From Ian:
New York Times Accuses Jewish Billionaires of Dragging US Into War With Iran
New York Times Accuses Jewish Billionaires of Dragging US Into War With Iran
The New York Times op-ed page carries an article by Lawrence Wilkerson headlined “A Familiar Road to War.” It warns, with zero factual basis, that the Trump administration is about to invade Iran the same way the George W. Bush administration invaded Iraq.2013: Wilkerson’s Shame. And Colin Powell’s
It’s a mystery what the Times is doing running a piece from this guy in the first place. As has been noted by both Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute and Dexter Van Zile of the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, Wilkerson went on television to speculate, groundlessly, that a poison gas attack on Syrian civilians “could have been an Israeli false flag operation.” (Thanks to online watchdog Mark Jacobs for tipping me off to this on Twitter.)
Second, once the Times piece went up online, it became clear pretty rapidly that there were some accuracy problems.
The website Newsdiffs tracks the changes — at least four different versions of the article. The piece originally said, “Today, the analysts claiming close ties between Al Qaeda and Iran come from the Foundation for Defense of Democracy, which vehemently opposes the Iran nuclear deal and unabashedly calls for regime change in Iran, while taking money from hawks like Sheldon Adelson and Paul Singer, who have made clear what their goals are with Iran.” About six hours after publishing the original piece, the Times stealth-edited it by correcting the name of the research and advocacy group to “the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.” If the Times is going, falsely, to accuse a think tank of dragging America into war with Iran on false pretenses, the least you can ask is that the Times would spell the organization’s name correctly. Alas, the Times couldn’t even initially manage that bare-bones level of accuracy.
Then, nearly ten hours after the original piece was published online, the Times deleted entirely the references to Messrs. Singer and Adelson, and appended a correction:
Correction: February 5, 2018
An earlier version of this article included outdated information about the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. Sheldon Adelson is no longer a donor to the organization.
On May 2, Lawrence Wilkerson, a close confidant of Colin Powell who served as chief-of-staff during Powell’s tenure as secretary of state, raised eyebrows when he told Current TV that reports of Syrian chemical weapons use might have been Israeli “false flag operations.” His pronouncement—which was part speculation and part sourced to his friends in the intelligence community—was quickly picked up and rebroadcast as fact by such outlets as Iran’s Press TV and Hezbollah’s Al-Manar.Colonel Kemp: Those that deny Israel’s right to exist are modern-day Nazis
As the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) points out, this is hardly the first time Wilkerson has made bizarre accusations, but CAMERA does not go far enough. Wilkerson acted as a definitive source for any number of stories throughout the Bush administration until now. As Powell’s chief-of-staff, journalists accepted his pabulum uncritically, never asking whether Wilkerson was at meetings for which he purported to offer first-hand accounts. The fact is that chiefs-of-staff do not go to meetings; they manage offices. Many of those whom Wilkerson pretends to have had conversations with say they never met him.
Nevertheless, Wilkerson remains central to some of the most pernicious—and false—rumors and conspiracies surrounding George W. Bush’s tenure:
“The documentary film ‘Whose Land?’ is not intended to justify the right to exist of the state of Israel. I find such an argument abhorrent. Questioning Israel’s right to exist is pure antisemitism. Such fundamental prejudice should not be dignified by response or contrary argument. How often is the right of Great Britain to exist called into question? Or the United States, Germany, France, China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, any other country. How often is the right to exist of any country other than Israel questioned, argued over, debated, discussed? To do so is exceptional. Exception applied only to the Jewish State. It therefore amounts to antisemitism pure and simple.
In Nazi Germany, the right of Jews to own businesses to own property, to join the professions to go to school to receive medical treatment to live a normal life in the community. All of these were denied them.
Today, Israel’s enemies demand that the Jewish state be isolated, ostracised, banished from the community of nations. These people are the Nazis of the 21st century. Their arguments must not be dignified with a response. These modern-day Nazis are responsible for the greatest slur campaign in the history of humanity spreading false narratives, falsifying and distorting history, lying, deriding, rejecting and despising without cause and for one purpose to abolish the nation state of the Jewish people, Israel.
‘Whose Land?’ does not set out to justify the right of Israel to exist. Instead, it simply tells the truth – a truth that is clear, undeniable and unequivocal. The truth, that for the sake of human civilization and decency, must be heard above the growing cacophony of those who clamour to turn the world against the Jewish state and whose false propaganda not only maligns the innocent and brain washes the unwary but also incites violence and inflames hatred.


















