Two years ago, Kayla Mueller, a human rights activist and worker with Doctors Without Borders, was kidnapped by al-Qaeda in Iraq–now known as the Islamic State, or ISIS. Yesterday, Mueller’s family in Prescott, Arizona confirmed that their daughter had been killed while in ISIS custody as early as four days ago. While American outlets had reported for some time ISIS had an American aid worker in its clutches, her name had been withheld at her family’s request. ISIS claims that Mueller was killed in a Jordanian air strike, but that hasn’t been confirmed. What is beyond dispute, however, is that the chances of Mueller getting a decent burial are somewhere between slim and none.
Well, Mueller’s family got another kick in the groin last night from right-wing blogger, sometime columnist, and virulent Islamophobe Debbie Schlussel. According to Ha’aretz of Israel, Mueller spent the late summer of 2010 in the West Bank volunteering with the International Solidarity Movement, a pro-Palestinian activist group. She took part in several anti-Israel protests and worked to keep Israeli settlers from taking over Palestinian homes. That didn’t sit well with Schlussel. The title of her piece made it all too obvious where she was going; she called Mueller a “Jew-hating, anti-Israel bitch.” It went downhill from there; to Schlussel’s mind, Mueller was “a Jew-hating, anti-Israel piece of crap” who worked hand-in-glove with Hamas to prevent Israeli soldiers from “doing their job of keeping Islamic terrorists out of Israel.”
Schlussel added that she has no sympathy for any American held hostage by ISIS, since to a (wo)man “every single one of these hostages has been a leftist America-hater.” For that reason, whenever one of them dies, her attitude is “so sad, too bad.” She thinks it was “poetic justice” that Mueller died at the hands of ISIS, since the supposedly thought she had “some sort of kinship and sisterhood” with them.
I’ve seen some pretty outrageous things from right-wing bloggers, commentators and speakers over the years. And as many of you know, I was in the very belly of the beast of a religious right/dominionist outfit in my college days–so I’ve seen some of the worst the far right has to offer first hand. But if this isn’t the most disgusting piece of bile I’ve ever seen from a right-winger, it comes pretty close.? Nothing Mueller did comes even close to justifying something as callous and hateful as what Schlussel wrote. Whatever you may think about her politics, at no point did Mueller lose her right to human dignity. Schlussel must have forgotten that when she took to her computer. I have to wonder–how would Schlussel feel if someone attacked her daughter or niece online in this way?
Schlussel has been getting deservedly slammed both on the comments section of her blog and on Facebook. It’s pretty telling, though, that as I write this, 120 people actually like the post on Facebook and 21 people have favorited it on Twitter. Those people, like Schlussel, have a warped notion of decency.
It’s not the first time that Schlussel has claimed that people somehow deserved to die for opposing Israel. Back in 2011, she wrote that the victims of Anders Behring Brevik’s rampage on the Utoya Island youth summer camp were getting a heavy dose of karma because “they sided with Islamic terrorists.” Schlussel was angered by a picture taken a day before, in which members of the Labor Party’s youth wing, which ran the camp, called for a boycott of Israel in favor of supporting a Palestinian state. While she condemned Brevik’s actions, she also called his victims “hateful, privileged brats” who didn’t deserve her support because they “support my would-be assassins.” Um, Debbie? They were still people, they still got mowed down by a madman–and they have families too.
As little as I think of, say, John Hagee, it would be equally wrong for a liberal blogger to trash a missionary from his church if he or she were ever taken hostage by an Islamist group. Just because I may disagree with someone’s politics doesn’t mean you can feel at least some empathy when that person is captured by the enemy. At that point, politics simply doesn’t matter–or at least it shouldn’t. Then again, a significant portion of Schlussel’s audience probably didn’t have any problem with the New York Post trashing Chelsea Clinton’s newborn baby. Morally speaking, what Schlussel did here is no different.
If Schlussel has anything at all left in her, she will issue a full and unreserved apology to Mueller’s family–and none of this “sorry if anyone was offended” baloney either. Otherwise, by all rights this should be her Sandra Fluke moment.
