Since it covered itself with obloquy by taking a stand
against the proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, the
ADL has been eager to put some distance between itself and its
co-opponents. Franklin Graham, for example, who seized the occasion to issue his latest denunciation of Islam in general:

President Bush and President Obama made great mistakes when they said
that Islam is a peaceful religion. It is not. There is no evidence in
its history. It’s a religion of hatred. It’s a religion of war.

In response, ADL national director Abe Foxman took
to the Huffington Post to denounce “groups with extreme anti-Muslim
agendas,” including those protesting with vile words and deeds the
construction of mosques and Islamic centers in other parts of the
country.

Now comes Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, founder and now spiritual head of Israel’s ultra-orthodox Shas Party and, mutatis mutandis, Franklin Graham’s Israeli equivalent when it comes to Islam. Yesterday, he declared
that God should send a plague to strike down the Palestinians and their
leader, Mahmoud Abbas. Shas happens to be a member of the current
Israeli governing coalition, whose leader, Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu, is about to enter into formal peace talks with Abbas. Netanyahu issued a mild statement to the effect that R. Yosef’s comments
“do not reflect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s view or the position
of the government of Israel.” Let it be known that the current
government of Israel is not pro-plague.

To its credit, the ADL’s
Israel office has not been shy about criticizing Yosef’s incendiary
rhetoric in the past, and not only when he has, for example, called down God’s wrath on the likes of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Back in April of 2001, the office denounced
both a Passover sermon in which Yosef called for all Arabs to be
annihilated and his subsequent “clarification” that he was only talking
about terrorists. It is to be expected that a similar criticism will be
forthcoming about the latest Yosef effusion.

But it would be more than appropriate if, this time around, Foxman
himself stepped up to plate. What goes for Franklin Graham should go for
Ovadia Yosef.

P.S. After a couple of weeks in Maine, it’s great to be back. I guess.

Update: And Foxman does it.