Why I Oppose a New Synagogue at Ground Zero

It’s quite remarkable how much debate and airwave consumption the proposed Islamic Cultural Centre (read Mosque with jungle gym) at Ground Zero has generated. It is an argument by which I am yet to meet an individual unwilling to express his or her opinion. It’s become of those genuine hot-button issues, designed to make us forget about the economy, stupid.

No doubt, you’ve heard all the arguments by now, the vitriol from the right, and uber political correctness from the left. As it stands today, however, 61% of Americans oppose the Park 51 project. (According to a new TIME poll)

My position, an opinion I’ve shared before, is that while I do not oppose Iman Feisal Rauf’s constitutional right to build a mosque there, I just don’t think it’s the right (whatever that means) thing to do, and I question the wisdom of wishing to do such a thing in the first place. And ok, I admit it. I don’t like Islam as far as I wish I could throw Christianity or Judaism. I’m an anti-theist. What more can I say?

Having said that, and for similar reasons, my sensibilities would be equally offended by the construction of a synagogue at Ground Zero. I just heard your jaw drop. But let me finish. My reasoning is simple, we have either forgotten the reason why we were attacked on September 11, 2001, or we’ve been duped into believing George W. Bush’s prognosis for why it is large parts of the Islamic world hates us so.

Nine days after the attacks, Bush in an address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American people said, “They hate our freedoms – our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.”

What complete and utter self-serving manipulative bullshit. It couldn’t be further from the truth. The Muslim world hates us not because we enjoy the fruits of democracy, of which a majority of Muslims don’t even know what democracy is, nor is their homicidal rage fueled by images of American women in bikinis, or of frat guys doing tequila shots off an exotic dancer’s cosmetically enhanced breasts. They hate us because of our airbases in the Holy Land, Saudi Arabia, our sanctions against Iraq that killed tens of thousands of children, and thirdly – the big bad daddy of them all – our unconditional and uncritical support of Israel.

Here’s what Osama Bin Laden had to say in his November 2002 “Letter to America”, Bin Laden described the US support of Israel as the motivation:

“The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its price, and pay for it heavily.”

Our timidity in speaking out against Israel should shame political leaders, documentarians, Hollywood, journalists, and all of us too. An artificially created nation, architected by diplomats in 1948, forced the displacement of 750,000 Arabs from their homes. Not content with the free land given, Israel has illegally occupied what little land the Arabs were allotted, continues to displace more Arab “settlements” in favor of illegally obtained new Jewish “neighborhoods”, and massacres hundreds to thousands of innocent civilians in so called “targeted killings”every year. 

In fact, our closest ally in the Middle East has been the subject of 138 UN resolutions in the years 1967 – 2000. Most of which called upon Israel to comply with basic principles of international law, and the Geneva Convention. Hello, war crimes! Moreover, the US vetoed a further 29 resolutions tabled against Israel in the years 1972 – 1990. You still think Muslims hate us because of our Budweiser beer commercials?

Further sickening to Arab nations, is the manner in which we belligerently rub their noses in the figurative Israeli excrement. For instance, George W. Bush referred to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon a “man of peace”. This a war criminal, held directly responsible for the slaughter of 1,700 Palestinians in Beirut in 1982.

I don’t think anyone disagrees with the fact Jewish people suffered more than anyone in the 20^th century, with, perhaps, the exclusion of the Russians. But this does not give Israel carte blanche to belligerently occupy stolen land in the same manner the Nazis managed the Warsaw ghettos. If you believe that last sentence to be an example of me overreaching, then heed the words of a German Jew by the name of Victor Kemplerer, himself a victim of the Holocaust, wrote:

“To me, the Zionists, who want go back to the Jewish state of AD 70…..are just as offensive as the Nazis. With their nosing after blood, their ancient “cultural roots”, their partly canting, partly obtuse winding back of the world they are altogether a match for the National Socialists….”

Award winning UK journalist and author Robert Fisk warns that Western media is guilty of lulling us into a false sense of good versus evil when it comes to critiquing Israel versus Palestine. Newspapers distort reality with clichéd headlines, such as “Arab terrorists threaten Israel” played against “Israel security chiefs warn Arafat”. Fisk says, “we ask can Arafat control his own people, when the Israelis ask the same question. Yet when a Jewish settler’s group killed two Palestinian civilian men and a baby, we did not ask if Sharon could control his own people.”

So if asked whether a synagogue has the right to be built at Ground Zero, my response will read: they are within their constitutional right, but I just don’t think it’s the right thing to do, and I question the wisdom of wishing to do such a thing in the first place.

(*The author is expressing his concern for the policies of the Israeli government, and this should not be misconstrued as some kind of attack against Jewish peoples, for which it is most certainly not.)

CJ Werleman 

Author ‘God Hates You. Hate Him Back’ (Making Sense of the Bible)

www.GodHatesYou.net