Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Search results for rania khalek

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Wednesday, November 02, 2016

11/02 Links Pt1: Jews Die, Turks Celebrate; The rise and fall of Ari Shavit; Hamas bids to join PLO

From Ian:

PMW: Fatah glorifies PA Police officer-turned-terrorist: "Heroic Martyr"

Emphasizing his position with the Palestinian Authority Police, Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Movement glorified the perpetrator of yesterday's terror attack as a “heroic Martyr” and “the Martyr police officer”. Terrorist Muhammad Turkeman shot and wounded 3 Israeli soldiers.
In two posts on Facebook, Fatah specifically stressed that terrorist Turkeman was an “officer in the [PA] Palestinian police special forces”, using several hashtags to underscore this point:
“#The_Martyr_police_officer
#Palestinian_Authority_[Security_]Forces_member”
“#The_police_officer_Martyr
[Official Fatah Facebook page, Oct. 31, 2016]
Fatah included photos of terrorist Turkeman in posts that praised him for carrying out the "shooting operation”. In one he poses with an assault rifle, and in another he is shown wearing his PA Police uniform with a Kalashnikov assault rifle next to him.

MEMRI: Palestinian Social Media Reacts To Shooting Attack At Beit El Carried Out By Palestinian Policeman: Praise For Attacker, Calls For Other Palestinian Security Personnel To Carry Out Further Attacks

On October 31, 2016, Muhammad 'Abd Al-Khaleq Turkman, a 25-year-old Palestinian policeman, carried out a shooting attack at a checkpoint in Beit El, wounding three Israeli soldiers, one of them seriously. Turkman's brother Rabi'a, who was killed in 2011, was an official in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade and the Popular Resistance Committees, and was active in confrontations with Israel during the Al-Aqsa Intifada.[1]
Following the attack, Palestinian social media users posted images and banners praising Turkman and his attack. Such posts also appeared on the Facebook pages of Fatah offices in the West Bank, and even on Fatah's official Facebook page, which referred to Turkman as "the hero martyr."
Facebook pages associated with Hamas featured calls for Palestinian security forces personnel to carry out similar attacks as part of the current Al-Quds Intifada that began in October 2015. Social networks also saw use of the hashtags "The Resisting Policeman" and "The Martyr Policeman."

JCPA: Have Some of the Palestinian Security Forces Gone Rogue?

On October 31, 2016, another attack was carried out by a Palestinian Security Services officer at an IDF checkpoint. Three IDF soldiers were wounded; the Palestinian officer Muhammed Turkman was killed.
Previous attacks occurred at the Hizma checkpoint adjacent to Jerusalem. The latest attack took place at the Ramallah District Coordination Office (DCO) checkpoint, a passage that oversees a road that is the Palestinian Authority’s Muqata (headquarters) lifeline. This checkpoint is the only one that serves senior PA officials and foreign diplomats as a gateway to and from Ramallah. The other checkpoints in the area (such as Qalandia and Beitunia) suffer from congestion and are off limits to PA officials. Practically, this means that the DCO checkpoint’s closure will amount to the disconnecting of the Muqata from the outside world, which may be the specific intention of those who perpetrated the attack.
The Palestinian Authority encourages incitement against cooperation with Israel while simultaneously stating that it is interested in continuing security cooperation. The PA cannot have its cake and eat it too.
Palestinian Security forces officers are portrayed in Palestinian Authority’s social media and by Fatah as traitors. It is only natural that these uniformed men try to regain their lost honor through terrorist attacks.

Hard times for Assad fan girl Rania Khalek (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

by Petra Marquardt-Bigman

About a week ago, popular anti-Israel activist Rania Khalek arrived for a visit in her ancestral Lebanon and was immediately disappointed. As she announced to her almost 100,000 Twitter followers: “I’m back in Lebanon for the 1st time in 9 years and struck by how few ppl care about Palestine & Israel. Ppl are consumed by Syria & ISIS.”

Given how freely she admitted that she was utterly clueless about what’s going on in the region to which she dedicates so much of her “journalistic” output, it’s perhaps useful to recall that Khalek told a fan last year in an interview: “I became a journalist by accident … I majored in exercise science and was working in cardiac rehabilitation and preparing to go to nursing school.” But then, some day in 2008, exercise science major Rania Khalek discovered by chance that the mainstream media kept all sorts of important news from her, and she promptly decided to do something about it; in particular, she soon began devoting herself to educating the world about the endless evils committed by Israel.

A noble mission, no doubt – but despite Khalek’s undeniable passion for her new calling, her ‘accidental’ journalism has begun to look more and more like a terrible train wreck. To be sure, none of Khalek’s fans were much disturbed by her openly displayed antisemitism, though there were a few raised eyebrows when she once tried to argue that a site promoting Holocaust denial also provided “completely factual” material about the unspeakable evils of Zionism. More recently, however, Khalek got caught in the backlash against her good friend Max Blumenthal, who alienated many of his fans when he tried to present the heroic Syrian rescuer group “White Helmets” as part of a sinister Western conspiracy against jolly good old Bashar Assad. In the ensuing controversy about the unsavory views of some prominent anti-Israel activists, it turned out that Khalek had been rightly accused of plagiarism. At about the same time, a piece she had written in late September for The Intercept – a publication co-founded by Israel-hater Glenn Greenwald – suddenly attracted sharp criticism; the article on the supposed impact of sanctions against the Assad regime was even denounced as “yellow journalism” and – somewhat belatedly, in my humble opinion – there were complaints about “Khalek’s demonstrable contempt for factual accuracy and [her] proven record of misleading readers.” I’ll admit that I’m tempted to say “I told you so”…

But Rania Khalek was far above such criticism, and soon after arriving in Lebanon, she confidently asked her fans to finance her trip to the region on which she had “reported” for years without having visited for almost a decade. As she writes in her fundraising appeal: “I wanted to go to the region first hand to get a real sense of what’s happening.” Initially, she wanted $ 12,000 for a month; in the meantime, she has become a bit more modest and is now asking for only $8000 (she has received pledges for almost $2800). Interestingly, she lists among the services she has to fund “translators,” which presumably means that even though her parents are Lebanese and she sometimes complains about experiencing discrimination as an Arab and Muslim, she doesn’t know Arabic.

Shortly after Khalek started her fundraising campaign, it became clear what had finally brought her to the Middle East: it was quite obviously not just the urge “to go to the region first hand,” but rather a “conference” organized by none other than Bashar al-Assad’s father-in-law. As the Guardian put it, “critics” were denouncing this conference as “little more than a Syrian regime propaganda exercise.” The announcement for the invitation-only event described it as a “workshop” under the rather cynical title “State of Play in Syria.” The program featured several “sanctioned war criminals” and, astonishingly, Khalek was listed as co-chair and presenter for a session on the effects of Western sanctions, where she perhaps planned to recycle her discredited Intercept article.

When she was faced with a fast and furious backlash on Twitter, Khalek decided to dig herself in a little bit deeper: she posted an utterly insincere statement, claiming she was just visiting Syria “with other international journalists” and that the conference would also be attended by “reporters from major international outlets” such as the New York Times and the Washington Post – that is to say: media outlets for which Khalek had always expressed nothing but contempt were suddenly useful for providing her some cover. She also claimed that she had thought she would participate in the conference under “Chatham House rules” – i.e. the identity of speakers and participants would remain confidential – which amounts to admitting that she had hoped it wouldn’t come out that she had agreed to co-chair a session and also serve as a speaker.

She was bitterly mocked in response, with some people including graphic images of the victims of Assad’s atrocities. Soon the criticism also extended to Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada, where she was not only a regular contributor but also an editor. Apparently, Abunimah was more interested in saving his own skin than in defending Khalek, and she eventually announced with considerable bitterness: “The outrageous attacks against me have expanded to @intifada. So I’m stepping down as an editor. The professional smear artists won.”

That turned out to be too little too late, as e.g. reflected in the disappointed musings of one fairly prominent (former) Intifada fan who lamented: “After years of fine journalism, the obtuse and abrasive nature of @intifada’s senior figures has caught up with them.” “Recent conduct of @intifada figures is a lesson for how you can build a strong activism brand, then destroy it in a few disastrous weeks.” “For years they used Palestine as a fig leaf; as an ‘instantly gain moral high ground’ card.” “I don’t know which is more sad. That @intifada shot itself in the foot, or that its leading figures were revealed for what they are.”

I will admit that I can see no reason for sadness – in fact, I think it’s great that leading anti-Israel activists have been “revealed for what they are.”

But Rania Khalek seems to be quite desperate now: she has posted yet another statement “[in] response to the ongoing deluge of questions, innuendo and attacks,” where she even admits that it was “a careless mistake” not to pay “close attention to the details of the workshop” – which she now claims not to have attended. That sounds like an admission that her critics were right, doesn’t it? It also sounds like an admission that her previous statement defending her participation in the workshop “under Chatham House rules” was just so much BS…

In the end, it has come to this: I find myself completely agreeing with a (now former) Intifada colleague of Rania Khalek: “If a journalist can’t figure out the nature of a conference she’s speaking at, she’s been discredited as a reliable judge of info + sources.”

And yes, this obviously means that Khalek didn’t resign from Abunimah’s Intifada, but that she was fired: “EI fires Rania Khalek. her now ex EI colleagues disavow her to try to preserve whatever appearances are left.”

Abunimah himself has taken a vacation from Twitter – perhaps he needs some time to figure out how best to preserve whatever appearances are left?

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Max Blumenthal triggers a wave of buyer’s remorse (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

by Petra Marquardt-Bigman

For the past few years, Max Blumenthal has worked hard to establish himself as a leading anti-Israel activist who is rightly celebrated wherever there are Jew-haters. But while Blumenthal’s “pro-Palestinian” fans could see nothing wrong with his “journalism” as long as it served to demonize Israel, they have come to reject the exact same kind of “journalism” as deeply offensive hackery when Blumenthal turned his attention to Syria. Since many people were hoping that Syria’s truly heroic rescuers known as “White Helmets” would get this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, Blumenthal apparently felt an irresistible urge to show off his journalistic brilliance by exposing the Syria Campaign – a group supporting the White Helmets – as an evil tool of the West. Not deceived by “the lofty rhetoric about solidarity and the images of heroic rescuers rushing in to save lives,” Blumenthal triumphantly discovered “an agenda that aligns closely with the forces from Riyadh to Washington clamoring for regime change.”

So brilliant and so obvious at the same time, isn’t it: given Bashar al-Assad’s benevolent rule, no Syrian could possibly want “regime change”…

The backlash against Blumenthal and his closest allies – notably Ali Abunimah and some of his Electronic Intifada writers – was quick and furious. Admittedly, it was a rather enjoyable spectacle, because a lot of the harsh criticism now voiced by disappointed fans (who want to see Israel gone as much as the likes of Blumenthal) could have been quoted from posts I and other critics of his screeds have written: suddenly people were ready to denounce “Max’s fact-free delusions” and his “smear pieces;” my personal favorite was perhaps when Blumenthal’s gonzo journalism was mocked in a tweet ridiculing how he usually concocts the “evidence” to indict his targets: “This NGO took money from a fund whose director once ate lunch in the same restaurant as an employee of an Islamophobe.” Incidentally, this is also an excellent description of the modus operandi regularly followed by Ali Abunimah and his Electronic Intifada crew.

Abunimah was quick to complain that this was a “coordinated smear campaign that’s been going on for months,” and naturally, he had no doubt about the sinister forces behind it all: it was, of course, an “Israel-lobby inspired smear campaign.” Stalwart Abunimah fans like the perpetually “Angry Arab” agreed: it just couldn’t be a “coincidence that the campaign is being directed against some of the bravest voices against Israel in the US.”

Abunimah reacted with a torrent of tweets hurling abuse against his critics – and his bullying ultimately paid off: a blog post under the title “Palestinians decry Western Assad apologists” named only Max Blumenthal and linked to a statement signed by about 120 “Palestinian signatories” that denounced unnamed “Allies We’re Not Proud Of.” The statement declared that the signatories “are embarrassed by the ways in which some individuals known for their work on Palestine have failed to account for some crucial context in their analysis of Syria” and decried the “tendency to heroize those who advocate on behalf of the Palestinian struggle,” vowing that the signatories would “no longer entertain individuals who fail to acknowledge the immediate concerns of besieged Syrians in their analysis.”

An Al Jazeera article on the controversy also avoided naming names, though the author forcefully condemned activists who regard the “Palestinian cause” merely as a convenient “platform … to vent their selective anti-imperialist outrage.” Interestingly, this article painted a rather dramatic picture of the controversy:

“The Palestine solidarity movement is facing an unprecedented internal crisis, brought about not by the conflict with Israel but by the war in Syria. The latter has caused divisions that are arguably deeper and more damaging than those over how to realise Palestinian rights and aspirations. While the effects of Palestinian political infighting have remained largely domestic, the fissures over Syria have taken on a global dimension, and created unparalleled hostility among supporters of the Palestinian cause.”

There was indeed quite a bit of “hostility” on social media, some of it helpfully documented by Ali Abunimah himself. One telling example is archived here: Abunimah complained that the “Syrian American Medical Assoc. launches incitement campaign against me/others, claims we’re paid by Assad/Russia.” And apparently, Abunimah didn’t like getting a taste of his own medicine: “This level of incitement – comparing us to Hitler – is getting to dangerous levels.” Abunimah also took offense when his dear friend Max Blumenthal got the Max Blumenthal treatment from erstwhile fans.

Clearly, Abunimah feels that Nazi smears should only be reserved for Israel.

The controversy also revealed a few interesting tidbits showing “pro-Palestinian” stars like Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek in a rather unflattering light. If Blumenthal really “went to Gaza &burst into tears at a Hamas checkpoint,” the boundless admiration he has expressed for Hamas perhaps also reflects some rather unhealthy psychological dispositions: the more brutal the bully, the more admiration Blumenthal will feel – which may well help to explain why Blumenthal has so much despisement for Israel and the US, and so much respect for Hamas, Assad, Russia and Iran.

But while I couldn’t find confirmation for the delightful insider rumor about Hamas reducing Blumenthal to tears, I did manage to find evidence for the accusation that Electronic Intifada “associate editor” Rania Khalek is a plagiarist: if you check out this 2008 post on “6 ‘Non-Lethal’ Weapons That’ll Make You Wish You Were Dead” and scroll to the comments, you will find one posted on August 4th, 2011, which says: “This article has recently been plagiarized by someone named Rania Khalek for a website called Alternet. It’s not even subtle. […] The title of the stolen article is ‘6 Creepy New Weapons the Police and Military Use To Subdue Unarmed People’ and it was published August 1st 2011.” Sure enough, there is such an Alternet article by Khalek, which is marked as “updated” at the beginning and adorned with an “EDITOR’S NOTE” at the end stating: “This article has been corrected since its original publication for more accurate attribution to original sources.” Isn’t this a delicate way to put it…

Khalek’s author archive at Alternet shows that her regular contributions at the site ended a few months later in January 2012, but resumed again after three years in January 2015 – and amazingly enough, the plagiarized piece was promptly recycled under the exact same title, without the “editor’s note” and without any hint that it had been published years earlier. I suppose that’s Alternet quality journalism …

Last but not least, the disappointment expressed by erstwhile Blumenthal fans offered many more revealing glimpses at how truly pathetic many supporters of the “Palestinian cause” are. One heartbroken Blumenthal fan lamented: “I regret writing a review of @MaxBlumenthal’s Gaza book for @MuftahOrg http://muftah.org/a-review-of-max-blumenthals-the-51-day-war-ruin-and-resistance-in-gaza/ … I see that he’s fallen as low as Rania Khalek.” Check out the linked review posted on July 29, 2015, and you’ll find the highest praise for the “fearless integrity that fuels Blumenthal’s reporting.” You’ll also find that this review is illustrated with an image of the aftermath of a deadly “explosion … at a public garden near Shifa hospital in Gaza City on July 28, 2014.” It’s hard to think of a better illustration for a review praising Blumenthal, because Israel had immediately said that the carnage was caused by Hamas rockets, and even Amnesty International ultimately conceded in the spring of 2015 that “the projectile was a Palestinian rocket.” Ignoring this fact is really a good example of Blumenthal-style “integrity”.

So here’s a lesson for erstwhile Blumenthal fan Joey Husseini Ayoub and the likes of him: if you hail a hack like Blumenthal who glorifies an Islamist terror group like Hamas for his “fearless integrity,” you just look utterly pathetic when you denounce him for serving as an apologist for Syria’s Assad: Hamas and Assad have pretty much the same concern for the people under their rule. Just as the current carnage in Syria is due to Assad’s determination to hold on to power, all the wars in Gaza in the last decade are due to Hamas’ cynical efforts to polish their credentials as the “Islamic Resistance Movement.”

But I suppose there’s really nothing more “pro-Palestinian” than to quickly forget how Hamas threw opponents from high-rises in Gaza, tortured them and dragged their bodies through the streets, or executed them ISIS-style on public squares – a spectacle that was actually defended by Ali Abunimah. Maybe Max Blumenthal recalled atrocities like these when he burst into tears at a Hamas checkpoint: it must be really scary to be at the mercy of people who treat their own like this – even if you’re a “journalist” who came to glorify those brutal bullies.

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09/29 Links Pt1: Scores of Israelis arrive at Knesset to pay tribute to Peres

From Ian:

President Reuven Rivlin: You were our heart

I am writing to you for the last time, Shimon, "one president to another," as you would say every time you called to lend me support and advice, after I followed you into this office. As a young boy, you proposed adopting the surname "Ben Amotz," the name of the prophet Isaiah, a man of vision.
You, however, were not only a visionary, but a man of action as well.
You had the rare ability to formulate an idea that seemed unbelievable and turn it into reality. Your gaze was affixed far afield, your hands worked ceaselessly, and your feet traveled boundlessly on the path of Zionist and Jewish history. Your steps, Shimon, were always pointed upward and onward.
Like a mountain climber who first plants a stake in the ground and then assaults the summit, you lived your life, Shimon. First you dreamed, picturing the summit in your mind and your soul; and like a professional climber, once you were able to envision the State of Israel on the next summit -- you would begin the arduous climb, dragging us all with you, toward the objective.
You were able to move the most intractable of statesmen and thaw the hearts of our toughest adversaries. You strove toward the pinnacle of the Zionist dream -- an independent country living in peace with its neighbors -- and you received the most distinguished recognition, the Nobel Peace Prize.

Shimon Peres: A Life for Israel

The death of Shimon Peres yesterday at the age of 93 is a moment to take stock not only of one of the most remarkable Jewish figures of the last hundred years but of the history of the state of Israel, which he served for his entire adult life. As a longtime aide to Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, who then went on to serve in just about every significant position of authority in the state, Peres’s story is very much that of his nation. And it is in that context, rather than solely through the prism of some of the policy choices he advocated, that his enormous contributions to Israel must be judged.
As one of Ben Gurion’s “boys,” it was Peres more than any other person, in his capacity as the director general of the Defense Ministry, who helped build Israel’s security infrastructure and its defense industry. His diplomacy was key to the alliance Israel struck with France in this period. That not only led to the Suez Campaign of 1956 (a great success for Israel even if it was a disaster for Britain and France), Israel’s acquisition of its first generation of sophisticated weaponry, and the birth of its nuclear program. He went on to follow his boss out of government and into opposition but he resurfaced as a leader of the Labor Party and served in a variety of posts, including minister of defense and two stints as prime minister despite never winning a national election in his own right.
But it is not for his role as the organizer of Israel’s defense in an era when its security hung by a thread that he is best remembered. Rather, his political legacy rests more on his actions as foreign minister, when he served in the government of his longtime bitter rival Yitzhak Rabin in the early 1990s. Peres was the driving force behind the decision to reach out to the Palestine Liberation Organization and to try and end the conflict with the Arabs that had begun long before Israel’s founding. Though he shared a Nobel Peace Prize with Rabin and the PLO’s Yasir Arafat, he was the one who not only pushed hardest for the agreement that would be known as the Oslo Peace Accords but was also the one who actually believed in what they were doing.
Peres liked to describe himself as more of a philosopher than a politician. This label explained his devotion to the idea that a land-for-peace deal could end decades of warfare in the face of facts that persuaded more sober figures it was bound to fail. His goal was not so much a security agreement as the creation what he hopefully described as a “New Middle East”—the title of the book he wrote about his objectives published in the midst of the post-Oslo euphoria in 1994—in which the dangerous neighborhood in which the Jewish state dwelled would be transformed into a Benelux on the Mediterranean.

"Journalist" Rania Khalek must really hate Palestinian victims of Hamas

On Twitter, Electronic Intifada's Rania Khalek has an interesting series of tweets trying to draw a distinction between Hamas and ISIS:

Hmmm. Hamas has used Palestinians as human shields by every definition of the term, telling civilians to stay in their homes when the IDF warned them of upcoming bombs and physically forcing Fatah members to stay as human shields.

And while Hamas may not have beheaded people, they certainly executed them. Publicly. Even according to Amnesty.

So why does a pro-Palestinian activist support the murder and use of human shields of other Palestinians?

Because Hamas' main enemy is Jewish Israelis. And she can forgive a few indiscretions against her own people as long as Hamas' main aim is the righteous murder of Jews.

This is what Rania, and Electronic Intifada, stand for.

(h/t YMikarov)

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09/26 Links Pt2: Kontorovich: The Palestinians illegal ‘football war’ against Israel; Israel qualifies for its first-ever World Baseball Classic game

From Ian:

Eugene Kontorovich: The Palestinians unsporting and illegal ‘football war’ against Israel

Human Rights Watch published a long, graphics-rich report on Sunday denouncing Israeli semi-pro soccer (football) clubs in towns in the West Bank. A few weeks ago, a group of European Parliament members sent a letter along similar lines to FIFA, the international soccer governing body. The parliament members argue the clubs violate international law, and for good measure, the FIFA constitution, and call for the expulsion of the teams, or Israel itself, from world soccer.
These efforts are all part of a broad Palestinian push to pressure Israeli in international forums. The legal arguments raised in these documents are entirely contrived. They contradict longstanding FIFA practice and create a double standard for Israel. And that’s just not sporting.
The human rights claims in the Human Rights Watch (HRW) report are tendentious — they assert that the local soccer leagues (all quite small-time) are “making the settlements more sustainable, thus propping up” the system. Most of the communities in question are just a few kilometers from the 1949 Jordanian-Israeli armistice line and would remain in Israel in all the major two-state proposals; their residents typically commute to work in bigger nearby cities. It is laughable to think anyone would leave them if the football league moved a few kilometers down the road. In any case, contrary to the HRW’s claims, there is simply no support in international law for prohibiting business in occupied territories, as British and French courts have recently affirmed.
Indeed, Morocco maintains a team, part of its national football federation, in occupied Western Sahara. Yet the HRW completely fails to mention this fact in its report. The human rights abuses in Western Sahara — where the majority of the population are Moroccan settlers and the indigenous population has been heavily displaced — are too vast to recount. No one — including the HRW and the Parliament members — has suggested expelling Morocco on account of its team, based deep in land taken from the Sahrawi.
The football-as-human rights-violation arguments against Israel are tendentious and prove too much. So those campaigning against Israel rely principally on a lawyerly claim about FIFA’s rules: The clubs “clearly violate FIFA’s statutes, according to which clubs from one member association cannot play on the territory of another member association without its and FIFA’s consent,” the members claim.
Curiously, the Parliament members and the think tanks that support them do not cite any statutes saying this. And that is because the statutes specifically do not say that — and numerous precedents show it is not how they are understood.

Lib Dems: Tonge’s ‘Jewish power’ article not anti-Semitic

By sharing an article about “Jewish power” in British politics, former Lib Dem peer Baroness Jenny Tonge was not being racist, according to the Liberal Democrats.
The ruling, from the party’s Regional Parties Committee, follows a complaint from Gary Spedding, a liberal activist in Northern Ireland, who took issue with Tonge sharing an article by Israeli musician Gilad Atzmon.
Tonge, who is a strong critic of Israel, is no longer a Lib Dem peer and sits in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher. While she remains a member of the party, she does not speak for it in an official capacity.
Relaying the decision, a Lib Dem spokeswoman says: “Having reviewed your complaint, our view is that an opinion can be controversial – and even offensive – but still fall short of being racist.”
She explained: “We are a liberal party that places immense value on freedom of speech… That includes the freedom to criticise in the strongest terms the actions of states and governments and the causal effects of their policies… Any desire not to offend also needs to be balanced against the right to criticise in the strongest terms the actions of states and governments.”
Spedding, who had called for Tonge to be thrown out of the party altogether, said was left “speechless” by the response to the complaint.

UK's Liberal Democrats suspend former MP for alleged antisemitic tweets

A party member of the United Kingdom's Liberal Democrats has been been suspended after posting a series of alleged antisemitic tweets to social media, The Jewish Chronicle reported Sunday.
Matthew Gordon Banks was sacked by the faction after accusing party leader MP Timothy James "Tim" Farron of winning his position due to "London Jews" financing his campaign.
“What fascinates me is that Farron's leadership campaign was organized and funded by London Jews,” Banks posted to Twitter earlier in the week.

Rania Khalek is a Nazi - if you embrace @intifada's reporting style

The screaming headline top story at Electronic Intifada on Sunday and most of Monday was this one by Rania Khalek:

Khalek and EI head Ali Abunimah want readers to associate being "pro-Israel" with racism and hatred of Muslims. And this crazy habitual criminal from Florida is all they need for their bigoted readers to connect the dots.

As Khalek says:

In a 12 July Facebook post, Schreiber wrote, “ALL ISLAM IS RADICAL , and should be considered TERRORIST AND CRIMANALS [sic].”

With such rhetoric, Schreiber was echoing the anti-Muslim messages emanating from organizations and high-profile individuals who have been spewing anti-Muslim hatred for years.

And who are those individuals and organizations? Follow the links and you find many pro-Israel organizations and people who are surely against Islamic terror and Islamic political extremism, but most of whom do not in any way "spew anti-Muslim hatred."

Under EI's rules of journalism, if you can find any link between a criminal bigot and a Zionist - they vote for the same party, for example - then the Zionist is proven to be bigoted. If A and B both belong to set C then A=B. This is the false equivalence fallacy and it is Electronic Intifada's lifeblood.

EI has a long history of using guilt by association using this fallacy. It does it to an insane degree - it appears that if someone's uncle's dog's previous owner once said something that could be interpreted as pro-Israel, they label him as a "Zionist extremist." Using this bizarre logic, Khalek once attempted to link me with Anders Behring Breivik using a post where I explicitly called him evil, a psychopath and a terrorist. (Max Blumenthal eagerly picked up on that association, showing that his journalistic standards are exactly equal to those of Electronic Intifada.)

If those are the rules, then we can safely link Rania Khalek and Ali Abunimah with everyone who shares their opinions that a Jewish state should not exist. By their own rules, the editors and fans of Electronic Intifada can all be associated with neo-Nazis.

And ISIS.

And the KKK.

And Syria's president Assad. And Saddam Hussein. And Iran's Ayatollah Khamenei. And Islamic Jihad. And Hamas.

In fact, if Khalek can associate a crazed arsonist with pro-Israel organizations who she claims are Islamophobic (most of them aren't, by any sane definition), then it would make a great deal of sense to associate Khalek and Abunimah with the Palestinian who used a meat cleaver to slice up a New York cop, and who had previously harassed Jews by screaming "Allahu Akbar" outside a synagogue. He is just doing what his fellow Palestinians like to do to civilians in Israel. After all, there is no doubt that the madman was pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, just like they are. Therefore, by their logic, they are associated with their fellow Arab who attacks innocent New Yorkers.

But why stop there? The 9/11 terrorists also shared the same anti-Israel and anti-American philosophy Khalek and Abunimah do. Therefore, Khalek is linked to Al Qaeda, using her own methods of fact-finding and journalism! She's just as bad as Bin Laden, who hated Israel just like Khalek does!

(Actually, the links between Abunimah/Khalek and antisemitism are far closer than the links they try to forge between Zionists and racists. After all, they explicitly deny the right of the Jewish people to self-determination.)

I don't need to resort to such lazy and illogical methods to smear haters like those who write for Electronic Intifada. Their own lies damn them directly. But it is important to show how low they are willing to go to push their agenda by using their major weapons of guilt by association and false equivalence - even when there is no association to speak of.

Why do they rely so heavily on this method?

Because when it comes down to actually debating facts and ideas, they've got nothing.

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“The Jews are our misfortune” – 21st century edition (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

The slogan “Die Juden sind unser Unglück“ – i.e. “The Jews are our misfortune“ was popular in Nazi propaganda. It appeared prominently on displays of the weekly magazine “Der Stürmer” and was regularly printed at the bottom of the publication’s title page.

Quite obviously, this slogan could also serve as a concise summary of the antisemitic world view: whatever is wrong or bad in your life and in your world must somehow be the fault of the Jews. The Hamas Charter reflects this view perfectly in Article 22, illustrating at the same time how the Nazi slogan was adapted for contemporary politics with an updated version: “The Jewish state/Zionism is our misfortune.” While the relevant paragraphs clearly echo popular anti-Jewish stereotypes about scheming Jews with lots of money and monstrously evil designs, they are also a bit evasive about who exactly “the enemies” are, though the parts I emphasized (bold & underlined) are clear enough:

“For a long time, the enemies have been planning, skillfully and with precision, for the achievement of what they have attained. They took into consideration the causes affecting the current of events. They strived to amass great and substantive material wealth which they devoted to the realisation of their dream. With their money, they took control of the world media, news agencies, the press, publishing houses, broadcasting stations, and others. With their money they stirred revolutions in various parts of the world with the purpose of achieving their interests and reaping the fruit therein. They were behind the French Revolution, the Communist revolution and most of the revolutions we heard and hear about, here and there. With their money they formed secret societies, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, the Lions and others in different parts of the world for the purpose of sabotaging societies and achieving Zionist interests. With their money they were able to control imperialistic countries and instigate them to colonize many countries in order to enable them to exploit their resources and spread corruption there.

You may speak as much as you want about regional and world wars. They were behind World War I, when they were able to destroy the Islamic Caliphate, making financial gains and controlling resources. They obtained the Balfour Declaration, formed the League of Nations through which they could rule the world. They were behind World War II, through which they made huge financial gains by trading in armaments, and paved the way for the establishment of their state. It was they who instigated the replacement of the League of Nations with the United Nations and the Security Council to enable them to rule the world through them. There is no war going on anywhere, without having their finger in it.”

Indeed, a “Stürmer” cover from May 1934 that features a story about a murderous Jewish plan targeting all non-Jews would make a good illustration for this section of the Hamas Charter.

Even though it should be obvious enough that the Nazi slogan has been updated to “The Jewish state/Zionism is our misfortune,” there are endless debates about how to define contemporary antisemitism, and the question what, if any, anti-Israel activism should be regarded as antisemitic remains particularly contentious. But as I have argued elsewhere, there are countless examples that illustrate “that antisemitism is not a bug, but a feature of BDS: if your mission is to mobilize public opinion against the world’s only Jewish state in order to bring about its elimination, you will inevitably end up producing new versions of the Nazi slogan ‘The Jews are our misfortune.’”

Indeed, if one had to describe the output of professional anti-Israel activists like Ali Abunimah or Max Blumenthal and the sites they are associated with in one sentence, the most fitting one would be: “The Jewish state/Zionism is our misfortune.” And their audiences are certainly getting the message, as illustrated nicely in one minor recent example: in the wake of the coup attempt in Turkey, Twitter user Hadi Syed saw an article in Ha’aretz that emphasized that one of the suspected coup leaders had served as Military Attaché to Israel from 1998 to 2000. So Syed promptly tweeted the article and tagged Max Blumenthal and Ali Abunimah, because he apparently knows full well that they are always interested in an Israeli angle if anything untoward is going on anywhere in the world.

Syed made a good bet: even though he has only 166 followers, his tweet got 95 re-tweets and 39 “Likes,” doubtlessly boosted by a retweet from Max Blumenthal as well as Ali Abunimah’s posting of the tweet together with the remark “Interesting.”

While Blumenthal and Abunimah may not find it worthwhile to promote this particular conspiracy theory now that the Hamas-friendly Islamist government in Turkey is mercilessly wiping out its opponents, they have often been determined to promote even the most absurd conspiracy theories in order to demonize Israel as the cause of everyone’s misfortune. One notable example is their promotion of utterly baseless claims that US police forces are brutal and abusive because they are inspired and trained by Israel. This particular subject is the specialty of their esteemed colleague Rania Khalek, who has produced numerous articles for Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada and other outlets implying that if it wasn’t for the world’s only Jewish state, the US and the world at large could be a much better place. The underlying message is indeed always the same: “The Jewish state is our misfortune.” And this lasting legacy of the “Stürmer” is by no means confined to the far-right.

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Apologists want to put Tel Aviv attack in "context." OK, let's do it.

Some Twitter reactions from oh-so-peaceful people:

overdone live @cnn coverage of Tel aviv attack but not a single word on the CONTEXT of the situation, the israeli rejection of french plan?
— Daoud Kuttab (@daoudkuttab) June 8, 2016

I am opposed to all the attacks on Israelis and Palestinians which are result of an illegal occupation. We need to put things in context
— Daoud Kuttab (@daoudkuttab) June 8, 2016

There was a shooting in Tel Aviv sadly. Get ready 2 hear media disinformation about evil Palestinians w zero context about Israeli violence
— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) June 8, 2016

"An occupation leads to foreign rule. Foreign rule leads to resistance. Resistance leads to oppression. Oppression leads to terrorism
— ygurvitz (@ygurvitz) June 8, 2016

MSNBC:

Ayman Mohyeldin and Martin Fletcher took turns blaming Israel’s “right-wing” government for Palestinian “frustration.”

Mohyeldin ranted: “...in terms of the context of what has been happening in the occupied Palestinian territories, the occupation, the shift of Israeli politics, including now the current government, more to the right, to what has been described by Israelis as even more of an extreme right-wing government, some of the measures that have taken place in the West Bank, the siege that continues in Gaza, all of those continue to fester.”

The "context" that these people plead for is "occupation" and "Israel's right wing government."

Context is a funny thing, though. It can be a bit more expansive than these people claim.

The Quran says twice about Jews "Allah has cursed them on account of their unbelief" (2:88, 4:46). Also "you shall always discover treachery in them excepting a few of them" (5:13). It refers to Jews and Christians by saying "may Allah destroy them; how they are turned away!" (9:30).

Is that too wide a context? Okay, let's narrow it a bit,to how Muslims treated Jews in the 19th century:

In the year 1823, at the same Damascus, all the Jews suspected of having property were thrown into prison, and compelled to pay forty thousand purses or lose their heads. At Safet, in 1834, their houses were stripped, and great personal cruelties inflicted upon them, for the like purpose of extorting money; and generally in Syria they were compelled to work for the Turks without payment, being bastinadoed if they remonstrated. The lowest fallaah would stop them when travelling, and demand money as a right due to the Musselman; which robbery was liable to be repeated several times a day upon the same Jew.

The occupation of Syria by the Egyptians did not mitigate the hard condition of the Jews of Palestine' They were still defrauded and insulted; the commonest soldier would seize the most respectable Israelite, and compel him by blows to sweep the streets, and to perform the most degrading offices. The contempt indeed in which they are held by Mahometans, however difficult to be accounted for, exceeds that which they have experienced in Christian lands. In the East they are truly become a proverb, the term Jew being applied despitefully, as the most reproachful and degrading known.

In Persia the condition of the Jews is worse even than in Syria. Often whilst they are assembled in their synagogues, a soldier enters with an order from the Shah for money; they are compelled to work without payment; and their women are unceremoniously taken from them, without their daring to murmur.

In Morocco they are equally ground down by a barbarous despotism. The Moors consider that the object of a Jew's birth is to serve Musselmen, and he is consequently subject to the most wanton insults. The boys for their pastime beat and torment the Jewish children: the men kick and buffet the adults. They walk into their houses at all hours, and take the grossest freedoms with their wives and daughters, the Jews invariably coming off with a sound beating if they venture to resist. In 1804 those of Algiers were subjected to horrible tortures, being suspended from the walls by long ropes with hooked nails at the ends, merely because they had unsuspectingly lent money to persons who were secretly conspiring against the Dey; nor were they released without the payment of a large sum. In 1827 the Dey threw a rich Jew into prison for no other purpose than to extort from him 500,000 Spanish dollars. At Tripoli the bashaw extorted a large sum from them on account of the drought, which he declared them to be the cause of. Mr. Ewald, after describing the beauty, fertility, and prosperity of the island of Gerba in Morocco, “where, if any where, (he says) every one lives quietly beneath his own vine and fig-tree,” next speaks of the Jews as the only exception, among whom he nowhere witnessed greater poverty and oppression...

Perhaps this context is still too wide for the lovers of context. Let's look only at how the Arabs in Palestine treated Jews before Theodor Herzl coined the word "Zionism."

Jews being banned from Temple Mount, 1883 painting

From James Finn, British consul to Jerusalem from 1853-6:

In times gone by these native Jews had their full share of suffering from the general tyrannical conduct of the Moslems, and, having no resources for maintenance in the Holy Land, they were sustained, though barely, by contributions from synagogues all over the world. This mode of supply being understood by the Moslems, they were subjected to exactions and plunder on its account from generation to generation ... This oppression proved one of the causes which have entailed on the community a frightful incubus of debt, the payment of interest on which is a heavy charge upon the income derived from abroad... the Jews are humiliated by the payment, through the Chief Rabbi, of pensions to Moslem local exactors, for instance the sum of 300£. a year to the Effendi whose house adjoins the ' wailing place,' or fragment of the western wall of the Temple enclosure, for permission to pray there; 100£. a year to the villagers of Siloam for not disturbing the graves on the slope of the Mount of Olives ; 50£ a year to the Ta'amra Arabs for not injuring the Sepulchre of Rachel near Bethlehem, and about 10£ a year to Sheikh Abu Gosh for not molesting their people on the high road to Jaffa, although he was highly paid by the Turkish Government as Warden of that road.

Palestinian Christians were no better to Jews:

In 1847 it seemed probable that the Christian pilgrims, instigated by the Greek ecclesiastics, were about to reproduce the horrors enacted at Rhodes and Damascus in 1840.
A Greek pilgrim boy, in a retured street, had thrown a stone at a poor little Jew boy, and, strange to say, the latter bad the courage to retaliate by throwing one in return, which unfortunately hit its mark, and a bleeding aukle was the consequence. It being the season of the year when Jerusalem is always thronged with pilgrims ( March), a tumult soon arose, and the direst vengeance was denounced against all Jews indiscriminately, for having stabbed (as they said) an innocent Christian child, with a knife, in order to get his blood, for mixing in their Passover biscuits. The police came up and both parties were taken down to the Seraglio for judgment ; there the case was at once discharged as too trivial for notice.
The Convent Clergy, however, three days afterwards, stirred up the matter afresh, exaggerated the state of the wound inflicted, and engaged to prove to the Pashk from their ancient books that Jews are addicted to the above cannibal practice, either for purposes of necromancy, or out of hatred of Christians, on which His Excellency unwisely Buffered the charge of assault to be diverted into this different channel, which was one that did not concern him ; and he commanded the Jews to answer for themselves on the second day afterwards. In the interval, both Greeks and Armenians went about the streets insulting and menacing the Jews, both men and women, sometimes drawing their hands across the throat, sometimes showing the knives which they generally earn» about with them, and, among other instances brought to my notice, was that of a party of six catching hold of the son of the late Chief Rabbi of London (Herschell) and shaking him, elderly man as he was, by the collar, crying out, ' Ah! Jew, have you got the knives ready for our blood ! '

Before any Likud prime minister, before 1967, before 1948, before the Balfour Declaration, before Herzl, Arabs and Muslims treated Jews like dirt both within and without Palestine.

The reason for modern terror attacks isn't because of "occupation" or Israel's refusal to participate in the French peace initiative that is meant to pressure only Israel to make more concessions. It isn't because of Israel's "extreme right wing government." It isn't even because of Zionism.

The reason that Arabs attack Jews is because the very idea of Jews acting as equals, with the right to self-determination and the right to have a land of their own, is an insult to Arab honor. Jews are meant to be wretched, second-class citizens bowing and scraping and paying extortion money to their Muslim masters, and there has never been a greater humiliation to the Arab people than seeing these despised Jews beating them militarily.

Arab psyche is driven by insistence on honor and fear of shame, and everything done since 1948 has been meant to erase the ultimate humiliation of Jews controlling land that Arabs consider their own. Do I really need to catalog the many terror attacks before 1967, before 1948, before 1917?

Yes, let's put the Tel Aviv attacks in context. The context is that Arabs (both Muslim and Christian) believe that Jews are a cursed people and that the existence of proud Jews not acting as proper dhimmis in the Middle East is an affront to Arab honor.

Everything else is apologetics.

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06/08 Links Pt1: Terrorist supporting fascists stop former IDF officer's speech; Janna Jihad Unmasked

From Ian:

Pro-Palestinian activists storm former IDF officer's speech at DC museum

Former IDF lieutenant-colonel and current director of the American Jewish Committee Jerusalem office, Avital Leibovich, was bombarded by some dozen pro-Palestinian activists while giving a speech about social media on Tuesday afternoon in Washington, DC.
Leibovich, who formerly served as head of the Interactive Media Branch of the IDF’s Spokesperson’s Unit, was five minutes into her talk at the 'Newseum' when the activists stormed the stage bearing signs with anti-Israel phrases and shouting pro-Palestinian slogans, such as "free, free Palestine!"
Leibovich calmly responded saying anyone who wanted to hear what she had to say were welcome to stay, and welcome those who didn't to use the "big red exit sign."
Two of the most prominent activist were Max Blumenthal and Rania Khalek. Security officials later ushered Blumenthal away from the address.

BDS: No Freedom of Speech

Freedom of speech? They wouldn't even let Avital Leibovich of the AJC and former IDF spokesperson speak. Code Pink and other BDS activists disrupted her speech on "New media During War" in the Newseum in DC

Janna Jihad Unmasked: 10-Year-Old Media Darling Is a False Heroine

A 10-year-old Palestinian firebrand “journalist” who sent social media into a frenzy recently over her bravery for documenting Israeli “injustice” in Palestine can be unmasked as an anti-Israel propaganda tool – a child being used by a family of terrorists.
This murderous clan, responsible for a restaurant bombing that killed eight children, used a then seven year old Janna to demand for the murder of Israeli police officers in Jerusalem.
They have been exploiting the child for terror propaganda since she was just five.
Janna “Jihad” became a digital sensation after Vice Magazine and the Al Jazeera TV network dubbed her “the youngest journalist in Palestine”.
Living in the village of Nabi Saleh, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, she apparently personally produces video reports from the centre of protests against the Israeli government – despite being a child.
But Heat Street can reveal that behind the supposed bravery and passion of “her” films, Janna is just another exploited child, used by an anti-Israel propaganda machine responsible for spreading fear and loathing.

How Isolated is Netanyahu?

After the much-anticipated French-sponsored Middle East peace conference ended last Friday with a whimper rather than a bang, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s critics were quick to point out that he shouldn’t be celebrating. They were right in that the event may be just the prelude to more such initiatives whose sole intent was to isolate the Israelis and perhaps set up one more climactic confrontation with the Obama administration this fall after the presidential election. It’s possible that at that point the United States might not oppose a new push for recognition of a Palestinian state without requiring it to first requiring it to make peace with Israel. If so, any satisfaction of the clear failure of the Paris conference would be premature. But as Netanyahu soon proved with a visit to Russia that highlighted Israel’s increasingly warm ties with the Putin regime, his nation is not as isolated as the prime minister’s domestic critics and foreign foes think.
Despite the French boasts about their plans to convene a conference that would establish a framework for Middle East peace without the presence of Israel or the Palestinians, nothing was accomplished in Paris. Nothing, that is, other than the usual bloviating by the French hosts and various Third World foreign ministers that were allowed to make speeches. If critics of the Obama administration can glean any satisfaction from this farce, it is that Secretary of State John Kerry was forced to sit through all of it for the sake of amity with Paris even though he was clearly put out by the futility of the effort and the indignity of having to attend. The platitudes issued at the end of the gathering could have just as easily been put out without the expense and inconvenience of the summit which left the world farther from a resolution of the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians than it had been before it started. The only thing it accomplished was to encourage the Palestinians to continue to refuse to negotiate directly with the Israelis because such conferences make them think the international community will bludgeon and isolate the Jewish state into concessions at no cost to themselves.
Moreover, those counseling that danger lies ahead, specifically from an Obama administration that, despite only having seven months left in office, still feels it has a score to settle with Netanyahu. The Palestinians torpedoed every administration Middle East initiative over the past seven and a half years even though each one sought to tilt the diplomatic playing field in their direction. But the White House continues to rail at the Israelis while largely giving the Palestinians a pass for their ongoing refusal to make peace.

06/02 Links Pt2: Lord Sacks: 'Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism'; UK Labour leader pushed for bans, boycotts of Israel,

From Ian:

Lord Jonathan Sacks: 'Anti-Zionism is the new anti-Semitism'

The former Chief Rabbi, Lord Jonathan Sacks, is the winner of this year's Templeton Prize. For decades he has been lecturing and writing on themes of faith, tolerance and peace. Evan Davis began by asking him a simple question - does religion cause war? (h/t Ha Meshuga)

UK Labour leader pushed for bans, boycotts of Israel, letters show

Before his election as UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn pressed for a boycott of Israel and called on the British foreign secretary at the time to ban Israeli politicians from entering the country, newly released letters from 2010-2015 show.
The letters, sent to then-foreign secretary William Hague, were published following a Freedom of Information request to the government.
Writing to Hague in February 2012 about East Jerusalem, in particular house demolitions in the Silwan neighborhood, Corbyn, who was a backbench MP for Islington North at the time, urged trade sanctions against Israel.
“Israel’s current actions and victimisation of the people of East Jerusalem is an abomination that is totally illegal,” he wrote. “Surely the only logical way forward here is to take concrete action to penalise Israel via the most obvious method.”
“There is clearly no time to lose to take actions via the EU-Israel Association Trade Agreement. Let the suffering of the Palestinian people no longer be so familiar to us that all we do is ‘make representations’ when there are tools at our disposal that our government and other governments are choosing to ignore,” he wrote. (h/t Think of England)

Corbyn pans UK Jewish journalist for coverage of anti-Semitism claims

UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn takes aim at top British Jewish journalist Jonathan Freedland in a new fly-on-the-wall documentary aired Wednesday, accusing the veteran Guardian columnist of “subliminal nastiness” in his coverage of the claims of widespread anti-Semitism in the party.
Corbyn said on film that Freedland is “kind of obsessed” with him, basing his claim on a column piece in which the journalist accuses Labour of having an anti-Semitism problem.
In a phone call with his director of strategy Seumas Milne, Corbyn accused Freeland of “utterly disgusting subliminal nastiness” over the March opinion piece entitled “Labour and the left have an anti-Semitism problem.”
“He’s not a good guy at all. He seems kind of obsessed with me,” Corbyn says of Freedland.
The dispute over anti-Semitism in Labour has been simmering for months — since Corbyn was elected party leader by grassroots supporters, despite opposition from many MPs — with a stream of party officials shown to have made anti-Semitic statements.

Livingstone blames ’embittered MPs’ for his suspension over Hitler remarks

Former London mayor Ken Livingstone has blamed “embittered MPs” for branding him a Nazi apologist over his controversial statements about Hitler.
Speaking at the Oxford Union, he refused to apologise for the comments and claimed Jeremy Corbyn “had no say” in his suspension from the Labour party.
In an appearance dominated by questions about anti-Semitism, Mr Livingstone stuck by his remarks that Hitler supported Zionism as “historical fact”.
He told members of the famous debating society that the furore was being used to deflect attention away from the Labour leader’s policies.
“I think this has been largely manufactured by people trying to undermine Jeremy Corbyn,” he said.
“If someone says something anti-Semitic they will be expelled but you can’t expel someone for telling the truth.”

Electronic Intifada is really scared of the all-powerful Israel Lobby - meaning, me

It took a week, but the Electronic Intifada hate site finally found out about the McGraw-Hill textbook story and went nuts.

Rania Khalek, a self-styled "journalist" whose Twitter autobiography used to say "objectivity is bullshit," uses the usual EI playbook to paint anyone who is pro-Israel as ethnic cleansers, racists and - in my case - even worse.

Here is what they said about the publications that republished my scoop:

The first criticisms of the textbook came from the virulently anti-Palestinian and pro-settlement blogger Elder of Ziyon.

Within hours, the post was republished by The Tower, a self-styled Israel and Middle East-focused magazine and website run by The Israel Project.

TIP is a right-wing pro-Israel lobbying outfit that specializes in crafting and supplying anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim propaganda to journalists and policy makers.

TIP receives funding from major bankrollers of the Islamophobia industry and is headed by Josh Block, former spokesperson for the powerful Israel lobby group AIPAC.

Many of the EI articles I've seen - no matter who the writer - spends an inordinate amount of time attacking any pro-Israel voices by whom they have associated with, accepted funding from, partnered with, spoke at the same conference as, or whatever they can throw to distract from the actual things that these people say. Because EI knows it is intellectually bankrupt and its only tool is the smear tactic.

So how did Rania attempt to smear me?

Inspired by anti-Muslim hate group leaders like Robert Spencer, Elder of Ziyon is dedicated to demonizing Palestinians and Muslims, and even argued that the paranoid manifesto of Anders Behring Breivik is “not all crazy sounding - it is scary how sane much of the document seems to be.”

“Some of [Breivik’s] political analysis is actually on target,” Elder of Ziyon stated after Breivik massacred 77 people in Norway, supposedly in an attempt to rescue Europe from what he viewed as the dark forces of Islam and Marxism.

Breivik drew inspiration for his violent ideology from the US Islamophobia industry of which Elder of Ziyon is a part.

She actually attempts to link me with a mass murderer, by referring to an article (which she knows her readers won't bother to read) where I condemn him in no uncertain terms!

Khalek even retweeted Max Blumenthal's description of me as having praised the disgusting mass murderer:

She knows very well I did no such thing. I said that the fact that his manifesto has some correct information is what makes it so scary - how any ideology, including right-wing, can be twisted into unimaginable evil.

I was saying that the devil can quote Scripture for his purposes. Khalek's logic is that this is simply proof that the Pope must be a Satan-worshiper.

Why do Rania Khalek and Electronic Intifada spend so much time trying to smear their ideological opponents? Because they have no facts on their side!

Khalek pretends that there is no possible logical reason for McGraw Hill (and, last year, MSNBC) to denounce the maps as false propaganda.

Her conclusion is very revealing:

Asked who carried out the review of the book, [McGraw-Hill's] Mathis told The Electronic Intifada that it “was conducted by independent academics who determined that the maps were not accurate.”

Mathis did not respond to a follow-up query seeking more details about who carried out the review and how they reached such a conclusion.

As for who pressured McGraw-Hill about the maps, Mathis would only say, “We heard about this from multiple sources.”

Given the highly politicized nature of all discussion related to Palestine in the United States, the definition of who is an “independent academic” would vary widely depending on the perspective of who is making the assessment. And if the “experts” are indeed independent, they should be willing to provide an explanation of how and why they deemed the maps to be inaccurate.

The only way that McGraw-Hill’s credibility can be assessed is with some transparency about the groups or “experts” who made this recommendation.

Otherwise, we are left to assume that McGraw-Hill is effectively burning books to placate the censorship demands of right-wing anti-Palestinian bigots.

But the propaganda Map The Lies has been thoroughly debunked by many people, myself included, even within my original post about the textbook. There is no reason for McGraw-Hill to explain itself further to a group of people who defend lies.

Here is a very abridged debunking:

Khalek and her mud-throwing, hateful pals do not attempt to defend the maps based on actual criticism - because they have no defense. Instead, they use misdirection by saying (in this case) that since McGraw Hill didn't answer their insipid questions, then this major textbook publisher must be controlled by me and my fellow pro-Israel bloggers.

Think about this for a second. The idea that MSNBC and McGraw Hill, two media giants, saw very quickly that the maps have no factual basis does not - and cannot - enter the discussion. Rania Khalek and Electronic Intifada and the thousands of haters know that they are an effective propaganda tool for their lies and they must do everything they can to minimize the possibility that their cherished propaganda is debunked. But they cannot argue against the debunkings - because of those pesky things known as "facts." And, after all, in Khalek's world, objectivity is bullshit and lying propaganda is the truth. Hand waving, misdirection, labeling their opponents as evil incarnate is their stock in trade, but the truth must be avoided at all costs.

So the only alternative explanation that the haters can accept as and tell each other to explain why media companies retract the maps is that there is a shadowy group of ~~Jews~~ Zionists who effectively control the media and textbook industries.

Elder of Ziyon is, according to Rania Khalek, one of the real Elders of Zion.

Thanks, Rania, for thinking that I have so much power. You must be very frightened of me.

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02/29 Links Pt2: David Cameron is no friend of the truth; Americans overwhelmingly support Israel

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: Anti-Zionists are fools if they think they have a monopoly on compassion

Instead, this being Israel Apartheid Week, allow me, one last time, to address the charge made frequently against anyone for whom Zionism isn’t a dirty word, that such a personage wilfully and maliciously conflates anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism in order to discredit the former.
Since I am one of the personages so charged, no matter that I have never conflated the two, I will repeat my innocence of the accusation. No, I do not say that an anti-Zionist must be an anti-Semite. Might I ever have said it? Perhaps where anti-Zionism comes to mean that Jews can go to hell in a handcart I might have thought it; but where the anti-Zionism is contingent not eschatolgical, a condemnation of a particular series of political choices and events, not an indictment of heartless expansionism lodged forever in the Jewish character, then no, I am not a conflator. Condemn away, I say.
What I do, however, maintain is that an anti-Zionist might be an anti-Semite and, in some instances, demonstrably is. Whatever its originating motives, anti-Zionism has become, for those who want to use it this way, a get-out-of-jail-free card. Anything can now be said about Jews under cover of anti-Zionism, as though, because an anti-Zionist need not be an anti-Semite, it must, by a perverse logic, follow that he never is.
What those who warn against confusing Israel-hatred with Jew-hatred must answer is why the two frequently confuse themselves. The recent alleged goings-on at Oxford and other campuses suggests that the distinct line which anti-Zionists wish to see drawn between their ideology and anti-Semitism is not respected within their own movement. Call a Jew a Zio, perpetuate the blood libel and mutter of worldwide Jew conspiracy, and you either betray the purity of intention you claim for your cause, or you demonstrate there was never such a purity in the first place.
I won’t play the game of “you suspect my motives so I suspect yours”. I simply ask of those who believe I cannot make a distinction whether the blurring they see is theirs not mine. Look into your hearts. How innocent are you?

David Cameron is no friend of the truth

Last week, in what became a widely discussed incident here in Israel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, in a discussion at the British Parliament, called Israeli construction in East Jerusalem “genuinely shocking”, while insisting at the same time, that he is a “great friend of Israel”.
What's genuinely shocking, is David Cameron's historical ignorance, hypocrisy and utter lack of moral clarity.
From the Islamic theocracies of Iran and Saudi Arabia, through the Sunni-Shia blood baths in Iraq and Syria, to all the offshoots of the Islamic State, Al-Qaeda and Muslim brotherhood across the entire length of North Africa, the Islamic Mideast is producing some of the most horrifying levels of rampant murderous violence and persecutions the world has seen in the 21st century.
In the 20th century, the Arab and Islamic mideast was ethnically cleansed of its Jewish population, people who had lived across many parts of the region for more than 2,000 years. Now in the 21st century, religious persecution of the remaining ancient Christian communities, along with other ancient minorities, is occurring before our eyes, as they are brutally persecuted and ethnically cleansed across many parts of the Islamic Mideast and Africa.

Gallup: Americans still overwhelmingly support Israel

Gallup released today its annual survey of American opinion regarding Israel and the Palestinians.
The survey shows that support for Israel versus the Palestinians remains near historical highs, slightly up from last year:
Americans’ views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict remained steady over the past year, with 62% of Americans saying their sympathies lie more with the Israelis and 15% favoring the Palestinians. About one in four continue to be neutral, including 9% who sympathize with neither side, 3% who sympathize with both, and 11% expressing no opinion.

This data shows, as I have argued frequently, that the “Israel Lobby” is the American people. That support is organic, not imposed by political donors or lobbying groups.