Saturday, March 29, 2014

  • Saturday, March 29, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon

A fun Twitter conversation with a terror apologist/anti-Israel leftist (updated)

Usually I don't get into Twitter arguments, because they are a waste of time, but CiFWatch pointed out a conversation where I was being insulted by someone called Gary Spedding. I tried to make my position clear, but his responses and backtracking become hilarious.

It started when journalist Yair Rosenberg asked NYT reporter Jodi Rudoren if she can follow up on a post I did about how PA school Facebook pages had posters that denied Israel's right to excist:

  1.  Mar 28
    Hey : Wondering why younger Palestinians are more likely to oppose a two-state solution? See their schools:
    Details
  2.  Mar 28
    Question should really b whether YOU support academic freedom or not. Continuous rejection of Palestinian narrative
    Details
  3.  Mar 28
    No, the question is whether these schools constitute the exception or the rule, which is why I tagged a reporter, .
    Details
  4.  Mar 28
    You sound just like an anti-peace agreement dissident in Northern Ireland - rejecting right of others narrative
    Details
  5.  Mar 28
    You have completely misunderstood my tweet. It's not about what should be taught, it's empirical question re: what is
    Details
  6.  Mar 28
    I mean, you use EoZ as a credible source when there is mountains of far more thorough documentation on the issue.

So I added all the context I could about how I found what I found, which Spedding took as evidence I was hiding something in my post:
I looked at about a dozen schools. Most didn't have political photos at all, these 2 did

Image will appear as a link
  1.  Mar 28
    Why is that information not in your blog I wonder? Doesn't fit your agenda of demonisation
    Details
  2.  Mar 28
    Same point I made to Yair - you've looked at Palestinian schools? All the way from the USA?
  3. . 100% of the political photos I found denied Israel's existence. Not newsworthy enough?
    Details
  4.  Mar 28
  5.  Mar 28
    methinks Gary is suffering from cognitive dissonance at present, hence his desperation
    Details
  6.  Mar 28
    Plenty of photos at Israeli schools deny Palestine's existence & history.
    Details
  7.  Mar 28
    Some schools in Northern Ireland don't recognise Northern Ireland either... Your point?
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  9.  Mar 28
    . My point is that you will be hard pressed to find a counterexample in Pal. schools Ever.
    Details
  11.  Mar 28
    Having been to numerous Palestinian schools, dialogued with students.. I can say your wrong

  1.  Mar 28
    Of course, Gaza schools are far worse including UNRWA
    Details
  2.  Mar 28
    Article full of supposition, dead links as sources & doesn't use any academic studies.
    Details
  3.  Mar 28
    Because UNRWA removed the sites after I exposed them. Or do you think I made it up?
    Details
  4.  Mar 28
    I think you've exploited, removed context and used to demonise... That's your agenda.
    Details
  5.  Mar 28
    Then find me a SINGLE Pal school Facebook page that talks peace with Israel. I'll blog it.
    Details
  6.  Mar 28
    Palestinian incitement: Genuine problem or right-wing dream?
    Details


Ah, my blog is right wing propaganda, but 972 (which he linked to a couple of other times, and for which  he has written) is perfectly objective. 

  1.  Mar 28
    Don't change the subject. Find me a FB page. I know the arguments and I've countered them
    Details



  1.  Mar 28
    As I said, you need to VISIT and actually DIALOGUE with Palestinian schools in Palestine.
    Details
  2.  Mar 28
    . If true, call your buddies and find me a FB post accepting Israel. Easy peasy.
    Details
  3.  Mar 28
    Again, if you actually want to be intellectually honest... Go visit these places yourself
    Details
And if you want to be, find me peaceful Arabic writings by students not sponsored by NGOs
4:56 PM - 28 Mar 2014


  1.  Mar 28
    You need to VISIT Palestinian schools in Bethlehem and other places for yourself.
    Details
  2.  Mar 28
    Because students and teachers act in front of Westerners exactly as they act without.
    Details
  3.  Mar 28
    Automatically dismissing my own experiences by asserting bad faith on part of Palestinians
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  4.  Mar 28
    Not dismissing. I'm saying that they act more naturally with each other. Get it?
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  5.  Mar 28
    Ah, so you're trying to assert its 'natural' for Palestinians to teach hate? I get it now.
    Details

The racism card!


  1.  Mar 28
    You won't even bother to try to find the Arabic peaceful writings. Says volumes.
    Details
  2.  Mar 28
    You won't bother to write about them because it's not conducive to your agenda...
    Details
  3.  Mar 28
    I already promised you I would. OK?
    Details

Since I promised multiple times I'd blog anything he found that contradicted my post about social media, he could no longer claim that I wouldn't. But he knows quite well that he cannot find any such evidence himself. 

So... Let the backtracking begin!


  1.  Mar 28
    In which case do the research yourself if you're being honest & genuinely want to learn.
    Details
  2.  Mar 28
    You are accusing me of being biased, so my research is worthless to you. Prove me wrong.
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  3.  Mar 28
    Your research is worthless because others counter your arguments VERY effectively.
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  4.  Mar 28
    Your closemindedness as to my point is remarkable.
    Details
What do you expect? You run a right-wing blog for a specific political agenda...

There ya go. I'm "right wing" and therefore cannot be trusted. But he is enlightened and progressive so his claims don't need evidence, while my evidence is biased. 
Image will appear as a link
  1.  Mar 28
    I updated my post. Don't think you'll like it any better.
    Details


I added a parenthetical comment to the post:

I looked up about 12 schools, all girls, on FB. Most of the boys' schools did not have FB pages. Of those schools these were the only political posters I found, although one school did have a photo of the funeral of a terrorist last week calling him a martyr.


  1.  Mar 28
    You updated your post without admitting the fact it shows you are misrepresenting reality.

Of course...because I was representing reality of Palestinian Arab social media run by their own schools.

People act more like themselves on FB. So call your peaceful buddies & find the posts. Or admit you can't.

Image will appear as a link
  1.  Mar 28
    Actually, people generally act like idiots on social media... Someone threatened to shoot me in the head last week.

Backtracking and changing the subject again, of course. Because deep down Spedding knows I'm right and he cannot find a single social media post, not subsidized by an NGO, that would show Palestinian Arab students (or teachers, for that matter) willing to say they are willing to live side by side with Israel in a permanent peace.

Of course, when Westerners come and visit the students and teachers will tell them what they want to hear in English. But if a Fatah official visits a school talking about the right of violent resistance, will any student argue? It is laughable. Yet Spedding pretends to believe otherwise.

By the way, Spedding's  accusations that I am dishonest in my posts and not being objective is the height of hypocrisy. As we were tweeting, others dug up stuff Spedding had written before on his own blog (quoted in JPost):

Hamas rockets are and should be condemned but they also need to be understood in order to progress forward with any plan for peace and justice. It does not excuse Hamas rocket fire but it explains it in an accurate way to state that the home-made rockets of hamas are a desperate attempt by angry and desperate people who join up with militant groups at taking out revenge against Israel the 4th most well equipped and armed army in the world and against israeli civilians (which is totally unacceptable and unjustifiable in terms of attacking civilians).

He also wrote, months after the Fogel family was massacred:
The J’post article sickening invokes the cloudy and unclear death of the Fogel family an attack which I have the report and pictures of in my email inbox from the day after it happened. I find it sick that the J’post is still using this attack for political gain suggesting Palestinians are to blame when there has been no further information, news or otherwise released about the murders since the IDF conveniently caught two Palestinians kept them in torture for a month until they ‘confessed’ and then announced they had caught the killers despite the evidence and speculation of it being the work of a migrant worker from asia.
That was of course an unproven rumor that was being tossed around by Israel haters and found, by the time of his writing, to have been thoroughly debunked.

But after this was exposed, Spedding removed his blog posts! 

Gilead Ini, of CAMERA, takes it from there, responding to Spedding's response to my UNRWA school webpage expose:

  1.  Mar 28
    Article full of supposition, dead links as sources & doesn't use any academic studies.
    Details
Dead links and supposition? Remember when hinted Fogels killed by an Asian?
5:32 PM - 28 Mar 2014

Tweet text
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  1.  Mar 28
    : Grief shouldn't be used for peace or war
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  2.  Mar 28
    Also, I never hinted or claimed such a thing... Some PA news sources did tho...
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  3.  Mar 28
    : "the IDF conveniently caught two Palestinians kept them in torture...
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  4.  Mar 28
    : "...for a month until they ‘confessed’ and then announced...
    Details
  5.  Mar 28
    : "...they had caught the killers despite the evidence and speculation...
    Details
  6.  Mar 28
    : "of it being the work of a migrant worker from asia."
    Details
  7.  Mar 28
    Where are you quoting from? Certainly not anything from me.
    Details
  8.  Mar 28
    Aren't you the Gary Spedding who posts at ?
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  9.  Mar 28
    Yes... Where is the post that you claim to have taken those quotes from?
    Details
  10.  Mar 28
    According to online citations, it was at .
    Details
  11.  Mar 28
    Is that URL fabricated, or did you post something on 7/26/11 and then delete?
    Details
  12.  Mar 28
    So essentially there is no blog. No evidence. Ergo your claims are false.
    Details
  13.  Mar 28
    If I'd posted such a blog and then deleted it I'm sure it would still be cached no?
    Details
  14.  Mar 28
    You didn't post a blog on July 26, 2011, then? cc:
    Details
  15.  Mar 28
    caches from 2011? highly unlikely
    Details
  16.  18h
    Spedding worked hard to expunge the evidence. Didn't succeed completely.
    Details
  17.  18h
    Ah troppy, haven't you embarrassed yourself enough where I'm concerned?

Spedding claims that he never posted such a thing, and there is no evidence, so (he implies) Ini must be lying. And so is Sam Westrop, who also joined the conversation, and who was the one who quoted Spedding's disgusting words in the Jerusalem Post.

So is there still any evidence of this article written by Spedding on his blog on July 26, 2011 that he later deleted? Why, yes there is, thanks to the Wayback Machine and the (better than mine) search skills of @lsorang :




So we have proof Spedding purposefully expunged his post and now denies ever having written them.

Which tells you all you need to know about the intellectual honesty of Gary Spedding - who accuses me of being intellectually dishonest without giving a smidgen of proof!

Another major fail for the Israel haters.

(More on this lying, hypocritical, terror apologist idiot here.)

(UPDATE: Original post only had evidence that Spedding's rant existed but not a screenshot of his actual words, @lsorang found the actual post.)

03/29 Links: Pro-Terror Activism by J Street Campus Leaders; PA Increases Imports from Israel

From Ian:
‘Israel offers to free 400 more prisoners if Abbas extends talks’
Israel has offered to release a new group of 400 Palestinian security prisoners, in addition to the fourth and final group of longtime terrorism convicts who were set to go free this
weekend, if the Palestinian Authority agrees to extend peace talks for another six months, The Times of Israel learned from Palestinian sources on Saturday night. The US, anxious to arrange for the continuation of the talks, backed the offer.
As of Saturday evening, however, PA President Mahmoud Abbas was insisting that the fourth group of longtime prisoners first be released before he would consider extending the talks beyond their current April 29 deadline.
Concerns at Wash U. Over Apparent Pro-Terror Activism by J Street U Campus Leaders
One of America’s elite universities became the focus of attention today as photos emerged showing students apparently engaging in support for international terrorism during the past year. The two students, identified as Fadi AbuNe’meh and Taka Yamaguchi, were apparently leading activists with the campus chapter of J Street U, an organization that describes itself, inter alia, as “pro-Peace.”
An especially vibrant part of the group’s peace activism, apparently, includes wearing T-Shirts that say “Resistance is Not Terrorism,” and sport a picture of Leila Khaled, a notorious PFLP terrorist who hijacked airplanes in 1969 and 1970, caressing an AK-47.
Caroline Glick: Interview on The Dennis Prager Show discussing The Israeli Solution
On Tuesday I had the opportunity to discuss The Israeli Solution on the Dennis Prager Show.
Anne Bayefsky: The UN "Human Rights" Council & Israel


Friday, March 28, 2014

  • Friday, March 28, 2014
  • Elder of Ziyon

Dershowitz eviscerates Jeremy Ben Ami, who sputters in response

From Haaretz:

J Street’s hypocrisy must be exposed

J Street’s 'Big Tent’ is open only to one side - the anti-Israel and BDS-supporting hard left of its own position; pro-Israel centrists are censored.

By Alan M. Dershowitz | Mar. 27, 2014 | 10:44 PM

J Street, the American organization that calls itself pro-Israel and pro peace but that always seems to be taking positions that are anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian, is asking America’s Jewish leadership to have a big tent and to open its doors to J Street. While I generally support that position, it is imperative that J Street’s hypocrisy be exposed. J Street insists that all major pro-Israel organizations be open to speakers who favor opposing views—such as supporters of the BDS movements, supporters of the single secular binational state approach, and those who oppose Palestinian recognition of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

In the abstract, this open tent policy seems commendable. We should be committed to the open marketplace of ideas in which views prevail on their merits not on the basis of exclusion.

Now let’s see how J Street itself fares with regard to an open tent policy. It has categorically refused to allow speakers like me, who oppose J Street’s policies on Iran and other security matters, to speak to its members at its conventions. I have repeatedly and persistently sought an opportunity to present my perspective—which is shared by many American supporters of Israel—at the J Street convention, or at other events officially sponsored by J Street. When J Street invites BDS supporters and those oppose Israel’s right to exist as the nation-state of the Jewish people to speak at its events, it claims that it does not necessarily support these positions, but it believes in encouraging its members to hear views that are different from its official positions. That is total nonsense. J Street only wants people to hear views to the anti-Israel hard left of its position. It categorically refuses to allow its members to hear views that are more centrist and more pro-Israel, such as my own.

...
And there is a good reason why they have placed this cone of silence over its critics. J Street survives, and even expands, largely as the result of speaking out of two sides of its mouth. It seeks to attract centrist members by advocating the two-state solution, an aggressive stance towards peace negotiations and criticisms of Israel’s settlement policies. These are positions I fully support, and if they were J Street’s only positions, I would have joined that organization many years ago. But in an effort to expand leftward, particularly hard leftward, it has taken positions that undercut Israel’s security and that virtually no Israeli center-leftists support. It placed its imprimatur behind the despicable and mendacious Goldstone Report by bringing Richard Goldstone to Capitol Hill and introducing him to members of Congress. In doing so it undercuts the efforts of the Obama Administration, which was supportive of Israel’s self-defense efforts in Gaza and not supportive of the Goldstone Report.

...
J Street has also spoken out of both sides of its mouth on the issue of whether the Palestinian leadership should recognize Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. While first appearing to oppose such recognition, it now seems to be saying that this issue should be left to final stage negotiations, but it leaves open the possibility that it will continue to oppose such recognition if and when such negotiations are reached.

Moreover, J Street has accepted funding from sources—such as George Soros—who are openly anti-Israel, and have kept this fact secret so as not to alienate its centrist supporters.

It is easy to understand therefore why J Street doesn’t want me, or others who hold positions like mine, to enter into its tent. It does not want its own members to be confronted with the reality of J Street’s double talk. If I speak at its convention, I will be speaking at the same time to those centrists it seeks to attract and to those hard leftists it wants within its tent. Both sides will be shocked by J Street’s duplicity in telling each what they want to hear.

So here is my challenge: at the next J Street convention, show the film The J Street Challenge: The Seductive Allure of Peace in Our Time to all of its members, invite me to speak to them, allow me to distribute its conflicting position papers and positions and let the marketplace of ideas remain open to its members. Only when J Street opens up its tent to views critical of its own should it be demanding that pro-Israel groups open its tent to them.

Now look at Ben-Ami's "response" where he doesn't respond at all:

...Instead of organizing to meet this existential threat, some on the far right of the American Jewish community are focusing their effort and their fire in a different direction – on members of their own community. In particular, there is a new well-funded and energetic campaign to defame and delegitimize J Street, centered on an hour-long attack-umentary called the “J Street Challenge.”

Sadly even a couple of mainstream, established Jewish organizations and figures are associating themselves with it - contrary to our community's firm commitment to civil debate on issues of legitimate disagreement.

Those who've made the film and are hawking it are, however, missing the real challenges that J Street is posing to the Jewish community. Here are a few of them:

• With the world losing patience with Israel’s policy toward the Palestinians, will we rally to urge the national homeland of our people to change course before it loses its democracy or its Jewish character?

• As the BDS Movement against Israel gains traction, will we recognize that the best way to defeat it isn’t spending our energy on preventing its supporters from being heard, but on ending the conflict in two states for two peoples?

• If you recognize the existential necessity of a two-state solution for Israel to survive as a Jewish and democratic homeland, isn’t it time to acknowledge the price that has to be paid to achieve it? How can we say we support a two-state solution but oppose establishing borders based on the pre-67 lines with swaps? How can we say we support two states and oppose a Palestinian capital in the Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem?

• Is it appropriate to call those who criticize Israeli government policy anti-Israel or anti-Semitic? Plenty of Israelis including security chiefs, former Prime Ministers and Members of the Knesset are critical of present policy, and they’re certainly not anti-Israel. In fact, using the anti-Semitism label to describe criticism of Israeli policy demeans the horror of real anti-Semitism.

• Is it right or smart to limit the right to speak in Jewish communal spaces to those with whom you agree? The more we limit admission to Jewish communal spaces by imposing ideological litmus tests regarding Israel, the smaller our Jewish community will be.

• Are we, as a people, treating the Palestinian people the way we ourselves want to be treated? Are we living up to the moral standards of our people and have we learned the lessons of our own oppression through the centuries and across the globe?

• Can we finally stop ignoring what is happening beyond the Green Line? The day-to-day maintenance of a 47-year occupation of another people runs counter to the interests and values of Israel and the Jewish people. It places all the wonder and accomplishment of the state of Israel at risk. It is time for the occupation to end.

We urge those attacking us to spend a little less time leveling baseless accusations against a now-established Jewish organization and a little more time addressing these fundamental challenges facing the Israel we love.
...
In Jewish communal venues here and across the globe, let’s call an end to the attack videos and mudslinging and let’s start discussing the significant challenges that really threaten not just Israel but the heart and the soul of the Jewish people.

Amazing, no?
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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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