REPORT (NOW DENIED): Muslim Leaders Will Abandon Ground Zero Mosque Plans (UPDATED

We just put up a report that so far seems to be untrue. The Ground Zero Mosque is apparently going forward.

Here’s our original lead, what we had and the updated material on the bottom:
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports that Muslim leaders will soon announce plans to abandon building a mosque two blocks away from Ground Zero – a plan that has been inaccurately described as being at Ground Zero as critics leave out the part about it also being a community center.

(Read Eugene Robinson’s column today HERE if you have not read it)

After weeks of heated debate over plans for an Islamic community center near Ground Zero – the site of the 9/11 attacks on New York – it seems Muslim leaders will soon back down, agreeing to move to a new site.

The decision follows a high-profile campaign against the project that included advertisements on New York buses showing images of the burning Twin Towers, an iconic landmark razed when al-Qaida terrorists flew packed passenger planes into them in 2001. The New York Republican party is also said to be planning a hostile television campaign.

Sources in New York said on Monday that Muslim religious and business leaders will announce plans to abandon the project in the next few days.

New York Governor David Paterson said last weekend that Muslim leaders had rejected outright his proposal to swap the site in for another in Manhattan.

But several people familiar with the debate among New York’s Islamic activists now claim that the leaders are convinced abandoning the site is preferable to unleashing a wave of bitterness towards Muslims.

Which raises these questions:

Will those who accused the Muslims who wanted to build it there for being insensitive now praise them for their decision not to build there, if this report turns out to be true? Or will there be a new line of attack? And if the Muslim leaders propose a new site, will some reason be found by some to oppose that location as well?

Will this still be a campaign issue in 2010 given the controversy over President Barack Obama’s statements backing the plan to build the mosque there in which he cited rights under the American constitution? Most likely answer: there will be an attempt to keep the issue alive by showing video of Obama’s statement which would, in effect, be going after Obama and also continuing to use Muslims (and Obama’s defending them) as a wedge issue during an election year when the GOP is already using illegal immigrants (mostly from Mexico) as a wedge issue.

Will this cool rhetoric by some Republicans such former Speaker Newt Gingrich, who essentially implied the Muslim backers of the mosque are like Nazis and by implication that Islam is like Nazism, whether that was his intent or not? (If you believe that I can sell you THIS for one dollar).

UPDATE: (Thanks to Doug Mataconis for the tip). Foreign Policy’s Passport blog says it’s not true. Here’s the key part:

The official Twitter account of Park51, the developer constructing the center, has now stepped in to deny the story. “Reports by Haaretz are completely false,” tweeted @Park51. “We are committed to plans of building Park 51 to serve the community of Lower Manhattan.

Score one for American media. And cross Haaretz off your list of sources for news on this story.

JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.

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