David Horowitz’ San Diego genocide lie — Islamophobia rears its ugly head

David Horowitz, dubbed an “Islamophobe” by the media watchdog group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting, has finally found a reason to matter again. The dark underworld of the far-right spin machine is circulating a video exchange between Horowitz and a Muslim student at UC San Diego in which the student appears to agree with Horowitz’ suggestion that Jews/Israelis gather in one place to make them easier to kill.

Anti-Muslim blogs and Fox News, whose cycle of story production is rarely out of sync, have dubbed her statements support for genocide. Further, they have made her the face of a totalitarian Nazi fascist worldwide Jihad threatening Jews and the West, a conspiracy for which the only evidence has been masterfully uncovered by Horowitz in a San Diego classroom.

Nevertheless, as people rush to misrepresent or explain away the student’s comments, it should be noted that what she “actually” said or meant to say is unimportant. It is enough to say that the notion that “if the Jews gather in one place it will be easier to kill them,” in whatever form it takes, is morally repugnant and indefensible under all circumstances.

What should matter now, though, as Horowitz makes his rounds in the media, is that nobody has pointed out the “hope” Horowitz ascribed to Hasan Nasrallah, the Secretary-General of Hizballah, is actually a fabrication.

Horowitz’ great feat apparently is that he managed to get a student to align herself with a genocidal agenda that does not even exist. Horowitz tells the student that “the head of Hizballah has said that he hopes we [the Jews] will gather in Israel so he doesn’t have to hunt us down globally.”

The quotation, which has made many rounds and is often cited by neoconservatives, traces to an article by Badih Chayban in the English language Daily Star, October 23, 2002. However, in no place in the speech does Nasrallah express the “hope” that Horowitz attributes to him (audio recording here, transcript here). The closest expression is an eschatological re-interpretation of the State of Israel’s creation, juxtaposed to the Christian Zionist version (gathering of the Jews in the Holy Land will bring the Messiah’s return).

According to my translation — please correct it if you see a problem — Nasrallah actually says, according to “some Islamic prophecies,” the State of Israel’s creation and the gathering of the Jews are “not so that their false messiah will rule the world, but because God wants to spare you from going to them in all corners of the world. Thus they gather in one place, and it will be the conclusive, decisive battle.” While the number of problems with such a statement cannot be understated, he is talking about the apocalypse, not a genocide he intends to orchestrate. (Click here for Arabic, feel free to offer a full/more accurate translation.)

From my perspective, the actual quotation, far from doing anything to vindicate Nasrallah, demonstrates the problems associated with analyzing real-world political and historical processes and conflicts in terms of religious prophecies. Strange here that interpreting Israel’s creation in this way differs only in quality from Zionist interpretations reading it as miraculous. Such views deny the organized human activity behind historical developments, writing it all off instead to divine providence. You get either the idea that God created Israel because he has chosen the Jews; or because the Messiah will not return until the Jews have returned to the Holy Land; or because the gathering of the Jews will facilitate the final battle between God’s believers and his unbelievers. In my eyes all positions are equally absurd and useless.

But their absurdity doesn’t save Horowitz from the fact that, despite what he claims, Nasrallah nowhere expresses a “hope” for that outcome, nor is it even the expression of some desire or plan. It is just a rote religious recitation about the end times. White American Christians associated with Christian Zionism openly discuss such apocalyptic battles, but these prophets Horowitz and the State of Israel are happy to have as allies.

The double standards at play, the kind of deception and misinformation involved in Horowitz’ rhetorical sleight of hand, are part and parcel of a deliberate agenda to enable U.S. and Israeli foreign policy interests in the Middle East by demonizing Arabs and Muslims.

That agenda inheres in Horowitz original question: “Will you condemn Hamas?”

There are many good reasons to vehemently criticize both Hamas and Hizballah, but one has to wonder, why the singular emphasis on “condemning” these two organizations, when the harm caused by the Israeli military’s violence in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza in 2009 alone has been horrifically more immense then the combined and cumulative activities of these organizations throughout their entire existence?

Of course, Horowitz and his ilk are not looking for a level-headed and rational analysis of either group. It is never enough to criticize or disagree. Instead they require a full-fledged condemnation (to death?). Their question is not merely a way to see how one registers on a shared moral compass — something that is easy to establish without answering the question. Rather, it is a way of framing Horowitz’ own hawkish and neoconservative foreign policy views in simplified moral terms. It is a way for his foreign policy agenda to escape fair debate and discussion. He never did answer the student’s question, after all.

Since 2001, thousands upon thousands of civilians have been killed by the US military in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Americans probably do not and will not for a long time comprehend the magnitude of the destruction and chaos wrought by their military in those places. The little we do know is sporadic and comes in the form of leaked videos and muted independent journalism. And despite the enormous and unjustifiable costs of these wars, no benefits have accrued to anyone, except perhaps war profiteers and other vendors of disaster.

Such simple mindedness, as advocated by Horowitz and his Fox News enablers, comes with few benefits, and, the lesson can never be learned enough, far too many risks.

(For the record, after writing this I e-mailed the student Jumanah Albahri about the situation and she confirms she unequivocally condemns the ideas ascribed to her. She is preparing a statement for public dissemination that will more clearly outline her views and response.)

To the General and Campus Communities:
As you are all well aware, I am the one who spoke at the David Horowitz event this past Monday May 10, 2010.

Allow me to begin by stating that I do NOT condone murder, I do NOT condone genocide, and I do NOT condone racism under any circumstance whatsoever against Jews or anyone else. These accusations are lies that I refuse to allow David Horowitz and his allies to perpetuate in their irresponsible and hateful smear campaign against those who disagree with or differ from them.

On April 19, 2010 I volunteered to speak at the Racism/Genocide Holocaust Event last April only because of my strong convictions against genocide like the Holocaust. I was there every step of the way during the protests denouncing racism on campus last quarter—from the very beginning to the very end. Never have I uttered a negative syllable towards or about any person because of their ethnicity or religion on campus or otherwise, Jewish or otherwise. Regardless of my participation in these events, for Mr. Horowitz to insinuate that I am anti-Semitic is ridiculous; I am a Semite.

I attended the event as an individual, not as a representative of any organization, least of all the MSA. My presence was solidly founded in my academic and personal quests to hear diverse viewpoints. Unfortunately, Mr. Horowitz is a seasoned polemicist whose intent is not to encourage academic discussion by expounding his arguments or even supporting his positions with hard facts, but to excite the passions of an audience. Mr. Horowitz spent an hour indiscriminately attacking liberals, students, Arabs, Muslims, and Palestinians, utilizing verbiage that completely departed from an academic tone and delved into hate speech—especially labeling groups and individuals that support Palestinian rights “terrorists.”

Insofar as my references to Hitler and the Nazi Youth programs: it was Mr. Horowitz who spent a substantial amount of time referring to the MSA as the “Hitler Youth” and its Justice in Palestine Week as “Hitler Youth Week”— pejorative titles that as a human being, a student of history, and a person of faith, I find disgusting. I uttered them in a sarcastic manner only to point out the ridiculous and slanderous nature of Mr. Horowitz’s labels—Nazis sought the extermination of anyone who was not “white,” and this racial category excludes the vast majority of the Muslim population.

I asked Mr. Horowitz to explain the purported connection between UCSD’s MSA and “Jihadist Terrorist Networks.” His pamphlet did not mention the organization; rather it focused on other groups like UCI’s MSU and Berkley and LA’s MSA chapters, and offered supporting grounds that can be characterized as shaky at best, with sources that had little credibility. He chose not to engage my question (his opening arguments were the verbatim generalizations made in the pamphlet, though my question asked for specifics) but instead decided to subject me to an interrogation because of my headscarf and Palestinian kuffiyeh. The fact that Mr. Horowitz claimed on a respected national cable news network that the MSA receives forty thousand dollars to put on Justice in Palestine Week, speaks volumes to his status as a gross exaggerator who should not be trusted to deliver opinions on anything. The information can be found here on UCSD’s official website http://as.ucsd.edu/finance/sofr_view_program.php?id=710.

Towards the end of the exchange, I became emotional. I could no longer hear Mr. Horowitz speaking and so did not even hear his injection of Hezbollah’s credo of “rounding up” Jews in his last tangent. I could no longer contain my anger at being implicitly and improperly labeled a terrorist, an anti-Semite, and a proponent of genocide. The answer I was coerced into giving grossly misrepresented my beliefs and ideologies.

My answer, “for it,” in the context in which it was said does NOT mean “for” genocide. I was referring to his initial question that asked me for my position on Hamas, a topic that for his own political reasons he was relentless in pursuing. “For it” was not a legitimization of Hezbollah’s or anyone else’s credo for that matter that Jews should be exterminated. In fact, Mr. Horowitz’s intent was to entrap me with his barrage of questions so that he could avoid answering my question, and construe any answer that I would provide as anti-Semitic, genocidal hate speech in order to further his political agenda.

I am not a member of Hamas, nor have I ever given support to Hamas, nor do I agree their actions or stances wholesale, but I refused to offer Mr. Horowitz a blanket condemnation of Hamas that night. I felt that doing so would be a blanket condemnation of the Palestinian cause. I refused to throw the baby (the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people) out with the bathwater (Hamas.) In addition, Mr. Horowitz asked me to condemn Hamas as a genocidal organization; which to my limited knowledge on the subject, is another unsupported claim made by Mr. Horowitz.

My opinion of Hamas is not as simple as condemn or condone, “for it” or “against it.” I firmly believe that the killing of civilians, even as “collateral damage” regardless of creed, politics, sexuality, nationality, or ethnicity is one of the highest crimes in the eyes of God and is morally reprehensible and abhorrent. But I condone Hamas in its ambition to liberate the Palestinian people. I condone Hamas as the duly elected representative government of the Palestinian people granted governance in an election overseen by our ex-President Jimmy Carter; and characterized as fair, open, and fully democratic. I condone Hamas in its desire to end the inhumane siege of the Gazan people. I condone Hamas in its struggle to free the 10,000 Palestinian men, women, and children unjustly locked away in Israeli prisons. It seems that in Mr. Horowitz’s logic, my support of freedom, peace, and justice makes me a “terrorist.”

David Horowitz can try to erase my history, the history of my grandparents, the history of the Palestinian people, he can call me a terrorist, he can mischaracterize my faith as bloody, and my God as false, but I will NOT allow him to vilify me as a racist or a proponent of genocide and remain silent.

For Peace, For Love, For Justice,

Jumanah Imad Albahri