Reasonable sounding liar - Dr. Sam Hamod

According to this site,
"Sam Hamod is a former advisor to the U.S. State Dept; founder of 3rd World News (Wash, DC);Director of The Islamic Center (Wash, DC); Professor at Princeton, Michigan, Howard and Iowa (ret.)." He is a Lebanese-American born in Indiana, according to another biography. He is also president of the American-Islamic Institute.

Dr. Hamod is retiring as main editor of his "Today's Alternative News" site, and he signs off with a somewhat reasonable-sounding defense of what he calls "true" conservatism and a statement of what he believes is best for America:

Since 2000, my site has been dedicated to truth, honesty and the pursuit of justice and democracy. I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, I am interested only in America being a moral leader in the world, a nation that aids those in need, a nation that takes care of its own and is interested only in the interests of mankind and follows the moral order of the major religions of the world, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Taoism and Bahai.

During this time, I have been critical of many things that have not measured up to what I thought was good for America or for the world; I have condemned those who called for violence, regardless of their alleged religion (whether they called themselves Christians, Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, etc.) when they did evil things. In our time we have seen plenty of hatred being spread by people from all these faiths—there is no need for me to repeat their names—they are known to all of you, and we all know the evil of their deeds, and I have called them on it.

Some thought that because I have been so critical of GW Bush’s war on Iraq that I must have liked Bill Clinton—not so. I thought Clinton betrayed the Palestinians and offered them only a Bantustan existence.
To this day, I have no respect for Clinton or his wife; but I do respect George Bush Sr. for having the courage and insight to know that it was best not to enter and destroy the infrastructure of Iraq (even though he and I, and many others knew that Saddam Hussein was a devil).
America cannot police or control the entire world; just as the Spartans could finally not control the world of their time; nor could Rome when it became too big and wanted to conquer the known world of the time.

...
I liked Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams the first, Lincoln, Eisenhower, Carter and even Nixon ( I still feel that he did more good things than bad in office; but he, like many others made mistakes); I also liked the pre-presidency of Lyndon Johnson and his moves to help integration, and I liked the later John F. Kennedy after Kruschev taught him a lesson in power politics. I have always distrusted Henry Kissinger, I think the truth about him has come out in the long run; he did little for real peace in the Middle East, instead, he was a shill for Israel and still is. Henry, whom I’ve known for years, has always had a hatred for the Arabs and Muslims, even though he tried to cover it with slippery semantics. On the other hand, Zbignew Brezinski. has been a fair man in world affairs and did work for peace wherever he went. This shows you that we can have good men, like Z B, but also men who drag us into immorality, like H K.

Again, my main concern is peace and justice in the world.

You might quibble with his politics, but it sounds patriotic and well-thought out. He is, after all, a professor, and he must have spent many years defining his positions.

But in his conclusion, on the subject of Israel, any pretense of objectivity and reason (and truth) flies out the window before he retreats back into his pseudo-patriotism:

I also think it is high time that Amrericans realize that Sharon’s and Israel’s agendas are not America’s agendas. We must quit supporting Israel in a carte blanche fashion. We must not fund them if they continue this oppressive and inhumane behavior, this illegal behavior, toward the Palestinians. By our support, we are complicitous in this evil that Sharon and Israel perpetrate upon the Palestinian people. If America quit following the Tom Lantos’ , the Grahams, the other Zionist agents in our Congress, we’d be better off. Most Americans don’t realize that every Israeli is subsidized by America to the tune of at least $40,000.00 per person, per year—you show me an American, aside from a Congressperson, who gets that kind of financial assistance. Bah!

So then what am I—I am a true Conservative. I wish to conserve our Constitution, our moral leadership, our water, our air, our people’s rights, our honor in the world, our honor in our courts, our opportunity to lead the world and make it a better place. I fear our last two presidents have done just the opposite; neither have served our nation well. Let us hope and pray our future presidents will do better.

Now, if you look at his other writings and the contents of his on-line magazine you will see opinions that are far more way-out and bizarre than this piece quoted here. As we've seen in many other times, the anti-Israel crowd will filter their messages based on their audience, so they can sound reasonable on TV and we have to dig a little bit to see their true agenda.

The essay quoted above is a classic example. In the middle of looking back at his worldview, he makes a claim that he feels all Americans should know - that the US subsidizes Israel to the tune of $40,000 per Israeli, per year.

Really? A quick calculation shows that he is saying that Israel gets $251 billion dollars annually from the US! Such a breathtakingly idiotic statement (a quarter of a trillion dollars annually to Israel!) is hardly what one would expect from an impartial academic.

Not only that, but this article by Matt Welch from 2001 does a nice job at finding out that Dr. Hamod seems to subscribe to the Jewish-owned media worldview, as well, claiming that 90% of reporters are Jewish. Welch also finds a different quote from the professor, praising Palestinian "children" and saying that American children should emulate them - throwing stones at the US Capitol. How patriotic!

Like the other pro-terror propogandists, Sam Hamod is a charlatan, a bigot and a liar who uses his apparent academic credentials to espouse hate and falsehood. He is no patriot; his agenda is indistinguishable from those of Islamist supremacists. It is important to expose the real views of the terror-apologists and anti-semites when they get published in mainstream media opinion columns.

The truth is never far from the surface.