The Republican National Committee (RNC), at their winter meeting in New Orleans, unanimously adopted a resolution that appears to support a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Journalist Mitchell Plitnik broke the story on his blog that the RNC passed the resolution, authored by a supporter of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential bid. The full text can be found at Plitnik’s post, but the relevant section reads thusly:

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the members of this body support Israel in their natural and God-given right of self-governance and self-defense upon their own lands, recognizing that Israel is neither an attacking force nor an occupier of the lands of others; and that peace can be afforded the region only through a united Israel governed under one law for all people.

The RNC had not promoted the resolution in the media, so Plitnik wrote to confirm its authenticity. RNC National Committeewoman from South Carolina Cindy Costa sponsored the resolution, so Plitnick wrote to her to confirm the authenticity of the resolution. Here’s the exchange between Costa — who just yesterday endorsed Romney — and Plitnik, who published the e-mails on his blog:

Me: Dear Ms. Costa,
[...] I just wanted to check with you that this was in fact an officially adopted RNC resolution. Can you please let me know? Thanks.

Costa: Yes it was adopted unanimously by the RNC last Friday at our winter meeting in New Orleans. Cindy

As Plitnik notes, the resolution endorses “one law for all people.” “So,” Plitnik writes, “there is no interpretation possible other than that the RNC is also advocating complete Israeli annexation of the West Bank, including granting citizenship to the Palestinians living there.”

The RNC resolution “confirms the decades long bipartisan consensus on a two-state solution is shattered,” J Street tweeted today.

A two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been the official U.S. policy of the Clinton, W. Bush and Obama administrations. The Center for American Progress has more on the importance of the two-state solution here.

Alabama, already home to the country’s most radical anti-immigration law, may soon have another overreaching and dubious law targeting a largely invented threat from a minority group. State Sen. Cam Ward (R) introduced an amendment to the state Constitution earlier this month that would to ban Islamic Sharia law in the state.

As the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch blog notes, Ward’s “American and Alabama Laws for Alabama Courts Amendment” is “clearly drawn from model legislation drafted by anti-Muslim lawyer David Yerushalmi” — a key figure in the Islamophobia network mapped in a recent report from by the Center for American Progress. Who is Yerushalmi? Hatewatch explains:

[Yerushalmi] equates Shariah with Islamic radicalism so totally that he advocates criminalizing virtually any personal practice that is compliant with Shariah. His “American Laws for American Courts” initiative enjoys support from Muslim-hating blogger Pam Geller, who plumbed new depths of foulness this week by expressing her “love” for the U.S. marines who were videotaped urinating on dead Taliban combatants.

Yerushalmi, who says the “War on Terror” should be a war against Islam “and all Muslim faithful,” has also proposed to outlaw Islam and deport Muslims and other “non-Western, non-Christian” people to protect the United States’ “national character.”

While the law would have nowhere near the negative impact of Alabama’s immigration law — indeed, it may have zero impact as the threat from Sharia law is entirely fictional — the proposed amendment underscores the pervasiveness of Sharia hysteria in the conservative movement. Similar versions of the law have already been passed in Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona.

According to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, less than half of a percent of Alabamians are Muslim.

A similar law in Oklahoma was recently struck down by a federal court, but legal experts said Alabama’s law — if enacted — may survive because it doesn’t explicitly mention “Sharia.”

Newt Gingrich’s statement that he would only support Muslim presidential candidates if they “would commit in public to give up Sharia” was met by harsh comments from both Muslim American organizations and academic experts on Islamic law. “Newt Gingrich’s vision of America segregates our citizens by faith. His outdated political ideas look backward to a time when Catholics and Jews were vilified and their faiths called a threat,” said Council of American Islamic Relations (CAIR) Legislative Director Corey Sayolor.

But Gingrich’s anti-Muslim crusade found an ally with noted Islamophobe Frank Gaffney. Gaffney, the president of the Center for Security Policy, leaped on Gingrich’s anti-Shariah comments yesterday in a column for National Review Online and on his radio show, Secure Freedom Radio. His column reads:

Newt is absolutely right in making such a distinction [between a "moderate person who worships Allah" or "a person who belonged to any kind of belief in sharia, any kind of effort to impose that on the rest of us]. The danger we currently face from the so-called Muslim world arises not from the fact that people are Muslim, but from the extent to which they adhere to the totalitarian, supremacist Islamic doctrine of sharia.

Speaking on his radio show yesterday, Gaffney took a similar line:

With his successive warnings about sharia…Newt Gingrich has, in my judgement, rendered a real public service. We must know who are enemies are and we must defeat, not accommodate, those who in the name of Sharia are obliged to wage Jihad against us. And we must keep America Sharia free.

But Gaffney’s concerns about religious and personal freedoms rarely extend to Muslim Americans. Last year, he said:

A mosque that is used to promote a seditious program, which is what Sharia is…that is not a protected religious practice, that is in fact sedition.

Newt Gingrich makes no secret of his hostility toward Muslims but Frank Gaffney’s defacto endorsement — he also picked up an endorsement from anti-Muslim activist and Gaffney ally Pamela Geller — might not be helpful as Gingrich attempts to appeal to moderate voters and chip away at Mitt Romney’s momentum in the primaries. Gaffney is a noted member of the Islamophobic far-right and his organization, the Center for Security Policy, was highlighted as a major nexus for the anti-Sharia initiatives sweeping the country in the Center for American Progress’s report, Fear, Inc.