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Wednesday, November 09, 2011

More lies from the Left

Max Blumenthal has another column in Al Akhbar filled with provable lies.

It is entitled "Despite major rebuke, Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin endorses slaughtering Palestinians."

He writes:
On October 25, here at Al Akhbar, I drew attention to Washington Post "Right Matters" columnist Jennifer Rubin's re-tweet of a call by professional neocon Rachel Abrams for the mass murder of Palestinians. In my post, I urged readers to write Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton and inquire if the Post has a policy regarding staffers who promote mass murder, ethnic violence, and hate speech. Yesterday, Pexton weighed in on the matter in his "Post Roast" column, crediting my post at Al Akhbar with exposing Rubin's re-tweet.
Pexton asked Rubin if her re-tweet was simply an innocent gesture intended to direct her followers to a widely discussed piece of inflammatory writing, or if it was an explicit endorsement of Abrams' call for murdering Palestinians, whom she described as "unmanned animals" and "child-sacrificing savages." Rubin replied matter-of-factly that it was the latter: she supported Abrams' message. According to Pexton, "But in this case Rubin told me that she did agree with Abrams. Rubin said that she admires Abrams, has quoted her a lot, thinks she’s an excellent writer and endorsed the sentiment behind the Abrams blog post."
Though Pexton stopped short of calling for Rubin to be fired, he concluded that by endorsing what amounted to a call for mass murder, if not genocide, "Rubin did damage to The Post and the credibility that keeps it afloat."
Now, look at what Pexton actually wrote:
But in this case Rubin told me that she did agree with Abrams. Rubin said that she admires Abrams, has quoted her a lot, thinks she’s an excellent writer and endorsed the sentiment behind the Abrams blog post. Rubin said, however, that she did not see it as a call to genocide against all Palestinians: “The post expressed an understandable desire for righteous vengeance against the kidnappers and human rights abusers of Gilad Shalit. It is a sentiment I share. If I were writing on The Washington Post Web site, I would not have used that language. . . but the sentiment underlying it — that the captors deserve the final penalty -- is one that I share.”

Abrams’s post is so full of dashes it’s hard to follow, but the subject of her run-on sentence does appear to be “captors” not Palestinians in general.
So while Blumenthal is accusing Rubin of supporting genocide - and using Pexton's column as proof - he is deliberately deleting the parts of the column that show, as I had proven before, that the original post said no such thing.

Similarly, Pexton's criticism of Rubin was for her judgment in retweeting a message that was, in his words, "over the top." Nothing to do with calls for genocide or mass murder, as Blumenthal says.

This is not a mistake. It is a deliberate deception on Blumenthal's part to misrepresent what Pexton and Rubin said. It is tantamount to libel. There is no way to spin this.

Al Akhbar's submission guidelines say
Al-Akhbar firmly adheres to the principles of journalistic integrity. Submissions selected for publication are expected to live up to high standards of factual accuracy, source accountability, and proper accreditation where necessary.
Yet even three hours after I wrote this information in the comments, not only is the article still up - but my comment has yet to be published.

Journalistic integrity, indeed.

Blumenthal used his earlier column to ask his unthinking drones to write to the Washington Post and demand that Rubin get fired. Wouldn't it make sense to write to Al Akhbar and demand that they drop Blumenthal as a columnist and apologize for propagating his lies?

Here's their contact form.