Geller distorts Rauf lecture to falsely paint him as a terrorist sympathizer
Right-wing blogger Pamela Geller grossly distorted portions of a 2005 lecture by Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to falsely suggest Rauf is an “extremis[t]” who “supports homicide bombers” and supports the “elimination of Israel.” The Drudge Report and Rush Limbaugh have subsequently trumpeted Geller’s report.
After Geller pushes distorted view of Rauf lecture, Drudge and Limbaugh trumpet it
Geller pushes “ATLAS EXCLUSIVE!” by taking Rauf out of context. On August 23, Geller posted a heavily edited reported that Spain’s leading expert on terrorism said the Madrid bombings “probably were instigated by al Qaeda and were not the work of autonomous cells.” But as of April 10, 2006, Agence France Presse was reporting (accessed from the Nexis database): “Investigators believe the attacks were carried out, as in the case of the July 7 2005 bombings in London, by a home-grown group sympathetic to Al-Qaeda but not part of the network.”
Geller falsely claims Rauf supports “elimination of Israel”
Geller: Rauf statement that “a one-state solution is a more coherent one” means he wants to “destroy the tiny Jewish state.” Geller writes, “Here Imam Feisal speaks of the elimination of Israel. Israel — a Jewish state no more. Feisal wants one state, not a Jewish state. I guess 57-odd Muslim countries is not enough. They must destroy the tiny Jewish state.” She then quotes from Rauf’s statement during his lecture in which he says that he supports “peace in the region” and beleves that “a one-state solution is a more coherent one than a two-state solution”:
We now have post-Zionism movements in Israel. We have a very broad spectrum of people in Israel who regard Israel as a nation state, as a secular state, as a multicultural state. The very fabric and demographic, and I would say even identity, of Israel has shifted enormously in the last 60 years since its founding. There’s always a danger. It only takes one individual to kill someone like Rabin. Rabin was assassinated by a fundamentalist, and there’s no doubt that there are those who are against Sharon. But my sense, again from what I’ve learned, is that those who are supporting the withdrawal from the territories are in the minority – I am sorry, those who support the withdrawal are in the majority. If not, I don’t think Sharon would have had the broadbase to do that.
The differences, perhaps, may lie on whether the solution lies in the two-state solution or in a one-state solution. I believe that you had someone here recently who spoke about having a one land and two people’s solution to Israel. And I personally – my own personal analysis tells me that a one-state solution is a more coherent one than a two-state solution. But anyway it goes, there is no doubt in my mind that once there is peace, and there will have to be a peace in the region, the fallout of that will be enormously positive.
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin: “I would prefer for the Palestinians to be citizens of this country rather than divide the land.” On July 15, Haaretz reported:
Two months ago, at a meeting with the Greek ambassador, devoted largely to discussing the financial crisis, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin referred to a political solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “I would prefer for the Palestinians to be citizens of this country,” he said, “rather than divide the land.” This was no slip of the tongue. Rivlin’s office gave the statement to the press, thereby making him the highest-ranking political figure to have publicly raised the possibility of a single State of Israel from the Mediterranean to the Jordan.
Haaretz also provided the following statement from Rivlin, who is a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party:
“There is a conflict in the Middle East between two entities, and they’re both right, each in their own way. This is our only home, and therefore all kinds of solutions can be found. One could establish a system in one state in which Judea and Samaria are jointly held. The Jews would vote for a Jewish parliament and the Palestinians for an Arab parliament, and we would create a system in which life is shared. But these are things that will take time. Anyone who thinks that there are shortcuts is talking nonsense. As long as Islamic fundamentalism thinks that Jews are forbidden to settle in the Holy Land, we have a problem. It will not be resolved by an agreement, even if we obtain a promise from all the Arab states that it will be fine.
“So if people say to me: Decide − one state or division of the Land of Israel, I say that division is the bigger danger. In an Israel with six million Jews it is much easier to sustain the vision of a Jewish and democratic state than it was in 1948. The people who now say that we must separate because otherwise the state will not be democratic or will lose its Jewish character would, for the same reasons, have said that no state should have been founded in 1948.
Former Likud defense minister Arens: “We are already a binational state.” On July 15, Haaretz reported:
“The prospects of the negotiations with Mahmoud Abbas do not look promising. President Obama undoubtedly thinks otherwise, but if Abbas speaks for anyone, it’s barely half the Palestinians. The chances of anything good coming of this are not great. Another possibility is Jordan. If Jordan were ready to absorb both more territories and more people, things would be much easier and more natural. But Jordan does not agree to this. Therefore, I say that we can look at another option: for Israel to apply its law to Judea and Samaria and grant citizenship to 1.5 million Palestinians.”
These remarks, which to many sound subversive, were not voiced by a left-wing advocate of a binational state. The speaker is from the Betar movement, a former top leader in Likud and political patron of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a former defense and foreign affairs minister – Moshe Arens. On June 2, Arens published an op-ed in Haaretz (“Is there another option?” ) in which he urged consideration of a political alternative to the existing situation and the political negotiations. He wants to break the great taboo of Israeli policy making by granting Israeli citizenship to the Palestinians in the West Bank. Arens is not put off by those who accuse him of promoting the idea of a binational Jewish-Palestinian state. “We are already a binational state,” he says, “and also a multicultural and multi-sector state. The minorities [meaning Arabs] here make up 20 percent of the population – that’s a fact and you can’t argue with facts.”
Haaretz: Israeli right wing now discussing “alternatives” to two-state solution. Haaretz further reported:
As Washington, Ramallah and Jerusalem slouch toward what seems like a well-known, self-evident solution – two states for two nations, on the basis of the 1967 borders and a small-scale territorial swap – a conceptual breakthrough is taking place in the right wing. Its ideologues are no longer content with rejecting withdrawal and evacuation of settlements, citing security arguments calculated to strike fear into the hearts of the Israeli mainstream. Their new idea addresses the shortcomings of the status quo, takes account of the isolation in which Israel finds itself and acknowledges the need to break the political deadlock.
Once the sole preserve of the political margins, the approach is now being advocated by leading figures in Likud and among the settlers – people who are not necessarily considered extremists or oddballs. About a month before Arens published his article, Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin (Likud ) said, “It’s preferable for the Palestinians to become citizens of the state than for us to divide the country.” In an interview this week (see box ), Rivlin reiterates and elaborates this viewpoint. In May 2009, Likud MK Tzipi Hotovely organized a conference in the Knesset titled “Alternatives to Two States.” Since then, on a couple of occasions, she has called publicly for citizenship to be granted to the Palestinians “in gradual fashion.” Now she is planning to publish a position paper on the subject. Uri Elitzur, former chairman of the Yesha Council of Settlements and Netanyahu’s bureau chief in his first term as prime minister, last year published an article in the settlers’ journal Nekuda calling for the onset of a process, at the conclusion of which the Palestinians will have “a blue ID card [like Israelis], yellow license plates [like Israelis], National Insurance and the right to vote for the Knesset.” Emily Amrousi, a former spokesperson for the Yesha Council, takes part in meetings between settlers and Palestinians and speaks explicitly of “one land in which the children of settlers and the children of Palestinians will be bused to school together.”
Geller ludicrously claims Rauf believes “911 was an inside job”
Geller declares Rauf a “conspiracy theorist” because he asked audience if they had seen Fahrenheit 911. In her blog post, Geller claims that “the Imam is conspiracy theorist – 911 was an inside job.” But in the portion of Rauf’s lecture Geller cites, Rauf simply asks his audience how many of them had seen the documentary Fahrenheit 911 and then references a portion of the film which in no way touches on whether the September 11 attacks were an “inside job.” From Geller’s post (emphasis in the original):
And the Imam is conspiracy theorist – 911 was an inside job:
How many of you have seen the documentary: Fahrenheit 911? The vast majority – at least half here. Do you remember the scene of the Iraqi woman whose house was bombed and she was just screaming, “What have they done.” Now, I don’t know, you don’t know Arabic but in Arabic it was extremely powerful. Her house was gone. Her husband, I think, was killed. What wrong did he do? I found myself weeping when I watched that scene and I imagined myself if I were a 15-year old nephew of this deceased man, what would I have felt?
Collateral damage is a nice thing to put on a paper but when the collateral damage is your own uncle or cousin, what passions do these arouse? How do you negotiate? How do you tell people whose homes have been destroyed, whose lives have been destroyed, that this does not justify your actions of terrorism. It’s hard. Yes, it is true that it does not justify the acts of bombing innocent civilians, that does not solve the problem, but after 50 years of, in many cases, oppression, of US support of authoritarian regimes that have violated human rights in the most heinous of ways, how else do people get attention?
![Share This icon](http://static1.firedoglake.com"/plugins/share-this/images/share-icon-16x16.gif"){kind=icon}
