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Recently Hezbollah, CiF’s favorite Fascist terrorist group (sorry, “resistance force”) lost one of its “spiritual” leaders. Hussein Fadhallah entered the gates of hell on July 4th 2010. His “Guardians” were promptly at those gates attempting to assure his passage to progressive heaven.
Ian Williams, writing in The Guardian, even made a snide remark about the date of the passing of this creep, being the 4th of July.
“Some might even see significance in his death, at 75, on July 4th, which will doubtless bring up his support for the attack on the American marine barracks in Beirut. But then they might also think about the joint Saudi/alleged CIA operation that tried to kill the Ayatollah with a massive bomb but ended up killing 80 men and women worshippers at his Mosque.”
Ian should have known better. The 1983 bombing was not just an attack on Americans. It was an attack on the UN. The same day a similar attack killed dozens of French peace keepers also sporting the Blue Berets. The reason Ian should know better is because he used to work for the UN .
In fact Hezbollah hung an American UN officer, video taped the murder, and presented it to the world. Nice progressive “resisters” they are. Those Hezbollah attacks ended US participation in UN peace keeping.
Of course nobody has figured out what Hezbollah is currently “resisting”, after Israel withdrew its forces from every last inch of Lebanese territory in 2000. Aside from the existence of Jews as a people, there is little left to resist.
He also should have known that this Mullah, who has supported the right of women to wear lipstick and nail polish – indicating his strong feminist credentials – denied the Holocaust and expressed genocidal intent toward Jews a number of times.
Merely entering his name into Google will yield this wiki quote:
“The Hebrew state is preparing to celebrate its 60th anniversary – 60 years since it plundered Palestine – in a festival, which will be attended by the countries of the world, most of which still support the Jewish state and consider the resistance movement to be terrorism. This is what led German Chancellor Merkel to visit that plundering country, which extorted and continues to extort Germany, using as a pretext the German Hitlerist-Nazi past, and the placing of the Jews in a holocaust. Zionism has inflated the number of victims in this holocaust beyond imagination. They say there were six million Jews – not six million, not three million, or anything like that… But the world accepted this [figure], and it does not allow anyone to discuss this.”
These are basically a repeat of the words of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the leading official Holocaust denier and President of Iran – patron of Hezbollah, its proxy terrorist force. Was Ian Williams lacking internet access when he was writing this piece?
No, likely he just took a page out of The Guardian’s “progressive” manifesto – an ideology which influences otherwise sharp minds to minimize the relevance of ideas such as Holocaust Denial and Fascism by insisting on putting such messy hatred in its proper political “context”.
At what point does the doctrine of denial of the obvious become so ridiculous that the deniers themselves will admit that the circus has left town and what reality remains is the droppings of the horses and elephants?
Many of us are aware of the Islamic Nazi alliance from World War II.
Many of us are aware that Mein Kampf is still a best seller in Muslim countries.
From Arab nations like Syria and Jordan to Asian nations like Bangladesh and even nations at the doorstep of Europe like Turkey.
In fact the connection between the Nazi executed genocide and the Armenian genocide (a term which can land one in jail in Turkey) happens to be the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem during WWII, Amin Al Husseini.
Yet mere mention of these connections and the whole idea that Jew hate is at the center of the rabid anti-Israel scene forces us to the fringes.
Shortly after the flotilla incident, among the many demos where we no longer even notice signs that say “Gods chosen terrorists”, one in Vienna has presented a sign which said “Hitler Wake Up!!“. This would actually be a crime in Austria. Praise of Hitler, Nazis and Holocaust denial are crimes in the birthplace of Hitler, as well as in Germany, the birthplace of Nazism. Yet when confronted with this evidence, the authorities reaction was apparently one of confusion. How can a leftist demo praise Hitler? “Strange” was the exact term used. Its strange so therefore no need to worry or enforce the laws.
Now there is another example surfacing and making the rounds on the web: a Nazi flag flown at a Turkish demonstration in Istanbul supporting the flotilla “peace activists” organized by the Islamic Saadet Party.
[Source: http://www.habervesaire.com/haber/1868/]
Along with a sign saying: “Legendary leader Adolf Hitler, our patience is running out, we need your spirit.”
Again not a peep from the media. Denial mode is still in effect. The narrative that Israel is a racist aggressor would not fly far when its “victims” fly Nazi flags and sing praises of Hitler.
On June 18th, Friday, Jose Saramago died. He was a Nobel Laurate, writer, poet, communist and Jew hater. Saramango symbolized what happens when the line between anti-Zionism and all out antisemitism is blurred and in fact crossed.
In “Death of a Jew Hater” David Frum writes:
But unlike other European anti-Zionists, Saramago explicitly connected his dislike of Israel to his feelings about Jews.
In a speech in Brazil on Oct. 13, 2003, Saramago reportedly unburdened himself of this thought about the world’s Jews: “Living under the shadows of the Holocaust and expecting to be forgiven for anything they do on behalf of what they have suffered seems abusive to me. They didn’t learn anything from the suffering of their parents and grandparents.”
It was Judaism itself that Saramago blamed for everything he disliked in Israel. He wrote in the Spanish newspaper El Pais on April 21, 2002:
“[C]ontaminated by the monstrous and rooted ‘certitude’ that in this catastrophic and absurd world there exists a people chosen by God … the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner. Israel seizes hold of the terrible words of God in Deuteronomy: ‘Vengeance is mine, and I will be repaid.’”
A few weeks previous, Saramago had visited Ramallah. The visit occurred shortly after the Passover 2002 suicide bombing at the Park Hotel in Netanya, Israel that killed 30 people and wounded 140 more. Saramago expressed no grief for these murdered innocents. Instead, he toured areas damaged during fighting between Israeli and Palestinian armed forces and pronounced to a Portuguese radio interviewer: “[I]n Palestine, there is a crime which we can stop. We may compare it with what happened at Auschwitz.”
Sounds like a familiar mind. Compares Israel to the Third Reich, pisses on Judaism from the perspective of an atheist sophisticate (makes no mention of the monstrous certitudes in Islam) and makes excuses for leftist dictatorship. The perfect personality for a Guardian eulogy which came promptly.
…He was born into a humble rural household in the small village of Azinhaga. The family moved to Lisbon when he was two, and Saramago left school early to contribute to the household bills by working as a mechanic. Gradually, he progressed through numerous jobs towards his central literary interest. He worked as a draughtsman, publisher’s reader and freelance translator, and in the editorial and production departments of a publishing house. He also worked on several newspapers, including a stint as a literary reviewer for Serra Nova and, after the death of the dictator António Salazar in 1970, as political commentator on the Diário de Lisboa…
…Political wranglings, and Saramago’s own uncompromised and uncompromising communism, were at least partly responsible for his being fired in 1975. The following year, he devoted himself exclusively to his books. “Being fired was the best luck of my life,” he said. “It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.”…
Reading Seumas Milne reminds me of the times when I was a kid and almost sensed myself growing up by feeling less and less scared of horror movies and haunted houses. It was like sliding on a scale moving from very scary to not scary but goofy. Though sometimes seeing a really creepy scene in the already “goofy” movie, striking me as if I were back at the top of the scale dreading each lead up moment in the film once more. Seumas is one of those movies. There is always one paragraph or sentence in the otherwise seemingly goofy pieces he offers to the CiF Haunted house which make me cringe and force me to seeing a mental picture of what the world would be like with people like Seumas in charge. Or actually my world, I must admit selfishly, as there are already places which are run by people like Seumas or more precisely, people Seumas worships. Goofy places yet capable of the occasional burst of a frightening scene turning our ridicule quickly to dread, if for no longer than a single news cycle. Such was the North Korean kidnapping of the two Current TV reporters, snatched from China displayed like bounty by a very goofy regime or the outbursts of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about wiping off and burning things ahead of some zombie imam awakening from centuries of slumber to rule the world and kill the Jews.
The B movie section of the news never ceases to entice us to dip our feet into the weirdness, often serving up that frightening scene once in a while.
A Seumas thread is like that speech by Nicolai Caucescou, the last one he made when his adoring crowd turned on him and revised the chant from “o great leader glorious party” to down with the bastard down with the tyrant“.
Moderation on Seumas threads is like a Caucescou regime. Posters are so afraid of criticizing him that I see often posts referring to him as Mr Milne. How goofy is that? Otherwise they descend into a mock fest of the author. A result mods are much too keen on avoiding. So instead of sparing us from Seumas, they hyper-moderate his threads.
Goofy is the way Seumas always takes his time adding his bit to a current event. His posts usually come late in the news cycle, when most facts are already out and a debate is already taking place. Still his posts are the most one sided and are ridiculously off-base, more likely to illicit laughter and eye rolls than an actual desire to respond.
From the Soueif thread:
On the day of 911, I was awoken by a call from a friend back East telling me a plane hit the WTC.
It was around 5 30 AM my time, I said “OK Sure” and went back to sleep.
She called me back once more knowing this hasn’t registered with me enough, being still in slumber and forced me to turn the TV on.
Wow.
Around noon and already immersed into CNN, another friend came to visit me. He was of Lebanese Christian background and I recall him yelling out of his car “Hezbollah!!” as he was approaching my driveway. He used to do this when he was expressing shock, displeasure or dismay. It was his personal curse word. He told me he just came from the Donair shop we always frequented when downtown to see movies or shopping. He told me that the shop owner, a Lebanese Muslim, was cursing at the TV in front of his customers saying “I know this was an (expletive) Arab who did this and now we are doomed, the world will hate us. Needless to say, I still love this guy’s falafel, the best in town among the Arab style falafels. (Israeli and Greek falafels are different as are their pitas). He is a sweet man as is his overworked family hustling this product from morning until late night from a 250 sft spot always with a smile and always with his accompanied complaints about rising rents, rainy weather and hard to come by reliable help.
When I was researching this piece about the Guardian’s stupid response to the Time Square attack I wanted to look at the writers whose pieces the Guardian published on the subject.
Was I delighted in more ways than one…
One of them was Wajahat Ali, a Pakistani American writer whose piece Against Terror, our liberty is our best defense. appeared on Cif a day after the arrest.
His Guardian piece reads like…well a Guardian piece.
Back in September of last year, we ran a piece about how Guardian Middle East Editor Brian Whitaker has come to the defense of Human Rights Watch when a poster mentioned their efforts at raising money from Saudi Arabia by emphasizing the organization’s critical positions on Israel.
Brian sprung to action by entering the thread defending against the attempted “smear” of HRW. Needless to say, he was proven wrong.
What has since emerged though is that we at CiF Watch may have been wrong also. Not about the Saudis, HRW or Whitaker but about Mark Garlasco. The Nazi memorabilia collecting military expert at the employ of HRW at the time. It turns out Mark is a collector of army memorabilia from a few nations along with Germany and it also seems that despite his fetish of having iron crosses on his T shirts, he was among the few actual defenders of the Jewish state’s military actions due to his military background himself and general familiarity with the Middle East and its complexities. 
We stand corrected.
- Still, Mark, the Iron Cross T Shirt wasn’t the best wardrobe choice.
Of course having satisfaction at seeing Mark as the strongest defender of Israel at HRW is still a big pill to swallow. So for water lets read this next piece by Benjamin Birnbaum in the New Republic published yesterday, titled Minority Report Human Rights Watch fights a civil war over Israel.
Please read the whole thing as it not only sheds light on the increasing anti-Israel and anti-war (of any kind) bias of the organization but tells us about how some members of this organization, up to its founder and former chairman, have found themselves in a climate so biased against Israel that only through airing these dirty sheets in public would they have any chance at redressing them. A decision not taken lightly by any institution these days. The piece navigates the reader through the famous road marks of Goldstone, Gaza, phosphorous and Hamas tactics with the occasional view of the “Right of return” and other goodies guaranteed to satisfy any reader familiar with the Israel-Palestinian conflict and familiar with the workings of institutions built on noble callings only to become servants of the self righteous.
I think we should start classifying Cif articles by Soviet Propaganda Labels:
1)The “Kill the Kulak Thread”
Attacking a group of people (neocons, zionists, capitalists, the West etc). Posts disputing the wisdom of the mob call get deleted.
2) The Sing along thread
Posters must sing along the thrust of the argument of the thread. Mild solo-ing is permissible however once out of tune, you re deleted !! Songs praising Chavez, Palestinians, Arab rulers and Iranian populism are to be expected and the music will be loud and dissent prohibited.
3) The Cry with us crocodile tears thread
Thread where one is demanded to mourn together with the writer. Usually appears when a Hamas leader dies (preferably via means of an Israeli strike or a new blood libel is on promotion (blue kids, poisoned water, starvation, excessive noise from F-16s). Disputing the tears shed by the author or his/her motivation will be deleted.
Mockery of the author in times of mourning will be met with force by placing in pre-moderation or outright banning.
4)The Praise Allah Thread.
Threads which appear on the regular making sure we are reminded that Islam is only about peace and tolerance and terrorism is our fault. Islam is the root of all Western knowledge and advances in science and Islamic norms should be internalized into the West.
Any reference to texts disputing this “call to prayer” (including the Koran itself) will be deleted. Any criticism of Islam will be deleted. Any criticism or exposing of Tariq Ramadan as anything other than a polite, noble sage will be deleted.
Any reference showing the author being either paid for by or member of Islamic pressure groups will be deleted.
Attacks on Christianity and Judaism are encouraged and rewarded with many recommends. Posts not fully praising Allah the all Mighty but in receipt of more than 7 recommends will be deleted.
5) The I am the Ideal Jew for the Party Thread.
Great example of one of these was the Weingarten thread and I must say probably the best so far in demonstrating the ideological purifying of the debate practiced by the so called “moderators”.
The ideal Jew will appear on the Guardian usually after some controversy (real or manufactured) occurs in the ME/IP conflict.
The Ideal Jew thread will get periodic posting access, usually to prevent North American Jews from posting (unless they re unemployed loners up at 3AM). This way the Guardian makes sure the debate is fair and balanced given that Jews own North America and its people have been brainwashed by Zionist ideology making their opinions less valuable than the intellectually superior posters from Europe who are free of Zionist mind control.
The ideal Jew thread commands that other Jews will not dispute the wisdom the Ideal Jew has put forth. No challenge shall be mounted, not from Talmudic references (even if the ideal Jew used such references in a callous and self serving way), not historic truths and most of all NO DISPUTING of the IDEAL JEW’S assessment of Antisemitism. Such posts will be automatically deleted and violators are to be warned of being segregated into the ghetto of pre-moderation.
The Ideal Jew thread is the one which will change Judaism to the benefit of the GWV. Thus it is imperative that the Ideal Jew Threads remain clean of dissent, mockery, humour (except jokes about Bush, Palin and Lieberman). Readers must learn that Jews are ashamed of having their own country and ashamed for being hated by the intellectually advanced and ultra sophisticated European Left. The ideal Jew thread thus serves both Jews and gentiles for a peaceful co-existence devoid of distracting debates and ideas which disturb the great work of the Guardian Counsel.
Any questions?
Front Page Magazine ran a piece yesterday about a topic and phenomenon we know all too well at CiF Watch: antisemitism leaking into leftist discourse through a site which publishes articles inviting the vilest of haters in its comment section.
The site is popular, in fact influential and is home to commentators and public figures revered in society and the corridors of power. This is the first on line publication to get a White House Press pass and is the most funded (and rumored to be losing money) e-magazine attracting the biggest advertisers in America. In other words, this is supposed to be the CiF of America.
It is the Huffington Post. Founded by former conservative millionaire trophy (and pretender) wife turned extreme leftist, Ariana Huffington. Ariana is a celebrity in the USA. She is a frequent guest on Larry King and other prime time shows and has won an Emmy. She is number 42 in the Guardian’s Top 100 in Media List.
I have been wondering for a while how antisemitism flourishes in the Guardian. Is it intentional?
Is it at all pervasive or merely subconscious and circumstantial? Or is it rooted in the false interpretation of Marxism attributed to the great Jean Baptiste Lamarck, that is, if the will can be shaped, so will evolution.
Of course they read Lamarck backwards as Lamarck’s theory was one based on the individual rather than the collective. The Guardian, like the Marxists before them, does however posses an idea of what a Jew, and also what an American should be like. Though theirs is about shaping and exemplifying rather than a nihilistic hatred of destroy and rebuild later.
What we have seen during the last few weeks on the pages of the Guardian would, if looked upon a hundred years from now in some journalism history class (assuming that Bat Ye’or wasn’t right and such classes will still exist), hand over the perfect snapshot of what questions everybody must have (or should have) asked themselves when reading this publication.
Starting with the Forth Hood terror attack; the first successful terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11. Not an insignificant milestone if one asked me. One probably not lost on Obama who is fighting so hard not to have this attack defined as terrorism.
The Guardian went on an offensive against America almost the same day the blood of its sons and daughters was mopped up from the floors of the rooms this creep sprayed with his bullets while crying out “Allah’u Akbar”.
How does that relate to antisemitism? Well directly it doesn’t. But the process in which the story was dealt with on CiF showed the neuron firing sequence all too similar to the sequences dictating the oldest hatred in which it was automatically assumed that the victim is the real perpetrator and the perpetrator is the victim.
Now of course the Guardian is much more crass with Americans than Jews, America hatred is fashionable. In fact, it supposedly displays a sense of sophistication required to enter some high circles of European or British thought.
I made this last distinction on purpose especially since Channel 4 aired their masterpiece of investigative work and since I read an excerpt from Dennis McShane’s brilliant book “The New Antisemitism”. The piece I read was called The Bigots of Westminster. As someone born in what became the EU, I can testify that just as in the UK a Jew’s loyalty is questioned, in the EU, or Europe as a whole, the loyalty of the British is also questioned. Probably even more often than not. And every time Americans are lambasted by British columnists, a disdain much worse is expressed toward the British on the “Continent”.
Fish & Chips score no higher than cheeseburgers friends, especially among wine drinkers.
Just like with Jews, Israel and Zionists, the Guardian has its coterie of American contributors who spared no effort in attacking the US Army, American society and of course policies right after the deed of Nidal Hasan Malik. And just like the Guardian’s ”dissident” Jewish contributors fighting against the so-called “Islamophobia” (as opposed to anti-Muslim racism), these American writers shamefully demonstrated why the American Left is incapable of ever fighting a war or beating an enemy for it sees more of an enemy in America than among those who really want to destroy it.
First and foremost, we had Michael Tomasky who in American for better or worse argued before the facts were in, that Hasan should not be “hated” for who he is but what he did. Well, he turned out to be an Al Queda recruit and overall hating incompetent hypocritical nut.
Can I hate him now Michael?
Then we had Dan Kennedy who in Finding the truth at Fort Hood wrote the following:
“Nidal Malik Hasan’s dangerous mental state is a legitimate subject for investigation, not an excuse for fear-mongering”
Fear mongering of what? Al Queda attacking the homeland? Of course, notice how terrorism becomes a psychological problem in the mind of the liberal.
“A state of mind”. A breakdown I suppose. And as the case with psychosis, there is a victim here. Like with cancer, the victim is now a patient. So Hasan is no more guilty than a cancer patient. Probably less guilty than a smoking cancer patient but I’ll let that slide for now.
The fact that the “patient” was a psychiatrist himself is negated to the wayside. A practicing psychiatrist MD shoots his patients and colleagues but he is “suffering” from a mental state. Well so was Hitler and probably Stalin and everybody in history commmitting great atrocities. By this reasoning Hitler was probably even sicker than Bin Laden and Bin Laden sicker than Hasan.
All this suffering all around us. I must say, we need to reform health care in America. Some terrorist families may go bankrupt fighting this disease, so what about them?
Not one CiF piece has been published since the revelations demolishing all the silly and dangerous excuses the CiF writers have pored over Nidal Hasan. Not one.
They have moved on since.
The American contributors have now consecrated their efforts at the pursuit of the “real danger”, Sarah Palin. Probably wishing she would be paralyzed not Hasan who has now awoken from his slumber but remains in his bed, probably never capable to stand up to be shot. Then again, he never was a soldier for real. Only a parasite and traitor.
The rest of the CiF team was handed the greatest of gifts. A documentary on Channel 4 about the secret Jewish lobbies and conspiracies shaping Britain toward the ugly abyss of Zionism. And just like Tomasky and Kennedy attacked America on the pages of the Guardian, Antony Lerman defended Channel 4 while attacking those who criticized it.
Notice the similarities?
In the mind of the hater there are always some made-up conditions upon which the hater may graciously remove his hatred.
“If all Jews were like you, I would not have these opinions”. If all Americans were like so and so, or will speak A,B or C, there will not be all this scorn.
This is what was illustrated at the Guardian, especially in the last few weeks. They do not hate like radical haters do. They do have an idea what their hated should be like and what they should say in order that the sanction of hatred can be lifted.
There is the chance of some conditional love here. And if you follow the examples, you will be rewarded.
“Follow the examples comrades… These are your heroes…These are your models and if you follow, you will get our smug sophisticated love and respect for we only respect the image of you we made…That image is just and fair to all of us…
We have shown you the path so follow…
…or else.”
Since the ascent of lunatic madman Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency of the Islamic terrorist republic of Iran, the Guardian has been the leading mainstream voice in defending the Iranian regime.
Starting with a series of denials regarding statements made by the mad leader on the Holocaust and on the elimination of Israel, they wanted to create the impression that mad Mahmoud may not have really said “wipe off the map” or may not have really denied the Holocaust.
Israel has been baring the brunt of demonization while Iran enjoys the support of an intellectually grotesque and dishonest campaign from the Guardian resulting in articles like “Iran needs the bomb” by media critic David Cox and Jonathan Cook’s piece explaining how happy Iranian Jews are at home (a piece also featured on David Duke’s site [Warning: neo-fascist/neo-Nazi web site, racist filth]). Amazingly, the Guardian even allowed suspected regime agents to ascend to contributor status only to cause embarrassment for the publication when one of these contributors started to leave the verbal padded room to come out and allege Jewish conspiracies infiltrating the UK government. Tehrankind77 was a mere preview of what was to come.
But this past summer has created a real dilemma for Guardinistas. Iran’s regime has been rejected by its own people. The regime went crazy, and as crazy regimes usually and unpredictably do, it started to brutalize its people while the world watched in horror as Iranian students were beaten, stabbed and crushed by Bassij militiamen, or worse, shot in plain sight bleeding away on the sidewalk.
The Guardian started to split from within. The reporting side of the paper did a great job exposing the morbid horrors this regime meted out on its citizens while CiF splintered between the apologists who couldn’t believe that their beloved anti-Israel nation has embarrassed them and the reporters who understood that Iran has crossed some, yet still unspecified Rubicon.
So they started to allege foreign intelligence plots being behind the revolt, basically becoming regime mouthpieces. There were also those who, basing it on their western Bolshevik heritage, started to allege that the revolt was only the expression of rich bourgeois kids under the influence of corrupting Western powers while the real man of the people, Ahmadinejad, was denied his democratic victory. Such was the ridiculous yet frightening explanation of Seumas Milne, the Guardian’s resident Stalinist. Milne also defended the Holocaust denial of the Iranian state as “nothing controversial” in the context of Middle Eastern discourse. He also called western delegates racists for having walked out on the mad president’s speech in Geneva. But as the new revolution gained prominence, fewer and fewer came to the defense of this evil regime.
Then came Obama, Sarkozy and the UN. Iran was caught red-handed building another nuclear site.
Wow.
Leftist softies like Simon Tisdall called it what this was: Iran caught red handed. But the old defenders of the genocidal goals of the Mahdi Cult have resurfaced. This time as often as posters. Case in point was Brian Whitaker who started an ideological decline of late, losing his bearings to put it mildly, by wondering into conspiracy land alleging first that Jewish posters on CiF were Israeli agents and later claiming that this new discovery in a long line of lies by Iran regarding its nuclear program, was again a conspiracy of Western intelligence agencies. As if the Iranians’ reputation preceding this was indication of any other plausible possibility.
Remember, this was after the brutal and often on-camera repression of Iranians during the summer. The rapes and the shootings of protesters.
Still, the crowd, who previously wanted us to believe Ahmadinejad didn’t deny the Holocaust and didn’t say “wipe off the map” was back again, coming to the defense of this menacing regime almost in a concerted effort.
A series of articles ran on CiF, notably an editorial claiming that no military action and no sanctions should be applied in light of the new discovery of another hidden power plant. Only talking.
Talking to liars is the solution according to the Guardian.
The editorial also stated that while Israel has the right to defend itself, it does not in this case because the consequences would have an effect on others as well.
Or something like that.
But the editorial would not be truly visible had it not been preceded by another piece by Stephen Kinzer. The same Kinzer who, on the anniversary of the murder of Bobby Kennedy, ran a eulogy of his killer Sirhan Sirhan whom he characterized as a disappointed weeping victim of the USA’s betrayal of the Palestinians, basically blaming Israel and the Jews for the death of Kennedy at the hands of an Arab assassin who incidentally also shot 4 other people that day, killed the hopes of the Democrats and helped usher in the Nixon presidency. So deep was his conspiracy theory disguised under the literary pretense of a failed novelist, he ended up looking like some third rate Middle East expert enamored with Islam and its false promise of a possible modern world with Islam as its central influence.
Stephen Kinzer, a former NY Times reporter, has been writing a steady trickle of articles, usually lobbying for Turkey as the absolute necessary addition to the EU, or alluding to Iran as some be all and end all solution to the whole Middle East stability “thing”. Needless to say, Kinzer, like many others in coup de foudre with Islamic culture, has started to internalize their myths and through his pretended Middle East scholarly approach to political fantasy journalism, he started repeating them as if those myths were historical reality.
Did I say failed novelist yet?
George Bush, like him or hate him, had excellent nicknames for leaders. For example, he called Hugo Chavez “Castro without brains”. Kinzer is a sort of Seymour Hersh without intellect. While Hersh is informative, if in nothing else but in shedding light on some of the more socially accepted conspiracy theories, Kinzer just creates them and informs nothing of value. In fact, he is a perfect example of a Guardian regular: positing false theories and floating in imagination land, seeing the good in evil and laying the blame on those he criticizes and vilifies when his theories fall short of reality or fall flat altogether.
Case in point, his recent piece My dinner with Ahmedinejad. In this otherwise incomprehensible piece, believe me I tried hard to understand what it was about beside his usual twisting together of feelings of fear and admiration, he explains that while he sat with monsters before, some enlightenment did come to him as he was dining with Mad Mahmoud.
Nothing more came out of the piece aside from explaining that the West’s problems vis a vis Iran are more cultural, thus the negotiations with Iran should be delegated to some old school, and in his view, aged diplomats, who sat with Kinzer at the table breaking bread with Ahmadinejad. This was after the again massive walkout from Mad Mahmoud’s speech at the UN and his repeated Holocaust denial and allegations on Larry King that Neda Sultan was shot by “foreign agents”.
I often think that to some of the liberal cultural elite inhabiting the rent controlled yet still exorbitantly expensive Manhattan apartments, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a sort of rare, believed to be extinct, yet colorful exotic bird. Hauled back from some far away and scarcely mapped jungle to the enjoyment of watchers fascinated by his supposedly extinct features presented in defiance of previous scholarly work.
- “Look he denies the Holocaust and believes in the end of the world on the heaps of dead Jewish bodies while he smiles and commands many of the poor and downtrodden in the third world.”
-”How fascinating, how dangerously cute”.
-”Can I feed him?”
-”Oh sure just attend his dinner galas, tea will be served and perhaps some Iranian caviar. The Russians cheated out on us of late, Putin wants money for every ounce. “
The exotic Shoah bird flies again. But they try their their best to deny it, probably thinking it is some acid flashback from ’69 and their radical days.
Alas, no Iran defense would be complete without the rolling out of the real float parade. So here comes George Galloway (again).
This time, now that his anti–Iran benefactor Saddam has died, George has become a host of a talk show on Iran’s state Press TV which ran the most ridiculous propaganda during the Iranian protests and regularly runs Jewish conspiracies and Hezbollah hero stories. He of course defended the Iranian elections on more than one occasion. No shocker there.
Out he comes on the pages of the Guardian once more.
George alleges that Iran is not working on the bomb, but Sarkozy and Merkel have become Bushists and are plotting to destroy the true nation of universal resistance, Iran, as it is trying to fight for global justice.
This was the essence of his latest speech meant for a rally but probably ending up as a Guardian post. The formats have been interchangeable for a while. Just take off those paragraph ending chants, add some references to one’s self and voila, a Galloway piece for the Guardian is born.
Needless to say, the thread became yet another episode of Monsters with the usual fans of George coming out of the woodwork praising his courage and resolve, while posts alluding to his treasonous hypocrisy and defense of totalitarian terror were deleted and even forewarned by the new and improved moderation which now warns followers to stay on plot or else.
The thread was shut within less than 24 hours, faster than the newest Ben White scribble praising Hamas which usually holds the shut down speed records.
These shut downs have now become symptomatic of a blog which has been caught between its own monster creations and those who call them out for inviting them in with pieces which would make great comedy, were they not in the defense of real monsters staring down real history.
This is why I suppose the Guardian started to hustle the dreamers of a nuclear free world. They do not defend the monsters but defend their own surreal ideals.
Enter Hans Blix. Or as I like to recall him, Hansa Briex. Somehow his most famous moment was indeed in Team America World Police. Not to be a spoiler, but Blix dies in the movie, gets eaten by the pet sharks of KimJong Il, who mocks him for his naiveté and sends him plunging into his shark tank. I still giggle at the memory of that scene, which encapsulated the whole “negotiating with evil madmen” doctrine. Not that there weren’t more serious lessons: Yalta, Munich and Arafat come to mind but still Brixie drove it home without the death of innocents. So Blix comes out on CiF arguing for a nuclear free Middle East. He is basing this on Obama’s famous but now increasingly dangerous speech from Prague where he called for a nuclear free world. A stance Obama repeated at the UN while he was already sitting on the evidence of Iran’s new October surprise, the hidden Qum facility.
Dangerous speech because ever since he spoke those words, the chorus to disarm Israel (on the extreme Left) has started hitting the high notes.
So Blix argues that Israel should basically disarm so that all other Middle East states could follow suit. Hardly a new idea. Probably one which Iran has planned at the outset. Figuring that even if they may not go through with their nuclear ambitions, they will try to leverage their behavior to extract some Western concession around the idea that “all should disarm” for the “sake of our children’s future” and while we’re at it why not of course start with Israel.
I mean who else right?
Blix’s new inspiration would have been more original had Mohamed El Baradei not already communicated the same view sitting next to the Iranian delegation recently where he argued that Israel presents the greatest security threat to the region.
Wow. It is great to know that he was once again, dispatched by Obama and the Security Council to look into that Qum thing. After all he has only withheld evidence twice from the EU and the Americans about what he found in Iran.
Wink wink. He is an “inspector”. He is looking out for us all.
The farce is starting to become old like Benny Hill chasing girls in garter belts around a fake clinic. But it seems, still entertainment for recent Nobel Prize winners basking in the world’s newly found cult of personality.
So the circle is almost complete. The Iranian nuclear issue is really about Israel. This is the Guardian World View. As those posting and reading CiF for a few years already know, it is (and was) about Israel not Iran and its messianic maniacal leaders who shoot their own people and deny the Holocaust as a matter of foreign policy.
On a side note, Holocaust denial and spreading Jewish conspiracy theory have been Iran’s major contributions to world culture and to the advancement of scholarship in recent years.
But Kinzer would say:
“A Great Culture, can I have some more of that Caviar?”
Israel is the danger and Iran, well, they either are not building the bomb as Whitaker would want us believe or needs the bomb as David Cox argued bluntly a couple of years ago.
But wait. There was another report from the Guardian about Hugo Chavez.
Hugo Hugo what would the Guardian be without you.
The great hero of the Euro Left was joking about building nukes for Iran. It was Guardian humor I suppose.
I mean, what crazy fool would think Chavez, dictator of a country rich with uranium, supporter of Iran and provider of real estate for Hezbollah and the Al Quds Militia, is helping Iran in either skirting sanctions or supplying their nuclear effort materially. Needless to say, this thread also brought out the real comics of CiF.
Who says humor isn’t the great healer.
Here’s a sample of the offering from that thread buried quickly from view:
SeanThorp (111 recommends) …Thank God the Russians and Chinese are thus far resisting the Zionist and Western hysteria. Sanctions on Iraq killed at least half a million children and all the mainstream British political parties are shaping up to do the same to Iran. Why should UK foreign policy be led by a rouge state like Israel? Why would the people of the UK vote for that…
There is more but you get the idea. These posts were not moderated for days despite the turbo moderation installed of late. I guess this turbo moderator acts also as an engine filter, programmed to detect defense against antisemitism and Islamic bigotry but letting through any other pollutant.
The only advice I can give to the Guardian, old advice but worth repeating, is:
If you play with fire, you can get either burned or not. But if you play with shit, you certainly will stink and be stained.
“Shit, the Guardian is burning”
Recently we pointed out how Brian Whitaker – commissioning editor of CiF – slurs pro-Israel posters there.
Unfortunately this is not surprising. Whitaker is the Guardian’s leading Arabist. He was the author of the famous “Selected MEMRI” article in 2002.
In that piece, Whitaker attempted to demonstrate that MEMRI was not only guilty of faulty translation but was also a propaganda arm of Zionist interest colluding in the dusty back rooms of some Washington lobby. He tried to debunk a story about Saddam Hussein ordering the ears of deserters to be cut off. This has been related by a former Iraqi Army Medical officer.
Needless to say, soon after the article was published, the Guardian was forced to backtrack. Indeed Saddam had given orders for ears to be severed. The correction is at the bottom of the archived article.
“In an article headed Atrocity stories regain currency, page 13, August 8, and in an article headed Selective Memri on the Guardian website, we referred to Dr Adil Awadh, an Iraqi doctor who alleged that Saddam Hussein had ordered doctors to amputate the ears of soldiers who deserted. Dr Awadh has asked us to make it clear that he has no connection with Memri (Middle East Media Research Institute), and that he did not authorise its translation of parts of an article by him. He is no longer a member of the Iraqi National Accord (INA). He is an independent member of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). His reference to orders by Saddam Hussein to cut off the ears of deserters has been supported by evidence from other sources.”
It is a question in itself why Whitaker would want to research and dispel such a story to begin with. After all, it is one of hundreds evidencing the morbid brutality of Iraq’s former dictator. Perhaps Whitaker wanted to dispel the notion that Saddam was a maniacal sadist and thus should have been left to stay. Who knows. It is now history – as is Saddam Hussein.
Also in the article, Whitaker quotes Ibrahim Hooper, the executive director of CAIR, which has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and was an unindicted co-conspirator with the Holy Land Foundation, a US local branch of Hamas which was shut down shortly after 9/11 for terror funding linked to the Gaza Islamist group.
So Whitaker parades Hooper to try to demonstrate the fallibility of MEMRI:
“Memri’s intent is to find the worst possible quotes from the Muslim world and disseminate them as widely as possible.”
Those words become the thrust of the article.
The irony of quoting an individual from an organization which has refused to condemn Hamas and Hezbollah as terrorist organizations, to denounce MEMRI, is only lost on the avid readers of CiF and perhaps of Whitaker’s other endeavour, Al-Bab
“Al-Bab aims to introduce non-Arabs to the Arabs and their culture. Western explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries portrayed the Arab world as a strange, exotic and sometimes terrifying place. Al-Bab seeks to portray the Arab world neither as an object of fear nor as a cultural curiosity – fascinating though it may be.”
Shooting the messenger is an old tactic, already well dealt with seven years ago here.
But shooting from such a frail glass house as Whitaker’s seems blatantly hypocritical, as outlined on Grasshoppa also in 2002 (near bottom, scroll down to August 13 2002).
It seems that Whitaker’s research into MEMRI is about as thorough as his research into pro-Israeli posters on CiF.
Last week Whitaker was back again, posting once more to denounce pro-Israeli posters. This time the issue was Human Rights Watch and whether they receive Saudi funding or not.
BrianWhit
10 Sep 09, 1:54pm
Staff
Are you suggesting that HRW is not heavily biased against Israel?
MiltonKeenest:
Yes. HRW, by the nature of its work, gets complaints from all sides – which probably demonstrates that it is doing its job quite well. In the Arab countries people complain that HRW is a pro-Israel organisation.
True, that HRW doesn’t get funded by the Kingdom of SA. Also true they are not funded by the Nazis either, yet their head military expert deployed to investigate Gaza is a Nazi fetishist. Or politely, Nazi memorabilia collector, who doesn’t even shy away from wearing a sweatshirt sporting the Iron Cross.
Perhaps Arab countries still consider HRW to be “pro-Israeli” but I am not convinced anybody else would.
And then my MEMRI was once again refreshed, but this time by none other than the famous Jonathan Cook, CiF contributor and has featured on more than one occasion on David Duke’s website. [Warning: neo-fascist/neo-Nazi web site, racist filth, be warned]
Ironically it is through the prism of Jonathan Cook that we are allowed to peek into the coulisses of CiF Management.
It appears that Cook penned a piece for CiF furthering the blood libel allegations regarding the IDF trafficking in stolen Palestinian organs but was rejected by Georgina Henry for lack of verifiable facts.
So Cook published his correspondence with Henry alleging that she was acting under the fear of appearing antisemitic:
…”Baffled by the reasoning provided by Henry in her rejection email, I engaged her in correspondence. Her initial willingness to respond looks generous but actually is driven, I suspect, by the need to persuade me, a former Guardian journalist, and herself that she is doing a reasonable thing in refusing my article. My polite but irritating suggestions that her own words imply that she is rejecting the piece not on its merits but out of fear of the expected backlash, as well as my requests that she explain which facts in the story need “100% independent verification” (a very unusual demand of an opinion piece), quickly lead her to shut down the debate..
So was this an opinion piece?
Judge for yourselves here .
The interesting anecdote in Cook’s correspondence with Henry is Whitaker who, according to Cook, has supported running the piece in CiF:
…Brian Whitaker, who had first received the piece and is the paper’s former Middle East editor, clearly like it and told me “we’re minded to use it”. But suggesting doubts about whether his own judgment would accord with that of the site’s executives, he warned that the issue was “a hot potato” and a decision would have to wait because “a couple of people are on holiday”.
“Hot potato”. That’s one way of saying it for sure.
So let me get this.
Whitaker attempts to take apart posters for being speculative about HRW and attempts to discredit MEMRI for the same reason but has no problem publishing a piece which is not only pure speculation, or opinion, as Jonathan Cook calls it, but rides on the nastiest of conspiracy theories written about Israel in a long time. One which alleges that Israelis harvest and trade in organs of Palestinians.
On a side note: If one’s opinion is that Israel is trafficking in stolen organs from Palestinians they kill, what does that say of the opinion holder?
Moving on.
For an editor who came to the rescue of Saddam Hussein when it was alleged that he was mutilating Iraqis coming out to support a blood libel piece, which, even by the view of its author is speculative, is a bit rich.
It is also very telling of the mindset at the Guardian where the default position seems to be to debunk allegations about the likes of Saddam Hussein (or Ahmedinejad) and to support the most outlandish and hostile speculations about Israel at the highest corridors of the editorial board.
I never would have thought I would be commending Georgina Henry on CiF Watch but it seems this time she did the sensible thing. Though I am not sure whether she did this out of fear of criticism as Cook alleges or out of common decency and journalistic ethic.
“It’s a sensitive issue, because it requires 100 per cent satisfaction at our end that it will stand up to scrutiny. You will be the first to accept that anything you write will be combed through minutely by Israel supporters for evidence of bias and/or anti-semitism. For that reason, everything about this story would have to be independently checked by a Guardian reporter and I don’t have the resources on Cif to do that. I can, as I said, put you in touch with Rory McCarthy, our correspondent in Jerusalem, via the news desk. “
So I guess we await the News piece from the Guardian about the matter.
So far no story has surfaced, probably because no facts were uncovered to support the piece.
“Please don’t jump to other conclusions like the worst of the conspiracy theorists on the threads on the I/P articles we carry. I hardly think you can accuse the Guardian or Comment is free of shying away from controversy.”
Well, it looks like Henry is also aware of the swamp creatures surfacing regularly on CiF threads. But Whitaker, who posts semi-regularly on threads attacking pro-Israeli posters, seems to either like these nature expeditions or wants to feed the wildlife like the misguided tourists feeding animals despite the signs warning otherwise.
The problem though, is that he is supposed to be one of the game wardens.
Ben White, CiF’s resident Hamas shill and antisemitism justifier is coming to Canada to join the Towards the Dignity of Difference, “Neither a Clash of Civilizations or End of History” conference coming up at the University of Alberta in Edmonton from October 2-4, 2009.
He will be speaking at the section called Dialogue and resistance – mutually exclusive or parallel tracks? Global civil society engages with Palestine/Israel which is described in the following terms:
Since the 1990s and the Oslo peace process there has been a growth in the number of NGOs in the West – as well as on the ground in Palestine/Israel – who have invested in what has been described as a ‘peace industry’. Dialogue between Jews and Palestinians is encouraged, and boycotts are considered ‘extremist’ or unhelpful. Meanwhile, in the last few years, a significant section of Palestinian society has officially called for what is known as BDS (Boycott Divestment Sanctions) to be adopted by governments and global civil society as a way of pressuring Israel to comply with international law and enable Palestinian rights to be realised. Does dialogue work – or is it more a matter of what kind of dialogue? Are dialogue and tactics like BDS mutually exclusive? What are the main obstacles to a just peace in Palestine/Israel?”
So predictably, Ben White will be promoting the boycott-divestment movement as opposed to the approach promoting dialogue. Nothing new for those familiar with his diatribes on CiF.
He will be joined in this section by Dr. Moustafa Abu Sway, a Professor from Al Quds University of Jerusalem and a known Hamas supporter. Militant Islam Monitor says the following about the “Peace Professor”:
“During the years 1997 to 2002 one can follow Abu Sway’s continuous connection with two known Hamas leaders Sheik Jamal Hamimi, and Hasan Yousef, both of whom are linked to terrorist funding . Hasan Yousef runs the Zakat “charity” department at Al Quds University. Below are photos showing Abu Sway seated next to the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. This proves that he is considered a significant figure by the PA and by the Hamas political and ‘spiritual’ leadership .”
Another guest speaker speaking along with White is Dr. Ghada Hashem Talhami from Lake Forest University. While she’s on break from writing about Palestinian and Arab women’s issues, she is busy claiming that Israel is a terrorist state and is the driving force in the “Clash of Civilizations” discourse.
Her conference page outlines this pretty well:
“The Clash of Civilizations” purveyors of continuing and future bloody confrontations between the West and the Islamic world have succeeded in impressing upon the Western mind the essential violent nature of Islam. In this context the struggle against terrorism has been reduced to the struggle to save Western civilization, consistently represented by the US and Israel, from the non-Judaeo-Christian barbarians at the gate. This paper will argue that Israel as a state routinely condones official terrorism even in open debates of the Knesset. Some of Israel’s prominent historians of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like Benny Morris advocate a pre-emptive form of state terrorism. The endorsement of a violent solution to this conflict was always supported by the US which views global terrorism through the same lenses like Israel. The US has also resorted to redesigning the world and its security organizations in a manner compatible with its own understanding of this problem (which is based on the Israeli view recall!). According to Professor Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University, the world is now living under a new “Humanitarian World Order” perpetrated through the US-controlled Security Council which selectively condemns some types of terror, as in Darfur, and ignores others. This paper will conclude with a plea for a universal definition of terror and a unified campaign against it.”
At Qumsiyeh, Human Rights Web, in a review of Sharing the Land of Canaan: Human Rights and the Israeli-Palestinian Struggle, by Mazin B. Qumsieh, Talhami endorses the argument that Palestinians are the descendants of the Canaanites along with the Jews, thus the rightful inheritors of the land. Interestingly, the Qumsiyeh webpage (in which the Talhami review appears) has for background the map of Israel without the borders of the West Bank and Gaza and this is not because this source supports the Israeli Right wing “greater Israel” position.
So judging from this, Ben White is in good company. Sitting between a Hamas activist and a supposed feminist who has no trouble sitting next to a Hamas activist herself and who believes in a one-state based on Canaanite heritage (despite being from Jordan herself). Or perhaps, Ben will sit between them so that no sensitivities are disturbed.
Anything for peace…as they say.
Hawkeye
Omar2
WellofSense
Medusa
The Alchemist
Louise
Tosca
Maimon
Telling the Truth
Israelinurse
Adam Levick
Margie in Tel Aviv
Guest/Cross Post
A personal reflection on our one-year anniversary
August 26, 2010 in Uncategorized | Tags: Comment is Free, Guardian | by The Alchemist | 98 comments
Almost exactly 4 years ago, a conflict ignited on the Lebanese-Israeli border when Hezbollah terrorists attacked an Israeli border patrol convoy, which led to a 30 day war between the Jewish state and the Iranian backed terror group. I watched it unfold on CNN, as well as on the local news – reports suggesting that Israel was intentionally killing Lebanese civilians in its response to the provocation.
That narrative was a usual one when discussing wars involving Israel and Arabs despite that, by this time, we have seen the Coalition invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq unfold and have seen the tactics deployed by Jihadists seeking martyrdom. As a matter of course, they were hiding behind civilians, civilian structures, and even dressed like civilians when ambushing American, Canadian and British soldiers who were seeking out the enemy among an undeniably unfortunate civilian population.
Yet when Israel responded to the kidnappings and rocket barrages of Hezbollah, the media reported Hezbollah casualties as “civilians”. Each day, 100, 200, 300 “Lebanese civilians” died while Hezbollah declared (and the media reported) that they lost 3 or 5 fighters on a given day. It sounded insane. I recall one report near the end of the war which stated that Israel lost 138 soldiers, but killed 1200 Lebanese civilians, while Hezbollah lost 15 fighters. No sane person would believe such nonsense so why, I asked myself, was this on the news.
Something seemed out of tune here. Something seemed really wrong with that picture.
Like many of us, 9/11 changed me. I was always aware of terrorism and radical Islam but starting that day, I entered the online world of news and commentary, and discovered scholars, experts and personalities who‘s work probably did not matter as much on September 10, 2001. During those long nights sitting at the computer reading people like David Horowitz, Robert Spencer and Steven Emerson, to name a few, I plunged into a new world. A world where I have discovered issues and conflicts similar to the ones my father told me about when he was growing up during WWII. One of those issues was anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews. Not long after the attacks on New York and Washington, conspiracy theories were spreading that Jews were the actual culprits and Israel was the one benefiting from this and that Bush was under the control of a Jewish cabal and as such needed to declare a war on Muslims.
I found these ideas so silly that I laughed at them and assumed nobody could possibly believe such nonsense. I was wrong. Many have, and many more believed other, even crazier, conspiracy theories. I also realized that these 9/11 Jewish conspiracies were not created in a vacuum but were the culmination of a long and steady effort of demonizing Israel and the Jewish people, which started before I really cared to notice. The internet was always a crazy place. Conspiracy theories were all over it for years. How those ideas managed to find themselves in mainline publications was the question I needed answering.
In 2006 when the Lebanon war coverage was taking up most of the afternoons on CNN, and occupied most of the space on the popular blogs (which I read but never commented on seeing no real purpose to do so), I read a couple of articles and exposes on the Guardian and its comments section which was, according to these reports, filled with anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and Islamist propaganda. In fact I recall the Guardian being in the news when it was revealed that CiF contributor Inayat Bunglavala had praised Osama Bin Laden.
During the start of the Lebanon war, I started to read the blog of the Guardian, called ‘Comment is Free’. I was curious to find out what the fuss was about as much was written about CiF on American Blogs, exposing the often explicit anti-Semitism and, at times, apparent sympathy for terrorist movements.
What I found was more than I could have ever bargained for. Comments about the inhumanity of Jewish fighters during the 1948 war, and even rhetoric about the “savagery” of the Jewish fighters during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (according to SS officers) caught my eye. This was a rude awakening.
What I saw was the complete and perfect merger of anti-Israel rhetoric with old anti-Semitic tropes. It was like reading a magazine from 1936 Germany but instead of “Jew”, “Zionist” and “Israeli” were the descriptive words.
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