By Neveen A. Salem
Editor- IslamOnline
"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Remember standing up in class every morning and reciting the pledge of allegiance before beginning your day? Remember everyone standing with their right hands over their hearts and looking towards the stars and stripes displayed in the front of the classroom?
Or how about when you finally got your citizenship and were sworn in during a proud ceremony that culminated with the pledge that seemed to hold so much promise for a bright future for you and your family?
Sadly, those words that color all of our memories now amount to nothing more than a meaningless bit of lip-service that may as well be thrown in the trash alongside the remnants of our Constitution.
The recent raids on Muslims' homes, places of business, and on their humanitarian, religious and educational institutions amount to nothing short of a fishing expedition in which the search for terrorists has become a McCarthyist witch-hunt for any and all Muslims that rivals the Spanish Inquisition and the puritanically driven hunts in Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
American Muslims have had to bear the brunt of the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, though not in the same way Afghans, Iraqis, Kashmiris and of course the Palestinians have been sacrificed at the altar of U.S. foreign policy. And it will probably get a lot worse before it gets better.
American Muslims, who are just as American as anyone else, have had their civil liberties categorically violated with no regard given to the fact that they, like all other persons living in the U.S. (citizens or otherwise), have constitutionally guaranteed rights -which include the right to be treated as equal members of society, free from religious and racial persecution.
What is also gravely overlooked is that American Muslims, too, lost friends and family in the attacks on New York and Washington. I personally sat in utter fear for 12 hours in Washington (a mile away from the Pentagon) as I wondered whether or not my father had to attend to business in the World Trade Center on that fateful day. But American Muslim losses are not even recognized, and are often, in fact, scoffed at.
American Muslims are now seen as "part of the problem" as opposed to what they really are-- a community in a unique position to help ensure that nothing like September 11 ever happens again. If only the U.S. government would listen.
But, by far, the largest casualty of the attacks on September 11 has been the abandonment of the American Muslim/Arab community by the very government that is supposed to be sworn to protect them.
Before Election 2000, American Muslims were looking to the leaders of the community to guide them towards deciding whom to vote for in the presidential election, as well as in other local and state elections.
First, there was then Texas Governor George W. Bush - who seemed to be the first presidential candidate in the history of the U.S. to actually recognize the importance of the Muslim vote. And on the other side, then U.S. vice-president Al Gore was avoiding Muslims like the plague, despite the fact that the second Bill Clinton Administration was the most American Muslim friendly administration ever to sit in the White House, although we still had to deal with racial profiling, and "evil of all evils"-secret evidence.
The leaders of our community reached out to both the Bush and Gore camps. One continued to completely ignore them and the other seemed to be receptive to the idea that American Muslims could, in fact, secure him the presidency.
And so it went. Bush addressed, during televised presidential debates, the issue of racial profiling and specifically made reference to an anti-secret evidence resolution introduced by then Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham, an Arab American who under the Bush Administration became U.S. Secretary of Energy.
And the Muslim community, although definitely not all, said, "great, this is the candidate for us." Since Gore was nowhere to be found, Bush was legitimized by the Muslim leaders and for the first time in U.S. history, a major religious community publicly declared their endorsement for a presidential candidate.
What did this bring about? Our utter destruction. Sadly, our leaders, despite their best intentions, were taken for a ride-- a very long and bumpy ride. As soon as the endorsement was made, the American Muslim community got thrown onto the sidelines. That is the nature of the political animal - once it secures what it wants, it moves on to another prey.
After the now infamous election of 2000, all talk on secret evidence on the part of the government came to a screeching halt and campaign promises made to the community were quickly forgotten.
Although it would have amounted to nothing more than a symbolic show of recognition and perhaps a "thank you" immediately following Bush's inauguration, the on again, off again Eid brunch at the White House proved to be the first in a long line of public humiliations for the Muslim community.
Former President Clinton had twice before hosted American Muslims for an Eid brunch at the White House. And Bush was on his way to doing the same as the White House called with invitations to Muslim family and friends to attend the event. This was a Friday, only two days before Eid.
Then, the day before Eid was set to begin, the White House called again and cancelled the event, giving no explanation as to why. It was only weeks later that it was made known that the White House was "concerned about the snow storm threatening the area." If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you.
While that minor event is an extremely trivial example of the marginalization of Muslims, paling in comparison to the events that would succeed it over the next year, it does spotlight how quickly and easily the Muslim voice was dismissed.
Then came September 11, and Bush immediately stepped up to assert that Muslims in the U.S. are not to be targeted and that the attacks were not attacks by Muslims but by "people who have hijacked a peace loving faith."
Bush came to our mosques and made public service announcements. He even sent out his cronies to try to convince the Muslim community that they were safe and that the best thing they could do was cooperate. Muslims were more than happy to oblige.
Then, the Holy Land Foundation, a humanitarian charity organization, had its assets frozen, headquarters raided and become branded as a "supporter of Palestinian terrorism."
Mazen Al-Najjar, a soft-spoken professor who was finally released after being held in a Florida prison for four years on secret evidence gets rounded up and thrown back in jail, where he still remains.
Sami Al-Arian, a computer science professor and political activist dedicated to the issue of Palestine and perhaps more famously for his fight against secret evidence, gets fired from his job by the University of South Florida for a long list of decidedly bogus reasons.
And these are only the most well known of the hundreds of incidents of anti-Muslim backlash, not by layman America, as we had originally feared, but by our own government?the one we elected.
Now we have Muslims waking up in their homes to find guns pointed at their heads and their premises ripped apart while 150 Federal agents search for "Osama bin Laden in the basement," as one pea-brain of an agent had the audacity to tell a woman whose house was being searched. She was, by the way, an American born Caucasian female who converted to Islam and is married to a Muslim doctor.
And we have thousands of Arab and Muslim men being rounded up for "voluntary" interviews with the FBI.
One can go on and on about how in retrospect the endorsement was a mistake, although I think the leaders and the rest of the community already realize that, and at a time when we must all stand together against the U.S.'s new "war on American Muslims", the game of Monday morning quarterbacking should not be entertained.
The greater problem is the fact that the rule of law, along with basic civil and human rights, no longer applies to Muslims/Arabs in the U.S. Our administration has not only failed Muslims, it has also failed America and the world as a whole.
While many in the Arab/Muslim world are using the current actions by the U.S. to say "see, we told you the U.S. was a bad country", what they do not realize is that far worse than their criticism, which most Americans (Arabs and Muslims included) seem to ignore anyway, is the fact that the U.S. has betrayed itself and its long-standing reputation for allowing the rule of law to be the only entity governing its land.
While the U.S.'s reputation abroad is important, what is more crucial is its reputation among its own people. A country will never survive if its own people don't believe in it. And right now, Americans find themselves struggling to comprehend the new dictatorship and police state that has materialized on their shores.
American Muslims/Arabs are not the first, and will most certainly not be the last community, to be raped by the U.S. government. African Americans have been battling the same types of discrimination, suspicion, and destruction for over 200 years. But they have persevered, and so too will Muslims, and any other people currently at the mercy of the power of might. For in the end, the rule of law always wins.
And "justice" will no longer stand to mean "just us".
A call to action
The case for U.S. intervention in the Mideast crisis
By Rabbi Michael Lerner
SPECIAL TO MSNBC.COM
April 1 -- If we didn't recognize it before, the disgusting acts of terror on Passover and since should convince us that the cycle of Mideast violence is out of control now, and it may yet spin into a regional war. Responsibility lies on both sides, and the first step toward sanity is to reject the mythologies that tell the story in ways that make one side the "good guys" and the other "the evil villain." A second step is for the United States to participate in an international peacekeeping force to separate and protect the Israeli and Palestinian people.
JEWS DID NOT return to the Middle East to be servants of Western colonialism, as some on the left and in the Arab world have claimed. Jews were jumping from the burning buildings of Europe, and we did so out of desperation. But in the process, we landed on the backs of Palestinians already living there, and we hurt them. Their unjustified attempts to keep us from returning to our ancient homeland, when it was we who were refugees, crawling out of the gas chambers and crematoria of Europe, created the climate that led to Israel expelling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes in 1948.
THE HISTORY OF HATRED
When, after the war was ended, Israel refused to allow the refugees to return to their homes, Palestinians resorted to violence and acts of terror. And because we Jews could never acknowledge that we (unintentionally, but still really) had hurt these people, our response was to see these acts of violence as part of the long and essentially unchangeable history of non-Jewish hatred toward us, something that we had no part in causing and from which we could only seek protection through military means. Each act of violence was interpreted through the framework of our 2,000-year history of oppression by (primarily Christian) others, and so we did not allow ourselves to hear the stories of the suffering of the Palestinian people.
We momentarily transcended that dynamic in 1993 when the Oslo Accord offered the only possible solution: an exchange in which Israel would retain control over 78 percent of pre-1948 Palestine and the Palestinians would get 22 percent (the pre-'67 borders of Israel and the West Bank). General of the army Yitzhak Rabin made the case clearly: the West Bank and Gaza offered no military security for Israel, as the Scud missiles from Iraq sailing into Tel Aviv during the Gulf War had demonstrated. When that was being implemented, terror declined as hope shaped both sides.
But after a right-wing Israeli murdered Rabin, subsequent governments increased the settlers on the West Bank from 120,000 to 200,000, giving Palestinians solid evidence that the land seizures, house demolitions and torture that escalated along with the occupation were likely to increase.
OSLO UNNRAVELED
Instead of offering to implement the previous agreement, Ehud Barak sought to reduce the percentage of land being given back to the Palestinians even further, and demanded that Arafat sign an agreement that would claim to be the "final resolution" of all issues though it did not provide for reparations or anything else for the 3 million Palestinians living in exile. No Palestinian leader could sign those terms, but by the time a more reasonable deal had been worked out at Taba, Ariel Sharon and Yasser Arafat had managed to escalate their public struggle into overt violence that had spun out of control.
Sharon had never accepted Oslo, and his current strategy is to destroy the Palestinian Authority so that Hamas can take over. With Hamas in control of the West Bank and Gaza, articulating its hateful strategy of destruction of Israel, there will no longer be any international pressure to constrain Sharon from his ultimate goal: reconsquest of the entire West Bank and Gaza and creation of yet more settlements.
Hence, the current reality: Hamas wants to see Arafat destroyed, so they attack Israeli civilians; Sharon wishes to see Arafat destroyed so he retaliates not against Hamas, but against the Palestinian Authority, claiming that they could have stopped Hamas' violence. Meanwhile, kept under house arrest by Israeli tanks, exposed as powerless to defend his own people, Arafat is in no mood to use the limited influence he does have to fight against the Palestinian militants who today seem to be the only force that can effectively stand up to Israel and provide some modicum of protection.
THE U.S. AS MIDDLEMAN
The only way to change these dynamics if for Americans to insist that our government support (rather than block, as it does now) the creation of an international force that could go into the West Bank and Gaza, separate the two sides, and provide protection for both. Once Palestinians felt safe from future military attack by Israel, we would have the leverage to demand that Arafat jail and punish those who have supported the outrageous attacks against Israeli civilians. Until that safety is provided, calls for Arafat to do anything to stop Palestinian violence are unlikely to be taken very seriously.
Both sides are acting immorally and self-destructively. Still, Americans, riddled with (quite appropriate) guilt for thousands of years of Christian anti-Semitism, are reluctant to challenge the Jewish people today.
Yet many Israeli peace activists are trying to communicate a different message: the real pro-Israel forces are those who are willing to use their influence and power to stop Israel from acting in ways that self-destructively decrease their actual security. To be pro-Israel today is to be willing to challenge Israeli policies and align with the growing number of Israelis who see, in the words of former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin, that "the Israeli war against the terrorist infrastructure will give birth to more terrorists because the terrorist infrastructure lies within people's hearts."
THE FIRST STEP IS OURS
This is a moment to separate the two sides, impose an end to the violence, and then begin to work on ending the occupation, providing reparations for Palestinians, and providing genuine security for Israel. And we must explain to Palestinians why these larger goals can only be achieved when the Palestinian movement begins to follow the path of Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi - principled and firm commitment to nonviolence as the path to freedom.
The first steps, however, are ours. The violence must end. That can only happen by decisive action from the United States and that will only happen when you let your elected officials know that you want that level of U.S. involvement.
(Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of TIKKUN: A Bimonthly Jewish Critique of Politics, Culture and Society, author of "The Politics of Meaning and of Spirit Matters: Global Healing and the Wisdom of the Soul," and rabbi of Beyt Tikkun synagogue in San Francisco.)
Intractable foes, warring narratives
While much of the world sees Mideast conflict through Palestinian eyes, in America, Israel's view prevails
By Eric Alterman
MSNBC CONTRIBUTOR
March 28 -- Tragedy has struck once again in the Israeli city of Netanya, killing at last count 20 innocents and wounding more than 130 people, as the Arab League meets amidst controversy and confusion in Beirut, with Yasser Arafat still trapped in Ramallah, and President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan staying home in protest. Only the most optimistic among us can muster much hope for an end to the murderous cycle currently underway in the Holy Land.
STEPPING BACK FROM the horrific headlines of the day, it is clear that the conflict over Israel/Palestine is all about competing narratives. Both sides inflict inhuman cruelties on one another. Both sides blame the other for forcing them to do so. The Israelis kill far more Palestinians than vice-versa, with far more deadly and effective weapons; but the Palestinians, unlike the Israelis, deliberately target innocents for murder. The Israelis say the conflict will end when the Palestinians renounce their commitment to terrorism and accept Israel's "right to existence." The Palestinians claim it will end when Israel ends its illegal occupation of Palestinian lands and compensates the millions of refugees it created, either by returning them to their homes or giving them the funds necessary to build new ones.
A TALE OF TWO STORIES
In most of the world, it is the Palestinian narrative of a dispossessed people that dominates. In the United States, however, the narrative that dominates is Israel?s: a democracy under constant siege. Europeans and other Palestinian partisans point to the fact that the Israel lobby in America is one of the strongest anywhere, and Jewish individuals and organizations give millions of dollars to political candidates in order to reward pro-Israel policies and punish those who support the Palestinians. Another reason, however, is the near-complete domination by pro-Israel partisans of the punditocracy discourse.
Some Jewish groups in America like to harass news organizations like The Washington Post or National Public Radio for what they believe to be coverage insufficiently sympathetic to Israel's plight. But even Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu would not be able to complain about the level of support their actions typically receive from the members of the punditocracy.
For reasons of religion, politics, history and genuine conviction the punditocracy debate of the Middle East in America is dominated by people who cannot imagine criticizing Israel. The value of this legion to the Jewish state is, for better or worse, literally incalculable, particularly when push "as it inevitably does in the Middle East" comes to shove. Here's a list I made in trying to measure the immeasurable.
COLUMNISTS AND COMMENTATORS WHO CAN BE COUNTED UPON TO SUPPORT ISRAEL REFLEXIVELY AND WITHOUT QUALIFICATION:
George Will, The Washington Post, Newsweek and ABC News
William Safire, The New York Times
A.M. Rosenthal, The New York Daily News, formerly Executive Editor of and later columnist for, The New York Times,
Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post, PBS, Time, and The Weekly Standard, formerly of the New Republic.
Michael Kelly, The Washington Post, The Atlantic Monthly, National Journal, and MSNBC.com, formerly of The New Republic and The New Yorker.
Lally Weymouth, The Washington Post and Newsweek
Martin Peretz, The New Republic,
Daniel Pipes, The New York Post
Andrea Peyser, The New York Post
Dick Morris, The New York Post
Lawrence Kaplan, The New Republic
William Bennett, CNN
William Kristol, The Washington Post, the Weekly Standard, Fox News, formerly of ABC News
Robert Kagan, The Washington Post and The Weekly Standard,
Mortimer Zuckerman, US News and World Report (Zuckerman is also Chairman of Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations ).
David Gelertner, The Weekly Standard
John Podhoretz, The New York Post and The Weekly Standard
Mona Charen, The Washington Times
Morton Kondracke, Roll Call, Fox News formerly of The McLaughlin Group, The New Republic and PBS
Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard, Fox News, formerly of The New Republic, The McLaughlin Group, and The Baltimore Sun
Sid Zion, The New York Post, The New York Daily News,
Yossi Klein Halevi The New Republic,
Sidney Zion, The New York Post, formerly of The New York Daily News
Norman Podhoretz, Commentary,
Jonah Goldberg, National Review and CNN
Laura Ingraham, CNN, formerly of MSNBC and CBS News
Jeff Jacoby, The Boston Globe
Rich Lowry, National Review
Andrew Sullivan, The New Republic
Seth Lipsky, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Sun, formerly of the Jewish Forward
Irving Kristol, The Public Interest, The National Interest and The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
Chris Matthews, MSNBC
Allan Keyes, MSNBC, WorldNetDaily.com
Brit Hume, Fox News
John Leo, US News and World Report
Robert Bartley, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
John Fund, The Wall Street Journal OpinionJournal, formerly of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page
Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page,
Ben Wattenberg, The Washington Times, PBS
Tony Snow, Washington Times and Fox News
Lawrence Kudlow, National Review and CNBC
Alan Dershowitz, Boston Herald, Washington Times
David Horowitz, Frontpage.com
Jacob Heilbrun, The Los Angeles Times
Thomas Sowell, Washington Times
Frank Gaffney Jr, Washington Times
Emmett Tyrell, American Spectator and New York Sun
Cal Thomas, Washington Times
Oliver North, Washington Times and Fox News, formerly of MSNBC
Michael Ledeen, Jewish World Review
William F. Buckley, National Review
Bill O?Reilly, Fox News
Paul Greenberg, Arkansas Democrat-Gazette,
L. Brent Bozell, Washington Times
Todd Lindberg, Washington Times
Michael Barone, US News and World Report and The McLaughlin Group
Ann Coulter, Human Events,
Linda Chavez, Creators Syndicate
Cathy Young, Reason Magazine
Uri Dan, New York Post
Dr. Laura Schlessinger, morality maven
Rush Limbaugh, radio host
PUBLICATIONS THAT, FOR REASONS OF OWNER OR EDITORSHIP CAN BE COUNTED UPON TO SUPPORT ISRAEL REFLEXIVELY AND WITHOUT QUALIFICATION:
The New Republic (Martin Peretz, Michael Steinhardt, Roger Hertog, Owners)
Commentary (American Jewish Committee, Owner)
US News and World Report (Mortimer Zuckerman, Owner)
The New York Daily News (Mortimer Zuckerman, Owner)
The New York Post (Rupert Murdoch, Owner)
The Weekly Standard (Rupert Murdoch, Owner)
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page (Peter Kann, Editor)
The Atlantic Monthly (Michael Kelly, Editor)
COLUMNISTS LIKELY TO CRITICIZE BOTH ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS, BUT VIEW THEMSELVES TO BE CRITICALLY SUPPORTERS OF ISRAEL, AND ULTIMATELY, WOULD SUPPORT ISRAELI SECURITY OVER PALESTINIAN RIGHTS:
Thomas Friedman, The New York Times,
Richard Cohen, The Washington Post and New York Daily News
Avishai Margolit, The New York Review of Books
David Remnick, The New Yorker
Eric Alterman, The Nation and MSNBC.com
The New York Times Editorial Board
The Washington Post Editorial Board
COLUMNISTS LIKELY TO BE REFLEXIVELY ANTI-ISRAEL AND/OR PRO-PALESTINIAN REGARDLESS OF CIRCUMSTANCE:
Robert Novak, The Washington Post
Pat Buchanan, WorldNetDaily.com, formerly of The Washington Times and CNN.
Alexander Cockburn, The Nation and New York Press
Christopher Hitchens, The Nation and Vanity Fair
Edward Said, The Nation
HOW FRIENDS CAN BEST HELP
As can be seen from this list of lists, the entire anti-Israel contingent of the punditocracy does not add up to a single George Will or William Safire, much less a Wall Street Journal or US News. It remains to be seen whether unqualified support for all of Israel's actions is really in that tortured nation's best interest in the long run. Sometimes the bravest and most valuable advice a trusted friend can give is: "STOP." Someone is going to have to stop first if this unending catastrophe is ever to end.
(Eric Alterman is a columnist for The Nation and a regular contributor to MSNBC.co).