It’s a joke, one of those mass Internet mailings that gets a laugh and captures the spirit of the moment. It goes like this:
I just applied for a building permit for a new house. It was going to be 100 ft tall and 400 ft wide with 9 tur rets at various heights and windows all over the place and a loud outside entertainment sound system. It would have parking for 200 old cars and I was going to paint it snot green with . . . pink trim. The City Council told me to f- -k off. So I sent in the application again, but this time I called it a mosque. Work starts on Monday.
Jokes aside, the conviction that government no longer works for the majority of Americans is spreading like wildfire. That nearly all of President Obama’s major policies have gone against public will is fueling voter anger across the nation.
The Ground Zero mosque fits the pattern, with opponents in New York and elsewhere tarred as bigots for the simple — and fundamentally American — act of disagreeing with their leaders. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even urged they be investigated.
Yet something profound and welcome is happening. The momentum for moving the mosque is growing as supporters multiply in both numbers and diversity. Even the first Muslim Miss USA, Rima Fakih, says it “shouldn’t be so close” to Ground Zero.
In addition to millions of ordinary citizens, including construction workers who say they wouldn’t work on the mosque, this New Majority includes conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and ultra-lib Howard Dean both are calling on developers to consider the feelings of opponents, especially 9/11 family members.
Predictably, Dean’s support earned him brickbats from the far left. But the former head of the Democratic Party and 2004 presidential candidate bravely told an interviewer that “we have to stop the polarization in this country” and that “some of the folks on my end of the spectrum are demonizing some fairly decent people who are opposing this.”
Citing polls against the mosque, Dean added, “65 percent of the people in this country are not right-wing bigots.”
Stop the presses. At least for one liberal, the majority is not automatically wrong or full of hate.
The majority movement includes religious leaders as well, with Jewish groups and Roman Catholic Archbishop Timothy Dolan urging a compromise on the location. Dolan and Gov. Paterson are offering to mediate the dispute.
And now comes fresh support from an international Muslim organization. The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community has theological differences with the dominant Sunni and Shia branches and is subject to violent attacks. Two of its mosques in Pakistan were bombed in May, killing 94 people and an American citizen active in the movement was murdered in Pakistan last week.
Yet this persecution has not dimmed its views, with its American leader condemning terrorism and telling Muslims to leave the United States if they cannot be loyal and law-abiding citizens.
I asked the group about the mosque. Calling it a civic issue, not a religious one, spokesman Waseem Sayed said that if the “sentiments of non-Muslims are unduly hurt,” then his group “does not see why that particular location has been chosen. There are surely other places where mosques can be built.”
He went on to offer another perspective, one that reflects a true spirit of brotherhood. It stands in stark contrast to the mosque developers, who talk of healing but in fact are causing a fresh wound between Islam and America.
“If a mosque is built at the proposed site, then the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community would like see churches, synagogues, Hindu places of worship and places of worship of all other religions also built near Ground Zero,” Sayed told me. “That would be a good example of how from an act of evil and terror has emerged unity and peace.”
Amen to that.
Peace? fatah chance
Given the formality of the plan for Israeli and Palestinian leaders to come to Washington for talks, the sit-down definitely needs a name. I propose we call it the “Don’t Get Your Hopes Up” summit.
Formal invitations and the involvement of President Obama notwithstanding, the basic sticking point remains. The Palestinians do not show any ability to make realistic demands for a state of their own or accept responsibility for combating terrorists in their ranks.
It’s not just Hamas, the terror group running the Gaza Strip. It’s also the so-called moderates, including the leaders of Fatah, the governing party in the West Bank, who continue to stoke anti-Jewish hatred and glorify murder.
Consider recent events covered in the government-controlled media, as reported by Palestinian Media Watch, a pro-Israeli group that translates the Arab press.
One story involves a memorial honoring a suicide terrorist, with top Palestinians in attendance. The 2002 attack in a Tel Aviv suburb killed a 15-year-old boy and injured 16 others.
The bomber’s hometown now has monument to “the heroic Martyrdom-Seeker.” It includes his picture and that of Yasser Arafat, along with a quotation from the Koran about nonbelievers, promising that Allah will “lay them low.”
At another televised event, advertised as “under the auspices” of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a song celebrates a 1978 attack that killed 37 Israeli civilians in a bus hijacking.
The song saluted the terrorists as “birds of prey” and “heroic,” and a large crowd sang, clapped and waved flags in homage to their slaughter. The video sends chills down the spine, with propaganda lyrics such as these:
No one outshines the Fatah member.
He mounts his machine gun on the tripod.
His eyes are to Al-Aqsa [Mosque] — the Fatah member . . .
Be safe, you defiant, oh Fatah member.
Many textbooks still omit Israel from maps, while some officials refer to Israel as “interior Palestine.” A newspaper praises Helen Thomas, the former White House reporter, for demanding that Jews leave Israel and “return” to Germany and Poland.
Remember these stories in coming days and weeks. That way, you won’t be fooled when Israel is invariably blamed for the failure to achieve peace.
Foes of Gilly bore us silly
The New York GOP is so lame, it makes Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand look like a thoroughbred. The Democrat, appointed to the job, is very beatable, but three Republicans competing to face her in November — Bruce Blakeman, Joe DioGuardi and David Malpass — are drawing only yawns from their own party. A Siena Research Institute poll says GOP primary voters give none more than 19 percent support, and 68 percent remain “undecided.”
This late in the race, they’re not undecided. They’re unimpressed.
Hold the hankies for this monster
There are few tears for the Craigslist killer, Philip Mark off, who committed suicide in prison. But you wouldn’t know that from the weepy headline in the Times: “Mur der Suspect Wasn’t on Sui cide Watch.” Isn’t that the good news?
Picture all this waste
Another pol, another dumb idea. Queens Borough President Helen Marshall (pictured) wants to spend $85,000 for a photographer to take pictures of her and, well, her. I say she should — as long as she uses her own money. I’ll bet she’d discover the virtues of cellphone cameras.