Trento: “Abe is an idiot. You can quote me.” And so is the FORWARD

Abe Foxman of the ADL

Adam Taxin of the Philadephia Jewish Culture Examiner has written this latest escapade in media manipulation by Abe Foxman of the ADL published in The Jewish Exponent, a local Federation weekly.  We have posted frequently about Foxman’s excesses when it comes to his bizarre views of what constitutes threats in the US. Sharia is not one of them and he goes to great lengths to criticize its critics like David Yerushalmi, Esq.- see here.  He considers Evangelical Christian groups who defend Israel like CUFI as mortal enemies and he has stooped to taking six figure ‘fees’ for opening doors for White House pardons, as he did for tax-frauster and oil trader Marc Rich in January, 2001 with former Presdent Clinton-see here.  Then there is his support for Mega Mosque construction  while avoiding the 800 pound gorilla of  anti-semitism in Islamic Doctrine.

The op-ed section of this week’s Jewish Exponent lends a considerable part of its limited space to Abraham Foxman, a man who has hardly been deprived of sufficient soapbox opportunities during the 24 years he has served as the boss of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) (affectionately known by Jewish Culture Examiner as “the Defamation League,” due to the way it ongoingly — and, make no mistake, driven by fundraising concerns — accuses non-Jews of dire anti-Semitism).

In his op-ed piece, called “Opinion: The Threat of Sharia Law: It’s All a Matter of Myth Making,” Foxman assures readers of the Jewish Exponent that “[t]he threat of the infiltration of Sharia, or Islamic law, into the American court system is one of the more pernicious conspiracy theories to gain traction in our country in recent years.”

Later in the article, Foxman, who in the past fired a New England regional ADL director who had the audacity to suggest that the Turkish (and Kurdish) Muslim extermination of up to 1.5 million Armenian Christians during World War I should be acknowledged as a “genocide,” describes “a false perception among a growing number of Americans that Sharia is a very real threat to our way of life and constitutional freedoms.”

Foxman, whose indefatigable fight against anti-Semitism earned him a salary of over $560,000 in 2009, also considers anti-Sharia legislative efforts “the proverbial solution in search of a problem,” as well as “a form of camouflaged bigotry that enables their proponents to advance an idea that finds fault with the Muslim faith and paints all Muslim Americans as foreigners and anti-American crusaders.”

Foxman, who has been the national director of the “Defamation League” for 24 years, since 1987, warns, in the article, that “we also face the prospect of a political season in which more candidates may be tempted to invoke this mythological threat in an effort to pander to bigotry and fear, and to score political points.”
In his Jewish Exponent piece, Foxman (who told this reporter personally in March that he has no opinion related to Great Britain’s banning of Michael Savage – the U.S.’s most popular Jewish radio host — from entering the country, [Relevant dialogue: Jewish Culture Examiner: Michael Savage is not allowed in Britain, and he claims… . Foxman: I have no position on that. Jewish Culture Examiner: … that it’s because they’re anti-Semitic; they want a Jew in there to balance out the Arabs. Foxman: I have no views on that.]), sermonizes near the end:
We have the option of heading down a path toward a greater tolerance of anti-Muslim xenophobia and fear of the “stranger in our midst,” or we can rededicate ourselves to the ideal of an America that is open and welcoming to immigrants as well as minority groups who have been here for decades. Let us hope that the better nature of America will enable us to proceed down the second path and reject those who seek to divide us for political gain, or those who wish to stereotype and scapegoat an entire people because of their religious faith.

Some – presumably those who, as Foxman phrases it in his piece, “pander to bigotry and fear” – were less than laudatory about Foxman’s piece in the Jewish Exponent.
According to Lori Lowenthal Marcus, the founder and president of the Philadelphia-area-headquartered, unabashedly-Zionist organization Z STREET: “Abe Foxman would do well to focus his energy on protecting Jews and the Jewish State rather than wasting valuable resources (such as space in Jewish media) huffing and puffing over imagined threats to Islam.”

She continued: “Sharia is a political ideology that has no place in American law. American Muslims are free to practice their own religion, but they are not free to impose it on others, which is what the anti-Sharia legislation is intended to prevent. The real myth being perpetrated here is not that there is no threat from sharia, it is that those who oppose the entwining of sharia with American law are a threat. Foxman is the scare-monger.”

Tom Trento, President of THE UNITED WEST and co-author of Shariah – The Threat to America was somewhat more concise than Lowenthal Marcus: “Abe is an idiot. You can quote me.”

 
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If you think Foxman is an idiot read this.

Remember Who We Are
Editorial, FORWARD
September 01, 2011

When Amy Waldman was writing her engrossing new novel, “The Submission,” premised on a Muslim winning the competition to design a memorial at the World Trade Center site, she wondered if her depiction of the uproar and violence by opponents of the design would ring true. That was before plans to build an Islamic cultural center near the site ignited anti-Muslim hysteria across the country. “After that, I realized I was right,” she told the Forward. “The lack of trust was that deep.”

What holds in good fiction is true in life. Trust is still a scarce commodity, ten years after the terrorist attacks left thousands dead in New York, northern Virginia and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Trust in the democratic and patriotic intentions of the Muslims in our midst. Trust in the ability of government to protect us at home and overseas. Trust that the nation will ever be able to put aside partisanship, race, religion and class and come together as it did on September 12th — and for a blessed but abbreviated time afterward.

This mistrust is keenly felt by Muslim Americans. In a new poll by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Muslims say that they feel targetted by government anti-terrorism policies; 55% say that being a Muslim in the United States is more difficult since 9/11. Significant numbers say that they have been viewed with suspicion, called offensive names and feel singled out by airport security. Would any other minority group accept this? Yet the survey also found a steadfast and overwhelming rejection of Islamic extremism and a similarly strong sense of satisfaction with life in America — nearly four out of five rate their communities as good places to live.

There is no way of knowing how Jews fit into this dynamic; our numbers are far too small to figure in this survey. The never-ending Israeli-Palestinian conflict surely affects Jewish-Muslim attitudes, but that could be counterbalanced by the fact that, in the American political context, Jews and Muslim share a prediliction for liberal politics and an understanding of the benefits of social acceptance.
There is, unfortunately, one disturbing way that a small number of Jews are contributing to the unfair characterizations and discrimination of Muslims.

A new study by the Center for American Progress reveals that seven foundations have spent more than $40 million in the last ten years to spread misinformation about Muslim Americans. And who leads those efforts? Far too many Jews, including blogger Pamela Geller, co-director of the group Stop Islamization of America; David Yerushalmi, whose attempts to promote anti-Sharia laws were detailed recently in the Forward; Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum, which gave a platform for Yerushalmi’s dangerous ideas; Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, who has even criticized President George W. Bush and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie for being soft on Muslims.

The attacks on Islam promulgated by these and a few others “go right to the heart of two critically important national issues: the fabric and strength of our democracy and our national security,” says the CAP report. Combating Islamophobia isn’t just a nice thing to do; it is essential to shoring up our security at home and our image abroad. The question is whether all the positive efforts to build trust with the American Muslim community can offset this well-funded, misdirected network.

In her novel, Waldman pens a poignant scene in which Salman Khan, father of her fictional architect, describes why he gave his son such a Muslim name, Mohammed. “We believed so strongly in America that we never thought for a moment that your name would hold you back in any way. And now — ” Given the fierce opposition to his son’s work, Salman wonders “whether this country has a place for us.”

“Of course it does,” Mohammad responds. “But sometimes America has to be pushed ­— it has to be reminded of what it is.”

A decade later, America still needs that reminder.

September 2, 2011 | 5 Comments »

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5 Comments / 5 Comments

  1. @ dweller:
    And part of Foxman’s motives must be seen as venal: his tender loving concern for Muslims keeps him close to the centers of power: Obama and the rest of the PC crew….

  2. He considers Evangelical Christian groups who defend Israel like CUFI as mortal enemies

    Typical Jewish liberal who perversely regards Christians who love Jews and Israel as the enemy while simultaneously courting the friendship of those who call for Jewish genocide.

    In his op-ed piece, called “Opinion: The Threat of Sharia Law: It’s All a Matter of Myth Making,” Foxman assures readers of the Jewish Exponent that “[t]he threat of the infiltration of Sharia, or Islamic law, into the American court system is one of the more pernicious conspiracy theories to gain traction in our country in recent years.”

    Tell that to Europeans who have lost parts of their countries to muslims who have carved out sovereign enclaves of their own under sharia law and which non-muslims dare not enter.

    We have the option of heading down a path toward a greater tolerance of anti-Muslim xenophobia and fear of the “stranger in our midst,” or we can rededicate ourselves to the ideal of an America that is open and welcoming to immigrants as well as minority groups who have been here for decades. Let us hope that the better nature of America will enable us to proceed down the second path and reject those who seek to divide us for political gain, or those who wish to stereotype and scapegoat an entire people because of their religious faith.

    What happens when those immigrants seek to forcibly impose their so-called religious faith on the rest of us? Should we still be tolerant at that point?

    This mistrust is keenly felt by Muslim Americans. In a new poll by the Pew Research Center, a majority of Muslims say that they feel targetted by government anti-terrorism policies;

    Who else to target if not the source of all of the terrorism?

    Significant numbers say that they have been viewed with suspicion, called offensive names and feel singled out by airport security.

    A complete lie since airport security prefers to molest six year olds and and grope senior citizens then to appear “islamophobic” by singling out passengers who actually fit the profile of a potential terrorist.

    So long as Foxman is in charge, anyone contributing money to the ADL ought to have their head examined.

  3. “They’re trying to harness and divert Jewish energy and other Jewish resources to ‘world causes’ and thus siphon-off limited resources from the Jewish community (in the guise that this demonstrates that Jews are not parochial). In fact, they are bragging to the world: ‘look at me, look at the great man I am!’”

    Leftwing Jewish universalism was precisely what kept the NYT (and other Jewish-owned, US publications) from suitably addressing the magnitude & distinctiveness of the Shoah during the war. Oh, they ‘covered’ it all right, but strictly as an example of wartime persecution & random excess — without ever taking up the matter of deliberate genocide.

    From Robt Leiter’s 2005 review of Laurel Leff’s book, Buried By the Times:

    “The publisher, Arthur Hays Sulzberger, comes in for considerable and often justifiable criticism. Like many other Jews of the period, he had a troubled relationship with his Jewishness and was outspoken in his opposition to Zionism. All this led him to make unfortunate journalistic decisions as he strove to insure that the paper was not perceived as favoring any one group, the Jews especially.”

  4. (1) The complete compensation packages for the top executives at all agencies and organizations that solicit the Jewish community for funds should be published. (This includes salary, health benefits, vacation benefits, retirement benefits etc. etc.) some time ago a Jewish publication did that and I was surprised and dismayed at some of the salaries displayed. Certainly, there are many things I do not like about the ADLs program and their priority. Now I also feel that Foxman defrauded me since I donated regularly in the past.

    (2 )The fate of the Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere should still be a matter of concern.

    (3) The Forward still is mentally in the days of the cigar makers. Unfortunately, too many Jews are a mixture of the labor movement of the 1910s and 20s ; the economic mentality of the 1930s: and the new left of the 1960s and 70s. I have often regarded the thrust (bragged about by many rabbis) of orienting Jewish funds and Jewish efforts to helping the poor in Africa,etc. They’re trying to harness and divert Jewish energy and other Jewish resources to“world causes” and thus siphon- off limited resources from the Jewish community (in the guise that this demonstrates that Jews are not parochial). In fact, they are bragging to the world: “look at me, look at the great man I am!”

  5. “Trento: ‘Abe is an idiot. You can quote me’.”

    Foxman is a horribly traumatized human being, and must be regarded in that light. He’s got some frightful, personal, childhood history with Christians in his Past, tied up with displaced fear, resentment and revulsion — and it has left him blind to the Islamic peril in his Present. His experience lead him, as a child, to overreact to Christians generally — though in recent decades he has come to SEE that it was indeed an overreaction. Now, for fear that he might overreact comparably to Muslims as well — even though he is no longer a child, and has an adult’s discernment– he bends over backwards to ignore what goes on before his very eyes. It’s obvious that he doesn’t trust his own good judgment.

    He must surely be countered, that goes without saying — but countered by those who understand what he’s been through:

    Abraham Foxman was born in 1940 to Jewish parents living in Poland. In a futile effort to stay ahead of the advancing Nazi army, Foxman’s parents fled with him east to Lithuania. The Germans soon occupied Lithuania and ordered all Jews to report to the ghetto in Vilna. Hoping to save their child’s life, the Foxmans decided to leave baby Abraham in the custody of his Polish nanny, Bronislawa Kurpi.

    Kurpi was a devout Catholic, and she decided to raise Abraham in her own faith. She had him baptized, taught him Catholic prayers, and gave him a little crucifix to wear around his neck. She not only cut him off from his Judaism, but she also taught him to hate Jews. Whenever a Jew passed on the street, Abraham Foxman, future director of the Anti-Defamation League, would spit and mutter, “Dirty Jew.”

    Foxman’s parents survived the Holocaust, and they came back to reclaim their son. But Bronislawa Kurpi wanted to keep Abraham, and she was ruthless in her quest to do so. Kurpi went to the local Soviet officials who occupied Lithuania after the war and accused Foxman’s father of having collaborated with the Nazis — an accusation that could have gotten the elder Foxman killed. After being arrested and interrogated, [the father] was released for lack of evidence. Kurpi next accused [the elder] Foxman of having stolen govt property from his place of work. Again he was arrested, and again he was freed for lack of evidence. By the third time Kurpi accused [the father] of a crime, the police knew to ignore her.

    Tiring of the continuing battles, the Foxmans decided to settle the issue by suing Kurpi for legal custody of their child. At trial, Kurpi resorted to more dirty tricks. She claimed that the Foxmans were not who they claimed to be, but merely “imposters” using the Foxman name. After the Foxmans proved their true identity, Kurpi claimed that Abraham was actually HER biological son and not theirs. The Foxmans were able to prove that this too was a lie.

    Having lost the legal battle, Kurpi resorted to kidnapping. She had some of her relatives take young Abraham and hide him in their home. The Foxmans tracked their son down and had some friends kidnap him back. At this juncture, the Foxmans decided to take Abraham and leave Lithuania and Kurpi behind for good.

    Bronislawa Kurpi was no saintly Corrie ten Boom. She was a bitter woman capable of great evil. Yet Abraham disregards her ugly behavior because of one basic fact — Kurpi risked her life to save his. Foxman refers to Kurpi as “my dear old nanny.” Rather than condemn her actions, Foxman demonstrates an incredible ability to put himself in her shoes and understand why she acted as she did. Foxman seems to excuse the fact that she taught him to hate Jews by noting that “[a]fter all, she shared the antisemitic assumptions of her world.” Foxman even excuses her efforts to steal him from his parents, pointing out that “Frau Kurpi had a simple, sincere acceptance of the dogma that only a faithful Catholic could hope to be saved, and she wanted me to be part of that fold.” [David Brog, Standing with Israel (Front Line/Strang Communications, Lk Mary, FL, 2006), pp. 246-47]

    All the same, any objective observer can see the grotesque scarring & confusion that this horrific and revolting series of episodes would inevitably have left on a young, developing mind.

    Abe Foxman is a walking testimony to the truth of dweller’s Second Law of Political Troubleshooting:

    “Seventy percent of what passes for politics in this world is in fact PATHOLOGY seeking a political outlet; i.e., it is pathology masquerading as ‘politics’. (In some circles, that figure is closer to ninety percent.)”

    Once upon a time, as a little boy slept, a monster crept into his room, and the closer he came to the child’s bedside, the more the boy’s terror grew. As the Beast leaned over the bed, the little one reached out to claw at it, in desperate hopes of keeping it at bay. With time the creature disappeared, the boy became a man and the fear was forgotten. But the Beast did not die. You see, when the boy had reached out to claw at the Beast, the creature’s cells got in under the boy’s fingernails. And grew silently with him as HE grew.

    Now the Beast was in him…