One law for them - another one for us!

By now, everyone has heard about the American scientist Stewart David Nozette caught tryng to sell classified information to what he believed was an Israeli spy, but was in fact an FBI agent.

Nozette's case brought to mind the issue of profiling and the double standards involved when it comes to Muslims.

Since the eighties, and especially since 9/11, racial profiling has been brought to the forefront as government officials, elected officials, "analysts" and far right activists have routinely argued that Muslims should be scrutinized at airports, border crossings and specific jobs more than others because of Islamist terrorism in the West.

This followed public opinion polls that found large numbers of Americans in support of such policies.

The logic goes - since "most Muslims are not Islamists and most Islamists are not terrorists, all Islamist terrorists are Muslims."

That's what Daniel Pipes wrote in an op-ed in the New York Post on Jan. 24, 2003. As anyone who is familiar with Pipes, he's a huge advocate for increasing American colonization of the Muslim world (and Israel's colonization of Palestinian territories) and massive repression of the unruly natives inevitable rebellion, as he spelled out in an Orwellian July 18, 2001 op-ed in the Jerusalem Post called "Preventing War: Israel's Options" and reiterated in a Sept. 6, 2007 post on his website www.danielpipes.org called Cut Gaza's power?

So naturally, he supports racial profiling to protect Americans from the fallout of such policies as the occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, and support for Israel - to name a few, a position he reiterates here and here. (Except for supporters of certain groups that market themselves as pro-American, like the MeK.)

So what about the issue of Israeli espionage? In case you've been living under a rock (or in the case of Pipes, as a parasite in someone's colon) Israel has been engaged in spying on its closest ally for a number of years, as documented in Sam Husseini's article A Long History and there's the more recent case of the AIPAC spy scandal, which adds up to Israel espionage "as a threat second only to China."

According to the indictment, Nozette is Jewish, so according to Daniel Pipes' Harvard-educated brain, rampant Jewish espionage for Israel demands the same racial profiling as for Muslims and Islamist terrorism, right?

Well, apparently not. Even though anyone with the IQ of a sandwich can obviously see that preventing espionage is as much of a "compelling governmental interest" - to use the words of Dov Hikind as quoted by Pipes - as preventing terrorism, the only item I could find about his views on Israeli espionage was this post which was tried to justify Israeli spying because the U.S. does it to Israel.

They can do, so can we - sounds like the same rationalizing terrorists use, eh Danny boy?

It gets better. Apparently, Pipes hired Steven J. Rosen, former AIPAC Policy Development Head and one of the key players at the center of the Franklin-AIPAC spying scandal - he was the one who passed on information to Israel - to work at Pipes' think tank, the Middle East Forum.

Rosen is credited with transforming AIPAC into the lobbying juggernaut that's it known for today, and he once summed up his philosophy:

"A lobby is like a night flower. It thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.”

Like espionage. Ironically, - but not surprisingly - in commenting on his latest acquisition, Pipes wrote that Rosen's acquittal on May 1, "confirms the limits on arbitrary and prejudicial government actions."

Prejudicial? As in, profiling? So Pipes supports Muslim profiling, but not Jewish profiling? As an imperialist and orientalist that defines his work as supporting "American interests in the Middle East," it doesn't come as a surprise.

Pipes' hypocrisy aside, the question of racial profiling is an important one because it isn't people like Pipes that enact it, but the government instead. The government victimizes Muslims becuase the views of people like Pipes are, to a certain extent, institutionalized - even in the current administration.

Reports like "Unreasonable Intrusions: Investigating the Politics, Faith & Finances of Americans Returning Home" and the ACLU report "The Persistence of Racial and ethnic Profiling in the United States" show that such policies will continue. That Pipes has a major Washington Player working for him - Rosen - his previous work as a foreign policy advisor to Rudy Giulani's primary campaign is proof that he's no marginal figure.

The only hope we'll have is by combating both institutionalized anti-Muslim prejudice and the work of people like Daniel Pipes who seek to reinforce that prejudice in a Muslim/non-Muslim movement, independent of the two-party system and the ridiculous schemes of groups like CAIR.