques appear across the nation".
In a series of sermons soon after the 9/11 attacks which he titled "Allah and America," Hagee began a relentless campaign of inciting his followers to fear and hate Muslims and Islam (videos of Hagee's sermons can be found on YouTube.
Hagee has emerged over the past decade as one of the most prominent Christian Zionist supporters of Israel. His sermons are broadcast on dozens of TV channels and he influences millions of Americans.
As his "Allah and America" sermons progressed, Hagee's answers became clear: "In the Qur'an, those who do not submit to Islam should be killed. That means death to Christians and death to Jews. Now I ask you, is that tolerant? Is that peaceful? Is that a sister faith to Christianity?"
After reading and distorting "selected verses from the Qur'an, which is the Islamic bible, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, to increase our understanding of the basis of their faith," Hagee claimed, "the Qur'an insists that no matter how mighty a nation is, it must be fought until it embraces Islam."
And, apparently knowing that his congregation may hate and fear only taxes as much as Muslims, Hagee told them that the Qur'an's message to Muslims is "when you get into the government, tax Christians and Jews into poverty until they submit willingly to Islam. Sounds like the IRS [Internal Revenue Service], but not faith."
Then he offered this warning: "Politicians who are telling America that Islam and Christianity are sister faiths are lying to the people of this country. There is no relationship of any kind between Islam and Christianity. None whatever."
At every step, Hagee exhorted the faithful that Islam and Muslims were not only a danger to the United States, but specifically to Israel - a country to which they should offer unconditional support.
This sounds a lot like the ideology of generalised fear and loathing of Muslims that Foxman condemned in the Washington Post.
Islamophobic fearmongering, demonisation and dehumanisation, from the likes of Hagee, and bellowed continuously on cable channels and radio stations across America, enabled the US government to legitimise invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq and expand wars from Pakistan to Yemen to Somalia. These took the lives of hundreds of thousands of Muslims, under the guise of a "war on terror" - all the while as presidents hosted White House iftars.
What makes Breivik's attack so shocking and new is that he turned the Islamophobic rhetoric against the white citizens of the Euro-American "homeland", those whom the officially-sanctioned military slaughter of Muslims abroad was ostensibly meant to protect.
Foxman welcomes Hagee in from the fringes
While Hagee offered his zealous support to Israel (he founded CUFI in 2006), not all of Israel's supporters returned the love. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, warned in 2007 that the pro-Israel Jewish community's embrace of far-right ideologues would drive away young, socially-liberal Jews from supporting Israel. He feared it could endanger the bipartisan support Israel always enjoyed in the United States by identifying it with what Yoffie saw as extremist elements.
Yoffie focused his criticism on Hagee, "who is contemptuous of Muslims, dismissive of gays, possesses a truimphalist theology and opposes a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict." He worried about the warm reception Hagee was receiving at conferences of Jewish Federations all over America.
One influential figure who didn't share Yoffie's fears about Hagee was Foxman, who told a reporter from the Religion News Service in March 2008, "I don't have to agree with anybody 100 per cent in order to welcome their support, as long as their support is not conditioned on my agreeing with them on everything or accepting them 100 per cent."
When it came to light during the 2008 US presidential campaign that Hagee had said in a 1999 sermon that Hitler had been sent by God to drive the Jews to Israel, Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain repudiated Hagee's endorsement. But Foxman was quick to offer Hagee absolution, issuing a statement accepting the pastor's "apology".
Enabling Islamophobia
Foxman's embrace of Hagee does not even mark the lowest point of his dalliance with Islamophobic extremists. Recall last summer - in the run up to the US midterm elections - the hate campaign targeting a proposal for an Islamic community centre planned for lower Manhattan in New York City.
Dubbed the "Ground Zero Mosque" by its critics, it became a cause celebre for the Republican Party - and some gutless Democrats - who claimed that building the institution close to the former site of the World Trade Centre would be an insult to the memory of victims.
The hate campaign was notable for unprecedented anti-Muslim rhetoric that exceeded anything heard in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 attacks. While New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg earned plaudits for defending the right of American Muslims to build the Islamic centre where they wanted, Foxman and his Anti-Defamation League caused consternation when they backed the bigots and came out against the project.
And who was it who helped take a little-noticed plan for a community centre and turn it into "a national political spectacle?" None other than Pam Geller and Robert Spencer - as the Washington Post reported at the time- the same Islamophobic extremists whom Foxman now blames for fueling the kind of hatred that inspired Breivik to kill.
Rescuing Zionism from Islamophobia
Foxman's claim that Breivik's support for Israel is "bizarre" is a brazen attempt to deflect attention from the alliance that Foxman and leading Israeli politicians have made with the most racist Islamophobes - ones Foxman accurately likens to anti-Semites.
To be clear, Israel and Zionism have always been racist toward Palestinians and other non-Jews, otherwise how else could they justify the expulsion and exclusion of millions of Palestinians solely on the grounds that they are not Jews? It is the virulent, specifically anti-Muslim trend that has been particularly pronounced since 2001.
But the rot has already gone too far. As a recent article in Der Spiegel underscores, Europe's far-right anti-Muslim demagogues have found many allies and admirers in Israel, particularly within the upper echelons of the ruling Likud and Yisrael Beitenu parties.
And the feeling is mutual: European ultra-nationalists, such as Dutch Islamophobe Geert Wilders, have put support for Israel's right-wing government at the centre of their politics.
Islamophobia welcome in Israel
While the world was united in horror at Breivik's massacre, several commentators in Israel's mainstream media were much more understanding of his motives, if not for his actions. An oped on Ynet, the website of Israel's mass circulation Yediot Aharonot, stated that "the youth movement of the ruling Labour Party" - of which many of the youths murdered on Utoya island were members - "is an organisation of anti-Israeli hate mongers".
An editorial in The Jerusalem Post offered sympathy for Breivik's anti-Muslim ideology and called on Norway to act on the concerns expressed in his manifesto, while an op-ed published by the same papersaid that the youth camp Breivik attacked had been engaged in "a pro-terrorist program".
Meanwhile, an article in the American Jewish newspaper The Forward noted that on many mainstream internet forums, Israelis expressed satisfaction with Breivik's massacre and thought that Norway got what it deserved.
Clear warning signs
Foxman cannot claim he didn't see any of this coming. Back in 2003, I interviewed him for an article about the inclusion of Yisrael Beitenu and other parties in Israel's governing coalition, parties that openly advocated the expulsion of Palestinians. Foxman's attitude was as indulgent toward those racists and would-be ethnic cleansers as he was to Hagee's hate-mongering a few years later, and it is those same Israeli parties that have forged the closest ties with European and American anti-Muslim extremists.
The continued lurch towards extremism in Israel, and among many of its supporters, underscores the truth that anyone who wants to dissociate from ultranationalism, racism and Islamophobia, also has to repudiate Israel's state ideology, Zionism. Universal rights and equality for all human beings are concepts that are anathema to both.
With his panicked and belated jump onto the anti-Islamophobia bandwagon, Foxman hopes we won't notice, and that organisations like his can continue defending Israel's racism free from the stain of the deadly anti-Muslim extremism they have done so much to promote.
Ali Abunimah is author of "One Country, A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Impasse", and is co-founder of The Electronic Intifada.
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