re: #52 SanFranciscoZionist

What healing process are they talking about, anyway?

Great question.

“Foxman said the critical part of the ADL’s statement – posted on the ADL’s website last Friday, not sent out as a press release – was the paragraph, “The controversy which has emerged regarding the building of an Islamic Center at this location is counterproductive to the healing process. Therefore, under these unique circumstances, we believe the City of New York would be better served if an alternative location could be found.”

“We didn’t say it should be found, and we didn’t say we were opposed to it, okay?” Foxman said. “We brought up a sensitivity, which was then pushed by somebody for their own interest, whatever that may be. We don’t shirk from taking a position, even if the positions are not always popular.”

The ADL’s position on the issue, Foxman said, stemmed from the organization’s sense of continuity and credibility.

“It goes back to the 1980s, where we as a community asked the world to help us prevent the building of a convent at Auschwitz, or on its periphery,” Foxman elaborated. “We were then accused of being bigots – anti-Catholic, anti-Christian.

“We said, look, if you want to heal or reconcile, do it elsewhere,” he recalled. “That location was painful for us. It wasn’t till eight years after all the ‘sturm und drang’ that Pope John Paul understood, and ordered the Carmelite nuns to move about a mile away and set up their convent.”

Foxman said the situation regarding the proposed Islamic Community Center was “similar” in terms of issues of sensitivity to the families of September 11 victims.

“The families have been saying to the Muslim proponents of the center, if you want to heal, this is not the place to heal,” Foxman said, speaking of the two-block proximity of the location to Ground Zero. “If you want to reconcile, this is not the proper place.”

http://www.jpost.com/JewishWorld/JewishNews/Article.aspx?id=183501