| WASHINGTON
- April 21 - A controversial presidential nominee to the board
of a government-funded think tank today refused to condemn the
internment of Japanese-Americans and reaffirmed his call for the
destruction of Palestinian villages.
During an
interview broadcast on the national "Democracy Now"
radio program, pro-Israel commentator Daniel Pipes outlined
why he advocates the profiling by law enforcement and security
personnel of Muslims and Arab-Americans. When program host Amy
Goodman asked whether Pipes' support for profiling extended
to the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II,
he said: "It's not a subject I know enough about to talk
about."
SEE:
http://stream.paranode.com/democracynow/dn2003-0421-1.m3u
The interview is in the final 20 minutes of the one-hour program.
President
Bush recently nominated Pipes, considered by many Muslims to
be the nation's leading Islamophobe, to the board of the taxpayer-funded
United States Institute of Peace (USIP). His nomination must
be confirmed by the Senate.
In that
same radio interview, Pipes also said razing Palestinian villages
from which anti-Israel attacks are launched is acceptable because
societies under attack may take "preventive steps."
(In a July 18, 2001, article in Canada's National Post newspaper,
Pipes said Israel needs to take more active steps to protect
its citizens, including razing "villages from which attacks
are launched.")
Over the
weekend, both the Washington Post and the Dallas Morning News
published editorials critical of the president's decision to
nominate Pipes to the USIP board. The Post said Congress "should
have the good sense to turn (the nomination) down," and
the Dallas Morning News called Pipes a "bad choice."
In the Jewish Forward, Judith Kipper, a senior fellow at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Pipes "has
very extreme views."
SEE:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53900-2003Apr18.html
http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/editorials/stories/041903dnediscorecard.ff05.html
http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.04.11/news5.html
A number
of Muslim and Arab-American-groups have also come out against
Pipes' nomination saying he has a long history of advocating
the political marginalization of America's Islamic community.
The groups point to an October 21, 2001, speech to the American
Jewish Congress, in which Pipes warned of the "true dangers"
posed by "the presence, and increased stature, and affluence,
and enfranchisement of American Muslims."
"It
is outrageous that someone with undergraduate and doctoral degrees
from Harvard University, both in history, would fail to condemn
the unjust internment of Japanese-Americans by disingenuously
claiming he is ill-informed. Mr. Pipes obviously knows that
he cannot advocate profiling Muslims and Arabs on one hand,
and then reject the earlier profiling of Japanese-Americans.
This position alone makes Pipes unfit to join the USIP board,"
said Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR), the group that first opposed Pipes' nomination.
Awad added
that Pipes has called for increased surveillance of ordinary
American Muslims, claims 10 to 15 percent of Muslims are "potential
killers," has decried any positive portrayal of Islamic
history and beliefs in public schools, and termed the PBS documentary
"Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet" an "outrage."
Last year, Pipes faced a storm of criticism when he launched
Campus Watch, a web site that included "dossiers"
on professors and academic institutions thought to be too critical
of Israel or too sympathetic to Islam and Muslims.
CAIR
is America's largest Islamic civil liberties group. It is headquartered
in Washington, D.C., and has 16 regional offices nationwide
and in Canada.
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