{"id":47,"date":"2010-08-02T09:56:42","date_gmt":"2010-08-02T09:56:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/adl-plays-by-its-israel-rules.html"},"modified":"2010-08-02T09:56:42","modified_gmt":"2010-08-02T09:56:42","slug":"adl-plays-by-its-israel-rules","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/adl-plays-by-its-israel-rules.html","title":{"rendered":"ADL plays by its Israel rules"},"content":{"rendered":"

Criticism of the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition<\/a>
\nto Cordoba House, the Islamic center proposed to be built two blocks
\nfrom the site of the World Trade Center, has been widespread and
\nwell-deserved. Stephen Prothero has a sharp essay<\/a> over at CNN’s Belief blog, as does<\/a>
\nPeter Beinart on the Daily Beast. Beinart makes the important point
\nthat for some time now the ADL has maintained a bifurcated stance on
\nwhat constitutes “defamation.” In the United States, the organization
\nhas more or less consistently maintained its original universalist
\ncommitment to opposing bigotry regardless of race, creed, or color. In
\nIsrael, however, its only interest is in anti-Jewish bigotry. Anti-Arab
\nbigotry, by its lights, don’t rate.<\/p>\n

What’s happened now is that the ADL is playing by Israel rules in New
\nYork. Never mind that it has joined with those who associate Muslims
\neverywhere with the perpetrators of 9\/11. As ADL national director Abe
\nFoxman told<\/a>
\nthe NYT, the “anguish” of those who lost loved ones “entitles them to
\npositions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.”<\/p>\n

Let’s try putting the shoe on the other foot, and imagine a comparable
\nIsrael case. An irenic Jewish group proposes building a community center
\ndevoted to peace and understanding a couple of blocks from the Cave of
\nthe Patriarchs, where on February 25, 1994, the Orthodox Jewish zealot Baruch Goldstein <\/a>opened
\nfire in a room being used as a mosque, killing 29 worshipers and
\nwounding 150. Would the ADL oppose construction, out of deference to the
\nanguish of the victims’ families, or would it attack the opponents as
\nirrational bigots? I think I know the answer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Criticism of the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to Cordoba House, the Islamic center proposed to be built two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, has been widespread and well-deserved. Stephen Prothero has a sharp essay over at CNN’s Belief blog, as does Peter Beinart on the Daily Beast. Beinart makes the important point…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nADL plays by its Israel rules - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/adl-plays-by-its-israel-rules.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"ADL plays by its Israel rules - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Criticism of the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to Cordoba House, the Islamic center proposed to be built two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, has been widespread and well-deserved. Stephen Prothero has a sharp essay over at CNN’s Belief blog, as does Peter Beinart on the Daily Beast. Beinart makes the important point…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/adl-plays-by-its-israel-rules.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-02T09:56:42+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"ADL plays by its Israel rules - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/adl-plays-by-its-israel-rules.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"ADL plays by its Israel rules - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"Criticism of the Anti-Defamation League’s opposition to Cordoba House, the Islamic center proposed to be built two blocks from the site of the World Trade Center, has been widespread and well-deserved. 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After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}