Author: Dean E. Murphy
Publication: The New York Times
Date: June 2, 2001
A Web site 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 toward 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.
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. Yesterday, 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 Brooklyn
and the Hindus in Queens and Long Island, their time in the United States
is temporary, made necessary only because of the threat of Islam in South
Asia and the Middle East. Ultimately, members of both groups said, they
must leave New York to confront the enemy face-to-face.
"I would love to move back to India
provided the situation improves there," Mr. Vyasmaan said. "We have made
a promise to do so."
Mr. Vyasmaan, who is 30 and came
to New York from New Delhi when he was 13, said matter-of-factly that 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 nationalist acts in India and are only in the United States biding
their time, he said. One of the site's major supporters on Long Island
was involved in destroying an ancient mosque at Ayodhya in northern India
in 1992, Mr. Vyasmaan said. The mosque was built on a site that is also
holy to Hindus. The incident led to widespread rioting between Hindus and
Muslims in India, and it is still profoundly divisive.
"Now they won't let us build a temple
at the site of the mosque," Mr. Vyasmaan said. "So there is more controversy.
He plans to go back."
HinduUnity.org advertises itself
as the official site of Bajrang Dal, a fundamentalist Hindu movement in
India that has chapters throughout that country and has frequently clashed
with Muslims and was among the groups blamed for the 1992 attack. The Web
site also goes by the name Soldiers of Hindutva, a term that refers to
the primacy of Hindu religion and culture. Mr. Vyasmaan said the Web site
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 F.B.I. 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 designations followed a series of violent attacks on Palestinians,
including the killing in 1994 of 29 Muslims in the West Bank by Baruch
Goldstein, a Kahane adherent who was born in Brooklyn.
Central to the Kahane message is
that all Jews belong in Israel, making any Jew in the United States a temporary
resident. Many of 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 his 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.
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 Web site,
Kahane.org, that aims to keep the Kahane movement alive despite the political
crackdown in Israel and the terrorist designations in the United States.
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.
"I definitely understand their pain
even if I don't know much about their faith," Mr. Guzofsky said of the
Hindu fundamentalists. "Their Web site is a little more militant than ours,
but an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth kind of speech is something
you can find in the Old Testament. I am not going to judge people who have
been oppressed by others and who fight back."
The Hindu Web site is up and running
only because Mr. Guzofsky and other Kahane backers came to its rescue.
Several weeks ago, the company that ran the site's Internet server, Addr.com
of Greenwood Village, Colo., notified Mr. Vyasmaan that it was canceling
its contract.
Matt Johnson, a representative of
Addr.com, said that the company had received complaints about offensive
content on the site, which contains historical accounts about Hinduism
and the centuries-long conflict between Hindus and Muslims in South Asia.
This week, a commentary on the site called on Hindus "to stand up and take
arms" against Muslims in India, urging them to "exterminate and banish"
them. The site also urged Hindus to "Fight if you must! Die if you must!"
Mr. Johnson said representatives
from HinduUnity.org contended that the Web site was informational and did
not advocate violence. But after three days of telephone calls between
New York and Colorado, Mr. Johnson said, the company decided to pull the
plug, saying that HinduUnity.org was a hate site.
When Mr. Vyasmaan got word of the
decision, his first call was to Mr. Guzofsky's office at the Hatikva Jewish
Identity Center in Brooklyn. Mr. Guzofsky had run into a similar problem
in December, when he was forced to find a new server because of complaints
about the Kahane site. Mr. Guzofsky was in Israel, but he returned the
phone call within hours and quickly set out to solve Mr. Vyasmaan's problem.
The solution came by means of a
businessman in Annandale, Va., Gary Wardell, who designs and services Web
sites and who branched out into the server business last year. Mr. Wardell
offered to help Mr. Guzofsky in December when he read about kahane.org's
problems, eventually taking on the job as the Kahane site's host. Although
Mr. Wardell said he is converting to Judaism from Christianity and has
taken an avid interest in the teachings of Rabbi Kahane, he said his motivation
in assisting Mr. Guzofsky was as much financial as religious.
"I am a small business and I need
customers," Mr. Wardell said. "Sometimes when you have bills to pay, that
takes the focus of your attention."
Early last month, when Mr. Guzofsky
told him about HinduUnity.org, Mr. Wardell agreed to a similar business
relationship for the same bottom-line reasons, he said.
Mr. Guzofsky said his group had
not officially endorsed the views on the Hindu Web site, but they support
the right of the Hindus to express them. For that reason, there is a link
to HinduUnity.org on the Kahane Web site and, Mr. Guzofsky posted an announcement
this week about the Hindu protest outside the United Nations.
"It is a core issue of free speech,"
Mr. Guzofsky said. "We have made it clear to the folks at HinduUnity.org
that if their site ever comes down again, we will offer them a mirror site
with ours so people can be updated concerning their events. I would hope
they would do the same for us."
Mr. Vyasmaan said there is no doubt
that the favor would be returned. Already, he said, Hindus associated with
the Web site have written to Congress urging that the two Kahane political
parties be removed from the State Department's list of terrorist organizations.
It is a cause very dear to Mr. Guzofsky, who said he was recently asked
by the authorities to submit fingerprints and handwriting samples for use
in their investigation into his Brooklyn operations.
Mr. Vyasmaan said doubters of the
Hindu-Jewish commitment need to look no further than his home in Flushing,
where he displays a large picture of Rabbi Kahane.
"He was a great man," Mr. Vyasmaan
said. "It almost appeared as if he was speaking for the Hindus."
