| NOVANEWS |
Dear Friends,
Somewhat more than usual tonight. But while there are 10 items below, there are at least 10 more that I omitted from the message. Some days there is more to report than on other days.
Item 1 reports that Palestinian prisoners in Ashkelon prison are dissatisfied with their conditions, and are threatening a hunger strike. Palestinian prisoners are not treated as are Jewish prisoners. For instance, visits are allowed but once in 3 months, and only immediate family members are allowed to visit. But even that is conditional. If a family member (father, mother, brother, sister) has been imprisoned by Israel, that person is not allowed to visit. The subject of Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners is quite long. If you wish to know more, B’tselem has a number of reports on ithttp://www.btselem.org/English/Publications/Index.asp?TF=03&image.x=9&image.y=12
Item 2 is deja vu, which does not make it pretty—another Palestinian family in East Jerusalem is being kicked out of its home (at this point, part of the home) to make room for Jewish colonists. Can you imagine being ordered to vacate a bedroom in your home to make way for total strangers who are extremely hostile to you?
Item 3 says, in brief, that the IOF masquerades so as to give an image that has no relation to reality. Though the masquerade is in this case physical, it is pure and simple propaganda. All Israeli propaganda paints Israel as it wants the world to see it rather than as it is. That is a function of all propaganda, I guess. Would it fool you? Probably not. But it might fool others not so intelligent and knowledgeable as you.
Item 4 reveals that African laborers are constructing the wall to keep out African refugees from entering Israel from Sinai. Well, who built the separation wall and constructed the colonies? Right! Palestinians, of course. Israel has a captive market—people who need to work, but can’t find other jobs. A wonderful supply, in other words, of cheep, cheep labor. What a godsend! How ugly!
Item 5 begins with a gross case of racism but then moves to show one attempt to give refugees and foreign labor a bit of warmth. This latter by no means makes up for the former, and particularly not in this case where an entire community practices racism. My spouse was very upset when he read the piece. It reminded him of what he suffered as a child in Austria in the 1930s. He never expected to meet the same ugly racism in Jewish Israel. Well, one lives and learns. It’s not that he did not know that some Jews are racists. But he never suspected that an entire community or much of it practices racism wholesale.
In item 6 we learn that the deportation order of 400 children who were born in Israel to foreign workers, not to Jews, is to be suspended temporarily. This leaves the children not knowing what will be in a few months. This too is a form of racism, whose motive (just as it is with other non Jews) is demographics.
Item 7 relates pleasant news—Denmark is upgrading the diplomatic status of the Palestinians from ‘general delegation’ to ‘mission.’ This is largely symbolic. Yet it is a step that is being taken by more than one country and was not taken before. So it would seem to suggest that things are moving in the right direction.
I give the background for item 8 when you come to it. In brief, GOD TV has given a sum of money (apparently a large sum) to the Jewish National Fund to plant trees for Jews but on Bedouin land.
Items 9 and 10 are about the growing Islamophbia in the United States. A congressman, Peter King, is beginning what would seem to be a McCarthyist investigation of Muslims, claiming that they are becoming dangerous to the United States. There are responses rejecting this in the media–in letters to the editor, op-eds, and open letters. I include one such by a rabbi in 9 who opposes the investigation. Item 10 is an action request, urging you to contact your congressperson and ask to prevent the investigation.
All the best,
Dorothy
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1. Palestine News and Information Agency WAFA Thursday, March 10, 2011
Ashkelon Prisoners Warn of Open Hunger Strike
http://english.wafa.ps/index.php?action=detail&id=15454
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RAMALLAH, March 10, 2011 (WAFA) – Prisoner’s Club Lawyer, Louay Akka, said that prisoners in Ashkelon prison are warning of an open hunger strike due to the deteriorating conditions they are suffering from.
Akka added that after a visit to Ashkelon prison, the prison’s administration refuse to grant prisoners their just rights.
Even the dialogue with the administration didn’t help, on the contrary it has worsened the situation, Akka added.
The prisoners confirmed that solitary confinement policy and only allowing first degree relatives to visit them are violations of their rights, especially prisoners in solitary confinement who are not granted visits even from their first degree relatives.
The prison’s administration conducts unexpected inspections during inappropriate times; deliberately during Friday prayer and violates prisoners’ private property which causes chaos inside the prisoners’ rooms.
The Club’s lawyer said that those inspections create some kind of instability in the prison and the dialogue with the administration is becoming fruitless.
Ashkelon prisoners returned meals protesting the bad conditions in prison such as lack of hot water and prohibiting Mutasim Muqadi’s father from visiting him.
M.H./F.R.
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2. The Guardian Thursday 10 March 2011 19.16 GMT
Palestinian family in East Jerusalem told to make way for Jewish settlers
Court order to evacuate room follows 11-year battle waged by US millionaire Irving Moskowitz
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/10/jerusalem-palestinians-eviction-jewish-settlers
Harriet Sherwood in Jerusalem
Building work on the Ma’ale Zeitim Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem. Its expansion is currently blocked by the presence of the Hamdallah home. Photograph: David Silverman/Getty Images A Palestinian family in East Jerusalem have been ordered to evacuate a room in their home so Jewish settlers can move in, following an 11-year court battle waged by a pro-settler US millionaire.
Ahmed Hamdallah, 33, has been told to remove his furniture and possessions by Monday or he will be billed for the cost of bailiffs clearing a room occupied by himself, his wife and one-year-old son. New occupants will take over the property under the protection of armed guards, he has been told.
The Hamdallah family have lived in the home in Ras al-Amud since 1952. The extension, in which Ahmed, Amani and Yazan Hamdallah now live, was built in the mid-1980s.
However, the land on which the home is built was bought in 1990 by Irving Moskowitz, a Florida businessman, from its pre-1948 Jewish owners. Moskowitz has spent millions of dollars purchasing property in East Jerusalem to create pockets of hardline Jewish settlements in Palestinian neighbourhoods.
Hamdallah said he intended to destroy the extension, which has views of the Dome of the Rock and the Mount of Olives, rather than hand it over to settlers. “Do you think I will just give them the key? I’m not going to allow them to live in my house,” he told the Guardian. “I have no power to do anything. I don’t even have the strength to speak or eat or go to work.”
Amani, his wife, said: “We have no plan, nowhere else to go.” She said the main part of the house was already crowded with members of the extended family.
The Hamdallah family came to Ras al-Amud after fleeing their village near Ramle in the 1948 war. The house is now bordered on two sides by Ma’ale Zeitim, a housing development built on land also owned by Moskowitz in which about 100 Jewish families live and from which Israeli flags fly. Expansion of Ma’ale Zeitim is blocked by the presence of the Hamdallah home.
A Jerusalem court ruled in 2005 that the family could retain buildings constructed up to 1989. However, according to the Hamdallahs’ Israeli lawyer, Shlomo Lecker, Moskowitz’s legal representatives have continued to press for evacuation of the extension and yard, and bailiffs this week served notice of eviction for Monday.
“This group of settlers are very determined to get the family out and they are trying every possible trick,” he said. “They got an order allowing the settlers to come to the house and take over the room and the yard.”
Lecker said he was challenging the decision.
Daniel Luria, spokesman for Ateret Cohenim, which promotes Jewish settlement in East Jerusalem, said: “We’re talking about one of the most significant areas historically and religiously for Jews. Jews have the right to live in any neighbourhood. The fact that the world does not recognise that is a problem that the world has got.”
About 200,000 Israeli Jews live in settlements in East Jerusalem, which was captured by Israel in 1967 and later annexed. Settlements in occupied or annexed territory are deemed illegal under international law.
A confidential EU report on East Jerusalem, circulated in December, warned that ideologically-driven settlers were threatening the prospects of a peace deal. “If current trends are not stopped as a matter of urgency, the prospect of East Jerusalem as the future capital of a Palestinian state becomes increasingly unlikely and unworkable,” it said.
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3. Haaretz Thursday, March 10, 2011
Latest update 01:57 10.03.11
The IDF’s masquerade in Hebron
By painting its military posts in Hebron in local colors, the IDF thinks it will disappear the under cover of darkness.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/the-idf-s-masquerade-in-hebron-1.348256
By Alon Idan
A walk through Hebron sends you into deep despair. Near the Cave of the Patriarchs, at the end of the plaza surrounded by a low fence, you see destruction and ruin, and especially the inconceivable segregation of the populations.
Four children, maybe eight or nine years old, curse you in Arabic as if by conditioned reflex. You smile at them, try to remove the wall between you, and all of a sudden they change their stance. Now they come closer to the fence and ask you for money. A shekel, sir, a shekel.
Further on, your depression deepens. The main street looks like something out of the closing scene of an apocalyptic film. Stores are closed, the windows of houses are shuttered with screens and bars, and on the walls, nationalist Jewish graffiti fights for space with nationalist Muslim graffiti. A Star of David is erased and replaced by a swastika, which is supplanted in turn by a “Kahane lives” slogan. To make this anomaly possible, there is an armored Israel Defense Forces guard post every few meters, manned by a soldier with his gun cocked and his gaze moving along an axis from bored to on edge.
Hebron is a living example, or perhaps it is better to say a dying example, of how a place in despair looks, and of how despair can easily be translated into death. For the visitor, it mainly hurts the eyes: a series of scenes, each of which brings up associations that you have to fight against, not always successfully.
Now, it turns out that the IDF also feels suffocated by the aesthetic experience of the city. So it has decided to change the city’s “look.” Over the next six months, several military positions will be stripped of their military character, including the metal camouflage screens. They will be renovated to fit in with the aesthetic of the local buildings.
“The intent is to renovate the positions so that they will look more natural in the city,” a military official said. “For example, instead of metal, they will be faced with stone that integrates into the local scenery. People don’t have to feel like they are living inside an army base. This move will bring normalization and reduce the military imprint.”
The IDF’s decision is quintessentially Israeli. It conceals several classic assumptions and conclusions about time and space. The first assumption: Reality cannot be essentially changed. The second assumption: Reality is damaging to public relations. The third assumption: The damage has to do with the aesthetics of the place. Conclusion: The way people see reality has to be changed. In short, renovations must be done.
Now that the military-public relations calculus has been done, all the energy and resources can be channeled into plastic surgery, although the patient is suffering from cancer. When the operation is over, people will be able to walk around the city without getting their eyes burned too much. When Israeli schoolchildren come for a heritage tour of the city of the Patriarchs, they will see the small, strange positions along the main street, but the stone facing will give them a local look, and the kids will continue along their way without pausing too long over the injustice.
This is good way to teach the concept of “defense” in that holy trinity of words, “Israel Defense Forces.” Defense, according to the Israeli lexicon, is mainly a matter of concealing reality. The ruling power pushes the problem into a place where it cannot be seen. And to enable it to be pushed aside in this way, the ruling power paints itself in the local colors and disappears under cover of darkness.
The reality remains as it was: crazy and threatening to shatter. But a passing stranger will be able to go on looking at himself in the mirror after he gets home.
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4. Haaretz Thursday, March 10, 2011
Latest update 01:57 10.03.11
African refugees hired to build fence to keep migrants out of Israel
Interior Ministry turns a blind-eye to recently implemented law banning asylum seekers on temporary-status visas from working – until it finishes building a holding facility that will satisfy migrants’ basic needs.
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/african-refugees-hired-to-build-fence-to-keep-migrants-out-of-israel-1.348212
By Dana Weiler-Polak
The government is employing Eritrean asylum seekers to help build a border fence designed to keep out other migrants seeking to enter the country from Africa via the Sinai Peninsula.
A man who gave his name as August, one of four Eritreans working for a contractor along the fence route, said he had sought work for a long time before he was told a construction job was available near Eilat.
He had arrived in Israel five months ago. According to August, the hardest part of the journey was trekking through the African desert. Now, once the border fence along the Egyptian frontier is completed, migrants will find it even more difficult to enter the country.
August laughed when asked if he felt guilty that he was helping put up a structure designed to keep fellow Eritreans out of the country. “I have a family that remained in Eritrea,” he said. “While they would love to come here, they know the journey isn’t easy.” As August tells it, he simply has no choice but to earn a living any way he can.
While the state has legally barred its citizens from employing asylum seekers from Africa, it doesn’t enforce the ban. Months ago, the Interior Ministry’s Population Registry inserted a clause in the temporary-status visas given to asylum seekers stating that under no circumstances could they be hired.
But it is in the state’s interests for asylum seekers to support themselves financially, so it has turned a blind eye to asylum seekers who break the law – until it can finish building a large holding facility that will provide the migrants with their basic needs. Only then will the state start enforcing the no-hiring law.
The Interior Ministry is also looking to clamp down on asylum seekers’ employment by local councils and municipalities. Two weeks ago, the head of the Population Registry reiterated to the local councils that the hiring of migrants and asylum seekers was forbidden.
“Dozens of contractors are working to build the border fence along the Israel-Egypt border,” the Defense Ministry said in a statement. “It was made clear to these contractors that they could not hire illegal workers to finish the project. We are not aware of any instance in which workers are hired to contractors to help build the border fence in contravention of the law.”
A contractor who is caught employing an illegal migrant would be subject to disciplinary measures, the ministry said.
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5. Haaretz Thursday, March 10, 2011
Latest update 01:57 10.03.11
Israel’s African refugees and their fight for acceptance
‘Open Houses’ campaign enables Israelis to see the human face of a community that wide swathes of the public, egged on by politicians, currently view as ‘infiltrators.’
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/israel-s-african-refugees-and-their-fight-for-acceptance-1.348258
By Vered Lee
The city of Eilat is colored red, part of the “protecting our home” campaign spearheaded by its mayor, Meir Yitzhak Halevi, assisted by public relations professional Motti Morel. Some 1,500 red flags are flying around the town.
Halevi explained that “red symbolizes a warning against the future conquest of Eilat by infiltrators.” And he added, “I want anyone who rents his house to infiltrators to feel uncomfortable when he looks at his neighbors and sees the red flags, which express collective solidarity with this struggle.”
The city has allocated public funds to support the campaign. Stickers declaring “I, too, protect our home” have been distributed, billboards have been posted around the town, and flyers have been put in residents’ mailboxes. “A community of refugees has started to form here,” the mayor warned at a press conference.
But what is really known about the community of refugees that is taking shape within the Israeli reality? What is known about their identity? About their culture?
In response to the wave of fear, hatred and racism that has recently been directed against the refugee population, Hamoked: Center for the Defence of the Individual has launched an “open houses” campaign. Its goal is to resist the unbridled incitement. Refugees invite Israelis to their homes to hear the refugees’ stories and get a sense of their culture.
The campaign also offers tours of various sites that reveal aspects of the refugees’ cultures: a trip to the Levinsky Park library for Israel’s foreign communities, which facilitates encounters and exchanges of books; a stroll around Levinsky Park, which serves as an asylum for refugees in Israel;
attendance at a mass in a church located in Tel Aviv’s old central bus station; meetings with groups of young people like those in the “Darfur Star Band,” who are determined to preserve the Darfuri musical culture; and hospitality at houses where members of the refugee community live.
The highlights of these tours are members of the refugee community themselves, whose personal stories provide a unique glimpse of the daily experiences and difficulties they face, as well as stories of successful integration. There is, for instance, Nadek Michael, 28, who operates a prosperous hairdressing salon with her husband, and also Ahmed Babkur, a refugee from Darfur, whose studies were cut short by the unrest and violence in his home country, yet who is now struggling to resume his education while working at a hotel in Tel Aviv.
This campaign will enable the refugees to make their voices heard directly by the Israeli public, instead of only through a media, political and public discourse that in the worst case relates to them in a racist, stereotypical manner and in the best case in a patronizing one, as passive victims rather than as people with their own dreams, desires and aspirations.
People who take part in these tours will gain an understanding of the refugees’ strength of spirit, as well as of the trauma of war in their home countries. Participants will also see the historical connection that, as refugees, they feel with Israel and the Jewish people, as well as their knowledge of our culture and language.
The “open houses” campaign will paint a complex picture of identity and fate. This is a laudable project which enables Israelis to see the human face of a community that wide swathes of the public, egged on by politicians, currently view as “infiltrators.”
Much of the public views the refugees as strangers and is happy for them to remain as such: people with no name, status, identity or culture. “Open houses” enables these two populations to open up to one another, create a personal dialogue and break down barriers – a moment before the blue and white flag turns red.
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6. Haaretz Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Latest update 15:30 09.03.11
Deportation of foreign workers’ children temporarily postponed
Foreign Minister Eli Yishai made the decision Wednesday, claiming he did not wish to disrupt the studies of children enrolled in Israeli state-run schools.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/deportation-of-foreign-workers-children-temporarily-postponed-1.348152
By Dana Weiler-Polak
Tags: Israel news
Interior Minister Eli Yishai instructed the Population and Immigration Authority Wednesday morning to postpone the deportation of children and families of foreign workers enrolled in state-run kindergartens and preschools by a few months.
Yishai delayed the deportation in order to enact the government decision to send them to their respective countries gradually, without placing undue pressure on families whose children are in the middle of the school year.
The interior minister said that although the necessary preparations for deportations had been made, he would delay the deportation out of “sensitivity” to the children who are currently enrolled in schools.
“I have instructed the enforcement [of the decision] regarding families with children learning in Israeli schools to be postponed by a number of months,” Yishai said. “At this point the focus will be only on families with children who unequivocally do not fall under the conditions set by the government decision.”
Yishai’s announcement comes less than a week after relief organizations staged a demonstration in Tel Aviv Friday in an effort to prevent the deportation of foreign workers’ children.
The deportation of families that do not meet the criteria set by the Israeli government was expected to commence this week, coinciding with the completion of preparations for arrests and the endorsement of a facility to be set up at Ben Gurion Airport, devised to detect families with children.
Hundreds of people demonstrated at the Tel Aviv park, calling on the government not to deport or incarcerate children that were born in Israel.
The demonstration was organized by relief organizations, including the Center for Assistance of Foreign Workers, the Civil Rights Union, Doctors for Civil Rights and others.
The speakers at the event included Aliza Olmert, wife of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, and Esther Akfiya, who participated in the Oscar-winning film ‘Strangers No More,’ a documentary about the Bialik-Rogozin School, whose student body comprises refugees and immigrants.
“It doesn’t matter how many pictures or decorations you put on the wall, a jail is a jail,” said Rotem Ilan, the founder of the Israeli Children’s Association. “These children do not belong behind bars.”
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7. Haaretz Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Latest update 18:21 09.03.11
Denmark to upgrade status of Palestinian representation to ‘mission’
Upgrade from third-highest ranking of general delegation mirrors move made recently by number of other countries, including Britain.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/denmark-to-upgrade-status-of-palestinian-representation-to-mission-1.348168
By Haaretz Service and News Agencies
Tags: Israel news Palestinians
Denmark on Wednesday announced that it would upgrade the diplomatic status of Palestinian representatives in the Scandinavian country, in connection with an ongoing visit by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.
The upgrade from general delegation, the third highest rank, to mission, the second highest, mirrored moves by several other countries – most recently Britain.
The Danish government wanted to show that it “recognized the progress made to reform the Palestinian society,” Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen said.
Abbas also held talks with Foreign Minister Lena Espersen. The Middle East peace process was among the issues discussed, with Danish officials saying they hoped for a breakthrough.
Britain’s Foreign Office said Monday it would upgrade the status of the Palestinian representation in London as an “administrative step.” But in an address to Parliament, Foreign Secretary William Hague cited “the extent of our aid to the Palestinian Authority and our work with them” as the reason.
Hague met Abbas in London on Tuesday, in part to confirm the move. In his address to parliament the day beforey the foreign secretary said: “It remains more vital than ever that we press for a just and lasting resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We want to see an urgent return to negotiations, based on clear parameters including 1967 borders. We will work with all the parties to press for a decisive breakthrough this year.”
British diplomats said that the diplomatic upgrade involves renaming the Palestinian General Delegation Office the Palestinian Mission; simplified visa arrangements for members of the mission; changing the title of the head of delegation to head of mission and a request that Westminster Council provide personal parking spaces for Palestinian Mission officials.
Foreign Office officials emphasized that the upgrade does not confer formal diplomatic status to the mission, nor the associated privileges and immunities of diplomatic status.
“This is not the first step toward U.K. recognition of a Palestinian state,” a British diplomat said. “It is right that we should recognize the progress made in building institutions of state.”
In recent months France, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, the United States and other countries have announced similar upgrades to PA diplomatic delegations. While the measures are symbolic gestures only, they stand out against the cold shoulder being shown by European Union members to Israel with regard to the peace process.
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8. March 9, 2011 from Aruna Baker
[This message is with regard to the JNF attempts to plant trees on the lands of the Negev Bedouin village of Al Araqib. GOD TV contributed sums of money for the project. Following it is a second message that responds to the reply received. D]
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Hello Friends,
I have received a reply from GOD TV to my letter about their activities in the Negev. They seem to be washing their hands of the situation, which is rather like Pontius Pilate in the Christian bible, so it looks as if the Beduoin are in the same situation as Jesus himself. They told me they are not involved in the decision as to where to plant the trees. They are seeking to make Israel green as in former times to prepare the way for the return of the king of kings.
I am considering replying reminding them how Dietrich Bonnhofer stood against the German Christians and saved Jews, paying the price with his own life, and how Jesus himself saved Lazarus and Mary Magdalene, a sex worker, and they killed him too. Rachel Corrie also died. I wonder what the king of kings really wants – a green desert or the exercise of compassion?
Salaam Sophia, Aruna
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[the letter responding to the above]
Dear Friends,
Thank you for your letter explaining your project in the land of Israel.
I am extremely concerned that you are evading moral responsibilities, in a way inconsistent with Jesus’ example.
You say that you are collaborating with the Jewish National Fund, and it is plain that they are implicated in the serious abuse of Arabs.
Jesus talked to us not only about the Kingdom of Heaven, but showed by example how those threatened with abuse must be protected, especially in the case of Mary Magdalene, who joined his disciples.
I myself have worked with sex workers, like Mary Magdalene, and paid the price of the murder of my daughter, Salaam, and her mother, May.
The Jewish National Fund deleted messages I posted about Salaam and my other daughter Sophia who died in an accident. This appears to show ruthlessness and disrespect for the dead.
I telephoned JNF in New York and the Bedouin were described as “like people camped in your back yard”. In Germany in the 1930s and 40s, Dietrich Bonnhofer chose to see Jews as camped in his backyard, and defended them from the “German Christians”. Like May, he paid with his life.
You need to decide whether your apostolic, prophetic act is not in reality a reversion to the “German Christians” promoted by Hitler, or even washing your hands like Pontius Pilate himself.
For me, the path of love will always lead me to the side of sex workers, lesbians, homeless women and men, gypsies and sexually abused people, as well as Jews themselves, having studied the Holocaust extensively. The escape of the Jews from Death camp Sorbibor was facilitated by a Christian nun.
I wish Christians today would help the Bedouin, as it is they who will make the Holy Land green.
Salaam Sophia, Brother Aruna
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9. Ynet Thursday, March 10, 2011
17:17 , 03.10.11
Growing Islamophobia (Archive) Photo: AP
Help our Muslim brothers
Op-ed: Rabbi says Americans of all faiths must support Muslims in face of hearings on radical Islam
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4040576,00.html
Marc Schneier
On Thursday, March 10th, Congressman Peter King of New York held Congressional hearings on “the radicalization of America’s Muslim community.” Will Congressman King’s hearings lead to greater understanding or greater conflict? Will the discussions shed greater light on the mosaic of American society, or narrow our definition as to what constitutes a good American?
If we in the US want to be true to our finest traditions and to values such as inclusion and pluralism, community and consensus, we must do whatever we can to ensure that the hearings serve not to induce fear, but to broaden awareness.
Our country’s Muslim community has consistently shown itself to be as fully committed to American values as any other faith group. From condemning terrorism to serving in Congress, from fighting in the military to participating in social justice, American Muslims are as dedicated to the preservation and improvement of our homeland as are all Americans.
In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, we have witnessed the exponential growth of Islamophobia and anti-Muslim discrimination. Many in our society believe that terrorists and extremists represent the Islamic faith, a religion of 1.4 billion people. This ignorance has led to the misperception that Muslims are a threat to American society. Targeting a single community implies its dangerous disloyalty to its new home and exacerbates the rhetoric and diatribe of anti-Muslim prejudice.
This isn’t the first time in American history that one group has been stereotyped with a broad and inaccurate caricature. As a rabbi, I have experienced prejudice and the demonization of my community, and as a leader who has devoted his professional life to interethnic and interfaith dialogue I know all too well the type of hateful rhetoric that too often enters our vernacular.
Through my work with my partner Russell Simmons at The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding I now have an even better understanding of the importance of all communities standing up for each other whenever hate raises its ugly head. Russell and I have embraced the principle that a people who fight for their own rights are only as honorable as when they fight for the rights of all people. In this spirit, a community can only defend itself when it is joined by friends and neighbors, people of different backgrounds, cultures and faiths.
Congressman King has failed to recognize this most important American tradition. Instead, he has forced American Muslims to stand alone defending themselves. Americans should never have to stand alone. This is why Americans from all walks of life should be prepared to testify on behalf of their Muslim brothers and sisters.
As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. often remarked, “An injustice against anyone anywhere must be the concern of everyone everywhere.”
I call on Congressman King to open the hearings up to the voices of non-Muslims.
This is what we do as Americans. We reach out and help our neighbors during difficult times. We urge Congressman King to ensure that the hearings reflect the best of this American spirit which keeps aglow the light of understanding and caring.
Rabbi Marc Schneier is the president of The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding and author of “Shared Dreams: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Jewish Community.”
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