Can you imagine the world reaction if Palestinians were to shoot and kill at Israelis that they suspect of "being militants"?

Lies by Mispunctuation

It doesn't take much to debunk Prof. Abukhalil's misinformation service.

Here he quotes from a NYT article, preceding the quote with highly directional headline:

Can you imagine the world reaction if Palestinians were to shoot and kill at Israelis that they suspect of "being militants"?

"Israeli security forces shot and killed three people suspected of being militants in a West Bank raid".

All you need is to click on the link he provides to find out what that suspiciously suspicious word "suspected" entails in the real world of facts and records and reasonable actions. What you find is that he cuts his quote in mid sentence at exactly the point where an explanation of what "suspected" means:

on Tuesday aimed at thwarting an attack on Israeli targets, the military and the police said. The Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said troops opened fire on two militants in their vehicle, which was found carrying explosive devices and two guns. The military said a third militant was killed in a gunfight with Israeli forces. The military said the militants were linked to a violent Islamist movement known as the Salafi Jihadis, which draws inspiration from Al Qaeda.

Quite a different story emerges, doesn't it?

What do you call this type of creative editing?

AbuKhalil's Tender Heart is Weeping Tears of Pain

Our hardy professor has a compassionate heart whose strings are tugged by the very idea of harm done to innocent people, even if the harm is wrought by their own leaders' evil machinations. Look how he expresses his moral outrage at the West's callousness in applying biting sanctions to nuclear-questing, genocidal-wannabe Iran:

Did you read the full text of the agreement with Iran? One of the "concessions" that Western governments made was in the permission to allow Iran to import parts for the civilian airliners.  There were plane crashes in Iran that have been attributed to the lack of spare parts.  This is the tenderness of Western values.

Ah, the humane humanism of the man! It shines through all that anger and piss.  There is not enough "human" in the English language to convey the depth of his anguish on behalf of suffering humanity:

 I was looking forward to the end of the world as it would have permitted me--even for a second--to witness the end of the Zionist entity over Palestine.

 On this day in 1187, Jerusalem was liberated by Arab armies.  There was no Obama or Bush to rescue the crusaders.  There will come a day when there will be no Obama or Bush to rescue the Zionists.  Stay tuned.

  But your delusions are good for us: you won't know what will hit you in the future in response to all the war crimes that you have committed against our people.  

The Odd Case of the One-Sided  Conversation

Here is a bizarre phenomenon I have not encountered before on the blogosphere.

Earlier today I posted a comment on this post by "Tikkun Olam" (the misleading title of a blog whose main business is the disrepairing of what the world had got right).

My comment was in response to the blog author who claimed with his usual aplomb that "Nusseibeh said nothing of the sort!" That is, Nusseibeh did not at all call the demonstration antisemitic, as one commenter claimed.


Here is what I wrote:

 I once defended Nusseibeh from the charge of antisemitism and I would still do so, in the same circumstances.

Your statement that “Nusseibeh said nothing of the sort!” is not quite accurate. In his original statement he averred that:

“These extreme elements spare no effort to exploit some rare but nonetheless damaging
events or scenes which occur on the campus of Al Quds University, such as fist fighting
between students, or some students making a mock military display. These occurrences
allow some people to capitalize on events in ways that misrepresent the university as
promoting inhumane, anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi ideologies. Without these ideologies, there would not have been the massacre of the Jewish people in Europe; without the massacre, there would not have been the enduring Palestinian catastrophe.”

As the statement was in response to a particular event within those “events or scenes” he alludes to in this paragraph, and as he ends the paragraph on the note that such an occurrence might imply that its message is shared by the university, and that since the university opposes “inhumane, anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi ideologies.” it is reasonable to conclude that he regards this occurrence as “inhumane, anti-Semitic, fascist, and Nazi”.

He is of course not coming outright and saying it , I suspect, for the same reason that he all but conceals the reference to the Holocaust under the much greater moral outrage of Palestinian displacement.

Checking out the thread later, I find my comment has not made it past Richard's byzantine moderation policy, but, strangely and inexplicably,  there was an answer to it.  

As you said, everything you said is “alluded to,” meaning he inferred it in very general, oblique terms. That’s certainly not sufficient to label it as Nusseibeh’s acknowledgement of the rally being anti Semitic.

(Please note that: 1. The correct English should have been: "he implied".  But Richard is somewhat illiterate, both in English and Hebrew, so allowances must be made. and 2. Richard is admitting here that Nusseibeh implicitly accepted that the rally was antisemitic, though he did not do so explicitly. That is a very different claim from Richard's earlier assertion that Nusseibeh "did nothing of the sort". It wouldn't surprise me to learn that Mr. Tikkun Olam is not fully cognizant of the fact that "nothing of the sort" means: absolutely not,  nothing like that, that is, a complete denial.)

How do I know it is in response to my comment? Because Richard uses my own vocabulary ("allude") in his otherwise enigmatic and needless to say, worthless and as usual illiterate, comment.

Now what to make of a blogger who posts replies to comments that he himself has banned from public view, thus creating a bizarre kind of one-sided conversation? Is this conventional conduct in some dark and impenetrable corners of the blogosphere? Or is it some sort of a new mental disorder, a kind of psychological quirk brought about by the excited delusion of omniscient power that some bloggers have developed within the confines of their own insignificant domain? 

Comments trail:


http://bbcwatch.org/2013/11/14/which-country-is-absent-from-the-bbcs-list-of-international-aid-efforts-in-the-philippines/comment-page-1/#comment-21380

Does Anne Barnard think that Al-Manar TV is a person?

Anger makes you stupid ... and illiterate ...

"An own goal occurs in goal-scoring games when a player scores a goal that is registered against his or her own team...It is considered
one of the most embarrassing and humorous   blunders in sports" (wiki)


Prof. AbuKhalil sneers:

Does Anne Barnard think that Al-Manar TV is a person?

I am not kidding but does Anne Barnard think that Al-Manar TV, the official news station of Hizbullah, is a person?  "Al Manar, a broadcaster aligned with Hezbollah". (Red emphasis added by CC)

_______________

According to wiki:

 "Broadcaster

• A broadcasting organization, one responsible for the production of radio and television programs and/or their transmission."

From another source:

Broad·cast·er

1.a person or thing that broadcasts. 

2.a person or organization, as a network or station, that broadcasts radio or television programs.

Yea, the NYT is biased in favour of Israel

 ... and pigs might fly 


This  from  As'ad AbuKhalil's blog of Arab Angers :

"The attack came after a string of violent episodes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in recent months that ended a period of relative calm. Since September, an Israeli soldier has been killed in Hebron, apparently by a Palestinian sniper; an off-duty soldier killed by a Palestinian acquaintance who had lured him to the West Bank; and a retired colonel bludgeoned to death outside his home in the Jordan Valley.
In the last week, an Israeli couple escaped from a burning car after it was hit by a firebomb on a West Bank road, and a Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli soldiers after he opened fire at a bus stop with a homemade handgun. A number of Palestinians have also been killed recently in clashes with Israeli soldiers. Three were killed in one arrest raidthat turned violent in August."

The link contained in this post is dead but I googled the quote and found it came from here, the NYT. There is an ellipsis in the quote by AA, which I highlighted in red,  without any indication within the quote provided by Abukhalil that the original was tempered with. 

"The attack came after a string of violent episodes in the Israeli-occupied West Bank in recent months that ended a period of relative calm. Since September, an Israeli soldier has been killed in Hebron, apparently by a Palestinian sniper; an off-duty soldier killed by a Palestinian acquaintance who had lured him to the West Bank; and a retired colonel bludgeoned to death outside his home in the Jordan Valley. 

In the last week, an Israeli couple escaped from a burning car after it was hit by a firebomb on a West Bank road, and a Palestinian man was shot dead by Israeli soldiers after he opened fire at a bus stop with a homemade handgun. 

Israeli security officials have attributed the rise in attacks to unrelated individuals rather than an orchestrated campaign backed by militant groups. A number of Palestinians have also been killed recently in clashes with Israeli soldiers. Three were killed in one arrest raid that turned violent in August."

The aim of this post by AA is to show that the NYT (of all things) is applying a double standard in its treatment of I/P victims. He quotes his source as saying:

 

Look at how the Times details attacks on Israelis but Palestinians are in passing, with only one incident mentioned:

and  it seems he approves of this source's message and even enhances it by heading the post "New York Times's standards" 

 So far we have a misrepresented quote and a charge against the most anti-Israel mainstream media outlet as favouring Israel.

But that is not what bothers me. What intrigues me is that this complaint seems to equate honest-to-God murders of Israelis by Palestinians with Palestinians being killed during arrests and violent clashes by Israeli soldiers, as mandated by their duty to serve and protect the people of Israel from violent attacks against them.

Here are the three murders carried out by Palestinians:

1. " an Israeli soldier has been killed in Hebron, apparently by a Palestinian sniper"

The gunman fired at Kobi and another Givati Brigade infantryman positioned to defend the Jewish community, as part of the army’s holiday preparations. The soldiers were positioned near the pharmacy intersection and Beit Hamachpela, defending the road used by Jewish residents of the quarter in Hebron.

“From what we see, the shooting occurred over a long distance,” a senior IDF source said. “At this stage, we have no clear direction as to the identity of the shooter.”

2.  " an off-duty soldier killed by a Palestinian acquaintance who had lured him to the West Bank;
 

The closeness of the relationship between Mr. Omar, 42, and the soldier, Sgt. Tomer Hazan, 20, remained unclear late Saturday, but the owner of the shop in Bat Yam where they worked said in a television interview that both men were well liked. Colonel Lerner said Mr. Omar had persuaded Sergeant Hazan to go with him in a taxi Friday from Israel to a Jewish settlement in the West Bank and then to Beit Amin, a nearby Palestinian village of 1,100, where his family is from.

Mr. Omar then took Sergeant Hazan to an open area, killed him and hid his body in a water cistern, according to Colonel Lerner, who said Mr. Omar “wanted to barter with the dead body.” Colonel Lerner did not say how the soldier had died.

3.  and a retired colonel bludgeoned to death outside his home in the Jordan Valley. 

 The man, Sariya Ofer, 61, was attacked around 1 a.m. by at least two people in the yard of his house at Brosh Habika, an isolated resort village that he ran and that was empty of visitors at the time. His wife, Monique, who escaped and called for help after reaching a highway, said Mr. Ofer had gone outside after hearing noises.

Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a military spokesman, said it was not immediately clear if the killing was a politically motivated act of terrorism or a criminal attack. He said Mr. Ofer was attacked with iron bars and a knife or an ax.

And here are the accounts of record of "A number of Palestinians have also been killed recently in clashes with Israeli soldiers. Three were killed in one arrest raid that turned violent in August."
 

The Israeli military said that its troops were in the Qalandia camp to back up security forces seeking to arrest a resident described by the military as a “terror operative.” Hundreds of residents threw rocks, firebombs, iron bars and other items at the security forces, including from rooftops, and soldiers were called in to aid them. 

The military later said an investigation indicated that camp residents had also fired at the soldiers and that the forces felt their lives were in danger, a standard that then allows the use of lethal force.

“Large, violent crowds such as this, which significantly outnumber the security forces, leave no choice but to resort to live fire in self-defense,” said Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, a spokesman for the Israeli military.

Other incidents that ended in Palestinians being killed by IDF soldiers:

* ... when about 50 soldiers and border police officers entered the camp at 3 a.m., they faced gunshots as well as rocks, firecrackers and explosive devices. 

The Maan news agency identified the dead Palestinian as Majd Mohammad Anis Lahlouh, 22. Two other Palestinians were injured, along with two soldiers, Colonel Lerner said.

“A very violent riot erupted there,” the company commander, identified only as Shai under military rules, said in a video of the episode that was distributed by the Israel Defense Forces. “We were faced with armed Palestinians, who shot at us from behind covers and rooftops. We responded with live fire.”

**...   The dead man was identified as Muataz Idris Sharawneh, a student at a Palestinian Authority security academy in Jericho.

A spokeswoman for the Israeli military said the Israeli forces were carrying out a routine overnight operation in Dura, southwest of Hebron, when clashes broke out. She said that a group of Palestinians hurled rocks at the soldiers and that, according to initial evidence, a few of them began to climb on one of the military vehicles. After the Palestinians ignored warnings to retreat and were undeterred by riot dispersal means, she said, soldiers fired at one of them. The spokeswoman was speaking on the condition of anonymity under army rules.

All quotes and information are from articles and reports appearing in the NYT.

So I ask you, can the NYT possibly be accused of pro-Israel bias, as AbuKhalil's reportage and headline indicate with this statement:  "Look at how the Times details attacks on Israelis but Palestinians are in passing, with only one incident mentioned"??

Comments that may not get to pass through the bizarre moderation policy on "Tikkun Olam"

1. In response to this: http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/11/15/israeli-hip-hop-star-calls-for-burning-palestinians-alive/comment-page-1/#comment-332804

“Subliminal’s being the son of Jewish refugees is at the core of his hard-line politics. “In Tunisia, my father grew up with his family locking all the doors and windows whenever performing a Jewish ceremony — out of fear of attacks.” Both parents, he says, “ran for their lives” to Israel, where they spent decades recovering from the persecution they had faced.” (wiki)

If anybody doubts the truth of this statement I urge them to read Albert Memmi’s essay:

Who is an Arab Jew? Albert Memmi (1975)

“As to the pre-colonial period, the collective memory of Tunisian Jewry leaves no doubt. It is enough to cite a few narratives and tales relating to that period: it was a gloomy one. The Jewish communities lived in the shadow of history, under arbitrary rule and the fear of all-powerful monarchs whose decisions could not be rescinded or even questioned. It can be said that everybody was governed by these absolute rulers: the sultans, beys and deys. But the Jews were at the mercy not only of the monarch but also of the man in the street. My grandfather still wore the obligatory and discriminatory Jewish garb, and in his time every Jew might expect to be hit on the head by any Moslem whom he happened to pass. This pleasant ritual even had a name – the chtaka; and with it went a sacramental formula which I have forgotten. A French orientalist once replied to me at a meeting: “In Islamic lands the Christians were no better off!” This is true – so what? This is a double-edged argument: it signifies, in effect, that no member of a minority lived in peace and dignity in countries with an Arab majority! Yet there was a marked difference all the same: the Christians were, as a rule, foreigners and as such protected by their mother-countries. If a Barbary pirate or an emir wanted to enslave a missionary, he had to take into account the government of the missionary’s land of origin – perhaps even the Vatican or the Order of the Knights of Malta. But no one came to the rescue of the Jews, because the Jews were natives and therefore victims of the will of “their” rulers. Never, I repeat, never – with the possible exception of two or three very specific intervals such as the Andalusian, and not even then – did the Jews in Arab lands live in other than a humiliated state, vulnerable and periodically mistreated and murdered, so that they should clearly remember their place”
http://www.sullivan-county.com/x/aj1.htmSince

Richard referenced Kahane and the rhetoric of Nuremberg in the context of Subliminal’s outburst. It might be prudential to provide a more appropriate historical context to the feeling is he voicing here. You know, the facts that everyone around this blog like to forget or pretend that they do not really matter.


 http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/11/15/israeli-hip-hop-star-calls-for-burning-palestinians-alive/comment-page-1/#comment-332952

( If you cannot see the comment, that means it was found to be too historically and factually discombobulating to the blogger's sickly agenda.)

2. In response to this comment , I left the following comment:

“I dare you to show any particular portion of my translation that misconstrues the original or contradicts it.”

To pinpoint the difference:

This is the sentence in Hebrew:

המכתב מעמיד בסימן שאלה חמור לא רק את האוריינטציה הפוליטית של קרי, אלא בעיקר את שיקול הדעת שלו, הן בנושא האיראני והן בנושא הפלסטיני.

This is how Silverstein reproduced the sentence in his translation:

“The letter raises a grave question about Kerry’s political orientation, whether regarding Iran or Palestine. 

Here is my translation:

The letter casts a severe question mark not only on what Kerry’s political orientation might be but, more importantly, his good judgment when it comes to the Iranian issue and the Palestinian issue.

You will notice that Silverstein not only omits this part of the sentence:

“but, more importantly, his good judgment”

but reconstructs the sentence in such a way as to accommodate the omission. The “not only … but…” structure becomes just a straightforward statement. To me that suggests that the translation was deliberately done in such a way as to circumvent the difficulty this particular clause presented to the blogger’s thesis in this post.

I dare you to correct the mistranslation at the heart of your post, and the conclusions you derive from this ellipsis.

3.  Another comment that won't make it on T-O:

” the boy was not affiliated ”

I like that euphemism: “the boy” for the boy-murderer. As I indicated in my own post about this post, the sentiment that blows across this thread is not at all about the horror of the killing but rather an attempt to soften and humanize and divert from that horror.

What a pusillanimous blogger you are, Richard. You ought to embrace your aim in this blog and this post. You need to openly and without sanctimonious prevarications declare this murder was just chickens coming home to roost. No wonder you are shunned by the Abunimah crowd. They sense that hesitation on your part. You haven’t got what it takes to go all the way to where they are going.

4.  "It is a summary "

Nice try. You inserted this entire passage from the article: 

"It’s important to get a (bitter) taste of the rhetoric employed in this smear:

    The Egyptians didn’t take the delegation seriously.  Israel didn’t take it seriously either.  The problem was John Kerry.  How could such a figure of such stature equip this group, whose views on the Middle East were much closer to Balad [the Israeli-Palestinian nationalist political party] or Hamas than to “Peace Now.”

    The letter raises a grave question about Kerry’s political orientation, whether regarding Iran or Palestine.  Even then, in 2009 it was clear to Kerry with whom he preferred doing business.  In 2008, one of the strangest meetings that ever took place in New York joined “peace activists” (including representatives of Codepink) on one side and on the other, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  The result was an agreement to wage a  common struggle against America’s “criminal” sanctions.

    …How could such a Senator provide legitimization to a group characterized by its support for Hamas and Ahmadinejad, including its deep hatred of Israel and the U.S.?  And an even more important question: is the John Kerry of 2013 the same as the John Kerry of 2009?"

Your quote repeats in English every detail in that paragraph that appears in the Hebrew underlying text EXCEPT for this little clause. You even begin the second paragraph with ... to inform the reader that some text was left out. That to me suggests you were not doing a "summary" as you allege but a translation. Additionally, nowhere at all did you alert the reader to the fact that this was a summary and that he/she ought to read it as such. It also took you a couple of days to filter this comment through. To me it suggests that you only allowed it in AFTER you came out with a plausible explanation for the DIStranslation you committed. It is of course only conjecture on my part. I can't know for sure what exactly prompted you to publish my comments after all.

And please. You are being very silly impugning my translation skills.  “severe question mark.”  is the exact and accurate translation of Ben Dror's phrase " בסימן שאלה חמור". I am not responsible for his stylistic linguistic choices. I'm just rendering an adequate translation of what he said. Which is what an ethical translator is expected to do. http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/11/13/israel-lobby-smears-kerry-as-anti-israel-pro-hamas-questions-his-conduct-of-iran-talks/comment-page-1/#comment-333103

5.  Yes, Richard, why don't you try to whitewash the suffering of Jews in Arab countries. Why don't you try to erase what Jews refugees from Arab countries had and still have to deal with.  Subliminal apologized for his outburst, admitted to being distraught, angry and unreflective when he wrote it. It is a failure of good judgment at worst, as your regular commenter here would say.  Where is the Palestinian artist who will express sorrow for the MURDER of Eden? Where, for that matter, is YOUR sorrow for the butchery of this boy, barely out of high school, sleeping on a bus in his own country, on his way from home to his base where he was still doing primary training for his military service? Are these your moral priorities? Is this how you improve the world? What good are you doing? Answer me, if you dare! If you can!

It's your blog. You wrote the "Moderation policy" so please don't pretend that you are following some higher authority when you warn me about the rules. You can leave my comments unpublished but please don't pretend to being fair!
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/11/15/israeli-hip-hop-star-calls-for-burning-palestinians-alive/comment-page-1/#comment-333114

6.  I have very little interest in your pathetic blog, Richard. You have been caught lying in your translation and every conclusion that flows from such a violated DISHONEST translation is just as flawed, and lacks any credibility or substance. So, please let's not pretend that I'm being banned here for any other reason except that you get into a mighty tantrum whenever your obvious shortcomings in either linguistic capability or logic or proper feeling are pointed out to you. http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/11/15/israeli-hip-hop-star-calls-for-burning-palestinians-alive/comment-page-1/#comment-333147

7.  "Maariv’s far-right columnist, "

Can we have an objective definition from a moderately reliable and verifiable source of what constitutes "Far Right", what is the essence, what attributes characterize this position? And Then, can the honorable author of this blog provide a few examples from Ben Dror's articles presently and in the past, that may comport with such attributes?

Here is one description that I could endorse:

" Far right politics commonly involves support for social inequality and social hierarchy, elements of social conservatism and opposition to most forms of liberalism and socialism. Both terms are also used to describe Nazi and fascist movements, and other groups who hold extreme nationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, racist, religious fundamentalist or reactionary views.[1] The most extreme right-wing movements have pursued oppression and genocide against groups of people on the basis of their alleged inferiority.[2]" (wiki)

Now all Richard has to do is provide direct quotes from Ben Dror's roster of articles where he openly and clearly advocates  social inequality and social hierarchy, opposition to most forms of liberalism and socialism, or any visible or invisible inclination towards extreme nationalist, chauvinist, xenophobic, racist, religious fundamentalist or reactionary views. http://www.richardsilverstein.com/2013/11/15/ben-dror-yemini-the-beat-and-the-lies-go-on/comment-page-1/#comment-333167

The Fanatic Sceptic 

Prof. AbuKhaliil bristles in indignation at something he read on WaPo:

"During the war, Palestinian militant factions in Gaza fired almost 1,500 rockets at Israel, although 143 landed inside Gaza and 421 were reported intercepted by Iron Dome, according to the United Nations."  According to the United Nations?  The United Nations does not count how many missiles were "intercepted" by the Iron Dome.  Those are pure Israeli military fabrications.  The Israeli military propagandist cited the UN to bolster his lies, and the Washington Post dutifully wrote it down."

Please note how he articulates his mockery: " The Israeli military propagandist cited the UN to bolster his lies, and the Washington Post dutifully wrote it down."

Let's re-cap:  The Washington Post got its information from some Israeli military propagandist "who cited the UN to bolster his lies".

AbuKhalil tells us with his usual braggadocio that "The United Nations does not count how many missiles were "intercepted" by the Iron Dome."

 

 Tel Aviv , 21 November 2012 - Secretary-General's remarks to the Security Council [as delivered]

"Attacks on both sides continued today as the ceasefire approached.  The bomb today in Tel Aviv injured 23 people, three severely.  The indiscriminate firing of rockets targeting Israel also continued, and one long range rocket landed on the outskirts of Jerusalem yesterday, with no injuries reported.  Since 14 November, rocket fire has resulted in death of 4 Israeli civilians, and 219 are reported injured, most of whom are civilians.

Three are in serious condition.  One Israeli soldier was killed yesterday, and 16 Israeli soldiers have been wounded, one critically.  Overall, in that same time period, more than 1,456 rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel.  142 have fallen inside Gaza itself.  Approximately 409 were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.  Ten Fajr-5 missiles have been shot at Tel Aviv suburbs and the sea, 5 of which were intercepted by the Iron Dome system.  Three long-range missiles have hit the outskirts of Jerusalem, which is unprecedented."

There seems to be some discrepancy between the number of rockets cited by WaPo (421) and the approximate number reported by Ban Ki-moon (409). But I suspect the difference between 421 and 409 was not the reason why the eternally pissed professor was mocking the WaPo.

As we know, he is always trying to play down the success of Iron Dome.

Why is he so invested in denying even the partial success of Iron Dome? Off the top of my head, I'm wondering whether he is worried that if Iron Dome can indeed intercept the Gazan rockets it might discourage the Hamas "operatives" from continuing to lobe them at Israel's civilian population. And we wouldn't want that to happen, would we?

 Lest We Forget: Eden Attias was murdered

With pre-meditation and imponderable malice

Let's imagine a case in which a young woman is brutally raped and left for dead. The rapist is caught and the shocking details of the case are published in the media. A female relative of the woman, a moderately famous actress, still reeling from what she has just learned about the gruesome details of the story, writes on her FB status:  All men must be castrated. An anti-feminist blogger, who calls himself The Guardian of Moral Society, who is always on the lookout for women whom he perceives as hateful towards men pounces with glee, writing a triumphant "gotcha" post on his chauvinist blog. He introduces the subject in the following manner:

 While the raping of the young woman by a violent man was a horrifying crime, the response by one feminist actress is chilling both because of its virulence and because of her celebrity. Feminism, a movement already filled with intolerance for non-feminists, male-hatred and feminist insolence, will be further provoked by such anger from a popular actress so beloved by the feministas and their daughters.

The rest of the post is dedicated to a spiel of vituperation against the actress and the sisterhood in which she is a member. 


What do you think? Does this person have his moral priorities in the correct order?

Does such a person deserve to be seen as a guardian of proper feeling and moral principles?

So now here is what triggered this imaginary case:

There is this post from a blogger I alluded to before.

There is no other way of describing the tone of his introductory paragraph except as a jubilant  shock at what a certain Israeli singer wrote on his facebook status following the gruesome murder of an Israeli soldier by a Palestinian adolescent.  Missing from the linked account is the fact that the 18 or 19 year old soldier was sleeping when he was stabbed.

Here is the perplexing part that struck me most in Mr. Tikkun Olam's presentation of the murder: 

"While the killing of the sleeping soldier by a Palestinian boy was a horrifying crime, the response by one of Israel’s leading hip hop stars is chilling both because of its virulence and because of his celebrity.  Israel, already a country filled with intolerance, race-hate and Islamophobia, will be further provoked by such anger from a popular performer beloved by the country’s youth."

 There are three components in this paragraph:

1. The butchering murder of a sleeping, 19 year old soldier on a bus in Israel by a Palestinian youth.
2. The immediate written response on some popular singer's facebook page
3. The statement as self-evident fact that "Israel [is] filled with intolerance, race-hate and Islamophobia,"

Notice the construction of this information: While the murder is horrifying, the response is "chilling"  because Israel is an evil state.

Let's reverse the order of this sentence: Israel is an evil state, as exemplified in the quoted FB status, therefore, this horrifying murder happened.

In other words, it is the fault of Israel and Israelis that this innocent young soldier was so horribly murdered.

If it is the fault of Israel, how can the murderer be at fault? It was his only recourse to justice as a Palestinian in an evil ("filled with intolerance, race-hate and Islamophobia,") society like Israel.

Make no mistake about it. For all that Mr. Tikkun Olam described the murder as "horrifying", the general sentiment that blows in his post is a sensibility that seeks to exonerate this gruesome act of butchery by diverting attention to the furious verbal response to it by some Israeli entertainment celebrity.

The French philosopher, Paul Ricoeur defined evil as "perversion, that is, a reversal of the order that requires respect for law to be placed above inclination. It is a matter of a misuse of a free choice and not of the malfeasance of desire. The propensity for evil affects the use of freedom, the capacity to act out of duty...”

Can we treat Silverstein's post as anything but a perversion of  Tikkun Olam, and reversal of the humanist order of justice and compassion, that puts respect for the law above inclination?

How do I know it is a malevolent formulation? Because he contains both transgressions of the law (the good and moral order) in the same sentence (implying a certain equivalence) and proceeds to direct and focus the reader's outrage not at the genuine evil in this story (the committed murder with its very real victim now dead), but at the rather marginal and instantaneous verbal outburst of fury and revenge fantasy by one member of Israeli society on some FB page. From there the indictment of the entire Israeli society is just one more step in the direction of this blogger's objective.

You may well notice with what dismissive shortness he relates the facts of the murder in what the British journalist Nick Cohen once wryly named "The rhetorical throat clearing": 
 

" It is the throat-clearing used to justify tyranny and excuse the barbarism of radical Islam. It is that sing-song, world-weary note that makes shrugging your shoulders and turning away appear virtuous."

To paraphrase what Cohen wrote in What’s Left? and apply his formulation to the case I'm talking about here:  We have to judge Mr. Tikkun Olam's intentions in his post by the bulk of the evidence he presents; the burden of proof is upon him.

When he says "While the killing of the sleeping soldier by a Palestinian boy was a horrifying crime, implying he is horrified by this act, and then spends the rest of his time in passionate polemics against one single Israeli, after having established that he believes that Israeli to be a true representative of the entire Israeli society, we can reasonably doubt the authenticity of that "horrifying" sentiment he attempts.

When he uses a complex sentence structure, consisting in two clauses, and the first clause starts with "while", we can conclude by simply applying the rule of grammatical logic, that  this is the  dependent clause and the independent clause that follows contains the important message for the writer. In other words, whatever Mr. T-O has inserted into that first clause that starts with "while" and ends with the coma, is just the above-mentioned rhetorical throat-clearing:  a necessary lip service to convention, but negligible in significance.


And Eden Attias, the boy whose vile murder has been shrunk, with pre-deliberation and imponderable malice, to one small and insignificant clause in a sentence on the ironically-named Tikkun Olam blogpost, lies cold in his fresh grave. Any person with a modicum of proper feeling mourns his cruel death.  

***

A footnote: 

 Mr. Tikkun thinks he knows Hebrew and likes to play the linguistic whistle-blower. Therefore he often inserts into his translations helpful "explanations" of Hebrew terms. He is doing it in this post too:

"Despicable murderer: may his name and memory be erased [a curse usually reserved for Hitler and the like]. "

" may his name and memory be erased" is indeed the literal translation of
 ימח שמו ושם זכרו.

The insertion of the helpful notation "[a curse usually reserved for Hitler and the like]" is likely intended to ridicule the outlandishness of Silverstein's target in his post. As if  it is somehow hyperbolic to attribute Hitlerian motivation to the Palestinian adolescent who has just plunged a knife into the chest of a sleeping young Israeli not much older than himself for no other reason than that his victim was an Israeli Jew. But never mind that. The term itself " may his name and memory be erased" is a pretty common curse among those Hebrew speakers who are inclined to use curses, and can be hurled at anybody who is perceived to have committed a great injustice, any great injustice. It is hardly an exclusive Jewish linguistic quirk. The phrase has a time-honoured, Latin etymology:

Damnatio memoriae

_____

Update: If anybody thinks I unjustly misread Mr. Tikkun Olam's sentiments about Eden's murder, take a look at this comment on his comment thread.  He is incapable of keeping up his own charade of being "horrified" by this butchery.

And once again, we get this  "By the way, far more Palestinian civilians than Israeli civilians have been killed."

No doubt the world will be a far better place if only more Jews were to be killed. But then, there is the ever present throat-clearing: "I’m opposed to killings on both sides".  

Words mean nothing for Mr. Tikkun Olam. He uses cliches and is incapable in thinking or feeling in anyway but in cliches.  

Update 2:  True. But this is a private blog that pretends to be staunch and implacable upholder of democratic principle. The intention is noble, but the implementation is highly eccentric, petulant and puzzlingly selective. Mr. Tikkun Olam asserts his goals and then applies an uneven and indecipherable moderation policy. Not that I mind one way or another. I'm not a regular reader on this blog. It makes me almost physically sick to read the type of "commentary" that takes place here and I won't even try to describe what it feels like to engage in a conversation with Richard. The banality and mediocrity of his "passion for justice" famish the mind.  I just find this type of cognitive dissonance incomprehensible especially when the tone of the blog is always so smug and virtuous. 

 

We are meant to believe ...

Act I:

 Mr. Silverstein, from the hubridical blog Tikkun Olam has seen fit to attack the integrity of one of my favourite Israeli journalists, Ben dror Yemini.

 I decided to leave the following comment on his blog:


"So we’re meant to believe that a single letter supporting a supposed activist plot on behalf of Hamas will lead to Kerry selling out Israel’s interest in the Iran negotiations."

Here is what the Ben Dror Yemini, (Unlike your representation of him, he is a Left of Center journalist and jurist with a record of dissent and assertive insistence on truth and accuracy in journalism and politics) wrote in his article:

המכתב מעמיד בסימן שאלה חמור לא רק את האוריינטציה הפוליטית של קרי, אלא בעיקר את שיקול הדעת שלו, הן בנושא האיראני והן בנושא הפלסטיני. כבר אז, בסוף 2009, היה ברור לקרי עם מי ועם מה יש לו עסק. בספטמבר 2008 התקיימה אחת הפגישות המוזרות ביותר בניו יורק. מצד אחד היו שם "פעילי שלום" ובכלל זה נציגות "קודפינק", ומצד שני, נשיא איראן, מחמוד אחמדינג'אד. התוצאה הייתה מאבק משותף נגד הסנקציות הנפשעות של ארה"ב.

ארה"ב היא הידידה החשובה יותר של ישראל. אין על כך סימני שאלה. ההתנהלות של קרי, לעומת זאת, מציבה סימני שאלה קשים. איך זה שסנאטור בכיר העניק לגיטימציה לקבוצה שהמאפיינים שלה היו גם תמיכה בחמאס, גם תמיכה באחמדינג'אד, וגם עוינות תהומית, הן לישראל והן לארה"ב. והשאלה החשובה יותר: האם ג'ון קרי של 2013 הוא ג'ון קרי של0

[Translation]:

The letter casts  a severe question mark not only on what Kerry's political orientation might be  but, more importantly, his good judgment when it comes to the Iranian issue and the Palestinian issue. Even back then, at the end of 2009, Kerry must have known whom he was dealing with: In September of 2008 a most bizarre meeting took place in New York, between "Peace activists" including representatives from "Code pink" and Ahmadinejad. The result was an agreement on a shared struggle to dismantle the “iniquitous” sanctions against Iran.

The US is Israel's most important friend. There is no question about that. Kerry's conduct, on the other hand, raises some very tough questions. How come a senior senator was providing support to a group known for its support of Hamas, support of Ahmadinejad, as well as for its unyielding hostility towards Israel and the US. And the most important question is: Is 2009 Kerry the same as 2013 Kerry?

__________

No one leads you to believe anything. It is ALWAYS (make no mistake about it) your choice to believe something and not another thing. Your choice of what to believe is a direct extension of your own biases and reflects upon your own quality of good judgment and common sense. Unlike you, writing from your safe perch in wherever in America, Ben Dror cannot afford to look the other way or attribute nothing but benign compassion to the motivation of a well seasoned American politician. He is looking from a highly critical POV and making his point known, which is what a journalist does, in a free society. And he actually provides the documentation of what provokes these legitimate questions from him. You call it a smear* campaign. How so? Where is the smear? Are Kerry’s letter, its contents and its beneficiaries, deniable? Is the context within which the letter is mentioned not verifiably accurate? Are Codepink’s and EI’s agenda a concealed secret? The answer to all these questions is a pretty solid No.

By trying to cast this honest and often intrepid and contrarian journalist a smearer you are the one doing the smearing, Mr. Tikkun Olam**.

[End of comment.]
_______________

Some helpful lexical meanings:

* A Smear is:
 "2. damage the reputation of (someone) by false accusations; slander."

** Tikkun Olam:  "...  is a Hebrew phrase that means "repairing the world" (or "healing the world") which suggests humanity's shared responsibility to heal, repair and transform the world. In Judaism, the concept of tikkun olam originated in the early rabbinic period. The concept was given new meanings in the kabbalah of the medieval period and has come to possess further connotations in modern Judaism.<sup>[2]" (wiki)

The reader should make his or her own mind as to what kind of  "repair" the blogger Silverstein is concerned with.

__________

Act II:</sup>  An Epilogue of sorts:

I think anyone who is engaged in good faith in the discussion of the I/P conflict knows that Tikkin Olam  is not a reliable place to go to for understanding and or getting a transparent and fair view of the events, the facts, the discourse that develops around it. a good example of how language is manipulated to serve the author's sickly agenda has cropped up in the discussion that ensued.

Initially, I provided a better and fuller translation of the excerpt from Ben Dror's article that Silverstein chose to use as the lynch upon the pin of his grievance. This is his translation:

"The letter raises a grave question about Kerry’s political orientation, whether regarding Iran or Palestine.  Even then, in 2009 it was clear to Kerry with whom he preferred doing business.  In 2008, one of the strangest meetings that ever took place in New York joined “peace activists” (including representatives of Codepink) on one side and on the other, the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.  The result was an agreement to wage a  common struggle against America’s “criminal” sanctions.

…How could such a Senator provide legitimization to a group characterized by its support for Hamas and Ahmadinejad, including its deep hatred of Israel and the U.S.?  And an even more important question: is the John Kerry of 2013 the same as the John Kerry of 2009?"

Here is mine:
 
המכתב מעמיד בסימן שאלה חמור לא רק את האוריינטציה הפוליטית של קרי, אלא בעיקר את שיקול הדעת שלו, הן בנושא האיראני והן בנושא הפלסטיני. כבר אז, בסוף 2009, היה ברור לקרי עם מי ועם מה יש לו עסק. בספטמבר 2008 התקיימה אחת הפגישות המוזרות ביותר בניו יורק. מצד אחד היו שם “פעילי שלום” ובכלל זה נציגות “קודפינק”, ומצד שני, נשיא איראן, מחמוד אחמדינג’אד. התוצאה הייתה מאבק משותף נגד הסנקציות הנפשעות של ארה”ב.
ארה”ב היא הידידה החשובה יותר של ישראל. אין על כך סימני שאלה. ההתנהלות של קרי, לעומת זאת, מציבה סימני שאלה קשים. איך זה שסנאטור בכיר העניק לגיטימציה לקבוצה שהמאפיינים שלה היו גם תמיכה בחמאס, גם תמיכה באחמדינג’אד, וגם עוינות תהומית, הן לישראל והן לארה”ב. והשאלה החשובה יותר: האם ג’ון קרי של 2013 הוא ג’ון קרי של0

The letter casts a severe question mark not only on what Kerry’s political orientation might be but, more importantly, his good judgment when it comes to the Iranian issue and the Palestinian issue. Even back then, at the end of 2009, Kerry must have known whom he was dealing with: In September of 2008 a most bizarre meeting took place in New York, between “Peace activists” including representatives from “Code pink” and Ahmadinejad. The result was an agreement on a shared struggle to dismantle the “iniquitous” sanctions against Iran.

The US is Israel’s most important friend. There is no question about that. Kerry’s conduct, on the other hand, raises some very tough questions. How come a senior senator was providing support to a group known for its support of Hamas, support of Ahmadinejad, as well as for its unyielding hostility towards Israel and the US. And the most important question is: Is 2009 Kerry the same as 2013 Kerry?
_______________

To pinpoint the difference:

This is the sentence in Hebrew:

 המכתב מעמיד בסימן שאלה חמור לא רק את האוריינטציה הפוליטית של קרי, אלא בעיקר את שיקול הדעת שלו, הן בנושא האיראני והן בנושא הפלסטיני.

This is how Silverstein  reproduced the sentence in his translation: 

"The letter raises a grave question about Kerry’s political orientation, whether regarding Iran or Palestine. 

Here is my translation:

The letter casts a severe question mark not only on what Kerry’s political orientation might be but, more importantly, his good judgment when it comes to the Iranian issue and the Palestinian issue. 

You will notice that Silverstein  not only omits  this part of the sentence:

but, more importantly, his good judgment

but reconstructs the sentence in such a way as to accommodate the omission. The "not only ... but..." structure becomes just a straightforward statement. To me that suggests that the translation was deliberately done in such a way as to circumvent the difficulty this particular clause presented to the blogger's thesis in this post.

I wouldn't have noticed this except that this omission is crucial for T-O's gist of the article: that Ben Dror calls " John Kerry a supporter of “radical ultra-leftists” and “Israel-haters” and to prove his point, he provides this quote as the damning evidence. While in fact what Ben Dror writes is, to paraphrase: We need to query not only Kerry's political orientations but more importantly, his good judgment (that is, his understanding and practical wisdom) when it comes to the issues of Iran and the Palestinians. 

Silverstein's "translation" tells a difference story. And, BTW, nowhere anywhere in Ben Dror's article is there any allusion whatsoever to Kerry being "Anti-Israel, Pro-Hamas;" as Silverstein claims in his headline. All he is saying is that Kerry's record as a signatory on a letter that serves the anti-Zionist crowds should make us wonder whether he is a political leader with the necessary kind of good judgment to meddle so actively in such combustible and momentous issues as Iran and the Palestinian issue.

But, facts and  language are no problem for the blogger who declares he contributes to the improvement of the world, a cherished Jewish principle. If he needs to pervert the arguments, subvert the the language and omit important parts of the "evidence" then so be it. All in the service of improving justice in the world.

The Open Liberalism at Open Zion 


There is a post on Peter Beinart's Daily Beast blog "Open Zion ". You can read it if you wish. My concern is with the type of discussion that takes place on the threads that follow O-Z's articles. Why? Because of this.  

My intent is to show what kind of commenters patronize Beinart's blog and how their morally-rancid products appear to be accepted by the new moderation regime installed on Open Zion since a couple of days.

Here is a revealing example:

This commenter posts a list of names* whom she suspects of  harboring "dual loyalties", because they hold both American and Israeli citizenship.  If you open the link and look at the list, you will find that: a) Very few, if any, of the names on the list have Israeli citizenship. b) Some or most of the names on the list are Jewish. c) at least one of the names, John Bolton, is not even that (Jewish, I mean).

Now where did she get this list? All you need to do is google a part of the list to find it comes from some high-stink websites like "Rense" and feted on such respectable message boards like "Stormfront".

So here we have a list of names which promotes verifiably false facts and anti-democratic premises, hailing from sources of information that are tainted by their record of  "a general mistrust of the establishment (ranging from the right-wing to President Barack Obama), and a range of theories about who was behind the September 11 attacks on the New York World Trade Center in 2001."

 Another commenter tries to respond by pointing to the falseness of the list. But the initial commenter will have none of it:  "s you know, you can be born in Brooklyn, Warsaw or Kenya, and as long as you're Jewish, can be granted Israeli citizenship. Rahm Emmanuel's name is not on the list I posted, but you refer to him in your rebut. Something we should know?"

You see, if you are a Jew, you automatically have an Israeli citizenship and in consequence, you are de-facto, to all intents and purposes, an Israeli citizen. And with that in mind, you are automatically a suspect. In other words, no American Jew should ever be appointed to a government position or be a politician.

When people talk about the virus of antisemitism being a highly adaptable virus that can mutate to accommodate any given set of circumstances, they know what they know talking about.

Since Open Zion has just established a new moderation policy, wherein:


" NO RACIST COMMENTS ABOUT ARABS, JEWS OR ANYONE ELSE. USERS VIOLATING THESE RULES WILL BE BANNED.  -- MODERATOR"

I expect the commenter's antisemitic list will be deleted from the conversation and she will be banned.

[... And pink pigs might fly.]   

___________

Addendum:  

" I see what is going on. I tried to post on Lisa Goldman's twitter and she removed me.  I also note I am not seeing Gil Troy here anymore.  
The one thing I respected about Open Zion was they allowed people to answer.  And I was noticing that more and more, it was people like you and others who would counter with facts and that the haters were finding it harder to respond as they were limited to cries of "zionazi"  ( which the  mod obviously does not find a lack of 'civility' )
Comment boards are now read by 40% of readerships and increasingly are clearly being used by media outlets to promote views too radical for them to put into articles and  also to silence people like us."
_________
*The list in the comment was removed but the gist of the comment, accusing american Jews of dual loyalties, remains. I flagged the remainder of the comment with this complaint to the editor:

This partial removal of the comment is unsatisfactory. The main gist of the claim still remains with its age-old antisemitic canard about Jews and dual loyalties. It follows the same rule as MacCarthyism,  the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. Would you accept a comment  that would cast aspersions on the integrity of Arab Israelis who hold very senior positions in Israel's government and judiciary as harboring dual loyalties? Of course not. One rule should be applied across the board no matter where the moderator's own biases may lie. This is a matter of fairness, integrity, honesty and contributing to a civilized discourse.