{"id":60,"date":"2010-08-30T09:45:37","date_gmt":"2010-08-30T09:45:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/another-chance-for-the-adl-to-redeem-itself.html"},"modified":"2010-08-30T09:45:37","modified_gmt":"2010-08-30T09:45:37","slug":"another-chance-for-the-adl-to-redeem-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/another-chance-for-the-adl-to-redeem-itself.html","title":{"rendered":"Another chance for the ADL to redeem itself"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since it covered itself with obloquy by taking a stand<\/a>
\nagainst the proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, the
\nADL has been eager to put some distance between itself and its
\nco-opponents. Franklin Graham, for example, who seized the occasion to issue<\/a> his latest denunciation of Islam in general:<\/p>\n

President Bush and President Obama made great mistakes when they said
\nthat Islam is a peaceful religion. It is not. There is no evidence in
\nits history. It’s a religion of hatred. It’s a religion of war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In response, ADL national director Abe Foxman took<\/a>
\nto the Huffington Post to denounce “groups with extreme anti-Muslim
\nagendas,” including those protesting with vile words and deeds the
\nconstruction of mosques and Islamic centers in other parts of the
\ncountry.<\/p>\n

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

To its credit, the ADL’s
\nIsrael office has not been shy about criticizing Yosef’s incendiary
\nrhetoric in the past, and not only when he has, for example, called down God’s wrath<\/a> on the likes of former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Back in April of 2001, the office denounced<\/a>
\nboth a Passover sermon in which Yosef called for all Arabs to be
\nannihilated and his subsequent “clarification” that he was only talking
\nabout terrorists. It is to be expected that a similar criticism will be
\nforthcoming about the latest Yosef effusion.<\/p>\n

But it would be more than appropriate if, this time around, Foxman
\nhimself stepped up to plate. What goes for Franklin Graham should go for
\nOvadia Yosef.<\/p>\n

P.S. After a couple of weeks in Maine, it’s great to be back. I guess.<\/p>\n

Update: <\/b>And Foxman does it<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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…<\/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-60","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nAnother chance for the ADL to redeem itself - 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\/another-chance-for-the-adl-to-redeem-itself.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Another chance for the ADL to redeem itself - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"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…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/08\/another-chance-for-the-adl-to-redeem-itself.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-30T09:45:37+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":"Another chance for the ADL to redeem itself - 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\/another-chance-for-the-adl-to-redeem-itself.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Another chance for the ADL to redeem itself - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"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. 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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\/60","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=60"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}