July 30, 2010 – Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.)

Anti-Islam Hate Pastor Promotes Qur’an Burning on CNN

Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) supports our universal human rights of religious freedom, freedom of conscience, and freedom of worship for all people. R.E.A.L. rejects hatred and rejects the activities of those who seek to promote hatred towards identity groups and specific religions.

Anti-Islam hate pastor Dr. Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center appeared on CNN’s national broadcast on July 29, 2010 to promote his views in calling for an “International Burn A Koran Day,” as R.E.A.L previously reported on July 14, 2010.

July 29, 2010: Anti-Islam Hate Group Dove World Outreach Center Pastor Jones Interviewed on CNN on "Burn A Koran Day" Plans (Photo: CNN Video Snip)

The CNN video is shown online. Excerpts from the interview follow. Hate pastor Terry Jones came on CNN to state that “Islam is of the Devil,” and to promote his right to burn the Qur’an. Terry Jones stated that as the Qur’an “is not sacred to… in doing this action… on burning the Qur’an on 9/11, what we are saying is stop to Islam.” Terry Jones stated that the group viewed that “Islam is of the Devil.” Jones also said that Muslims have “right to worship,” and the CNN interviewer made no comment about Dove World Outreach’s support of protests against mosques, including its July 4 protest of a mosque in Gainesville, Florida.

The CNN interviewer asked Terry Jones “why would you sound or do something as hateful as to burn their most sacred book?” Terry Jones’ reply was “Because we believe that the times call for it. It calls for radical times. If we do not stand up, if we do not do something, if we do not… this church and other churches call people to stand up, do you know what is going to happen to us? We are going to end up like Europe… A true Muslim is a believer in the Qur’an…in Sharia law…” Terry Jones ended by asking “Is that a religion we want in America?”

See this link to the complete CNN interview.

The Independent also has a report on this topic.

The Dove World Outreach Center promotes a sign in front of their Florida-based church that reads “Islam is of the Devil,” with campaign shirts with the same message, and a book with the same name. The Dove World Outreach Center led a July 4, 2010 protest march against a Muslim mosque in Gainesville, Florida. The Dove World Outreach Center has allied itself with the anti-Semitic hate group Westboro Baptist Church, and has been a long-time supporter of the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) group. SIOA supporters have called for support of the “Burn A Koran Day” on the SIOA Facebook page and have called for financial support for the Dove World Outreach Center.

Dove World Outreach Anti-Islam Hate Campaigns: "Burn A Koran Day," Protest Against Florida Mosque, Partners with Westboro Baptist Church (Photos: Facebook)

Dove has appeared at events led by the Executive Director of the Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) group, and photos of Dove members with their “Islam is of the devil” has appeared on that Executive Director’s website.

Dove World Outreach at November 2009 Columbus Protest Led by Current Executive Director of the SIOA (Photo 2: AtlasShrugs)

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Responsible for Equality and Liberty (R.E.A.L.) supports our universal human rights to freedom of religion, freedom of worship, and freedom of conscience for all people of all faiths, including the freedom of religion supported under Article 1 of the United States Constitution. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

We urge those who promote hate and intolerance to unburden the hate from their hearts.

We urge all to Choose Love, Not Hate. Love Wins.

Remember Women’s Struggle for the Vote: Suffering Suffragettes

Suffering Suffragettes material below provide from JoAnna London, a supporter of the League of Women’s Voters (LWV)

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This is the story of our Grandmothers & Great Grandmothers who lived only 90 years ago.

Remember, it was not until 1920 that women were granted the right to go to the polls and vote.

The women were innocent and defenseless, but they were jailed nonetheless for picketing the White House, carrying signs asking for the vote.

And by the end of the night, they were barely alive.�
Forty prison guards wielding clubs and their warden’s blessing went on a rampage against the 33 women wrongly convicted of ‘obstructing sidewalk traffic.’

(Lucy Burns)
They beat Lucy Burns, chained her hands to the cell bars above her head and left her hanging for the night, bleeding and gasping for air.
(Dora Lewis)

They hurled Dora Lewis into a dark cell, smashed her head against an iron bed and knocked her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and suffered a heart attack.
Additional affidavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.

Thus unfolded the’Night of Terror’ on Nov. 15, 1917, when the warden at the Occoquan Workhouse in Virginia ordered his guards to teach a lesson to the suffragists imprisoned there because they dared to picket Woodrow Wilson’s White House for the right to vote.

For weeks, the women’s only water came from an open pail. Their food–all of it colorless slop–was infested with worms.

(Alice Paul)

When one of the leaders, Alice Paul, embarked on a hunger strike, they tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she vomited. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
So, refresh my memory. Some women won’t vote this year because–why, exactly? We have carpool duties? We have to get to work? Our vote doesn’t matter? It’s raining?

(Mrs. Pauline Adams in the prison garb she wore while serving a sixty-day sentence.)

Last week, I went to a sparsely attended screening of HBO’s new movie ‘Iron Jawed Angels.’ It is a graphic depiction of the battle these women waged so that I could pull the curtain at the polling booth and have my say. I am ashamed to say I needed the reminder.

(Miss Edith Ainge, of Jamestown , New York )

All these years later, voter registration is still my passion. But the actual act of voting had become less personal for me, more rote. Frankly, voting often felt more like an obligation than a privilege. Sometimes it was inconvenient.

(Berthe Arnold, CSU graduate)

My friend Wendy, who is my age and studied women’s history, saw the HBO movie, too. When she stopped by my desk to talk about it, she looked angry. She was–with herself. ‘One thought kept coming back to me as I watched that movie,’ she said. ‘What would those women think of the way I use, or don’t use, my right to vote? All of us take it for granted now, not just�
younger women, but those of us who did seek to learn.’ The right to vote, she said, had become valuable to her ‘all over again.’

HBO released the movie on video and DVD . I wish all history, social studies and government teachers would include the movie in their curriculum I want it shown on Bunco night, too, and anywhere else women gather. I realize this isn’t our usual idea of socializing,
but we are not voting in the numbers that we should be, and I think a little shock therapy is in order.

(Conferring over ratification [of the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution] at [National Woman’s Party] headquarters, Jackson Pl [ace] [ Washington , D.C. ]. L-R Mrs. Lawrence Lewis, Mrs. Abby Scott Baker, Anita Pollitzer, Alice Paul, Florence Boeckel, Mabel Vernon (standing, right))

It is jarring to watch Woodrow Wilson and his cronies try to persuade a psychiatrist to declare Alice Paul insane so that she could be permanently institutionalized. And it is inspiring to watch the doctor refuse. Alice Paul was strong, he said, and brave. That didn’t make her crazy.

The doctor admonished the men: ‘Courage in women is often mistaken for insanity.’
Please, if you are so inclined, pass this on to all the women you know.

We need to get out and vote and use this right that was fought so hard for by these very courageous women. Whether you vote democratic, republican or independent party – remember to vote.

(Helena Hill Weed, Norwalk , Conn.�

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Serving 3 day sentence in D.C. prison for carrying banner, ‘Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.’) History is being made.

George Washington Quoted on Religious Liberty and Tolerance

During a visit to Newport, R.I., in 1790, a year before the Bill of Rights was ratified, President George Washington received a letter from Moses Seixas, warden of the Touro Synagogue. President Washington replied, in part, to the the Touro Synagogue to state that:

— August 1790 – George Washington: “The Citizens of the United States of America have a right to applaud themselves for having given to mankind examples of an enlarged and liberal policy: a policy worthy of imitation. All possess alike liberty of conscience and immunities of citizenship. It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent national gifts. For happily the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens, in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.”

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— “May the father of all mercies scatter light and not darkness in our paths, and make us all in our several vocations useful here, and in his own due time and way everlastingly happy.”

United States President George Washington - 1789 - 1797 — United States President George Washington - President: 1789 - 1797

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Choose Love, Not Hate – Love Wins.

The Big Lie of the Protocols of Elders of Zion Shows How Hate Kills

Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel stated “the Holocaust began with words.”

There were words that sought to promote hate to Jews and to other minorities in Nazi Germany. Among the first of these was the apocryphal anti-Semitic screed promoted in Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and in Hitler’s speeches from 1921 forward, viewing “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion,” an apocryphal claim of a plot for Jews to control the world, as factual.

Originally created by forgers in Tsarist Russia, the anti-Semitic “Protocols of Elders of Zion” fraudulently claims of an organized Jewish plot to take over the world. Where this hate screed has been sold in book form, its cover shows a hate image of a snake with the Star of David all over its body encircling the world. This image was part of Henry Makow’s recent article, re-posted by a NYC blogger, promoting the “Protocols” as fact. (It should give pause to many that this NYC blogger also promotes protests against Muslim mosques in America.)

UnitedStatesAction.com has captured on the Internet, the 1921 London Times articles proving “The Protocols” are a forgery. It provides a transcript of Philip Graves’ articles published in the London Times, August 16 to 18, 1921, entitled “The Protocols of Zion – An Exposure.” Philip Graves’ articles go into detailed historical analysis to prove the apocryphal nature of the hoax documents.

But despite their exposure as a total fraud and forgery, Adolf Hitler continued to use the apocryphal, anti-Semitic screed the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as a rationale to exterminate Jews. When Adolf Hitler came to power, the Nazis made “The Protocols” required reading for German students. In The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933–1945, Nora Levin states that “Hitler used the Protocols as a manual in his war to exterminate the Jews.”

Words of hate kill.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum reports: “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is the most notorious and widely distributed antisemitic publication of modern times. Its lies about Jews, which have been repeatedly discredited, continue to circulate today, especially on the Internet. The individuals and groups who have used the Protocols are all linked by a common purpose: to spread hatred of Jews. The Protocols is entirely a work of fiction, intentionally written to blame Jews for a variety of ills. Those who distribute it claim that it documents a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. The conspiracy and its alleged leaders, the so-called Elders of Zion, never existed.”

But the apocryphal “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” did not just fade away with Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. The Protocols have also been republished throughout the Middle East and Arab world in contemporary times. In January 2010, Egyptian television station Al-Faraeen broadcast a television series promoting the apocryphal “Protocols” as factual and owner Tawfiq Okasha defended this. (Responsible for Equality And Liberty replied and condemned such promotion of hate screeds.)

The charter of the Foreign Terrorist Organization Hamas explicitly refers to the Protocols of Elder of Zion as factual, and it is referenced in Article 32 of the Hamas Charter.

The apocyrphal “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” have also been widely promoted in Europe and the United States, as well as a wide spread appearance on the Internet. In Turkey, the “Protocols” remains one of the most popular books. In the 1920s, American automobile tycoon Henry Ford published 500,000 copies of the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” to be distributed across America.

There have been contemporary books that have addressed the apocryphal nature of this book such as the Simon Wiesenthal Center’s (SWC) Stephen L. Jacobs “Dismantling the Big Lie: The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and Will Eisner’s “The Plot: The Secret History of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”

But we should not believe that the anti-Semitic apocryphal hate screed “the Protocols” is limited to history, conspiracy theorists, the Middle East, or Nazi supporters. Hate has no expiration date, no borders, no races, and no single religion. Like a virus, hate can spread from the worst to the best of us, and hate can contaminate and destroy us all.

My own personal contact with the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” came with what I would have thought to be an unlikely source – the U.S. mainstream church, the Presbyterian Church (USA) or PCUSA. This was my first contact with the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” other than reading about it in history books. Back in 2004, I learned that a PCUSA group supported by the Presbyterian Peacemakers held an event at Wooster College where the “Protocols” was promoted as fact and the Israeli flag was show morphed into a swastika. Regardless of your views on Israeli politics or foreign policy, there remains no question that the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is an anti-Semitic forgery and hate screed.

As a Christian, I felt the responsibility to speak out to members of the Presbyterian Church (USA) on this subject. Therefore, I reached out to hundreds and hundreds of PCUSA leaders, members, and pastors on this issue. I purchased and sent copies of Professor Stephen Jacob’s book “Dismantling the Big Lie,” to Presbyterian leaders, including the individual who organized the conference where “The Protocols” was presented as fact.

Later, I traveled to Ohio’s Wooster College myself to speak as a Christian to other Christians on the need to reject such anti-Semitic hate, where Professor Stephen Jacobs spoke to assembled Presbyterians at the Wooster College. It was clear that some were still not persuaded, and as I stood in the doorway of the exit speaking to one of the leaders of the pro-Protocols conference, I knew that he too was not convinced. Nor was there any apology coming from representatives of the Presbyterian Peacemakers at the Wooster College that I met. While the Wooster College apologized for the incident, over six years later, I have never seen a public apology by the PCUSA for a PCUSA-sponsored group holding an event promoting of the “Protocols of Elders of Zion” as factual.

So when you think that promotion of such hate screeds are limited to conspiracy theorists, bigots, and extremists, think again. To those who think that standing up against anti-Semitic hate is just a “Jewish” responsibility and does not affect other religious, racial, and minority groups, also think again. As Professor Jacobs concludes in his book “The Big Lie,” “because there is no sense of internal logic to either prejudice or hatred, it remains quite possible that those who hate the Jews as well as these other group will tomorrow adapt such notions to them. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion will remain within the arsenal of those who specifically hate the Jews, but it is equally possible that the false and malicious arguments of the Protocols will be adapted to meet other needs and other agendas.”

Professor Jacobs also states that “People need to see the lies for themselves and the refutation of the lies…we must educate the young people the world over to be textually analytical and discriminating when it comes to materials which make startling and/or grandiose claims that serve to divide the human community from itself even further than it has been in the past or which challenge the legitimacy of group or subgroup.”

And to those who think that apocryphal hate screeds such as the anti-Semitic “Protocols of Elders of Zion” have no impact on American society, think again.

This week, in America’s nation’s capital (and my home) in the Washington DC area, once again a Jewish synagogue, in a DC area Maryland suburb, has been defaced with swastikas, slurs, and even death threats.

Hate is alive in America.

But so is Love.

We can choose which one that will be the compass for our lives and our interactions with other people.

The motto of the Responsible for Equality And Liberty (R.E.A.L.) group is:

Choose Love, Not Hate – Love Wins.

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NOTE: After Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, the united nations of the world gathered to develop a Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was its own way of stating “Never Again.” The Universal Declaration of Human Rights calls for freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and freedom of worship – for EVERYONE.

Article 18 reads: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”