Yet another example of Jews opposing free speech in American Universities by continuting their whining over the Passion of Christ. Note carefully that it was not the Academy pushing Jesus and the Passion film but simply the students and faculty on the University campus expressing their personal beliefs. So what's wrong with this expression of intellectual freedom and fee speech? What the Jews are really asking for is the elimination of free speech about Jesus that Jews always find offensive. Do the Jews really understand America's democratic principles of feedom?(These same Jews are rabid defenders of Israel's racist JEWISH STATE where Christians and Moslems are marginalized and stripped of their civil rights in the public domain.) You can also add to this irony the fact that Congress has given Israel/Judaism many billions annually to help further the Jewish/Zionist religion in the Middle East. No protest from these same Jews about separation of Church and State when it comes to Israel/Judaism.
I Want You for the U.S. Air Force [you don't need to be a Jesus freak, but it'll help....]
By Nathan Guttman
Tue., June 07, 2005 Iyar 29, 5765
WASHINGTON - Mikey Weinstein and his family are proud of their history in the American armed forces. His father graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, Weinstein is a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado, as are his oldest son and future daughter-in-law, and his younger son is currently enrolled there. Given this sort of background, it goes without saying that Weinstein, who now lives in New Mexico, is extremely proud of the Air Force Academy, which trains the future pilots of the USAF. Yet along with this pride, Weinstein also harbors an intense rage that has turned him into a leader of the battle against the religious coercion he discovered in the institution he so reveres.
Weinstein began to suspect something was wrong at the academy last February, when Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" was released. Friends who knew of his feelings for the institution informed him that the dining hall for pilot cadets was filled to the brim with posters for the film. Weinstein telephoned the base commander and told him this constituted a violation of the constitutional prohibition against the state's promoting religion in an institutional manner. The commander looked into the issue and the following day dispatched his second in command to read out a letter of apology in front of the cadets.
But evidence of what was going on at the Academy only continued to amass. Last July, Weinstein met his son Curtis during a visit to the campus. The son, looking disconsolate, asked to speak with his father outside of the base. There, in a nearby McDonald's, he told his father, "I think I'm going to get into trouble." When Weinstein senior asked the meaning of this, his son explained: "Dad, I'm going to beat up the next one who calls me a fuckin' Jew or says that we killed Jesus." He told his father that he had had to endure this abuse on several occasions, and didn't know how to handle the issue.
The enraged father called back the general, who promised to deal with the matter, and at the same time initiated a public campaign to expose harassment at the prestigious military institution. The campaign, which has reached Congress and the highest echelons of the Pentagon, exposed an intentional policy going back several years of religious guidance from above, active encouragement of Christian evangelism by senior officers and prejudicial discrimination against members of other religions. Hundreds of families have approached Weinstein, and to date 117 people have filed official complaints through him. Only eight are Jews. The majority are Christians who feel persecuted by the policy of promoting evangelical Christianity on an institutional basis while employing the power of military authority. "I'm at war now, at war against my own school," says Mikey Weinstein, an attorney who has served in Ronald Reagan's White House, in a conversation from his home in Santa Fe. He does not hold back from strong language as he discusses what he sees as the evangelical takeover of the most prestigious training institution of the United States Air Force.
Coerced prayers
An organization called Americans United for Separation of Church and State has documented what is happening inside the academy's walls. A 14-page report issued by the group enumerates numerous incidents, all of which share a common denominator - promotion of religion by the academy and its highest-ranking officers. In one case, the coach of the academy's football team hung a large sign in the locker room reading, "I am a Christian first and last - I am a member of Team Jesus Christ." In another case, a chaplain at the base gave a lecture to a group of cadets. At the lecture's conclusion, he dispatched them to their friends who had not attended and instructed them to proselyte them (including lobbying Christians to "rediscover" Jesus). He also said they had to tell their friends that if they did not do so, they would "burn in the fires of Hell."
More examples: Soldiers who did not agree to take part in prayer services after dinner were marched outside the dining hall, with other cadets issuing orders to them; numerous mandatory events opened with the recitation of Protestant prayers; the back cover of the base newspaper's Christmas edition featured a large advertisement signed by 300 people, including many of the academy's highest-ranking officers, stating: "We believe that Jesus Christ is the only real hope for the world" and "There is salvation in no one else."
Aside from the systematic promotion of Christianity, and its evangelical denomination in particular, on the grounds of the Air Force Academy, the group also reported cases of discrimination against non-Christian pilot cadets. For instance, when Christian cadets wished to leave campus on Sunday and attend church or religious classes, the request was granted without difficulty and without the cadets losing vacation days; when under similar circumstances Jews asked to leave the base, they were not permitted, or had the days deducted from their vacation time. Moreover, Jews on the base reported that the strain of training activity on Saturdays was so intense that they often had no opportunity to attend services.
It should be mentioned that the U.S. Constitution forbids the promotion of religion by the state or its institutions, including the army. This prohibition is the basis of the separation between church and state, and is supposed to guarantee freedom to every citizen against religious coercion by the state.
According to the reports, the U.S. Air Force Academy saw things differently. One theory is that because the academy is so close to Colorado Springs, which has become a major center for evangelical churches and nationwide organizations, this has had a strong effect on the religious proclivities of senior officers, causing them to espouse the evangelical doctrine and its obligation to promote belief in Jesus.
There were those within the academy who issued warnings of what was going on. Melinda Morton, a Lutheran USAF chaplain reported the zealous promotion of evangelical faith by ranking officers and cadets, and discrimination against members of other religions and faiths. But not only did they not listen to Morton's charges at the academy, they also saw fit to transfer her to a distant base on the Japanese island of Okinawa. A group from Yale Divinity School reached similar findings, but the conclusions did not lead to any changes.
Nevertheless, as complaints piled up and the public campaign began to gain momentum, commanders of the Air Force Academy decided to do something. They devised a program to educate and train the faculty and cadets toward tolerance and religious sensitivity. But the academy's critics claim that the program, as well as several feeble apologies and clarifications issued by high-ranking officers, has done little to help. According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the program's emphasis was flawed from the outset, since the problem at the academy was not a lack of religious sensitivity, but a violation of the constitutional ban on state promotion of religion. "Hello? Anyone hear of Thomas Jefferson? Anyone see a problem here?" asks a cynical Mikey Weinstein.
The affair long ago left the confines of the Colorado base and made its way into the national media and to Washington, D.C. Numerous articles have been devoted to the subject, and one group of legislators even dispatched a letter to acting Air Force Secretary Michael Dominguez, calling for an investigation of the events at the academy and the prevention of any reoccurrence. The Air Force appointed an investigation committee, scheduled to release its findings this week, but complaints have already been voiced against the committee's proceedings, as some of the key witnesses who complained of religious coercion and discrimination at the academy have not even been interviewed by the investigators.
Clinton intervenes
The affair is indicative not only of a specific problem at a single military facility in the United States; it is indicative of the change taking place in the United States in recent years - a rise in evangelical Christians' strength in the national and political arenas. It is sufficient to consider a hearing that took place in the House Armed Services Committee last month. As part of the hearings on approving the defense budget, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) sought to attach an amendment to the law that would instruct the USAF to take immediate action to correct the situation at its academy.
The hearing very quickly shifted from discussion of the problem at the academy to complaints by Republicans that the party most hurt in the affair was the Christians, who were being denied their constitutionally guaranteed freedom of expression. Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, said that if there were any problem at the Air Force Academy, it was one of political correctness. He argued that evangelical officers do not receive promotions because of their religious beliefs and that Christian chaplains say they are not permitted to hold prayers mentioning Jesus. His party colleague, Joel Heffley of Colorado, said, "To divorce all religion from anything that's public, I don't think that's what the founding fathers intended at all," while Rep. John Hostettler, a Republican from Indiana, warned that if the proposed amendment regarding the Air Force Academy were accepted, it would "bring the ACLU into the United States military, it would bring the silly thinking of several of our judicial systems."
Steve Israel's proposal in the Armed Services Committee, as well as the one submitted to the House Rules Committee, failed to pass. An irate Israel issued a statement accusing the Republicans of voting a party line, thus sending the message that Congress does not intend to intercede when intolerance, coercion and discrimination are exposed in the army's institutions.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now working to revive the issue on Capitol Hill. In a meeting with key Jewish activists, she emphasized the need for vigorous action to investigate and correct that which needs to be corrected at the academy, and urged Jewish organizations to act on this matter.
But even if the issue makes the rounds in Washington, the situation in Colorado Springs continues nevertheless. As members of Congress were debating the matter, to decide that there was no justification for intervening in what was happening at the military academy, a new case of religious advocacy was discovered there. One of the top graduating cadets e-mailed a greeting card to the 3,000 students to mark the end of the academic year, making free use of quotations from the New and Old Testaments, including, for instance, the call "to bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ." This is exactly the sort of quote that critics of the academy believe should not appear in correspondence sent to Air Force Academy cadets.
Last Friday, USAFA Superintendent Lieutenant-General John Rosa met with Anti-Defamation League activists, and for the first time admitted to them that there was a problem at the base. He said he is losing sleep over it, but noted that it might take up to six years to correct.
Mikey Weinstein, the driving force behind the struggle, does not sound like someone who intends to wait that long. "These are the people who are going to hold the trigger to our nuclear bombs," he says, referring to the pilots in training. "This should bother everyone, because all over the world they'll be looking at the way we teach these people and use it to reinforce their claim that America is on a religious war against all who are not Christians."
haaretz.com |
