“Anti-Muslim Group unite through internet” by Dean E. Murphy, New York Times, June 2, 2001, website run by militant Hindus in Queens and Long Island was recently shut down by its service provider because of complaints that it advocated hatred and violence towards Muslims. But a few days later, the site was back on the Internet. The unlikely rescuers were some radical Jews in Brooklyn who are under investigation for possible ties to anti-Arab terrorist organizations in Israel.
The unusual alliance brings together two extreme religious philosophies from different parts of the world that, at first glance, have little in common. But living elbow-to-elbow in the ethnic mix of New York, the small groups of Hindus and Jews have discovered that sharing a distant enemy is sufficient basis for friendship.
(V.T. Rajshekar: “Brahminial origin of Jewish thoughts”, DV Jan.16, 1993). So tight is their anti-Muslim bond that some of the Hindus marched alongside the Jews in the annual “Salute to Israel Parade” on Fifth Avenue last month.
MUSLIM AS COMMON ENEMY
On May 22, several of the Jews joined a protest outside the United Nations against the treatment of Hindus in Afghanistan by the Taliban regime. “We are fighting the same war”, said Rohit Vyasmaan, who helps run the Hindu Web site, HinduUnity.org, from his home in Flushing, Queens.
“Whether you call them Palestinians, Afghans or Pakistanis, the root of the problem for Hindus and Jews is Islam”.
The budding Hindu-Jewish Relationship presents a view that counters a popular perception of New York city not as an open door to immigrants seeking a better life, but as a political way station where some people come or stay not to make money but to engage in politics from afar. For some of the Jews in Brookiyn and the Hindus in Queens and Long Island, their time in the US is temporary, made necessary only because of the threat of Islam in South Asia and the Middie East. Ultimately, members of both groups said they must leave New York to confront the enemy face-to-face. | would love to move back to India provided the situation improves there”, Vyasmaan (30) said.
BABRIMASJIID INCIDENT
He came to New York from New Delhi when he was 13. He and many others expect to die in the battle for “Hindu supremacy”. Nonetheless, he is protective of the identities of some of HinduUnity.org’s biggest financial backers. Some of them have been implicated in Hindu nazi acts in India and are only in the US biding their time, he said.
One of the site’s major supporters on Long Island was involved in destroying Babri at Ayodhya he said.
HinduUnity.org advertises itself as the official site of Bajrang Dal, a Hindu nazi movement in India that has chapters throughout India and has frequently clashed with Muslims and was among the groups blamed for the 1992 attack.
The Website also goes by the name “Soldiers of Hindutva®’, a term that refers to the primacy of Hindu religion and culture. The Website has 500 people affiliated with it.
The Jews in Brooklyn, meanwhile, are followers of Rabbi Meir David Kahane, the assassinated Israeli politician, whose teachings advocated the expulsion from Israel of all Arabs, most of whom are Muslim. Their headquarters in Brooklyn was raided in January by the FBI as part of a federal investigation into their association with two Kahane political parties that were banned in Israel and designated as terrorist organizations by the State Department.
The group’s biggest supporters shuttle back and forth between Israel and New York, keeping one foot in each country. Rabbi Kahane was Brooklyn-born, as were many of high supporters, and was shot to death at a Manhattan hotel in 1990. His™ son, Binyamin, who took up his father’s teachings, also carried an American passport but spent most of his time in Israel. He was killed with his wife when their car was ambushed in the West Bank in December.
RRORIST DESIGNATIO
During his last visit to New York, two weeks before his death, Binyamin Kahane reminded a gathering of several hundred supporters in Brooklyn of their obligation to settle in Israel. The Brooklyn group runs a Website, Kahane.org, that aims to keep the Kahane movement alive despite the political crackdown in Israel and the terrorist designations in the US.
The site’s manager, Michael Guzofsky, said the Jewish-Hindu relationship in New York is a practical one that reflects a common suffering at the hands of Muslims. The alliance is born from adversity, he said, and transcends the differences in their religious traditions, which, he acknowledged, the two groups have never addressed in detail.
