Pittsburgh shooter a fan of sites that love Electronic Intifada, Max Blumenthal, Mondoweiss

EoZ contributor Petra Marquardt-Bigman writes in The Forward that the white nationalist Pittsburgh mass murderer also hated Israel, and he was a fan of neo-Nazi sites that loved to quote anti-Israel sites.

To give one example he would reproduce posts from a disgusting blog with the disgusting name Diversity Macht Frei. The author of the blog say he's a fan of Electronic Intifada, "which publishes a lot of good research on the Jews, if you can ignore their disturbing sympathy for brown people.”

The blogger often quotes not only Ali Abunimah, but also Mondoweiss  several times and Max Blumenthal: (I'm not linking to the site.)

I’ve also recently been reading the book “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel” by the Jew Max Blumenthal. Some of the details about the systematic ethnic discrimination the Israeli government routinely practises are amazing. Equally amazing is the fact that this is almost completely unknown in the wider world. For example, he describes a law that requires any Gentile who has a relationship with a Jewish girl to register it with the government and provide documentation to the government that the girl’s parents approve of her having a relationship with a non-Jew!!

Obviously, the quality of research by neo-Nazis is roughly the same as that of Max Blumenthal - both hawk anti-Jewish and anti-Israel lies.

Neo-Nazis are quite aware that these leftist sites agree with them about Jews. At least the white nationalists are honest as to their Jew hatred; the far Left and "pro-Palestinian" sites pretend that they care about human rights and swear up and down they aren't antisemitic.

The neo-Nazis and "pro-Palestinian" sites agree that Jews and the Jewish state are their misfortune. The only real difference is that the far Left sites will quote anti-Zionist Jews as proof that they aren't antisemitic; the far right will quote the same to lend proof to their own proud antisemitism - even the Jews admit that the Jews are as evil as they say.

The irony is that EI and Mondoweiss and Blumenthal and company will happily trot out the most bizarre relationships to "prove" that Zionists are antisemitic - when the antisemites are openly praising the far Left and passionately hate the Zionists.

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Shame, shame, shame. What Human Rights Watch won’t do for money. (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

When HRW was schmoozing with the Saudis

What a difference a few months can make… Sarah Leah Whitson – who is the executive director of the Middle East and North Africa Division at Human Rights Watch – is now raging against Saudi Arabia. You can find countless examples of her fury on her Twitter feed.

But just a few months ago, Whitson apparently felt that the Saudis (and other repressive Arab regimes) could make great allies against Israel.

Back in the merry month of May, Whitson quoted a tweet by Jordan’s foreign minister condemning Israel’s response to the Gaza riots and added the comment: “Your turn @AdelAljubeir and @abzayed and @mfaEgypt -- have any firm words for your ally @Netanyahu and his open fire policies that allow this massacre to unfold?”

The people she tagged as contemptible ‘allies’ of Israel’s prime minister Netanyahu included Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Aljubeir and United Arab Emirates Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed as well as Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It clearly didn’t matter to Whitson that these countries have dismal human rights records – she would have been only too happy if they joined her to bash the Jewish state for defending its borders from violent mobs incited by Gaza’s Islamist rulers.

Just like Whitson has changed her tune on the Saudis, her boss Ken Roth is by now also sure that they really deserve to be shunned. As he commented disapprovingly on a recent report about brisk business at a Saudi investment conference: “Shame, shame, shame. What people won’t do for money.”

Well, less than a decade ago – when the Saudi human rights record was hardly better than now – one could have said: “Shame, shame, shame. What Human Rights Watch won’t do for money.”

It’s worthwhile checking out this superb post by Jeffrey Goldberg from 2009 on “Fundraising Corruption at Human Rights Watch.”

Goldberg notes that he first found it hard to believe a report which claimed “that Human Rights Watch officials went trolling for dollars in Saudi Arabia, and that the organization’s senior Middle East official, Sarah Leah Whitson, attempted to extract money from potential Saudi donors by bragging about the group’s ‘battles’ with the ‘pro-Israel pressure groups.’” As Goldberg put it back then: “this allegation, if proven true, would cast serious doubt on whether Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division could ever fairly judge Israel again.”

Goldberg then recounted his efforts to find out whether the allegation was true, and he posted his astonishing email exchanges with Ken Roth, who did everything humanly possible to avoid answering Goldberg questions.

In the end, Goldberg managed to get Ken Roth to admit that his organization had indeed tried to solicit Saudi donations by highlighting HRW reports on Israel and by claiming that Israel’s supporters “fight back with lies and deception.”

Well, that was probably a very worthwhile fundraising effort in a country that had long made sure that “modern-day Muslim readers have at their disposal the whole gamut of Nazi antisemitic mythology and iconography.”

Shame, shame, shame. What Human Rights Watch won’t do for money.

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Jamal Khashoggi – The Washington Post’s Islamist columnist (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

When Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul at the beginning of this month, the media reacted with understandable outrage to the growing evidence that he was likely murdered there. Yet even in this situation, there is no justification for presenting Khashoggi as something he clearly was not.

According to his colleagues at the Washington Post, Khashoggi was a “committed, courageous journalist” who wrote “out of a sense of love for his country [Saudi Arabia] and deep faith in human dignity and freedom.”

Much of the media coverage of the case reflects this glowing assessment.

But a Wall Street Journal reporter noted early on that “Khashoggi was close to several people in the administration of President Erdogan, whom he knew personally and liked,” and apparently, Khashoggi “trusted Turkey even more than the U.S.”

So I started to wonder how a “committed, courageous journalist” with “deep faith in human dignity and freedom” could feel so positive about Turkey’s Islamist regime – after all, Turkey reportedly “has the highest number of journalists in jail worldwide.”

By now it is clear that Khashoggi’s admiration for Erdogan’s Turkey was due to the fact that he himself was an Islamist.

An excellent Spectator piece provides a fascinating report under the fitting title “What the media aren’t telling you about Jamal Khashoggi.”

The report argues that Khashoggi’s case has “provoked global outrage … for all the wrong reasons.”

While much of the media now present Khashoggi as “a liberal, Saudi progressive voice fighting for freedom and democracy,” he apparently “never had much time for western-style pluralistic democracy.”

“In the 1970s he joined the Muslim Brotherhood, which exists to rid the Islamic world of western influence. He was a political Islamist until the end, recently praising the Muslim Brotherhood in the Washington Post. He championed the ‘moderate’ Islamist opposition in Syria, whose crimes against humanity are a matter of record. Khashoggi frequently sugarcoated his Islamist beliefs with constant references to freedom and democracy. But he never hid that he was in favour of a Muslim Brotherhood arc throughout the Middle East. His recurring plea to bin Salman in his columns was to embrace not western-style democracy, but the rise of political Islam […] For Khashoggi, secularism was the enemy.”

A year ago, just when Khashoggi started writing for the Washington Post, he reportedly told Al Jazeera Arabic that “if Saudi Arabia wants to confront Iran, it must re-embrace its proper religious identity as a Wahhabi Islamic revivalist state and build alliances with organisations rooted in political Islam such as the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Is this really a view the Washington Post wanted to amplify when it hired Khashoggi as a regular columnist?

But it’s not only Khashoggi’s Islamist politics that should raise eyebrows about the Washington Post’s decision to provide him a prestigious platform as a columnist.

Khashoggi’s own record of work in the media can also hardly count as a qualification for a columnist in an influential western paper. As noted in the Spectator report, “Before working with a succession of Saudi princes, he edited Saudi newspapers. The exclusive remit a Saudi government–appointed newspaper editor has is to ensure nothing remotely resembling honest journalism makes it into the pages.”

Indeed, Khashoggi was apparently not all that keen on freedom of speech, as illustrated by what he told Al Jazeera last fall:

“Khashoggi, who spoke to Al Jazeera from Washington, DC, expressed hope that Saudi Arabia would go back to assume its leadership of the Arab world and shift its focus to the causes that are very important to the Arabs, mainly to support the Palestinians in their struggle against Israel. He deplored the authorities' decision to allow some in the Saudi news media to express support for Israel against the Palestinians, while journalists and intellectuals known to support the Palestinian cause were put in jail or felt afraid to speak out.”

Khashoggi also asserted in this interview that it’s “not in the Saudis’ interest to have relations with Israel. Israel will neither fight our battles nor attack Iran or Hezbollah for us.”

According to the Islamist website Middle East Monitor, Khashoggi also recently “called on Muslims to visit Jerusalem,” because Muslims “need to remind the Israelis that Jerusalem is ours.”

*

The Washington Post and many other influential media outlets now try to create pressure in order to force the Trump administration to downgrade relations with Saudi Arabia. In my view, there was plenty of reason for holding Saudi Arabia at arm’s length long before Khashoggi’s disappearance and likely murder – and there was most definitely never a reason to fawn about Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman like Tom Friedman and other influential commentators and public figures.

But if the media want more distance between the US and the Saudis, the Washington Post might have wasted a golden opportunity when they hired Khashoggi as their very own Islamist columnist, but failed to press him on what he knew about 9/11.

As the Spectator report explains, Khashoggi was seen as a threat by Saudi royals not only because he “emerged as a de facto leader of the Saudi [Muslim Brotherhood] branch,” but also because “Khashoggi had dirt on Saudi links to al Qaeda before the 9/11 attacks. He had befriended Osama bin Laden in the 1980s and 1990s in Afghanistan and Sudan while championing his jihad against the Soviets in dispatches. At that same time, he was employed by the Saudi intelligence services to try to persuade bin Laden to make peace with the Saudi royal family. The result? Khashoggi was the only non-royal Saudi who had the beef on the royals’ intimate dealing with al Qaeda in the lead-up to the 9/11 attacks.”

What a pity that the Washington Post was content to provide Khashoggi a platform to promote his Islamist agenda, but apparently failed to find out what he knew about al Qaeda.

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Linda Sarsour’s triumphalism on the Temple Mount (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

Linda Sarsour never tires of emphasizing how “unapologetically Muslim” she is. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but perhaps she gave a useful example when she recently visited the Temple Mount.

Sarsour posted a short clip showing the Dome of the Rock to her Instagram account with the text: “God is GREAT all the time. The beautiful Dome of the Rock in #Palestine. #Jerusalem”

For most Muslim tourists, I would consider this an unremarkable post. After all, Muslims are indoctrinated to believe that the Dome of the Rock is part of the “Al Aqsa mosque compound,” which they are told to consider as Islam’s “third holiest site.” The fact that it is Judaism’s holiest site is always adamantly denied or dismissed as a fabricated idea. At the same time, Palestinian and other Arab Muslim media never tire to churn out vicious libels about Jewish attacks on the site, and Jews are accused of falsely claiming that the Islamic buildings were erected on the ruins of their ancient temple, while every good Muslim knows that it was the biblical Adam or his son, or Abraham and his son Isaac, who built the Al Aqsa mosque.

I’m sorry if the idea of biblical figures building a mosque long before Muhammad introduced Islam sounds a bit crazy, but this is what you can learn from Linda Sarsour’s dear friend Imam Omar Suleiman – who was recently listed by CNN (where he also has published op-eds) as one of 25 Influential American Muslims (needless to say, Linda Sarsour is also included in the list).

Sarsour has said that Suleiman makes her “more proud to be a Muslim and a Palestinian,” and perhaps she fully shares his Temple denial and his vicious anti-Jewish theological views.

Her recent Instagram post is certainly remarkable for someone who claims to be not only “progressive,” but who also wants to be considered as a credible opponent of antisemitism.

Sarsour is surely fully aware that the Temple Mount is Judaism’s holiest site, but that – due to constant threats of Muslim violence – Jews are banned from praying anywhere on the huge platform, which measures about 150,000 square meters (37 acres). And as Sarsour surely also knows, the fanatically imposed Muslim supremacy restricts the access of all non-Muslims, including Christians for whom the site has significance in their faith.

So when Sarsour stands in front of the Dome of the Rock and says “God is GREAT all the time”, she is triumphantly joining the Muslim fanatics who make sure that only Muslims are allowed to do anything that can be construed as worship on the Temple Mount. Any Jew or Christian who would stand in front of the Dome of the Rock and would declare “God is GREAT all the time” would risk being attacked by a Muslim mob and/or being swiftly arrested by police.

That’s clearly perfectly fine with the “unapologetically Muslim” Linda Sarsour, who for good measure places the Dome of the Rock in “#Palestine”. With this she makes clear that the building that was erected on the orders of a Muslim emperor to obliterate the ruins of the Jewish Temple and prevent its rebuilding for all time should indeed continue to serve as “a symbol of the permanent supremacy and governance of Islam and the Muslims over the … Noble Sanctuary or al-Haram al-Sharif.”

I guess if you’re as “unapologetically Muslim” as Linda Sarsour, Islamic imperialism remains a most wonderful thing that – unlike all other imperialist regimes – should still be celebrated in the 21st century.

Both Linda Sarsour and Omar Suleiman are heavily promoted in the media as modern Muslims who have nothing in common with Islamist fanatics. If you don’t agree, both Sarsour and Suleiman and the media will denounce you as “Islamophobic.” But the truth is that any Muslim who is unwilling to acknowledge the historic Jewish connection to the Temple Mount and unwilling to accept that Jews have the right to visit freely and pray somewhere at the site has something very fundamental in common with Islamist fanatics.

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Amnesty misses the good old times when Jews were defenseless (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

No matter how many atrocities are perpetrated all over the world, there is no worse atrocity than Israel defending its citizens – at least as far as Amnesty International is concerned. It seems that the “human rights” organization really misses the good old times when Jews were defenseless: last Friday, Amnesty told its more than one million Twitter followers:

“#Israel must stop the murderous assault on protesters in #Gaza, including killing and maiming 'Great March of Return' demonstrators who pose no imminent threat to soldiers. Countries must stop all military aid to Israel until this assault ends.”

To make sure everyone understood that the world’s only Jewish state behaved in ways that Jew-haters have always seen as characteristically evil, Amnesty posted another tweet echoing the medieval blood libel:

“Malicious tactics are being employed by the Israeli military who are deliberately using weapons of war to cause life-changing injuries to Palestinian protesters. Why are weapons still being sold to #Israel?”

On Facebook, where Amnesty has about two million followers, the organization shared the same posts.

And needless to say, there were not just social media posts, but also a lengthy statement under the title: “Israel: Arms embargo needed as military unlawfully kills and maims Gaza protesters.”

Just in case you were wondering: no, Amnesty doesn’t mention that Gaza’s Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar told a crowd of protesters near the border with Israel: “We will uproot the borders, we will pluck out their hearts, and we will pray in Jerusalem.” No word either about the fact that many of those killed were members of terror organizations; no word about the displays of swastikas (on Hitler’s birthday) or about the successful attempts to start fires across the border in Israel by releasing kites carrying burning rags or fire bombs.

Instead, Magdalena Mughrabi, Deputy Regional Director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, sounded as if she was a deputy Hamas spokesperson – according to her, the riots at Israel’s borders are just the peace-loving people of Gaza “demanding the right to return to their homes and towns in what is now Israel.”

Right, Ms. Mughrabi: now it’s Israel, but you can always hope it will eventually be Hamastan if Amnesty keeps working as hard as it can to rid the world of its only Jewish state.

So let’s conclude with a picture worth a thousand words to illustrate what Amnesty is cheering on.

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Holocaust cartoon competition winner Carlos Latuff disappoints some fans (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

As long as the Brazilian cartoonist Carlos Latuff focused on bashing Israel, his fans could see nothing wrong with his participation in the “International Holocaust Cartoon Competition” organized by an Iranian newspaper in 2006. Latuff won the second prize with one of the countless images he produced on the antisemitic theme presenting Israel as today’s Nazi Germany, while the Palestinians appear as victims suffering like the Jews under the Nazis.

But the down-with-Israel camp that never had a problem with antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism is no longer one big happy family united in hate for the world’s only Jewish state. The horrors committed in Syria by Assad and his allies Iran and Russia have convinced some people that Assad’s ardent hatred of Israel isn’t quite enough to embrace him – though there are still many veteran Israel-haters like Max Blumenthal and his ilk who remain ardent defenders of Assad’s regime.

I wrote already in fall 2016 about the backlash against Blumenthal’s determined efforts to make butcher Assad and his allies look good; at around the same time, Blumenthal’s good friend and fellow-Israel-hater Rania Khalek also lost some of her erstwhile fans over her eagerness to embark on a career as an Assad apologist.

Now it seems that Holocaust cartoon competition winner Carlos Latuff has managed to alienate a few of his fans with a cartoon that smears Syria’s famous White Helmets – a volunteer rescue group that tries to help civilian war victims – as Islamist terrorists.

And just like with Max Blumenthal, erstwhile fans of Latuff are now disappointed that he “even glorified the Russian invasion and bombing of Syrian civilians as some fight against terrorism and imperialism.”

It’s welcome news that more people seem to realize that “Carlos Latuff is a fascist and a smear merchant. He is motivated by hate and resentment. He has no regard for truth or justice. If you use his crude and racist cartoons, you do your cause a great disservice.”

Arguably though, it’s a bit late to come to this conclusion more than ten years after Latuff got a prize at Iran’s “International Holocaust Cartoon Competition.”

And in any case, it seems that most so-called “pro-Palestinian” activists remain ardent fans of Latuff’s vile output.

The notorious “hate site” Mondoweiss features his cartoons regularly; one good example of Latuff’s  endless recycling of the antisemitic meme presenting Israel as today’s Nazi Germany and the Palestinians as the Jews of Europe in the 1930s and 1940s is a cartoon Mondoweiss published last October “to celebrate the IDF’s 70th birthday.”

Here are some additional examples of Latuff’s largely undiminished popularity among those who think the slaughter that has been going on in Syria for years should not distract anyone from the urgent task of demonizing the world’s only Jewish state.

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Linda Sarsour’s blood and soil (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

 By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

I always thought that talk about blood and soil has a really bad ring to it ever since the Nazis used it to express some of their core beliefs. But I was obviously mistaken: it’s progressive. You don’t have to take my word for it – here’s Linda Sarsour: “I am honored and grateful to God that he chose to let this Palestinian blood run through my veins. A blood of a courageous, determined and resilient people” who “have EVERY right to fight for their land.”

And needless to say, Linda Sarsour fully supports Palestinians fighting “for their land” by trying to storm the border between Gaza and Israel…

It’s hard to know what exactly Linda Sarsour has in mind when she is sending her “Palestinian sisters and brothers … gratitude for their sacrifices.” Maybe she’s grateful that they haven’t yet revolted against Hamas? After all, the Hamas leader has given one of those speeches that should really please someone whose “Arab pride was hurt” when the ruthless Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was captured.

When you regard Saddam Hussein as a mistreated hero and are so immensely proud of the “Palestinian blood” running through your veins it must sound wonderful to hear: “We will take down the border with Israel and we will tear the Israelis’ hearts out of their bodies!” Though for some reason, Linda Sarsour had nothing to say about this speech, or the Palestinian Nazi flag, in the two posts she put on her Facebook page since then. Maybe she’s too modest to talk all the time about how proud she is? Oh, and she was also too modest to mention the chants of “Remember Khaybar, O Jews. Muhammad's army will return.”

In any case, you may have heard that a senior adviser to Mahmoud Abbas had some very strong words of condemnation for the violent show Hamas is putting on, accusing the terror group of “deliberately sending Gazan civilians to their deaths to grab good headlines.”

But Linda Sarsour doesn’t quite see it this way. In her most recent post, she passionately decries “the inhumanity in the continued assault, dehumanization and murder of Palestinians who have every right to mobilize for dignity on their own land;” she also calls on her followers to “say a prayer for these souls” – meaning those who were killed while trying to storm the border. And she adds: “More important than that - speak truth to power and do not let anyone dictate what your eyes clearly see for themselves.”

Okay then, my eyes clearly see for themselves that Linda Sarsour wants her followers to “say a prayer” for more than a dozen terrorists.

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Max Blumenthal (and his $20 lawyer) vs. the Southern Poverty Law Center (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

I’m quite sure that there are many people who think Max Blumenthal doesn’t have much of a reputation to lose, but he still seems to feel otherwise. So he reacted with great fury a few days ago when he found out that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) – which claims to fight “hate and bigotry” – had published an analysis on “how fascists operationalize left-wing resentment.” The piece provided lots of interesting material on “red-brown populist collaboration” and featured Blumenthal as an example of a supposedly left-wing activist who happily collaborates with media outlets and individuals promoting a far-right agenda.

Before most people had a chance to read the piece, Blumenthal managed to bully the SPLC into taking it down – though luckily someone was even quicker than Blumenthal and archived it before it disappeared. Why the SPLC caved so promptly is a bit of a mystery (- some clues later -), because all claims and conclusions in the analysis are meticulously supported by links.

Take for example the part that deals with Sputnik: it’s a media site that “has widely been described as a Russian propaganda outlet,” and Max Blumenthal has repeatedly collaborated with them to promote ideas that fit Sputnik’s agenda.

The SPLC’s retracted piece mentioned Sputnik podcast “Loud & Clear,” noting:

“Aside from marginal guests, Loud & Clear can bring on some heavy hitters. During his two appearances on ‘Loud & Clear’ in late 2017, bestselling author Max Blumenthal called the red-brown radio show ‘the finest public affairs programming’ and declared, ‘I am increasingly turning to RT America [Russian government-funded propaganda channel] for sanity.’”

Presumably, Blumenthal won’t dispute that he made these statements – which truly speak for themselves and reveal a lot about what he regards as “sanity”…

But one can’t deny that Max-Blumenthal-style “sanity” has its rewards: the lawyer who threatened the SPLC on Blumenthal’s behalf apparently did so pro bono, charging only a nominal fee of $20; and it just so happens that he is “a former Sputnik editor who previously represented ‘alt-right’ star Cassandra Fairbanks, who also worked at Sputnik.” One could indeed almost be tempted to conclude that “Russian state media promotes Red-Brown alliances.”

It is then hardly surprising that a recent Sputnik piece on SPLC’s craven retraction celebrates Max Blumenthal as a “prominent journalist and author (and strident critic of the West)” who can’t possibly be tainted in any way by his admirers on the far-right.

Well, let’s recall just a few of the relevant examples I documented a few years ago:

Back in 2010, Max Blumenthal attracted some heartfelt praise on Stormfront for his efforts to demonize Israel and Jews: “Max Blumenthal has done a great service for all of humanity here, and we WNS [i.e. white nationalists], and the rest of the world, ought to be grateful to him.”

A few years later, when his vile anti-Israel screed “Goliath” was published, Blumenthal got some well-deserved praise on David Duke’s website: “Blumenthal’s recent book and much of his other work have been extremely valuable.” You can check out archived copies of some of the relevant posts here and here.

But when Blumenthal won plaudits from the far-right for demonizing the world’s only Jewish state, many of the people who are now so appalled by his apologetics for Putin’s Russia could see nothing wrong and were very happy to cheer him on. That includes the SPLC: as Blumenthal gleefully pointed out on Twitter, the organization had mounted an ardent defense of him in 2014 after it emerged that the far-right perpetrator of a deadly attack on a Jewish community center was an admirer of Blumenthal’s work. The SPLC passionately denounced attempts by “leading conservatives … to blame liberals for the massacre,” noting: “Specifically, they pinned the blame on a single liberal journalist, Max Blumenthal, because Miller [the far-right perpetrator] on a handful of occasions praised Blumenthal’s against-the-grain reporting on the right wing in Israel.”

So while the SPLC claims to fight “hate and bigotry,” they apparently also think that it’s part of their mission to whitewash a book that demonizes the world’s only Jewish state as the Nazi Germany of our time as “against-the-grain reporting on the right wing in Israel”…

The SPLC also asserted that “Blumenthal … is of Jewish descent and has spent years off and on in Israel,” and that he “does not ‘despise’ Israel” and merely “has written a number of articles that criticize Israeli policies.”

That was written on April 18, 2014. A few months earlier, the Simon Wiesenthal Center had published its 2013 list of the “Top 10 Anti-Semitic/Anti-Israel Slurs” and included Blumenthal in the category “The Power of the Poison Pen.” As I also documented at the time, during his book tour for “Goliath” in fall 2013, Blumenthal had discussed the urgent moral imperative to eliminate the world’s only Jewish state and had advocated a “Juden raus” policy for Israeli Jews who wouldn’t willingly “become indigenized” by accepting Arab-Muslim dominance in political, cultural and social terms.

Since the SPLC had no problem whitewashing Blumenthal’s agenda four years ago, it’s understandable that they now decided that it was a regrettable slip to expose his unsavory views and the fact that he has quite a few admirers on the far-right.

It is of course true that it can happen to every writer that people whose views one might find deplorable will pick up on one’s writings. But in Blumenthal’s case, it’s not an occasional article that was picked up by people on the fringes and put to unintended use. If you get complimented on David Duke’s site that your “recent book” and “much of” your “other work have been extremely valuable,” and if similar praise is heaped on you on quite a few similar sites, it’s plainly well-deserved praise.

 But the SPLC’s defense of Blumenthal in 2014 is also noteworthy for another reason: while I agree that the fact that a far-right terrorist had cited Blumenthal approvingly “on a handful of occasions” does not mean Blumenthal inspired his deadly attack, Blumenthal himself had claimed in 2011 that American writers cited by the Norwegian mass-murderer Anders Behring Breivik were “Right-Wing Hatemongers Who Inspired the Norway Killer.” So the people who tried a few years later to tar Blumenthal with the deadly attack perpetrated by his fan merely sank to Blumenthal’s own level.

Indeed, in another related piece, Blumenthal described Breivik as “a perfect product of the Axis of Islamophobia” and again emphasized that Breivik’s “writings contain the same themes and language as more prominent right-wing Islamophobes (or those who style themselves as “counter-Jihadists”) and many conservatives in general.” Needless to say, Israel loomed large in Blumenthal’s musings about Breivik – as he put it on the notorious “hate site” Mondoweiss, people like the Norwegian mass murderer “turn for inspiration to Israel, the only ethnocracy in the world.”

Well, guess what? These were ideas that appealed to Stormfront proprietor Don Black. In April 2014, he penned a post responding to allegations by the SPLC that Breivik and other far-right terrorist killers had been members of his forum. As Black confidently explained:

“Breivik’s murderous rampage was actually inspired by Zionist extremists. As Jewish peace advocate Max Blumenthal has documented, Breivik fell under the influence of Zionists Daniel Pipes, Pam Geller and Robert Spencer. So he attacked a youth group that had demanded disinvestment from Israel.”

It’s of course just a coincidence, but it still is a great illustration of the absurdity of the SPLC’s defense of Max Blumenthal: Black published his Stormfront post on April 17, 2014 – praising Max Blumenthal as a “Jewish peace advocate” and trying to use his writings on Breivik against the SPLC, while the SPLC published its post defending Max Blumenthal against the kind of smears he had spread in the wake of Breivik’s murderous rampage one day later, on April 18, 2014.

Well, if you have so dedicated supporters from the far-right all the way to the progressive left…

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