The Supreme Court decided Monday (Feb. 23) to consider a case about a controversial eight-foot cross that was erected as a war memorial on federal property in California.
The legal battle surrounding the memorial in the Mohave National Preserve in San Bernardino County, Calif., has pitted veterans groups against advocates for church-state separation.
In this special episode of The Bulletin, host Mike Cosper sits down with senior vice president of research at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Jonathan Schanzer, to talk about the terrorist backstory of the Israel-Hamas conflict. Peeling back the layers of history, Cosper and Schanzer discuss the origin story of Hamas, Hezbollah’s involvement in spreading Islamism, and Iran’s aggressive influence in an already fragile region.
Joining us this week:
Dr. Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), where he oversees the work of the organization’s experts and scholars. He is also on the leadership team of FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power, a project on the use of financial and economic power as a tool of statecraft. Jonathan previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the US Department of the Treasury, where he played an integral role in the designation of numerous terrorist financiers. Jonathan has written hundreds of articles on the Middle East, along with more than a dozen monographs and chapters for edited volumes. His book, Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine, is still the only book on the market that analyzes the ongoing Palestinian civil war. Jonathan testifies often before Congress and publishes widely in American and international media. He has appeared on American television channels such as Fox News and CNN, and Arabic language television channels such as Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera.
Listen to More in This Bonus Series:
Making Sense of the Israel-Hamas War
Antisemitism and the Jewish Identity
Hamas and the Laws of War
“The Bulletin” is a production of Christianity Today
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Producers: Clarissa Moll and Matt Stevens
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Editing and Mix: David LaChance
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Social Media: Kate Lucky
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the cross and a 2004 congressional statute designed to maintain its placement is unconstitutional.
“It is bad enough to say that the veterans’ memorial is unconstitutional, but it is outrageous to say that the government cannot give the monument back to the people who spilled their blood and put it there in the first place,” said Kelly Shackelford, chief counsel of Liberty Legal Institute and attorney for the VFW and other veterans
groups, which sought the high court’s review of the case.
After the National Park Service denied a request to erect a Buddhist shrine in the preserve, a visitor to the preserve sued in 2001 because the property was not “open to groups and individuals to erect other free-standing, permanent displays.”
The American Civil Liberties Union has represented that visitor, Frank Buono, a former assistant superintendent at the preserve.
“The appeals court rightly found that the statute did not solve the Establishment Clause problem created by a large cross in the midst of a National Preserve,” said Peter Eliasberg, managing attorney with the ACLU of Southern California. “In fact, it compounded the problem by continuing to favor this one religious symbol that had already been granted unique access to federal property.”
The Supreme Court is already mulling another case involving government property and religious symbols. It heard arguments in the fall about whether a small Utah religious sect should be permitted to erect a monument of its beliefs in a city park that already includes a Ten Commandments monument.
