Image courtesy: History.com

It is exactly eighty years since that infamous night of November 9-10, 1938. The world will never ever forget that night known as the ‘Reichspogromnacht’ or by a seemingly more pleasant sounding ‘Kristallnacht’ (crystal night), which ironically refers to the litter of broken glass strewn on the streets after the pogrom. The Nazis and their henchmen were on the onslaught as they attacked Jews and destroyed their property in a night of bloody violence and terror, across Germany and Austria. Thousands were affected, several killed; according to some estimates more than one thousand Synagogues and an additional 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed. At least thirty thousand Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. The violence on the Jews continued unabated the next day, and the following weeks and for several years after that. It was a pogrom, the start of a genocide. The sheer hate, brutality and inhumanity that unfolded over the period has been recorded for posterity.
 
Etched in the hearts and minds of all men and women at the end of the Second World War, were those immortal words, “Never Again”. It seemed that the world had learnt a lesson particularly with the promulgation of the ‘Universal Declaration of Human Rights’ in 1948. Ground realities point to something very different: human nature seems to continue to be feeble and fickle. Eighty years down the road, it seems that we have neither the courage nor the capacity to learn from history; that we will continue dishing out flimsy justifications and incredible reasons to legitimatize hate, violence, divisiveness and war.
 
When will we ever learn that anti-Semitism has no place in this world? The lone gunman that killed eleven members of the ‘Tree of Life’ Synagogue in the United States recently is but an example of the resurgence of anti-Semitism in several parts of the western world today. This needs to be addressed and countered as soon as possible.
 
When will the Israelis ever learn that Palestinians have a right to their homeland?  Despite the decisions of the United Nations and the outcry by most thinking nations of the world, the Palestinians continue to be at the receiving end of inhuman treatment and hostility from the Israeli regime.
 
When will the Saudis ever learn that they have no right to continue to destabilize the Middle East? Their intervention in Yemen has resulted in widespread bombing of civilian areas, the deaths of several thousands and a terrible famine all over. The world is aware of the prime movers behind the ISIS- but sadly, everyone else is called out except the Saudis.
 
When will the US administration ever learn that democracy is about equals? That the core values and vision of any great country are justice, liberty equality and fraternity. That the dignity of the human person is sacrosanct. That agendas and speeches of hate and divisiveness are bound to have negative effects everywhere.
 
When will the Indian rulers ever learn that India is about diversity and harmony? That the essence of a great country is the constant pursuit of truth and non-violence. That the denigration of the minorities; the instutionalisation of violence, the partisanship in ‘name-changing’, crony capitalism are guaranteed signposts for the destruction of the country
 
When will the right wing ever learn that inclusiveness is at the heart of people’s development? Be it in the Philippines and Austria, in Brazil and Congo, in Myanmar and in Italy – the ‘official’ xenophobia is bound to have repercussions. A great nation is about building bridges to reach out to one another and not about constructing walls to keep out others.
 
When will the military industrial complex ever learn that they are responsible for so much suffering all over? The guns lobby, the other producers of weapons, the nuclear club are all having a heyday profiteering from fomenting violence in so many different parts of the world. They have no qualms of conscience when innocent, ordinary citizens have to flee their homes because of violence.
 
The tragedy is that there are these and too many other ominous signs all over the world today. The ‘Kristallnacht’ of 1938 was not a spontaneous event. There were conditions created: hate speeches given, lies and myths propagated a fear about the ‘other’ slowly but surely entrenched in the majority community. Finally, the demon unleashed itself to an unimaginable level. An objective analysis of the politics of today provides one with the grim reality of very similar indicators.
 
Sometime in the early sixties Bob Dylan gave us that haunting song, which several folksingers and anti-war protesters like Joan Baez made famous
Yes, ‘n’ how many times a man must look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, ‘n’ how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind
The answer is blowin’ in the wind
 
Yes, the answer is blowing in the wind – but do we have the courage to learn from history and help make our world a better place for all?

 
 Fr. Cedric Prakash SJ is a human rights activist)
 

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A Palestinian holds a poster saying “the nation state bill is official apartheid” in two languages. Photo from Simone Zimmerman.

Passed last month, the law officially declared Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people and, among other things, made Hebrew the singular national language. The move was appladued by Israel’s right-wing government, which praised it as finally affirming the “Jewish character” of Israel.

Critics, local and international, however, have criticized the law, saying it turned Israel’s nearly 2 million non-Jewish citizens — both Palestinians and other minorities — into second-class citizens, by prioritizing Israel as a Jewish state over a democratic one.

About 30,000 protesters gathered in the Rabin Square in Tel Aviv and marched through the streets of the city towards the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, where the main rally, entitled “Abolish Nation-state Law – Yes to Equality,” took place.

Protesters called for the cancellation of the law and held signs calling on people to fight against apartheid.

Many activists and journalists tweeting about the protests commented that it was possibly the largest display of protests and solidarity between Israelis and Palestinians in Israel’s history.

Photos of the massive crowds showed people flying Israeli, Palestinian, and Druze flags, despite several reports saying that the protest organizers — The Arab Higher Monitoring Committee — specifically requested that flags not be flown, seemingly to appease liberal Zionists who threatened to boycott the protest if Palestinian flags were featured.

Nevertheless, many of the demonstrators waved Palestinian flags, while some chanted popular national slogans, including “With spirit, with blood we shall redeem you, Palestine!”

On his personal Twitter account, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted a video of said protesters, saying “There is no better evidence of the necessity of the nationality law.”

Jafar Farah, Director of the Mossawa Advocacy Center for Palestinian Arab citizens in Israel, who was at the protest, told Mondoweiss that the show of Palestinian symbols at the protest was “extremely powerful.”
 

Jafir Farah at march in Tel Aviv against nation state law. Photo by Yumna Patel
 

“To take our Palestinian flag and symbols to Tel Aviv and tell the Jewish population what we think of this legislation, and to tell them that we will not accept second class citizenship, it was a powerful feeling,” Farah said.

“It was the first time that the Palestinian community moved in buses from our towns and villages to the middle of a Jewish center, Tel Aviv, to challenge the public discourse in Israel,” he told Mondoweiss.

When asked about Netanyahu’s and the Israeli response to the Palestinian flags and chants at the march, Farah said he was happy that it got the attention of the PM.

“The fact that Bibi was talking about it is a success in itself,” he said, highlighting the importance of creating a discourse in Israeli society, and getting Israelis to talk about and acknowledge Palestinian symbols, heritage, and history.

“We came with the Palestinian flag to say we are Palestinians, this country is our country, and if you like it or not, the future of this country will take into consideration that Palestine is not only about the occupied territories.”

Farah stressed to Mondoweiss that the symbols of the state is one of the core issues outlined in the Nation State law, which say that the state’s symbols are the Israeli flag, and that the name of the state will be called Israel, and nothing else.

“The marginalization of the Palestinian community, which has been happening since 1948, is also taking place through this designation of the symbols of the state,” Farah said, when asked why it was so important for Palestinians to raise their flags and wear kuffiyehs at the march.
“What we can offer to the Jewish population is peace based on reconciliation and truth, not peace based on separation,” Farah told Mondoweiss.

“The peace that has been offered to us has excluded and separated us. This is not peace. We are here, we are Palestinians, and we are not planning to go away.”

Yumna Patel is a multimedia freelance journalist based in Bethlehem, Palestine. You can find her on twitter @yumna_patel.

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net/

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Just consider three prominent voices. Wolf Blitzer of CNN, the liberal Zionist group J Street, and blogger and Democratic Party thinker Josh Marshall.
–Wolf Blitzer has condemned the “racism and hatred” of Charlottesville and his show has served that good cause.

But Blitzer once published a book in which he promoted one piece of Zionist propaganda after another and denounced Palestinian views of the conflict as “spurious myths.” It is a “myth” that Arab civilians were “massacred” at Deir Yassin, a “myth” that Palestinian refugees “were the major victims of the 1948 war,” and a “myth” that “Jewish atrocities” caused the Palestinians to flee. From Blitzer’s book on the refugees:
 

The startled Jewish community declared: “We did not dispossess them; they themselves chose this course.”
 

Wolf Blitzer book of Zionist propaganda written for AIPAC denying there was a massacre at Deir Yassin.

 

These are all grotesque falsehoods or distortions of the truth to deny war crimes, typical of AIPAC, the lobby group Blitzer was working for when he put the book out. (Deir Yassin was an Arab village on the outskirts of Jerusalem that Israeli militias cleared in April ’48 for strategic and nationalist purposes, killing over 100 Palestinian civilians; the outrage caused terror throughout Jerusalem.)

To this day, Blitzer frequently airs Israel’s defenders, rarely puts on its critics; and he attacked Jimmy Carter when he dared to say Israel was practicing apartheid.
–The liberal Zionist group J Street has taken a prominent role in condemning white nationalists.

Meanwhile, its president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, brags about his father’s “service” in the Irgun establishing the state of Israel — without noting that the Irgun was a terrorist Jewish militia, linked to the massacre of Palestinians in Deir Yassin and other ethnic cleansing operations.
–Josh Marshall of TPM has been a tribune of warnings about the real-and-present dangers of Trumpism: “a President driven by white racial grievance” has detonated a bomb of “white supremacist violence” hatred that will keep bursting.

Marshall is married to an Israeli and proudly named his son in 2006 after an Israeli general:
 

His full name is Samuel Allon Marshall. … The name means ‘Oak’ in Hebrew. And it was also the name of Yigal Allon, after whom he is also named, who was one of the founders of and later the commander of the Palmach, the elite commando unit of the Haganah, the predecessor of the IDF.

Yigal Allon was the general who carried out David Ben-Gurion’s more-or-less explicit orders to expel Palestinians from the incipient state of Israel in 1948. Famously he emptied Lydda and other areas near the Israeli airport of Palestinians. “IDF commander Yigal Allon asked Ben Gurion ‘what shall we do with the Arabs?’ Ben-Gurion made a dismissive, energetic gesture with his hand and said, ‘Expel them’”.  [John Pilger, and Ari Shavit too.]

Josh Marshall is wired inside the Democratic Party and tries to maintain order over Israel inside the party. He does so by avoiding the issue as much as he can lest it divide the base, by pointing out Israeli atrocities only when they’re glaring, and when push comes to shove, characterizing anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism.

Marshall’s view is, We can’t divide over Israel because there are anti-Semites at the gate. He wrote during the Keith Ellison fight:
 

[T]ruly the last thing the Democratic Party needs right now is a toxic internecine fight over Israel. And equally important, we are in an era when real anti-Semitism has been rearing its head in the United States in a way it has not done in [many years].

I could go on to Jeffrey Goldberg, Brian Lehrer, Jonathan Chait, and Terry Gross (who disciplined Jimmy Carter for daring to say “apartheid”); to Time Warner (CNN) executive Gary Ginsberg who wrote speeches for Netanyahu, or Comcast (NBC) executive David Cohen who raised money for the Israeli army; to the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and People for the American Way.

I admire what these people are doing for our country during the rise of intolerance. But white nationalists have themselves pointed out that American Zionists in powerful positions have a reservation on liberalism when it comes to Israel. We only want what they want, a nation for ourselves, say those white nationalists. “I am a white Zionist,” Richard Spencer said on Israeli television yesterday. JVP’s Naomi Dann writes in the Forward today: “Richard Spencer Might Be the Worst Person in America. But He’s Right About Israel.”

American Jews need to get clear on the nationalism question. Are they for an ethnic state that seeks to shelter one ethnicity, even if that means driving out the minority and discriminating against that minority on an ongoing basis– and having government coalitions composed of parties representing one religious belief? Or are they against that kind of arrangement? If they’re against it here, they should be against it there, in what Cory Booker’s largest donor calls the “Jewish Homeland”– the country of Greater Israel, which is half Jewish and half Palestinian, with most of those Palestinians lacking all rights.

Charlottesville makes this conversation urgent because the hypocrisy of the Democratic leadership hurts resistance to intolerance. You can’t be righteously anti-nationalist in the U.S. and evangelists for Jewish nationalism over there.

This is not just good liberal philosophy. It’s the best policy to fight anti-Semitism. Israel’s status as a human-rights abuser is now its global reputation; and Jews and Jewish organizations who blindly defend it are hurting the reputation of Jews. Tony Klug explained this at J Street a few months ago. The Palestinian conflict is now defining the Jewish reputation around the world and making Jewish life in other countries “precarious.”
 

if Israel does not end the occupation sharply, and if organized Jewish opinion in other countries appears openly to back it, there will indeed almost certainly be a further surge in anti-Jewish sentiment, potentially unleashing more sinister impulses.

To stem those “sinister” forces, Klug said American Jews must pressure Israel to end the occupation or give Palestinians equal rights. Pretty much what happened in the South, a long time ago….

Liberalism and Zionism (as it has worked out anyway) are incompatible. That is why we’ve seen many liberal Zionists turn quietly into non-Zionists in recent years. We see this in the surging membership of Jewish Voice for Peace. Tom Friedman and Ayelet Waldman both seem to be on the road away from Zionism. Jeffrey Goldberg is in the halfway house. Deep in their hearts, they know that we are in a different age from the mid-20th century, and that Zionism is an untenable ideology in an era in which the country is seeking to solidify minority rights and other progressive achievements. They need to say so out loud.

Philip Weiss is Founder and Co-Editor of Mondoweiss.net.
 

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We do not find books or treatises written by Imams or Dai themselves whereas a Rabbi must have high literary achievements.

Why, you may ask, Is it too Expensive to be Bohra. Please read the following to find answers

 1. Womb Tax. When a child is still in mother’s womb, Bohras must start paying tax called Sila-Fitra and then every year thereafter. Bohra Chief Priest says, not paying tax, the child will be down with health problems and bad luck. Sila Fitra is recorded by town Amil, the Bohra Chief Cleric’s agent; it remains on balance sheet and cleric would harass you until it is not paid.

2. Animal Sacrifice. When a child is born Bohras must perform Aqiqa, the sacrificing of a goat. For this ritual, one must take permission from local cleric and pay him Salam. Jews also had tradition of Korban https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korban

3. Rite of passage. At reaching puberty Bohras perform Misaq which is similar to Jewish Bar Mitzvah. During Misaq the boy or girl must pledge allegiance to Syedna. One has to agree and pronounce “Yes” to several conditions such as if the person goes against Syedna’s edicts, his/her property becomes illegal to him/her including his wife and children. His wife gets automatic three divorces and each divorce being equal to three more divorces. His property can be looted. One must pay hefty Salam (tithe) for the Misaq and Misaq must be renewed yearly. No other Muslims, Shia or Sunni, have this tradition. On each yearly Misaq day, Bohras must pay to Syedna a hefty sum.

4. Marriage. At the time of Nikah ceremony both the bride and bridegroom family must pay hefty Salam (tithe) to local cleric called Bhaisaheb. Having Nikah performed by[AV1] [AV2]  Syedna, the chief cleric himself, costs several lakhs Rupees.

5. Taxes. Every year each Bohra has to pay about 20 taxes viz. Zakat 2.5% of certain saving, Sabeel fee of several thousands, constant offering of Nazar Muqam, Najva, Imam Salam, Darees charges, tiffin tax, tomb collection, offerings at tombs of several taxes, trips to tombs and offering in Galla, mosque building and its inauguration charges, prayer space charges, Moharram Waez spce fee, Every month Syedna announce new projects even in foreign country Bohras are levied separately, During Syedna’s visit towns folks must host visitors. Syedna has colleted billions and stashed it in banks and properties over the world. In Africa he owns a diamond mine.

Mr. Leslee Komaiko, you are lucky in comparision with Bohras. If you were a Bohra and had hesitated paying to Syedna, his surrogate would have insulted and kicked you out and made you an outcaste.
 
 

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The lyrical beauty of Arabic inspired many poets, writers. Land Rover MENA, CC BY

At the heart of such fear is ignorance. A December 2015 poll found that a majority of Americans (52 percent) do not understand Islam. In this same poll, 36 percent also said that they wanted to know more about the religion. Interestingly, those under 30 years were 46 percent more likely to have a favorable view of Islam.

These statistics highlight an opportunity for educators. As a scholar of Islamic art and architecture, I am aware that for the past 20 years, educators have been trying to improve the teaching of Islam – both in high school and college history courses.

The problem, however, is that the teaching of Islam has been limited to its religious practice. Its impact on the arts and culture, particularly in the United States, is seldom discussed.
 

What teaching of Islam misses

In high school history books, there is little mention of the intertwined histories of Europe, Asia and Africa in the middle ages and the Renaissance. There is even less mention of the flowering of art, literature and architecture during this time.

In a world history textbook for New York public high schools, for example, the “Muslim World,” appears in the 10th chapter. In condensing a thousand years of history – from the seventh to the 17th century – it focuses only on “Arab armies” and the rise of early modern Muslim empires.

Palatine Chapel borrowed from the art of the Fatimids. Al-dabra, CC BY-NC-ND

Such narrow focus misses out on the cultural exchanges during this period. For example, in medieval Spain, the Troubadour poets borrowed their lyrical beauty from Arabic. Arabic was the courtly language of southern Spain until the 15th century. Similarly, the 12th-century Palatine Chapel in Sicily was painted and gilded in the imperial style of the Fatimids, the rulers of Egypt between the 10th and 12th centuries.

Such exchanges were common, thanks to the mobility of people as well as ideas.

The point is that the story of Islam cannot be told without a deeper understanding of its cultural history: Even for early Muslim rulers, it was the Byzantine empire, the Roman empire and the Sassanian empire (the pre-Islamic Persian empire) that provided models. Such overlaps continued over the centuries, resulting in heterodox and cosmopolitan societies.

The term “Middle East” – coined in the 19th century – fails to describe the complex social and cultural mosaic or religions that have existed in the region most closely associated with Islam – and continue to do so today.
 

How the arts can explain important connections

So, what should educators do to improve this literacy?

From my perspective, a fuller picture could be painted if identities were not to be solely defined through religion. That is, educators could focus on the cross-cultural exchanges that occurred across boundaries through poets and artists, musicians and architects. Both in high school and university, the arts – visual, musical and literary – could illustrate the important connections between Islam and other world histories.

For example, a class on the Renaissance could explain how the 15th-century Italian painter Gentile Bellini gained famed at the court of Mehmet II, the conqueror of Istanbul. Mehmet II commissioned Bellini to design an imperial portrait that was sent to rulers throughout Europe. His art presents a wonderful example of the artistic exchanges that took place between early modern cities such as Delhi, Istanbul, Venice and Amsterdam.

It might also help students to know that the Dutch painter Rembrandt collected Mughal miniature paintings. Silks from the Safavid empire (the Iranian dynasty from the 16th to 18th century) were so popular that Polish kings had their coat of arms woven in Isfahan.

This exchange of art continued into the Age of Enlightenment, a time when ideas around politics, philosophy, science and communications were rapidly being reoriented in Europe. A class on the Enlightenment may highlight the fact that writers like Montesquieu turned to the Middle East to structure a critique of their own religious institutions.

Goethe found inspiration in Persian poetry. kaythaney, CC BY-NC

A poetry class could similarly show connections between the German author Wolfgang von Goethe’s writings and Islam, as exemplified in his “West-Eastern Diwaan,” a collection of poems. This epitome of world literature was modeled after classical Persian poetry in its style, and inspired by Sufism, the mystical tradition in Islam.

Most students are open to seeing these connections, even if it might require overcoming their own preconceptions about Islam. For example, when I teach my class on medieval architecture, students are surprised to learn that the two oldest continuously run universities in the world are in North Africa (in Fez – a city in Morocco – and Cairo).

Indeed, it is not easy to disentangle contemporary politics from historical fact, to teach more fully the culture and diversity of a religion that is almost 2,000 years old.

Perhaps educators could learn from a recent exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York titled “Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven.” The show illustrates how Abrahamic religions – that is, Christianity, Judaism and Islam – borrowed freely from each other in the realm of art, music and literature. Jerusalem was home to diverse populations and the arts played an important role within its religious and political life.
 

Muslims in America

It’s not in the past alone. We see these connections continue today – here in America, where Islam is an intrinsic part of the culture and has been for centuries.

From the Mississippi delta to the Chicago skyline, Muslims have made contributions, which might not be so obvious: West African slaves in the South were central to the development of the blues. Its complex vocalization and rhythms incorporated the rituals of Islamic devotion many of them had to leave behind.

The same is true of architecture. A quintessential example of modern American architecture is the Sears Tower in Chicago, which was designed by the Bangladeshi-American structural engineer Fazlur Rahman Khan.

Muslim contributions to art and architecture don’t just reflect the diversity of America, but the diversity of Islam in this country. Muslims in America comprise a rich tapestry of ethnicities, languages and cultures. This knowledge is particularly meaningful for young Muslim Americans, who struggle to claim their place in a country in which they are sometimes made to feel like outsiders.

Educators, especially within the arts and humanities, have an important role to play in this religious literacy, that helps students understand the unity in the diversity. After all, as the most popular poet in America, the 13th-century Muslim mystic Rumi wrote:

All religions, all this singing, one song. The differences are just illusion and vanity.
 

Author is Associate Professor in the History of Art Islamic Art and Architecture, Yale University

Courtesy: The Conversation

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At a secret conference organised by Israel Minister Gilad Erdan with 150 top supporters of Israel, American right wing pollster Frank Luntz rolled out statistics which show that most US Jewish students don’t see Israel as ‘civilized’ or a ‘democracy”.
 
According to the independent website, Mondoweiss, which attracts a million views a month, Luntz made the disclosure at the secret conference organised to consider ways of combating the growing global campaign, ‘Boycott, Disinvest and Sanctions’ (BDS) movement against Israeli oppression of Palestinians.   
 
Highlights of Luntz’s disclosure:

• The ministry of tourism’s attempt to market Israel as a cool destination (girls and bikinis) has failed.
•  Jewish American students have an increasingly negative image of Israel  
• Just 42% believe Israel wants peace.
• Just 38% believe “Israel is civilized and Western”.
• Just 31% believe Israel is a democracy.
• No less than 21% believe the US should side with the Palestinians.

In November 2014, the Republican pollster and best known propagandist for selling Israel to the American public had conceded that Zionism had become a dirty word for American opinion-making elite. Clearly, his prescription then was to keep reminding Israel’s critics in the US, “we’re allies.” But the magic mantra does not seem to be working.
Mondoweiss now reports that “the new, or not so new, agenda” put forward by Luntz, the “guru of political opinion” at the conference was this: Israel’s supporters should say that they are in favour of a dialogue and peace-building through diplomacy, and accuse BDS supporters of obstructing dialogue, and spreading hate.

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The other victims of Nazi racism, including Europe’s Sinti and Roma are now routinely named in commemoration, but not all survivors have had equal opportunities to have their story heard. One group of victims who have yet to be publicly memorialised is black Germans.

All those voices need to be heard, not only for the sake of the survivors, but because we need to see how varied the expressions of Nazi racism were if we are to understand the lessons of the Holocaust for today.

When Hitler came to power in 1933, there were understood to have been some thousands of black people living in Germany – they were never counted and estimates vary widely. At the heart of an emerging black community was a group of men from Germany’s own African colonies (which were lost under the peace treaty that ended World War I) and their German wives.

They were networked across Germany and abroad by ties of family and association and some were active in communist and anti-racist organisations. Among the first acts of the Nazi regime was the suppression of black political activism. There were also 600 to 800 children fathered by French colonial soldiers – many, though not all, African – when the French army occupied the Rhineland as part of the peace settlement after 1919. French troops were withdrawn in 1930 and the Rhineland was demilitarised until Hitler stationed German units there in 1936.

Denial of rights and work

The 1935 Nuremberg Laws stripped Jews of their German citizenship and prohibited them from marrying or having sexual relations with “people of German blood”.

A subsequent ruling confirmed that black people (like “gypsies”) were to be regarded as being “of alien blood” and subject to the Nuremberg principles. Very few people of African descent had German citizenship, even if they were born in Germany, but this became irreversible when they were given passports that designated them as “stateless negroes”.

In 1941, black children were officially excluded from public schools, but most of them had suffered racial abuse in their classrooms much earlier. Some were forced out of school and none were permitted to go on to university or professional training. Published interviews and memoirs by both men and women, unpublished testimony and post-war compensation claims testify to these and other shared experiences.

Employment prospects which were already poor before 1933 got worse afterwards. Unable to find regular work, some were drafted for forced labour as “foreign workers” during World War II. Films and stage shows making propaganda for the return of Germany’s African colonies became one of the few sources of income, especially after black people were banned from other kinds of public performance in 1939. (Carl Peters 1941 propaganda movie  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8LOTJAwf4ys)

Incarceration

When SS leader Heinrich Himmler undertook a survey of all black people in Germany and occupied Europe in 1942, he was probably contemplating a round-up of some kind. But there was no mass internment.

Research in camp records and survivor testimony has so far thrown up around 20 black Germans who spent time in concentration camps and prisons – and at least one who was a euthanasia victim. The one case we have of a black person being sent to a concentration camp explicitly for being a Mischling (mulatto) – Gert Schramm, interned in Buchenwald aged 15 – comes from 1944.

It was the Nazi fear of “racial pollution” that led to the most common trauma suffered by black Germans: the break-up of families. “Mixed” couples were harassed into separating. When others applied for marriage licences, or when a woman was known to be pregnant or had a baby, the black partner became a target for involuntary sterilisation.

Instead, the process that ended with incarceration usually began with a charge of deviant or antisocial behaviour. Being black made people visible to the police, and it became a reason not to release them once they were in custody.

In this respect, we can see black people as victims not of a peculiarly Nazi racism, but of an intensified version of the kinds of everyday racism that persist today.

Sterilisation: an assault on families

It was the Nazi fear of “racial pollution” that led to the most common trauma suffered by black Germans: the break-up of families. “Mixed” couples were harassed into separating. When others applied for marriage licences, or when a woman was known to be pregnant or had a baby, the black partner became a target for involuntary sterilisation.

In a secret action in 1937, some 400 of the Rhineland children were forcibly sterilised. Other black Germans went into hiding or fled the country to escape sterilisation, while news of friends and relatives who had not escaped intensified the fear that dominated people’s lives.

The black German community was new in 1933; in most families the first generation born in Germany was just coming of age. In that respect it was similar to the communities in France and Britain that were forming around families founded by men from the colonies.

Nazi persecution broke those families and the ties of community. One legacy of that was a long silence about the human face of Germany’s colonial history: the possibility that black and white Germans could share a social and cultural space.

That silence helps to explain Germans’ mixed responses to today’s refugee crisis. The welcome offered by German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and many ordinary Germans has given voice to the liberal humanitarianism that was always present in German society and was reinforced by the lessons of the Holocaust.

The reaction against refugees reveals the other side of the coin: Germans who fear immigration are not alone in Europe. But their anxieties draw on a vision that has remained very powerful in German society since 1945: the idea that however deserving they are, people who are not white cannot be German.

(This article was corrected on January 27 to clarify the situation in the Rhineland between the two world wars and was first published in The Conversation)
 
 

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I’m proud of American Jews mobilizing to fight Islamophobia. But to fully fight hate, U.S. Jews must confront the role pro-Israel organizations continue to play in spreading anti-Muslim bigotry.

http://972mag.com/what-u-s-jews-must-do-to-fight-anti-muslim-bigotry/115113/
 
Anti-Muslim rhetoric coming from American lawmakers and presidential candidates reached a fevered pitch earlier this month when, standing before a cheering crowd aboard the USS Yorktown in South Carolina, Donald Trump called for a “total and complete” ban on Muslims entering the United States. This call came on the heels of Trump and Ben Carson calling for mosques to be monitored, Senator Marco Rubio suggesting that places where Muslim-Americans gather be shut down, and hundreds of lawmakers voting to turn away Syrian refugees.

These anti-Muslim policies, and the Islamophobia at their core, no longer reside on the fringes in America. They have seeped into the mainstream. Today, a majority of conservative voters support them, and poll numbers often rise for those Republican politicians who choose to double down by exploiting anti-Muslim sentiments. Such policies — and the hateful incitement politicians use when proposing them — are inspiring horrific hate crimes against Muslim-Americans. In the week after Trump’s Muslim ban comments, a California mosque was torched, an Arizona mosque was vandalized, two Muslim women in Florida were violently attacked, a Muslim deli owner in New York was beaten, and a Muslim child in Georgia was asked by a teacher, “Do you have a bomb in your backpack?”

I have been heartened in recent weeks to see many Jewish leaders and pro-Israel institutions, shocked by the historical reverberations, stand up for Muslims under attack. After all, in 1939 it was Jews fleeing Hitler who were demonized and blocked from reaching America’s shores. This stuff hits close to home for American Jews. Which is why 11 Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), recently signed a letter to Congress declaring that “to turn our back on [Syrian] refugees would be to betray our nation’s core values.” It is also why the ADL was quick to blast Trump last week.

However, such public pronouncements, as wonderful as they have been, conceal a troubling truth which the institutional Jewish community and U.S. Jews invested in Israel must confront if we are to root out anti-Muslim bigotry: in the post-9/11 era, pro-Israel donors, institutions and the Israel lobby have often fueled the very Islamophobia now suddenly catching fire in America, doing so as a strategy for smearing Palestinians.

Promoting and showcasing anti-Muslim bigots has become a troubling pattern for the Israel lobby, particularly its most powerful arm: the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). One example occurred in 2007, when Pastor John Hagee – one of the loudest anti-Muslim voices on the Christian right – was invited to give a keynote address at AIPAC’s policy conference. Not only has Hagee engaged in Holocaust revisionism, but his Islamophobia prompted the Center for American Progress (CAP) to highlight him as a prime example of anti-Muslim hatred fomenting in evangelical circles. Even John McCain rejected his endorsement in 2008, despite the huge potential gains. And yet, crowds cheered him at AIPAC, where he has been given a platform.

Another example is Steve Emerson, who has been invited to speak at AIPAC’s policy conferences multiple times. CAP identified Emerson as one of the five most influential “misinformation experts” in America. Head of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Emerson is best known for creating outlandish claims to support the theory that Muslim-Americans are plotting jihad in this country, such as the one repeated by a Republican congressman on Fox News that “80 to 85 percent of mosques … are controlled by Islamic fundamentalists.” With AIPAC giving platforms to such purveyors of hate, it is no surprise that the organization has remained silent as Syrian refugees are smeared and anti-Muslim bigotry runs rampant.

Of course, organizations are influenced by those who financially support them. And a deep dive into the world of Jewish, pro-Israel donors reveals that some of the most influential people spreading anti-Muslim bigotry are funded by American Jews with deep connections to the Israel lobby and pro-Israel organizations. This includes the Jewish Communal Fund, which has supported Pamela Geller and the Clarion Fund, and former AIPAC board member Nina Rosenwald, who has given millions to some of the most notorious bigots. This includes Daniel Pipes, who has made spreading Islamophobic misinformation a multi-million dollar profession as head of the Middle East Forum, where he has notoriously argued that Muslim-Americans should be racially profiled and denied constitutionally protected rights.

Why are pro-Israel organizations and donors fueling anti-Muslim bigotry when most American Jews reject such hate? Troublingly, too many Jewish institutions see propagating Islamophobia as a way of supporting Israel. Matt Duss, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace (full disclosure: FMEP is a +972 donor), once wrote that for some, “support for the Jewish state is a zero-sum contest between favoring Israel and favoring Arabs and Muslims. For too many American Jews, smearing Islam is seen as a legitimate expression of Zionism.”
I’m proud of American Jews mobilizing to fight the Islamophobia being fomented by figures like Trump. However, to fully fight such hate, U.S. Jews must confront the role pro-Israel organizations have played – and continue to play – in spreading Islamophobia as a zero-sum justification for smearing Palestinians. Otherwise, even as U.S. Jews publicly fight the purveyors of hate from without, by giving cover from within to those spreading hate, not only will Muslim-Americans continue to be endangered, so too will those Palestinians being occupied and oppressed by Israel.
For they are the true target.

David Harris-Gershon is a writer for Tikkun and author of ‘What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?‘

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On the eve of the Pope’s visit to India, the clamouring of Hindu communalist and fanatic groups within the country was matched by a statement issued by the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) on the eve of Diwali, praying for the deliverance of Hindus from all sin. Protests against this statement were made by both Indian secular groups, members of the Indian Catholic clergy and groups of non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the USA. Here is the text of one such statement issued by the Forum of Indian Leftists (FOIL), USA:

"On Tuesday, October 19, 1999, the International Mission Board of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) released a statement instructing their followers to "pray that the world’s Hindus might be convicted of sin and see Jesus is the Light of the World" (www.sbc.net/bpDownload.asp).

This statement has been timed to coincide with one of the most popular festivals celebrated by Hindus, Deepawali or Diwali (Festival of Lights). Supporting this statement is a nine–page prayer booklet, ‘Diwali: festival of Lights. Prayer for Hindus’, that aids those who wish to pray for Hindus during Diwali celebrations (www.imb.org/frontpage.htm). Along similar lines, the SBC booklet, ‘Days of Awe: Prayers for Jews’, also calls on Christians to pray for Jews from Rosh Hashana to Yom Kippur, while a third pamphlet, ‘Ramadhan Prayer Guide: Prayers for Muslims’, which calls for Christians to pray for Muslims will be re–released during the coming month of Ramadhan (Ramzaan). Yet another pamphlet, directed towards Buddhists is also planned by the SBC.

We, the signatories to this letter, are a collective of various individuals and groups committed to the promotion of secular, democratic and egalitarian principles in the social, economic and political life of South Asians. We believe that the SBC pamphlets promote ignorance, divisiveness and intolerance and concur with Keith Parks, the former president of the SBC’s International Mission Board, when he criticises the campaign for "launching a new crusade that is confrontative and abrasive," and underscores the importance of not caricaturing other religions, insisting that it is "essential that a Christian’s descriptions of other faiths be acceptable to members of those faiths".

It is worth recalling the fact that the SBC argued in the 1950s that racial integration was a sinful idea since "the Good Lord set up customs and practices of segregation" (in the words of John Buchanan of Birmingham). Even as recently as last year, the SBC at their convention amended their statement of beliefs to include a declaration that a woman should "submit herself graciously" to her husband’s leadership and her husband should "provide for, protect and lead his family."

We call upon the SBC leadership to re–evaluate its position on other religions, as well as its position on women’s subordination, in the same spirit that led the SBC to adopt a 1995 resolution repudiating its past advocacy of slavery and lack of support for civil rights. Many of us come from diverse backgrounds and were raised as Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Jews, Jains, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, etcetera, and have a secular commitment to equal treatment of, and respect for members of all religious communities. We wish to affirm religious diversity and tolerance as important strengths of South Asian society and cultures. The current government of India, whose complicity in the attacks against Muslims, Christians and Dalits has been well–documented, is steadily undermining these values. Despite this climate of intolerance, there have been many dialogues between followers of different faiths. We support the efforts of the citizens of India who continue to affirm tolerance for different religious and cultural practices.

Just as we cannot condone the call by Hindu fundamentalist organisations to "reconvert" Christians and Muslims to Hinduism in India, we cannot condone the Baptist call to "pray" for Hindus, Muslims, Jews or Buddhists to convert to Christianity in the U.S. While prayer for another person or groups of people may be commendable, attempts to clothe bigotry and ignorance with a veneer of theological and cultural analysis is not.

The SBC ‘Prayer for Hindus’ booklet does not show any comprehension of the complex nature of the different theological and philosophical schools that have come to be known as Hinduism. More troubling is the authors’ use of Hindu fundamentalist interpretations of history to suit their own needs. Thus they uncritically accept and reproduce the mythology of a ‘Hindu’ resistance led by the Maratha ruler Shivaji against ‘Islamic’ Mughal rulers of India in the seventeenth century even while calling for active conversions of the Hindu Marathas.

The booklet sometimes veers toward the absurd; for instance, while describing Bangalore "the Silicon Valley of Asia", it calls upon Southern Baptists to pray that all educated Indian computer scientists become "open to the Truth." Moreover, there is not even a pretence of an understanding of, or respect for the cultural context of Indian Christianity.

Nor does the booklet display any knowledge of the historical diversity of Christianity in India, which includes Roman Catholics, Syrian Christians, Anglicans, Methodists, Episcopalians, Baptists, Presbyterians, and other Protestant denominations. Indians of all faiths and creeds have historically been tolerant and accepting of Christianity in India. It is not Hinduism that has led to attacks on Indian Christians but the communal practices of the Hindu fundamentalist organisations and political parties, which have been well documented by human rights organisations.

Ironically, the SBC pamphlets resonate with the increasingly intolerant practices and policies of the Hindu rightwing government and its cohorts in India. In this context, the response of many Indian Christians who have distanced themselves from the SBC literature is to be applauded. At the end of the millennium, we challenge leaders of religious institutions and progressive people of all faiths to propagate words and deeds that will end and not perpetuate hatred and ignorance".

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 1999, Year 7  No. 53, Special Report 3

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One of the great texts of the Upanishads reads thus:

"From the unreal, lead me to the REAL

From darkness, lead me to LIGHT

From death, lead me to IMMORTALITY".

This in essence, captures the relentless search of a Hindu for the Truth and the Light. The great Hindu festivals of Holi, Dussehra and Diwali are symbolic of the triumph of good over evil and of darkness over light.

Mainline Christianity has come a long way and the general understanding is that Jesus would, in no uncertain terms, condemn the "self-righteous" – just as he condemned the "holy men" the scribes and the Pharisees, of his times. Today, there is a greater appreciation of the value system inherent in different religions and cultures.

In a message to Hindus entitled, ‘Christian and Hindu Pilgrims in Dialogue for the Good of All’, on the occasion of Diwali this year, Cardinal Francis Arinze, president of the Pontifical Council for Inter–religious Dialogue, asserts: "The Hindu tradition strives to answer the restless searching of the human heart by proposing ways which include teachings, rules of life, and sacred ceremonies."

What is imperative — and this is what Jesus would expect from his followers — is that each one breaks down the walls of prejudice and hate — and work together to establish a Kingdom on the Gospel values of justice, hope, love, peace and universal brotherhood.

Fundamentalist and fringe groups exist in every society — and perhaps in every religion — some even bordering on fascism. Whilst it is evidently clear that most Christians in India will not generalise and say that Hindu fundamentalists represent most Hindus, it should be equally clear that the offensive prayer–book is not the opinion of most Christians.

What most Christians would pray for, today, is a greater openness to the Transcendent: to be able to dialogue respectfully in that relentless search for Life, Truth and Immortality! Anything different would indeed be a betrayal of Christ and of all that he stood for.

In his concluding statement in the above mentioned message, Cardinal Arinze states: "May Diwali this year, be an anticipation of what God wants the history of humanity to be: a fraternal journey in which we accompany one another towards the transcendent goal which God himself puts before us…"

A true follower of Jesus let’s his light shine…In deed !

Archived from Communalism Combat, November 1999, Year 7  No. 53, Special Report 3

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