Another absurd Super Bowl conspiracy theory courtesy of The Nation's Dave Zirin

We've previously looked at Dave Zirin, the "sports writer" for The Nation who openly lies about Israel in his column with the full approval of his editors.

He's at it again, with a bizarre Super Bowl conspiracy theory.

This year’s Super Bowl was a weapon of mass distraction. If there’s any justice, future generations will remember the game not for Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, or Taylor Swift but for the US-funded attacks on Palestinian civilians that occurred while so many Americans were glued to their TVs. During the game, watched by well over 100 million people in the United States, Israel launched a bombing raid of Rafah in the Gaza Strip, the most densely populated area on earth.

Meanwhile, CBS granted the Israeli government space for an ad about the 130 hostages left in Gaza. This ad, meant to build public support and justify the slaughter of nearly 30,000 civilians in Gaza, spurred 10,000 people to register complaints with the FCC, because the commercial did not disclose that a foreign government had paid for it. Coupled with the Rafah raid, this looks more like military synergy than happenstance.

Dave Zirin is a deranged liar.

Here's the ad, which only true antisemites could claim "justifies slaughter."

The "Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee" set up a webpage urging people to complain about the ad. Practically none of them actually saw the ad during the game. That's because the ad was only shown on smart TVs tuned to the game through Paramount+, not CBS, where the vast majority of people watched the game. 

It was not a "Super Bowl ad."

No one could possibly think that tens of thousands of people angrily wrote to the FCC because it didn't disclose who paid for it.  If anyone complained, it is because they support the war crime of taking hostages - a war crime whether it is done to civilians or soldiers.

Oh, and the ad clearly said it was sponsored by the State of Israel! 

But the layers of lies don't end there.

The FCC doesn't regulate streaming or online services like Paramount+,  only over the air broadcasts. It makes no sense to complain to the FCC.  

The entire point of this campaign is virtue signaling, to show anger that anyone might be sympathetic to Jews.

And what kind of "virtue" are these antisemites signaling?

The ad was against Hamas and only against Hamas. It urged action to bring the hostages home. Anyone complaining about this message is, by definition, pro-Hamas, since Hamas and its allies are the only parties against releasing the hostages unconditionally.  Anyone who actually complained (and the 10,000 number is highly suspect) want Hamas to continue to murder and rape Israelis. And they want that so much that they take actions to support Hamas. Not Palestinians - Hamas. 

Modern Jew-haters don't just lie. They couch their lies in layers of other lies.  This supposed "FCC complaint" has layers of lies behind it. All to support war criminals: terrorists, rapists, murderers and kidnappers.

This strategy of layering lies is effective. CBS News Miami believed the antisemites and falsely reported that this was a $7 million Super Bowl ad. It didn't do any research, and uncritically platformed similar lies by "Jewish Voice for Peace." 

Dave Zirin goes even beyond the insanity of effectively supporting Hamas rapists. He is claiming that the ad was timed to air at the very moment of the raid to rescue hostages, because the rescuing hostages itself was really not the point - Israel just wanted to slaughter Palestinians. (Note that he claims that every single Gaza death is a civilian. Not one Hamas terrorist has died!)

According to this conspiracy theory, Israel wrote, produced, directed and paid for a Super Bowl ad - a process that takes weeks at least - because it planned a series of airstrikes on Rafah and wanted to "distract" people.  

The Super Bowl isn't enough of a distraction - according to this genius, Israel needed to bring people's attention to Gaza to distract them from things happening in, um, Gaza.

Zirin is not only against this ad. He also wrote a full article criticizing the real Super Bowl ad against antisemitism, claiming that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft is himself the real antisemite. Before he even saw the ad, he wrote, "The ad’s goal is to create a propaganda campaign to counter the reports and images from Gaza that young people are consuming on social media."

Here's the ad. Spot the reference to Gaza that only exists in the minds of deranged antisemites. 

Zirin's ever-growing conspiracy theory culminates with this:

We don’t know if the White House gave the go-ahead for what has now been dubbed “the Super Bowl massacre,” but if you launch an attack during the biggest TV event of the year—blunting an emergency response by US demonstrators and hoping that everyone will be too hung over, drunk on commercialism, and gambling apps to give a damn—it doesn’t take a poli-sci major to see how Biden benefits.

Huh? Israel haters won't bother protesting on the Monday after the game? Biden is now part of the conspiracy as well? He benefits from dead Palestinians? And all of this is obvious?

As I've noted before, when anti-Israel rhetoric crosses the line into conspiracy theories, that is when you know they are antisemitic. Dave Zirin is a full-blown conspiracy theorist who hides behind his "as-a-Jew" credentials to publish his bizarre theories that could just as easily have been penned by the Goyim Defense League. 

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"The Nation" sportswriter blames Israel for US police brutality

We've already seen how Dave Zirin, "sports writer" for The Nation  who has a special obsession with Israel, disregards facts that get in the way of his hate. And how The Nation has no interest in correcting his egregious and provable lies.

He's at it again. This time he is so incensed that some NBA players are visiting Israel that he is telling them that Israel is responsible for every time a black person is assaulted or killed by an American cop.

Yes, really.

On December 12, you were one of several Sacramento Kings players to wear an “I Can’t Breathe” shirt during warm-ups. The shirts were worn to commemorate the last words of Staten Island’s Eric Garner and protest his death at the hands of the New York Police Department. It was a brave act, a link in a chain, which aligned some of the NBA’s biggest stars with the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Of course, lethal police brutality has been directed at black Americans for as long as there have been police. But the #BlackLivesMatter movement has emerged out of a dramatic spike in this violence. Roughly 400 people were shot and killed by police over the first five months of 2015, according to a Washington Post analysis. That is more than twice the average of the past decade. Those killed are primarily black and brown, as police departments have outfitted themselves in military fashion. Finding justice for those killed has proven to be a near impossible task.

This epidemic of killings has been aggravated by the influence of Israeli police practices on US policing. Since 9/11, police chiefs and high-ranking officers from across the United States—from Ferguson to New York City—have traveled to Israel for training in the arts of suppression. As Ali Winston reported, “[a]t least 300” chiefs from across the country have gone to Israel for these workshops. Former US Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer called Israel “the Harvard of antiterrorism” after one all-expenses-paid trip. The NYPD, which took the life of Eric Garner and broke the leg of NBA player Thabo Sefolosha, now has an office in Tel Aviv.

Since 9/11, Israel has turned its repressive capabilities into an exportable commodity. It instructs on surveillance, crowd control tactics, and psychological operations like keeping lights on police cars at all times.

Zirin is not the first idiot to make this argument. Rania Khalek did the same in May, and I demolished it then:

First of all, the programs that Khalek highlights are not for riot control. One of them mentions a demonstration of "crowd control" during a terror attack - not a training session - but most of the training was for counterterrorism techniques such as intelligence gathering and operations to capture terrorists before they begin their operations; border security, mechanisms to delay terrorists on their way to a target such as checkpoints; and site security - the protection of the restaurants, shopping malls and buses that are the preferred terrorist targets, preventing bombings, securing airports and border crossings and performing mass rescue operations.

Secondly, even if Israel did offer training in riot control, it is up to individual police departments to decide on their techniques. They wouldn't photocopy Israel's manual for riot control. They take the lessons that they like and incorporate them into their own programs. One has to be thoroughly consumed with hate in order to blame Japan if someone kills another with a karate kick. (In fact, I am very surprised that Khalek didn't notice that the Baltimore police offers krav maga seminars. )

(For those interested, here is a blog post from someone who took Baltimore cop riot training in 2000, with a comment from someone who took it in 2008. Nothing about Israel, of course. )

According to Khalek's moronic logic, there is another organization responsible for Baltimore police actions:

The United Nations.

Yes, the UN offers police commander training, and one of the sessions was attended by a major in the Baltimore Police Department.  Clearly the UN is culpable for the Baltimore riots.

Do you hear how stupid that sounds?

That is how stupid Rania Khalek's argument, the same argument used by other Israel haters, is.

But it isn't stupidity that animates Khalek's half-baked theories. It is pure hate.

The Electronic Intifada readers who buy this argument, however, are truly stupid.

The same goes for readers of The Nation who buy this garbage.

Zirin also mentions that Israeli police used tear gas against Ethiopian protesters, not mentioning that the response was only to those who were throwing bottles and bricks while trying to storm a police headquarters.  He of course didn't mention that subsequent rallies by Ethiopian Jews who were rightly protesting discrimination were successful and changes are being made including Israeli police promising to hire more Ethiopian Jews. But that doesn't fit Zirin's narrative of racist Israelis.

The only person filled with hate here is Zirin. But blind, irrational, hate against Israelis is perfectly OK for people who pretend they are against blind, irrational hate.

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Dave Zirin's deranged hate of Israel

Dave Zirin is a sports reporter for The Nation. But he doesn't only cover sports - he uses sports to bash Israel.

Last year he wrote two columns claiming that Israel routinely attacks Palestinian soccer players, and that some of them were deliberately shot in their feet by Israel.

Bob Knot demolished every single one of Zirin's arguments and exposed him as a liar. His last piece of evidence, that he was trusting the reporting of Haaretz, was found to be wrong as well, as Haaretz plagiarized its report and was forced to take it down.

Yet The Nation and Zirin, full of venomous hate for Israel, didn't adhere to the slightest shred of journalistic standards and no corrections were made.

This week Zirin finds another tenuous sports story to hang his anti-Israel hate on: the NBA finals.

David Blatt, born in Framingham, Massachusetts, holds dual citizenship in Israel by virtue of being of the Jewish faith. His Israeli citizenship (which I could also claim by virtue of my own familial Judaism) gives him a set of political and civil rights that non-Jews born on this land 5,500 miles from Framingham do not possess. After playing and coaching in Israel following a Princeton education, Blatt became in his own words, “much more Jewish and much more Zionist.”

Blatt’s proud Zionism means that he has been a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces (the IDF), an experience described in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz as “his most significant bonding experiences with the country.” He is also on a first-name basis with the nation’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu. This friendship, which ABC broadcaster Jeff Van Gundy described at high decibels as “impressive” during Tuesday night’s primetime Finals broadcast, is so intimate, that Blatt boasts of being able to call Netanyahu “Bibi” when they speak. Blatt told The Plain Dealer that the prime minister “said all of Israel is behind the Cavaliers. That was great.”

What went unmentioned by Van Gundy, not to mention The Plain Dealer, are the ethical implications of an NBA coach beaming about his friendship with Netanyahu. “Bibi’s” last campaign was so riven with virulent anti-Arab racism, it was condemned across the globe. The aforementioned Israeli newspaper Haaretz printed an editorial about feeling “shame” that their “prime minister was a racist” after Netanyahu’s March election victory. The New York Times editorial page credited his triumph to a “desperate and craven” campaign that relied on a “racist rant” against Arab citizens of Israel to pull out a victory. Time’s Joel Klein wrote that Netanyahu’s victory represented an “appalling irony” that “brought joy to American neoconservatives and European anti-Semites alike.” I use these examples because they represent how even staunch supporters of Israel were nauseated by Netanyahu’s toxic political platform.

Blatt has evidenced no such concerns, but this should not surprise. Last year, as NBA players were being excoriated for just posting messages about the loss of innocent life during Israel’s war on Gaza, Coach Blatt, without consequence, publicly cheered a venture that, according to the United Nations, killed more than 2,200 people and over 500 children, 1,500 of whom were civilians. Israel lost six civilians in the fighting. In an interview with the Israeli newspaper Globes, Blatt said, “In my opinion, this war is Israel’s most justified war I can remember in recent years. I’m really sorry about what’s happening in Gaza, but there’s no doubt that we had to act there, so that Israel will have quiet there once and for all.” He then reprimanded the people of the United States for not supporting Israel’s war more heartily, saying, “There’s support, although sometimes it’s not enough.”

The absence of public criticism or even discussion about Blatt’s politics represents a head-spinning double standard.

So an Israeli citizen is proud of his friendship with his adopted nation's leader and supports its war against terrorism.

But to Dave Zirin's twisted mind, this means he supports the murder of children and anti-Arab racism. (Counterexamples showing how Bibi supports Arab citizens in Israel of course must be censored from the pages of The Nation. We can't let facts get in the way of a false narrative.)

The other irony of the column is that the father of the Golden Warriors coach was murdered by"Islamic Jihad" in Beirut, which has the same name as one of the terror groups that Israel was defending itself against in Gaza.

Does Dave Zirin know how many children have been killed by the US military since President Obama has entered office? For some reason, those numbers are hard to come by, but they seem to be well over 150 from drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan alone. We don't know how many were killed in airstrikes in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Syria and Libya. If Zirin supports Obama, then by his logic he must support killing babies too!

A high school essay couldn't get away with this ridiculous attempt at logic. But to The Nation, it is impeccable.

Zirin once wrote, "It's always dangerous, but never boring, when a newspaper sports columnist uncorks a political thesis." In his case, it reveals his ignorance and sickening hate.

I have some bad news for Zirin, though. Other people call Bibi their friend, and they even say the same about IDF generals.



Will Zirin find a way to write the same hateful words against General Martin Dempsey? Or does that apply only to Jews who dare to be proud of Israel?

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Dave Zirin's last piece of anti-Israel evidence disappears

Remember Dave Zirin, sports reporter for The Nation who claimed in two separate articles that Israel deliberately  targets Palestinian Arab soccer players?

In the second article, which our own Bob Knot ripped to shreds, Zirin self-righteously described how people didn't believe the first article (that Bob also destroyed.)

The part of the response that was truly jarring however was the numerous private queries I received from prominent members of the media. I am choosing to keep their identities private because their correspondence to me was private and I will respect that. The queries contained no curiosity about Israel’s possible expulsion from FIFA. They all instead openly doubted that the shooting of the two young men had even taken place. Was I sure this really happened? When I pointed to my initial sources, the response by numerous people was, “Do you have any sources that are not Palestinian?” One person, writing for a major sports website, sent me numerous queries that I did not respond to, and then when the facts of the shooting appeared in the Israeli paper Haaretz, said to me, “Forget previous queries. I see news of the shooting on Haaretz. Never mind.” The assumption of mendacity affixed to Palestinian sources spoke volumes.

Haaretz' reporting was the peg on which Zirin hung his cap of proof that the soccer players were innocent and shot in the legs, deliberately, by Israeli troops. What self-respecting journalist would doubt Haaretz' account? Zirin shows that unnamed sports reporters were swayed to his side of the story based purely on Haaretz' corroboration.

Only one problem.

That Haaretz article was not written by Haaretz. It was plagiarized  from the well-known international affairs journal known as Inside World Football. And that "reporting" contradicted Haaretz' earlier reporting of the same incident!

As CAMERA reports, on Wednesday, Tamar Sternthal, director of CAMERA's Israel office, sent the following email to editors:

I am writing concerning the March 31 article ("Report: FIFA gives Israel until summer to improve Palestinians' soccer conditions"), which reports a disputed Arab claim as fact, and which is largely plagiarized from Inside World Football. (The byline on the Ha'aretz article is attributed to Ha'aretz.)

The Ha'aretz article reports as fact:

Jawhar Nasser Jawhar, 19, and Adam Abd al-Raouf Halabiya, 17, were shot by Israel Defense Forces soldiers as they were walking home from a training session in the Faisal al-Husseini Stadium in al-Ram, in the central West Bank, on January 31.

At the time, Ha'aretz's Amira Hass covered this incident, and made it very clear that the Israeli border police maintained that the two Palestinians were about to throw a bomb -- they were not just innocently walking home -- when they were shot. Hass reported on Feb. 3 ("Wounded Palestinian teens dispute border police claims"):

Two Palestinians have been hospitalized in Jerusalem since Friday after they were shot and arrested by Border Police forces amid claims they were going to throw a bomb. The two Palestinians are under guard in Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem, have been operated on for their gunshot wounds, and will remain there until their treatment is finished. They deny the claims made against them, and contend that the Border Patrol forces shot them, sent attack dogs to chase them, beat them with their rifle butts, and punched and kicked them.
Adam Jamous, 17, and Jawahar Halbiyeh, 19, are residents of Abu Dis, a town east of Jerusalem. Last Thursday evening they were en route to visit a friend in a neighborhood close to a Border Police base. An Abu Dis resident told Haaretz that before midnight, residents heard a lot of gunfire and saw dogs attacking the two men when they looked out the window. . . .
In response to inquiries, a Border Police spokesman said, “During operational activity, a group of individuals was seen just seconds before throwing bombs at security forces. When they saw the Border Policemen, the group attempted to run away and tried again to throw bombs at the policemen. The policemen initiated the protocol for opening fire in order to neutralize the threat. The suspects were apprehended, and a bomb was found on them, which has been deactivated.”
The response included a picture of the bomb, but did not include any answers to the claim that the suspects were beaten. (Emphases added)

Given that Ha'aretz has previously reported that according to the Israeli border police, the two were about to throw a bomb when they were shot, why does Ha'aretz now ignore this information? Have editors obtained information substantiating the Jamous and Halbiyeh's account, and disproving the Israeli spokesman's? If not, a clarification ought to be published making clear that the Israeli Border police dispute the Arabs' account that they were shot when they were doing nothing more than walking home. (We will be in touch with Inside World Football to request a clarification there as well.)

Additional contradictions exist between the March 31 Ha'aretz report and Hass' earlier report:

1) According to Hass' report, the two "were en route to visit a friend in a neighborhood close to a Border Police base." According to the later Ha'aretz account, "they were walking home from a training session in the Faisal al-Husseini Stadium in al-Ram." (The fact that al-Ram is 13.3 miles from Abu Dis -- not exactly walking distance -- further complicates the picture.)

2) According to Hass, the two were shot by Border Police. According to Ha'aretz's later account, they were shot by Israel Defense Forces soldiers.

3) According to the more recent account, "the two were shot in the legs and set upon by dogs." According to Hass' earlier version, their lawyer said "one of them . . .was hit by many bullets and had a bite wound on his arm."

On a separate matter, at least nine paragraphs of the March 31 Ha'aretz story is reproduced, almost word for word, from Andrew Warshaw's March 31 account in Inside World Football.

Thus, Warshaw wrote:

The Israeli security forces have accused the Palestinians of using football to hide the movement of terrorists and equipment within the region. The Palestinians have denied this and point to the inability to get footballers to training and matches which they say is a deliberate act of oppression.

FIFA have set up a mediation Task Force and Palestine football's leading figurehead Jibril Rajoub has already met with his Israeli counterpart Avi Luzon and FIFA President Sepp Blatter to try and resolve the long-term issue of access to and from Palestinian territories.

Blatter, who is due back in the region next month, wants Israel and Palestine to sign a formal co-operation agreement at or around the FIFA Congress in June but Rajoub has implied this is some way off while travel permit restrictions continue to be imposed by Israel on everyone from players to consultants.

Kemer, however, implied the debate has been far too one-sided.

"I don't think we will be expelled from FIFA because we are making good progress with the Palestinians," he said. "I would say we are on the right track."

Despite his comments, earlier this year two teenage Palestinian footballers were shot by Israeli security forces in the West Bank and were told it is unlikely they would play again.

Jawhar Nasser Jawhar, 19, and Adam Abd al-Raouf Halabiya, 17, were shot by Israeli soldiers as they were walking home from a training session in the Faisal al-Husseini Stadium in al-Ram in the central West Bank on January 31. The incident served as a graphic reminder of the situation on the ground and was recently taken up by FIFA vice-president Prince Ali bin al-Hussein during a briefing with reporters.

"I am not promoting or defending any side (but) I am in a very difficult situation where I have to take two boys from Palestine at my own expense, for treatment in Jordan," said Prince Ali, head of the Jordanian FA.

"These are the two who were shot in the legs and set upon by dogs. Why is this happening? Under FIFA statutes you cannot say one country can do one thing and another country can do something else. All we are asking is to allow our young boys and young girls to play the sport."

The Ha'aretz account follows. All the text that is word for word identical with Warshaw's copy appears in red:

Inside World Football reported that Israel'ssecurity forces have accused the Palestinians of using soccerto hide the movement of terrorists and equipment within the region. The Palestinians have denied this and point to the inability to get soccer players to training and matches, which they say is a deliberate act of oppression.
FIFA has set up a mediation Task Force and Palestinesoccer's leading figurehead, Jibril Rajoub, has already met with his Israeli counterpart Avi Luzon and [Warshaw's account gives Blatter's full name and title here] Blatter to try and resolve the long-term issue of access to and from Palestinian territories.
Blatter, who is due back in the regionin April, wants Israel and Palestine to sign a formal co-operation agreement at or around the FIFA Congress in June, but Rajoub has implied this is some way off while travel permit restrictions continue to be imposed by Israel on everyone from players to consultants.
Kemer, however, implied the debate has been far too one-sided. "I don't think we will be expelled from FIFA because we are making good progress with the Palestinians," he said. "I would say we are on the right track."
Earlier this year, two teenage Palestinian soccer players were shot by Israeli security forces in the West Bank and were told they are unlikely to play again.
Jawhar Nasser Jawhar, 19, and Adam Abd al-Raouf Halabiya, 17, were shot byIsrael Defense Forces soldiers as they were walking home from a training session in the Faisal al-Husseini Stadium in al-Ram, in the central West Bank, on January 31.
The incident served as a graphic reminder of the situation on the ground and was recently taken up by FIFA vice-president Prince Ali bin al-Hussein during a briefing with reporters.
"I am not promoting or defending any side [but] I am in a very difficult situation where I have to take two boys from Palestine at my own expense, for treatment in Jordan," said Prince Ali, head of the Jordanian FA.
"These are the two who were shot in the legs and set upon by dogs. Why is this happening? Under FIFA statutes, you cannot say one country can do one thing and another country can do something else. All we are asking is to allow our young boys and young girls to play the sport."

Ha'aretz's text is virtually identical to Warshaw's aside from minor changes like substituting "soccer" for "football," placing paragraph breaks in slightly different places, updating dates, and the like.

Again, we urge Ha'aretz to publish a clarification making clear that the Israeli border police have said that the two players were about to plant a bomb when they were fired. (Additional background information on this case, including Jawhar Nasser's affiliation with the DFLP, supports the Israeli spokesman's account.)

Thank you in advance for your follow up on these points.

As soon as Haaretz editors received this letter, they immediately deleted the article.

So Dave Zirin is left with nothing but a report written by a British sports reporter whose knowledge of the Middle East is minimal, who unquestioningly trusts one side of the story without researching the other side, and whose "reporting" is contradicted by Haaretz itself. This is besides the many facts that were published here that shredded the report and that no one has yet found a single problem with,

Guess what, Dave? The Palestinian Arab reports of the incidents really were mendacious lies. And over the years I have documented scores of similar, verified cases where the Palestinian media exaggerated or falsified facts, and even where "eyewitnesses" make things up. It happens all the time.

Zirin's righteous indignation that people didn't believe his first report is hypocritical, because now that every shred of his reporting has been shown to be false he does not have the intellectual honesty to admit his role in the libel. Worse still, he added to it with an entire encyclopedia of slander in his second article.

The question remains - will The Nation act appropriately?

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Nation sports writer Dave Zirin devastatingly exposed as an anti-Israel liar

A couple of weeks ago commenter "Bob Knot" put together an incredible piece of investigative journalism exposing the lies of the anti-Israel writers who claimed that Israel deliberately shot the feet of innocent Palestinian Arab football players.

One of those writers was Dave Zirin of The Nation.

Even though he, and The Nation, were repeatedly contacted about the overwhelming proof that their reporting was completely wrong, there was never any response.

Three days before I published Bob's expose, Zirin published a much longer piece trying to make his earlier lies look like a consistent, long standing policy of Israel against Palestinian Arab football, using older examples. Zirin's newer piece defends his earlier reporting by disparaging those who doubted him.

I expected to get the typical barrage of hate mail from the usual suspects: the darkest corners of the Internet that believe on principle that Palestinian life is cheap if not entirely without value. At most, these e-mails are as nettlesome as spam.

The part of the response that was truly jarring however was the numerous private queries I received from prominent members of the media. I am choosing to keep their identities private because their correspondence to me was private and I will respect that. The queries contained no curiosity about Israel’s possible expulsion from FIFA. They all instead openly doubted that the shooting of the two young men had even taken place. Was I sure this really happened? When I pointed to my initial sources, the response by numerous people was, “Do you have any sources that are not Palestinian?” One person, writing for a major sports website, sent me numerous queries that I did not respond to, and then when the facts of the shooting appeared in the Israeli paper Haaretz, said to me, “Forget previous queries. I see news of the shooting on Haaretz. Never mind.” The assumption of mendacity affixed to Palestinian sources spoke volumes.

His defense of course was destroyed by the piece I published. The photos clearly showed that they were not shot in the way described besides dozens of other inaccuracies. The Palestinian Arab sources indeed were proven to be mendacious.

Zirin then attempted to prove that his earlier lies are supported by a pattern of Israeli actions seemingly aimed deliberately at Palestinian Arab football players.

Bob has taken Zirin apart again, and it is devastating.

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Dave Zirin targets Israel but shoots himself in the foot instead.

“A Red Line for FIFA? Israel, Violence and What’s Left of Palestinian Soccer” is a beyond pathetic, one-sided, unsubstantiated claim that Israel deliberately targets “Palestinian” football players.

Dave Zirin on March 10, 2014:

Yes it is certainly true that I don’t have a document signed by Benjamin Netanyahu calling for a systematic attack on the Palestinian national team. What I do have are names: real people, with real families, whose lives and deaths are testament to a story that needs to be told.

Absolutely, the world needs to know the truth. Shame on Dave Zirin for telling lies again and again . Integrity and accuracy are foreign to him.

This is the “untold” story of the “Palestinian” football players”:

Ayman Alkurd

He was a 34-year-old member of the Palestinian national soccer team. Alkurd was killed during the 2009 Operation Cast Lead when a missile was sent into his home in Gaza.

No, that is incorrect. Ayman Ahmed Al-Kurd was 28 year-old (born on July 12, 1980). He played for Jabalia Youth Sports Club until the day of his death, and, no, he was not a member of the Palestinian National team at the time.

Ayman was a terrorist that also played football; he joined the ranks of Ezzedeen Al Qassam Brigades in 2004. He was martyred on January 5, 2009 by Israeli artillery shells while in combat gear in the Salateen neighborhood (Beit Lahia).

Ezzedeen Al Qassam Brigades confirms that in a statement in English and in Arabic on their Website.

Ayman’s name is also on the B'Tselem list of Palestinians who took part in the hostilities and were killed by Israeli security forces in the Gaza Strip, during Operation Cast Lead .

Career Highlights

Team Qassam

Happy at Training

Terrorist Pr0n Production 

Lots, lots more.

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