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If you ever needed a sign that Jews feel fully integrated and accepted by society, consider this: Not one major Jewish group made a peep over the revelations of National Security Agency (NSA) surveillance.
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It doesn’t matter what rhetorical polishing President Bush’s team has done to market the “War on Terror.” Outside the United States, it’s perceived as an effort to undermine—even attack—Islam, according to a report by WorldPublicOpinion.org, a research group affiliated with the University of Maryland.
“While US leaders may frame the conflict as a war on terrorism, people in the Islamic world clearly perceive the US as being at war with Islam,â said Steven Kull, editor of WorldPublicOpinion.org.
Muslims have raised concerns about the “War on Terrorism” since President Bush briefly dubbed it a “crusade” back in September 2001. [The word, which conjures up images of medieval battles between Christians and Muslims, was quickly scrapped.]
In Egypt, 92 percent of those polled believe one of the U.S.‘s goals is to weaken and divide the Islamic world. Only four percent disagreed. Seventy-eight percent agreed with the statement in Morocco, and 73 percent shared that view in Pakistan and Indonesia.
While suspicious of U.S. foreign policy, the people polled also expressed opposition to terrorism. Attacks aimed at civilians to carry out political goals are “not at all justified” according to 57 percent of Moroccans, 77 percent of Egyptians, 81 percent of Pakistanis and 84 percent of Indonesians.
U.S. Muslims were not surveyed. Though Muslim Americans might not believe the United States is at war with Islam, they have grown increasingly concerned about home-grown Islamophobia. When I wrote about this two weeks ago, it incited some e-mails that warranted their fears.
But this statement from WorldPublicOpinion’s press release helps explain why some Americans broadly paint Muslims as scary:
Most respondents have mixed feelings about al Qaeda. Large majorities agree with many of its goals, but believe that terrorist attacks on civilians are contrary to Islam.
Many people would stop reading after that first sentence.
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“Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?”
Hitler reportedly asked that question of his commanding generals in 1939, as he prepared to rid the world of Jews. Holocaust historians site this quotation when trying to explain Hitler’s rational for how his acts would escape world condemnation. And yet, Jews—who have so much in common with Armenians—have struggled to embrace Armenians as true kindred spirits, diaspora people like Jews, who, though they did not suffer the Holocaust, suffered a holocaust.
Today marks the 92nd anniversary of the beginning of what mosthistorians call the Armenian Genocide. And though most Western countries have recognized the acts as genocide, the United States and Israel have not. The U.S. has not wanted to offend an important military ally, and Israel has been hard pressed to condemn the founding fathers of the best friend in the Muslim world.
But the tide has shifted.
Two years ago, the Daily News’ Lisa Friedman reported that Rep. Mark Lantos, Congress’ only Holocaust survivor, had changed course and now supported a resolution to call the slaugthering of Armenians by Ottomon Turks a genocide. Media outlets have been all over the story this year, the year handicappers predict Congress might finally pass a non-binding resolution calling the atrocities genocide. (The LA Times had a front-page story Saturday and an Opinion cover Sunday.) A January headline in the Turkish Daily Newsproclaimed, “US Jewish lobby warns Turkish MFA: Even we might not be able to block the Armenian genocide bill if you donât move.”
Valley Beth Shalom, a Conservative Encino synagogue, has begun pushing for Jewish recognition. I covered an event the synagogue held in January that brought together Armenian and Jewish youth for a screening of the moving “Screamers,” a documentary following the rock band System of a Down’s campaign to have the genocide acknowledged across Europe and the U.S.
“Amnesia of the past foreshadows amnesia of the future. Forget yesterday’s tragedy and the threat to tomorrow is denied. Forget the first genocide of the 20th century—the murder of 1.5 million Armenians in 1915—and the memory and atrocities of the first genocide of the 21st century in Darfur turn invisible, and the world response is muted,” Rabbi Harold M. Schulweis of Valley Beth Shalom wrote in this week’s Jewish Journal.
” ... Every genocide is singular. But a kinship of suffering unites us all. To play the shameless game of “one-downsmanship” is an invidious sport. My blood is not redder than yours, my suffering not more painful than yours. Hatred consumes us all indiscriminately.”
Schulweis, who founded the group Jewish World Watch, which is working against the genocide in Darfur, also will preside over a shabbat dinner for Armenians and Jews at his temple Friday night. He will be joined by His Eminence Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, Primate, Western Diocese/Armenian Church of North America.
Turkey does not dispute that more than a million Armenians were killed from 1915 to 1923, but it attributes the deaths to civil strife and notes that many Turks died then, too; there are even statues to who lost their lives.
“Let’s unearth the truth about what happened in 1915 together,” the Turkish embassy said in a full page ad on the back of the LA Times A section Monday. “We can face the truth about our past; we call upon the Armenians to do the same.”
So today, I accepted a writing job at the largest Jewish paper outside New York. I know what you’re thinking. You’re not Jewish. Not religiously. No matter how bushy a beard you can grow. Correct, but I’ll be reporting about a lot more than just Judaism—Jewish life, politics, history and most everything else.
The job will be satisfying both professionally and personally. The weekly format and larger newshole will help me develop my narrative voice and become an expert in a specific field. The subject matter will allow me to learn more about my ancestors while getting a paycheck.
My new digs will be in Koreatown. From the 15th floor suite, I can see Kate’s office and for the first time since we got married, we’ll be able to meet up for lunch. (My first job put us 80 miles apart; the Daily News separates us by 20 miles.)
I’m grateful for the time I’ve had in Woodland Hills, for the opportunities Ron and Melissa have given me to grow, for the shepherding editing of Aron Miller, who brought me here. This unexpected offer brought a tough decision; I’ll miss a lot of people. Brent Hopkins, my good buddy and role model here at the Daily News, had this nice farewell on the paper’s union blog.
During the next two weeks, if you have a good religion story, let me know. And after that, I’ll be taking the religion blog with me. Loyal God Blogites (Mom, I know you’re reading), please come and see what I’m doing for the Jewish Journal.
It’s not often I read an editorial that begins like this:
IN THE BIBLICAL Book of Job, the anguished hero is visited by three friends who attempt to comfort him by drawing airy and sententious lessons from his agonies. Of course, they end up adding to his troubles; Job endures not only the real pains of grief and sickness but the indignity of having his suffering milked for rhetorical effect.
Thanks to the LA Times for this thoughtful reflection on everything politicians and activists can do wrong in the immediate wake of tragedy. Pushing for gun control; insisting a broader right to bear arms. Blaming the university for not reacting quick enough. Dismissing the attack to a shunned lover’s rage.
“I have heard many such things,” Job says. “Miserable comforters are ye all.” No newspaper is in a position to criticize anybody for capitalizing on tragedy or taking convenient positions. There will be time for both in the days to come. But now is a time to respect, quietly, the tears and the pain of this terrible event.
Liviu Librescu survived the Holocaust. But while millions worldwide observed Yom HaShoah Monday, Librescu sacrificed his life for his Virginia Tech students. From the Jerusalem Post, via my favorite blog:
Professor Liviu Librescu, 76, threw himself in front of the shooter when the man attempted to enter his classroom. The Israeli mechanics and engineering lecturer was shot to death, “but all the students lived - because of him,” Virginia Tech student Asael Arad - also an Israeli - told Army Radio.
Several of Librescu’s other students sent e-mails to his wife, Marlena, telling of how he blocked the gunman’s way and saved their lives, said Librescu’s son, Joe.
“My father blocked the doorway with his body and asked the students to flee,” Joe Librescu said in a telephone interview from his home outside of Tel Aviv. “Students started opening windows and jumping out.”
“If you ever forget you are a Jew, a Gentile will remind you.”
So the saying goes. And for me, it was true: I grew up in a Christian home and, aside from my last name, knew nothing about what it was to be Jewish. Except of course, for the jokes, which usually involved terms like “money grubbing.”
It seems today that presidential hopeful Tommy Thompson wasn’t aware of the stereotype that says Jews are stingy money hoarders, a slander that has been used to incite violence and foment malevolence. Here is what he told a group of Jewish activists, courtesy of Haaretz:
“I’m in the private sector and for the first time in my life I’m earning money. You know that’s sort of part of the Jewish tradition and I do not find anything wrong with that.”
Thompson later apologized for the comments that had caused a stir in the audience, saying that he had meant it as a compliment, and had only wanted to highlight the “accomplishments” of the Jewish religion.
“I just want to clarify something because I didn’t [by] any means want to infer or imply anything about Jews and finances and things,” he said.
It’s difficult to imagine someone being so oblivious, but he is running for president. That should be worth something. The headline from the Dallas Morning News’ religion blog says it all: “Next he’ll tell the NAACP that he loves that great fried chicken and watermelon they serve…”
Texas is synonymous with capital punishment. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, Texas has executed 391 people. This year, 12 Texans have been executed; the other 49 states have killed a sole convicted murderer.
That’s what makes this so surprising: The Dallas Morning News’ editorial board has called for an end to the death penalty. Here’s the explanation:
Ernest Ray Willis set a fire that killed two women in Pecos County. So said Texas prosecutors who obtained a conviction in 1987 and sent Mr. Willis to death row. But it wasn’t true.
Seventeen years later, a federal judge overturned the conviction, finding that prosecutors had drugged Mr. Willis with powerful anti-psychotic medication during his trial and then used his glazed appearance to characterize him as “cold-hearted.” They also suppressed evidence and introduced neither physical proof nor eyewitnesses in the trial â and his court-appointed lawyers mounted a lousy defense. Besides, another death-row inmate confessed to the killings.
The state dropped all charges. Ernest Ray Willis emerged from prison a pauper. But he was lucky: He had his life. Not so Carlos De Luna, who was executed in 1989 for the stabbing death of a single mother who worked at a gas station. For years, another man with a history of violent crimes bragged that he had committed the crime. The case against Mr. De Luna, in many eyes, does not stand up to closer examination.
There are signs he was innocent. We don’t know for sure, but we do know that if the state made a mistake, nothing can rectify it.
And that uncomfortable truth has led this editorial board to re-examine its century-old stance on the death penalty. This board has lost confidence that the state of Texas can guarantee that every inmate it executes is truly guilty of murder. We do not believe that any legal system devised by inherently flawed human beings can determine with moral certainty the guilt of every defendant convicted of murder.
That is why we believe the state of Texas should abandon the death penalty â because we cannot reconcile the fact that it is both imperfect and irreversible.
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From our vantage point in Dallas County, the possibility of tragic, fatal error in the death chamber appears undeniable. We have seen a parade of 13 men walk out of the prison system after years â even decades â of imprisonment for crimes they didn’t commit. Though not death penalty cases, these examples â including an exoneration just last week â reveal how shaky investigative techniques and reliance on eyewitnesses can derail the lives of the innocent.
Here is the religious spin on capital punishment, from an article I wrote for The Sun before Tookie Williams was executed:
There is diversity across political ideology and religious dogma.
Generally, though, Jews oppose the death penalty, as do Buddhists. Many Muslims believe it is an acceptable punishment although some decry its application.
Pope John Paul II, who once met with the man who tried to kill him and publicly expressed his forgiveness, strongly condemned the death penalty in 1999. U.S. Catholic bishops this spring announced a campaign to put the punishment to rest.
Most Protestant denominations also have publicly joined the abolitionists in what they see as the other pro-life issue.
But the largest U.S. Christian denomination Southern Baptists support states’ rights to execute murderers.
“The same ones who support pro-life support the death penalty. It is an oxymoron,’ said the Rev. Michael Nichols, a Southern Baptist chaplain at California Institution for Men in Chino who disagrees with his denomination’s stance.
The United States is the only westernized nation to allow capital punishment. Last year, it was one of four countries that accounted for 97 percent of known executions, according to Amnesty International. The other three were China, Iran and Vietnam.
In the United States, this is attributed to stronger Christian convictions, say some theologians and the writings of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.
“If we don’t have God as the author of law, then law is meaningless because it is whatever we say it is and the Nazis were right,’ said Kevin Thomas, an assistant professor of theology and law at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.
Christians who support the death penalty often point to the 13th chapter of the New Testament book of Romans:
“If you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword for nothing. He is God’s servant, an agent of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.’
Other supporters refer to several passages in the Old Testament, particularly the ninth chapter of Genesis: “Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed.’
But more liberal theologians argue Jesus Christ, who was crucified, opposed executions. In fact, Christ is credited with the clemency most widely known throughout history that of a woman caught in adultery.
“If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her,’ he said, according to the Gospel of John.
Two weeks ago, the man synonymous with carefree adverturism, someone who lept the fountain at Caesar’s Palace (right), told a Palm Sunday crowd at the Crystal Cathedral in Orange County that he had taken a leap of faith.
“I don’t know what in the world happened,” Robert “Evel” Knievel said. “I don’t know if it was the power of the prayer or God himself, but it just reached out, either while I was driving or walking down the sidewalk or sleeping, and it justâthe power of God in Jesus just grabbed me. ⦠All of a sudden, I just believed in Jesus Christ. I did, I believed in him! ⦠I rose up in bed and, I was by myself, and I said, ‘Devil, Devil, you bastard you, get away from me. I cast you out of my life.’ ⦠I just got on my knees and prayed that God would put his arms around me and never, ever, ever let me go.”
Evel’s testimony reportedly resulted in hundreds of people being baptized on the spot. From an article I submitted to Christianity Today last night, online now.
Why are Jews so smart? (Or dumb, depending on your point of reference.) Well, in this month’s Commentary Magazine, controversial scholar Charles Murray, a self-described “Scots-Irish Gentile,” has a piece titled “Jewish Genius” in which he writes that “going back to the time of Moses, Judaism was intertwined with intellectual complexity.”
In the first half of the 20th century, despite pervasive and continuing social discrimination against Jews throughout the Western world, despite the retraction of legal rights, and despite the Holocaust, Jews won 14 percent of Nobel Prizes in literature, chemistry, physics, and medicine/physiology. In the second half of the 20th century, when Nobel Prizes began to be awarded to people from all over the world, that figure rose to 29 percent. So far, in the 21st century, it has been 32 percent. Jews constitute about two-tenths of one percent of the worldâs population. You do the math.
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New York Cityâs public-school system used to administer a pencil-and-paper IQ test to its entire school population. In 1954, a psychologist used those test results to identify all 28 children in the New York public-school system with measured IQâs of 170 or higher. Of those 28, 24 were Jews.
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Nothing that I have presented up to this point is scientifically controversial. The profile of disproportionately high Jewish accomplishment in the arts and sciences since the 18th century, the reality of elevated Jewish IQ, and the connection between the two are not to be denied by means of data. And so we come to the great question: how and when did this elevated Jewish IQ come about?
Murray, of the American Enterprise Institute, tries to answer that question here. He refutes research published last year in the Journal of Biosocial Science that reported Ashkenazi Jews had heightened intelligence, but not Sephardic or Oriental Jews. Gregory Cochran, an author of that study, snaps back in The Forward.
âI would call it pure speculation,â said Cochran, who is a researcher in Utah. âI donât think thereâs any evidence heâs right.â
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Murray acknowledges that his work is based more on historical impressions than on rigorous science, but it is already provoking debate in a corner of the intellectual world that tends to make Jews very uncomfortable: genetics.
Cochranâs work was widely panned by geneticists, and Murray makes even less of an effort to placate these experts with scientifically grounded evidence. The assumption from which both researchers work â that intelligence has a genetic basis â is still disputed by many scientists. Harry Ostrer, a leading Jewish geneticist, said that Murrayâs work was âspeculationâ and that both Murray and Cochran trade in a âlove of group typology â Jews are smart and blacks are great athletes.â
Sam Zell got the treatment today from the largest Jewish newspapers in Los Angeles and New York. The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles and The Forward recycle the stories of Zell’s reputation as a open-shirt-wearing, motorcycle-riding, grave-dancing business maverick.
But, more fascinating, is that both papers note the oddity of Zell, whose parents fled Poland the night before Nazi invasion, placing the winning bid for the Tribune Co, which owns the Los Angeles Times.
The irony of Zellâs latest success is that it will likely make him the owner of a company that has been the very antithesis of the Jewish summer camp culture in which Zell was molded. The Chicago Tribune, the companyâs flagship publication, has had a famously antagonistic relationship with the Jewish community in Chicago â historically because of its right-wing, isolationist stance during World War II, and more recently because of its critical coverage of Israel. Newspaper watchers say that Zell and the Tribune will be an interesting mix.
âThe paper has a reputation for having a thick glass ceiling for Jews,â said Michael Siegel, who for 25 years has been the rabbi at Chicagoâs Anshe Emet Synagogue, where Zell is a member. âFor someone like Sam Zell, who is noted as a grave dancer, here is he is more of a grave spinner. There are probably some past owners and executives who are spinning in their graves right now.â
Happily for them, most of the old-time Los Angeles anti-Semites who used to hang out at the downtown California Club are either dead or too old to care that a Jew is on the verge of owning the L.A. Times.
Not just any Jew. Sam Zell looks as though he’s one tough Jew, probably even tougher than the old California Clubbers who stole the water from the Owens Valley and got rich in sneaky San Fernando Valley land deals.
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Another Jew, David Geffen, is waiting in the wings, hoping to be either Zell’s joint-venture partner or to buy the Times from him.
However it turns out, we’ll probably have a Jew in charge of the Times, which was once one of old Los Angeles’ most famous WASP institutions. What a great day for old L.A. Jews with long memories of country clubs and downtown clubs that banned them; restrictive covenants that kept them out of certain fancy neighborhoods; anti-Semitic fraternities and sororities at USC and UCLA and law firms that never seemed able to find a place for a smart Jewish attorney. They also may have memories of the old Times, which, while not anti-Semitic, was a perfect reflection of the conservative Republican WASP culture of Los Angeles’ upper classes.
I’ve been getting a lot of response to my article in today’s Daily News about Islamophobia. Here is another gem, with added emphasis in bold:
Why do so many Jews in the U.S., continue to apologize and making excuses for radical Islam. Here’s a group of people who want to marginalize and destroy Jews all over the world, yet you and many others of the Jewish faith, defend them and push their propaganda.
There is NO such thing as Islamophobia! when is the last time you heard of a Muslim being beaten, raped or murdered in the U.S.???? They are allowed to work where they want, preach when they want and say what they want. nearly the complete opposite of their home country. What there is, is a realization that there are millions of Muslims both here and around the world, who want to impose their backwards, totalitarian beliefs on the rest of us. WHY IS IT THAT LIBERALS LIKE YOU DON’T GET THIS!!!!
So as long as you’re giving University teachers a pass on their hate speech against the U.S. and Israel, how about you talk about how:
Muslims burn and loot cars and homes in Paris every night!
a Muslim shot and killed Jewish women at a Synagogue in Seattle
Schools in the U.K. are now BANNING any teaching of the holocaust so they don’t offend Muslims.
this list is endless but those are recent examples.
Brad, you’re on the wrong side. So while you push your politically correct - multicultural drivel, I’ll choose to fight to keep this country strong and safe.
While you’re waiting in line with your prayer rug on the way to the ovens
, I’ll continue to shine a light on the hate speech that Imams are spewing in Mosque’s.
I should note that based on this man’s last name, which is the same way he misidentified my faith—I am culturally though not religiously Jewish—he might be Jewish.
An episode of “South Park” last month (a clip is available here and the entire episode here) offered a true pearl of religious-persecution wisdom. The premise of the entire show, in which a rally for Hillary “Hildog” Clinton is disrupted by a dirty bomb that has been slipped inside her, is that Cartman is trying to stop a new Muslim student from carrying out his terrorist plot. Why does Cartman—who in another episode this season convinced the school that Kyle, the fourth grade’s lone Jew, planned 9/11 and in a previous season emulated Hitler—suspect young Bahir wants to nuke South Park?
Because he is Muslim—no other reason is needed.
In theDaily News today, I touched on a theme of this “South Park” episode. (It was already in the works, and was turned in long ago. I swear.) Increasingly, Muslim Americans are talking about “Islamophobia.” After 9/11, they felt misunderstood. Now they say they are being targeted for discrimination and persecution. One of the people I interviewed, Hussam Ayloush of the SoCal chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, spoke at length about the “industry of hate” that fuels Islamophobia.
Here’s a recent post on his blog that names some names. “Are you a professional failure?” Ayloush asks. “... No more worries. Your hardships are gone. I have the right solution for you. Just become a Muslim basher and all your financial and low self-esteem troubles will be gone.”
Making Ayloush’s list is Steven Emerson, whose reporting for The New Republic last summer enshrouded in controversy the selection of local Muslim Maher Hathout for a county humanitarian award. Coincidentally, on the same day the “South Park” episode aired, The New Republic posted online another Emerson piece criticizing a mainstream Muslim American organization—Ayloush’s CAIR.
CAIR has been accused repeatedly of having terrorists ties, and Emerson again makes the claim, while taking aim at a recent NY Times article, posted here at the International Herald Tribune, that he thought was a CAIR apologia.
Emerson, a self-styled terrorism expert, has, of course, been a controversial figure.
It doesn’t matter what rhetorical polishing President Bush’s team has done to market the “War on Terror.” Outside the United States, it’s perceived as an effort to undermine—even attack—Islam, according to a report by 
“Who still talks nowadays of the extermination of the Armenians?”
Well, Donald Trump didn’t want me, but the Jewish Journal does.
It’s not often I read an editorial that begins like this:
It seems today that presidential hopeful Tommy Thompson wasn’t aware of the stereotype that says Jews are stingy money hoarders, a slander that has been used to incite violence and foment malevolence. Here is what he told a group of Jewish activists, courtesy of 
Two weeks ago, the man synonymous with carefree adverturism, someone who lept the fountain at Caesar’s Palace (right), told a Palm Sunday crowd at the 
An episode of “South Park” last month (a clip is available 
