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?