"Potato Job Senior Analyst, Potatoes | AHDB

The Potato, or:

Angry Arab's Sense of Humor

I recently hooked my cable to a few channels I had not had before and was rewarded by having access to many re-runs of Seinfeld, my favourite situation comedy, ever, absolutely. A few nights ago, I watched the nearly forgotten episode: The Fatigues


[Jerry and Abby are in Jerry's apartment.]

JERRY: So you saw Bania's act?

ABBY: He got two minutes into that Ovaltine thing and I just couldn't take it anymore.

JERRY: I told you, it's like getting beaten with a bag of oranges.

ABBY: Why is he so obsessed with Ovaltine?

JERRY: He just thinks that anything that dissolves in milk is funny.

___________

[Jerry runs into Bania on a street corner.]

BANIA: Hey Jerry.

JERRY: Oh, hey Bania.

BANIA: Didja hear what happened? The mentor saw my act. She dumped me.

JERRY: Oh, that's too bad.

BANIA: Maybe she's right. Maybe I am a complete hack. I'm the absolute worst. The worst, Jerry.

JERRY: Well it's just that you got so many things with the milk. You got that Bosco bit then you got your Nestlé's Quik bit, by the time you get to Ovaltine--

What, you may well ask, has a fruit salad got to do with the donkey's wife? Or, to put it more bluntly, how can Seinfeld be of any relevance to Prof'. AbuKhalil's sense of humor?

The answer, my friends, is in the application of Seinfeld's and everyone else's puzzlement verging on total incomprehension when confronted with what Bania thinks is funny. Having been a devout reader of Prof. AbuKhalil's News Service, I am by now familiar with his sense of humor and can take a very educated guess at what he thinks is funny: potatoes! This harmless blob of a vegetable, this disinterred darling of most Fast Food joints, has somehow become AA's preferred intrument of ridicule and sarcasm. Here are a few examples:

"Potato Job Senior Analyst, Potatoes | AHDB

His potato

For potato's sake!

I shall here for the first time reveal their names: Karim potato and Husni potato.

Oh, the hilarity. The wit. The trenchant sarcasm. All of such pristine potato quality.

The puzzle is less Prof. AbuKhalil's fixation on potatoes and more on the seeming perseverance in utilizing this so-called joke. I mean, haven't his many fans and readers sort of gotten the joke by now? I know for a fact Arabs are capable of the most cutting edge humor.

Take Sayed Kashua for example. Or this blogger (Be forewarned: explicit and graphic everything!)

Or the joke about the pregnant Palestinian woman being held up at a checkpoint for so long that she starts labour right then and there. An IDF medic is rushed to help with the delivery of the expected two boy twins. The first baby emerges from the womb, sees the Israeli soldiers around, and turning back, calls to his brother: Ahmed, bring the rocks!

See what I mean?

I think Prof. AbuKhalil's needs a mentor in cultivating a proper kind of humor. I can even name a candidate for the job, a fellow academic and a kindred spirit, aspiring also to be a funny.

_________

Update: It must be stated, in all fairness, that AbuKhalil's sense of humour does not exclusively run to potatoes. Here is an example of another sophisticated strain. And I forgot to mention his razor sharp satirical portraits of Abe Foxman, a Jew AbuKhalil really really loathes. Of course it is always possible that AbuKhalil's humorous sidebars are so superior and sophisticated that I just don't have the mental cojones to understand their brilliance.

Today's Update  on the Latest Angry Arab Snarls

1.

Prof. AbuKhalil about Anne Barnard :

" Ms Barnard is a victim twice, of her ignorance and of her political bias."

Enough said.

2.


Here, Prof. AbuKhalil boasts knowing what is really going on in Syria, who fights and who and where.  How does he know? He doesn't really tell.  And rightly so. Because if you follow AbuKhalil's news service you will know by now that reliability of report and verifiability of facts are not exactly his strong suit. He tends to believe everything his informers tell him, and doesn't mind trumpeting the fact that for him,  "I heard it from someone who knows" is a good enough source worthy of concocting an entire edifice of  conjectures and myth and pass them as unalloyed truth.

Here is one example of how his network of information works.

It is interesting that since that last "report" Quntar's name failed to materialize on the Professor's website.

Why is that, do you think?

____________

3.

Every once in a while, AbuKhalil's steady diet of pure hatred, slander and twists of facts has the same effect on his mind that a steady diet of nothing but beans would have on any normal organism. The gaseous pressure amounts to such a degree that it needs to be relieved through the most convenient and closest orifice.  He then posts a 'message"on his "News Service" that serves no useful purpose whatsoever, does not augment any understanding, does not rely on any factually correct record. It is posted for no other reason then it relieves Abukhalil's mind of its gaseous stench. This is an example of such a posting:

Every six months since 1990 the Israeli government anounces that it has distributed gas masks to its citizens. And every time Wesrwen media cover the ritual and volunteer analogies to the holocaust for extra propaganda effect. By my count every Israeli citizen should have by now around 23 gas masks.

A point of fact: If gas masks have been distributed for 23 years every 6 months, the number of gas masks each Israeli  would have is 46. I hereby conclude that AbuKhalil does not know how to divide or multiply correctly even the simplest exercise. Perhaps he considers this basic arithmetic skill a Western value and shuns it as it should be.

As for the frequency of gas mask distribution, here is an article from 2010 that says:

Tel Aviv - Israel will next month begin gradually distributing new gas masks to its 7.5 million citizens, officials said on Wednesday, the third time the country has taken such a step in its history.

Like I said, a verbal noxious fart whose only claim to accuracy or truth is that of a stink bomb.




So what has caused this latest verbal fart from AbuKhalil's slander and hatred workshop?

I suspect it is this information:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week ordered the defense establishment to urgently get gas masks and protective kits into the hands of all Israelis, according to Israel's Channel 10 News.
Currently, only an estimated 42 percent of Israelis have up-to-date gas masks and protective kits. Budgetary constraints in recent years prevented both the manufacturing and distribution of enough masks to protect the entire population.
But, with the probability of an unconventional attack on Israel increasing significantly in the past year, and with the recent proven use of chemical weapons in Syria, distributing gas masks to all Israelis has become more than just a "feel-good" measure.

It appears to be a reasonable measure taken by a responsible leader who cares about the welfare of his people. AbuKhalil's feelings about this people is well known and recorded on this blog : He would like to see them wiped clear out of the universe.    It is not beyond a wild conjecture to assume that AbuKhalil's latest attack of intestinal gaseous fumes was caused by the thought that yet another opportunity to achieve his dreams has been thwarted ...

Prof. AbuKhalil's Pedagogical Successes

He managed to instill his hatred into at least one of his students: 

"...  one of my students gave me a gift: the book the Deadliest Lies by Abraham Foxman. She said she suffered through the book for a paper she wrote and wanted me to suffer like her. "

Such harmonious alignment of spirit and intellect between teacher and student! And notice the clever student's sense of impeccable timing for both her gift and her explication of it: 

"On the day of the final examination". 

Abe Foxman is AbuKhalil's  bête noire.

In this case he takes issue with Foxman's definition of antisemitism: 

"criticism of Israel that is intensely biased, unfair, and illogical."(p. 174).  Only a brilliant mind can vomit such pearls. "

No supporter of Israel can ever state or say anything. In AbuKhalil's elegant universe of restraint, delicacy of mind and pious adherence to historical fact, they can only vomit.

When I read AbuKhalil's "news" service,  I often recall how Seinfeld's Elaine Benes describes one of Kramer's girlfriends:

" If you could see her personality it would be like one of the Elephant
Man exhibits, you know where they pull off the sheet and everyone gasps."

Change the gender of the subject and you've got an almost adequate description of AA. 
 

The Daily Angry

"When people invoke their Zionism advocacy in their writings (like Lewis and Ajami and others) they lose it completely and forget about the scientific method or even basic logic." 

 Thus intones my favourite Arab intellectual, Prof. Abu Khalil, he who is a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC, Berkeley:

This high standard for writing, coming from the Angry Arab stupefied me. As a short perusal of his heavily loaded "news" service will show you,  a concern for scientific method or basic logic is not exactly a strong aspect of his writing.

A few examples:

The self proclaimed anarchist's idiosyncrasies


The writer who cannot comprehend what he reads


No such thing as  logic or scientific verification of fact where Israelis are concerned


The basic logic of AbuKhalil's priorities


And the list goes on ...

_______________

Update a day later: AbuKhalil's scientific method and basic logic of writing at its most evident:

" I usually avoid mentioning those types: those handful of Arabs who do tours and gigs for Zionist entertainment.  I tell Arabs that they should be ignored.  Of course, Saudi media now take orders from Zionist handlers in the US--yes, I believe that and please call me conspiratorial--I mean that.  So someone called Noona Darwish was on Al-Arabiyya (the news station of King Fahd's brother-in-law) but she was interviewed by one of the few able journalists there, Hasan Mu`awwad.  He grilled her and it was a Zionist fiasco.  Her Arabic is halting, and he would ask her questions about things she said in her books and she would not be able to answer and clearly revealed that she did not write a word that is attributed to her (like the Cicero of Damascus: her English is atrocious but we are led to believe that he writes long articles for the New Republic).  She would make claims about Islam and she would not be able to back them up.  Mu`awwad would ask her for reference and she would hold a book to the camera but would not be able to even read from it or cite what she wants to say from it.  It was rather a comedy.  I don't think that Zionists had this in mind when they put her on the network.  I must say that Mu`awwad seemed very pleased to mock her for the entire show and expose her for what she is.  Ha."

You will note that this "news" item is merely a tirade full of sarcastic commentary and not one verifiable example of the claims being made in this post. You will also note that there is no  link to any source whatsoever.

So here is a link to an article posted on Al-Arabiya News website (it was easy to google once you adjust AbuKhalil's insistence on the phonetic spelling of Arabic names to the way these names are actually spelled in the media; thus Noona Darwish can be found under Nonie Darwish and Al-Arabiya has only one "y" in it)).

When you read the article and the quotes provided by the author of what Darwish said, AbuKhalil's  reluctance to apply the scientific method will become self-explanatory.

The Great Pretender

The perpetually enraged Arab talks about the "smearing" of Chomsky.

Glenn Greenwald, perhaps the most courageous US journalist, writes about smearing of Chomsky: "But what is at play here is this destructive dynamic that the more one dissents from political orthodoxies, the more personalized, style-focused and substance-free the attacks become. That's because once someone becomes sufficiently critical of establishment pieties, the goal is not merely to dispute their claims but to silence them. That's accomplished by demonizing the person on personality and style grounds to the point where huge numbers of people decide that nothing they say should even be considered, let alone accepted. It's a sorry and anti-intellectual tactic, to be sure, but a brutally effective one."

And here I am, thinking about Chomsky the purist-anarchist par excellence. What could possibly be a greater smear on his "dissents from political orthodoxies" than the way prof. AbuKhalil bowdlerizes and abuses anarchist theories in the service of his own fascist, particularist agenda?

Imagine, just for the sake of the point I want to make in this post, No'am Chomsky saying something like AbuKhalil's repeated refrain, with one tiny alteration: 

I don't like flags, and I don't like nationalisms but for Israel and the Jews, everything and anything. 


"Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority and hierarchical organization in the conduct of human relations. Proponents of anarchism, known as "anarchists", advocate stateless societies based on non-hierarchical voluntary associations.^{" (Wikipedia)}
 
 According to Wikipedia, "Chomsky has stated that his "personal visions are fairly traditional anarchist ones, with origins in the Enlightenment and classical liberalism".

AbuKhalil's concern for Chomsky's reputation is rather vacuous. It simply does not make sense and misrepresents Chomsky's rejection of all statehoods, nationalisms, and flags as illegitimate corruptions of human justice and freedom. The two of them are certainly not on the same page. I have little doubt that Chomsky's political vegetarianism precludes the possibility that any exception might be made for one special place in his life where he can  always indulge in carnivorous gastronomy.

To conclude, let me remind you of how Paul Ricoeur defines evil: "Evil is, in the literal sense of the word, 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...”

So here is the prof. of political science, here are his principles: [as a self-proclaimed anarchist] "I don't like flags, and I don't like nationalisms" except that he cannot subject his own personal inclinations to the very principles he claims to uphold:  "..for Palestine and the Palestinians, anything and everything".

__________

Update: It is tragically amusing to note the extent of Prof. AbuKhalil's self-regard and cognitive dissonance. It's not as if he is incapable of noticing structural contradictions of the type I reported above in others:

 "It is an extremely disturbing interview [with Chomsky] ... the reference to Israel "harming itself" as Chomsky put it, is telling enough. It is time that we learn that we dont have to stand and applaud any White Man who comes to our region with some criticisms of Israel, OK? I mean, imagine if a supporter of the struggle of blacks against Apartheid were to say: I count myself as a supporter of the Apartheid regime."

What emerges is a clear picture of an absolutist academic incapable of even the tiniest bit of self-reflection or self-criticism. I wonder what he teaches* his students? What benefit, what learning, what skills, do they gain from attending the classes of such a "teacher"?? 

BTW, Is Chomsky a "white man"? A redneck? Perhaps a "new Afrikaner"? An Aryan, perhaps? (Apparently, one is a "white man"when one is not as virulently hostile to Israel's very existence as one ought to be. When a "white man"comes along and praises the Angry Arab, the white man's words are not only welcome but paraded with some pink-faced pleasure:) ).

*Sidebar about teachers:

 Bertrand Russell, in one of his Unpopular Essays, tries to explain that the role of a teacher is to be the guardian of civilization. A teacher, says Russell, "should be intimately aware what civilization is'.

But what does Russell mean when he invokes the term "civilization"?

It's much more than advanced technology. It is "a thing of the mind"

"it is a matter partly of knowledge, partly of emotion... A man.. should see his own country not only as home but as one among countries of the world, all with an equal right to live, and think, and feel. He should see his own age in relation to the past and the future".

The danger and impossibility to fulfill the true role of the teacher is much less present in democratic countries. A teacher, however, in totalitarian countries, cannot hope to serve his noble goal, for

"In each of these countries fanatical nationalism was what was most emphasised in the teaching of the young, with the result that the men of one country have no common ground with the men of another., and that no conception of a common civilization stands in the warlike ferocity". In such countries, he goes on to say, "Collective hysteria, the most mad and cruel of all human emotions, is encouraged instead of being discouraged".

Yet Prof. AbuKhalil does not live in a totalitarian country. What's his excuse for encouraging his readers, on his blog  "Collective hysteria, the most mad and cruel of all human emotions"??

"Netanyahu

The Swollen Envy of a Pygmy Mind

The New York Times featured a nicely admiring article about Israeli Jazz artists performing in New York:

"The proposition that jazz is a global language, spanning continents and cultures, has been a reliable diplomatic device for so many years that it now has the ring of a banality.

Dani Miller

“Jazz became the world’s music long ago,” said Susan E. Rice, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, in that organization’s General Assembly hall on Monday night. “There is by now a rich tradition of Nordic jazz. There’s South Asian jazz, there’s Russian jazz and Chinese jazz.”

Ms. Rice was speaking at a concert to celebrate International Jazz Day, an initiative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and if her quick catalog left out Israeli jazz, that was probably just as well: no need to state the obvious. Over the last 15 years, Israel has produced and exported so many serious young musicians that the jazz landscape is hard to picture without their influence, particularly in New York and especially now." (My emphasis)

Let's re-read what the article states: "Over the last 15 years, Israel has produced and exported so many serious young musicians that the jazz landscape is hard to picture without their influence,"

Prof. Abukhalil, ever the vigilant Zionist-hater, expresses a violent displeasure to this rather innocuous and easily verifiable accolade. According to his intelligent interpretation, the article is claiming that Jazz is Israeli. That is, Israel claims to be the originator of Jazz. And Abukhalil will have none of it. What, Jazz is Israeli? Isn't it enough that Israel "stole the Falafil" it now pretends that Jazz is authentic Israeli music?

This is the kind of mind that the State University of California entrusts with teaching its young students. 

***

Here is another example that highlights the distinguished quality of Abukhalil's thinking. Note how delighted he is by the vulgar humour displayed by some young Arabs: 

"Netanyahu

I have noticed that many young Arabs write Netanyahu's name in Arabic as:
نتن يا هو
which would read as "filth, o people".

PS Ali tells me:  "Just wanted to tell you that نتن يا هو was first used during the 1996 Zionist attack on Lebanon".

And how ignorant he is when he quotes "Ali" as avowing that this vulgarizing tradition of spelling Netanyahu's name was  begun during Israel's 1996 attack on Lebanon. 

The Prime Minister who presided over "Sour Grapes" was Shimon Peres, not Netanyahu.  So, do you believe "Ali"? Are you impressed by AbuKhalil's  intellectual quality of criticising Israeli policies (or whatever)? Are you moved to mirth by his inclination for low-brow spurts of childish and vulgar animus towards Israel?

If you are still hesitant in making a severe judgment on AbuKhalil's intellectual abilities and general faculties (such as they are), read this comment.

Do you wonder what kind of news, information, understanding or analysis is exactly being purveyed by this person with his incontinent verbal passing of noxious intestinal gas via the anus?

Do you know how easy it is to make fun of As'ad, a name that could be read as an acronym of ass and head?

***

Update: Another empty braggadoccio from the professor:

"US cash

I am willing to bet my farm (the family sold the farm in Tyre, actually), that there has never been an election in the Middle East since the 1950s in which the US did not intervene in with cash.  Not one."

 

He is willing to bet a farm he does not own on making some outlandish statement which he has no way of proving, ever. What does it mean when you make a bet on something while your bank account is totally empty? What do we call such persons who do that?  A liar? A coward?  An empty barrel that makes a lot of noise when on a roll? Would he dare bet his academic position on this fulmination?  What do you think?

Scot-Free of truth telling

The context is this article:

"Eid’s desire to become an informant in the late 1990s came naturally. Fluent in Arabic and English, he grew up in Hezbollah-dominated south Lebanon, the youngest of nine siblings in a family of Maronite Christians. He was 13 when the Israelis punched through southern Lebanon in their 1982 campaign to root out Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization. When the Israelis later pulled out, parts of the Christian community — which had collaborated with the invaders — came under attack from the Muslim majority. Roland never forgot"

Prof. AbuKhalil's dirty slip is showing ("dirty slip" being a metaphor for a soiled undergarment showing under the ostensibly clean and respectable dress of a sanctimonious woman) when he claims here, with a straight face, that this statement:

 "When the Israelis later pulled out, parts of the Christian community — which had collaborated with the invaders — came under attack from the Muslim majority..." 

is false:

 "Of course, that did not happen and even Israeli collaborators and torturers for Israel were left scot free."

First things first:

What is the meaning of "scot-free"?    "to get away without penalty"

Now that we have ascertained the honest professor's meaning in this declaration on his blog, let's google some information.

Oh, what's that?

 "A Beirut military court Wednesday sentenced another 73 Lebanese to prison terms ranging from three weeks to 15 years for collaborating with Israel during its occupation of southern Lebanon.
The majority of the sentences were for one to two years, and were handed down against people who had served in the Israeli-backed militia, the South Lebanon Army.
The heaviest sentences, of three to 15 years, were reserved for people who had worked directly for Israel or for the SLA's intelligence arm.

Those included in the latter group were also forbidden from entering the former occupied zone for periods equal to the length of their prison terms.

One of those charged, a doctor, had been tried for "treating enemy agents." While found innocent of that, he was nonetheless sentenced to one month in prison and a fine of 700 dollars for having gone to Israel.

The latest verdicts bring to 869 the number of Lebanese sentenced since June 5th, when the court began holding marathon sessions to wade through the 2,200 people charged with collaborating during Israel's 22-year occupation, which ended May 24th - BEIRUT (AFP) "

 And here:

"By the next month (June 2000), 3,000 former SLA members were in the custody of the Lebanese government; by the end of the year, about 90 percent had been tried in military courts. It has been estimated that a third of the SLA members were sentenced to less than a month and another third received one-year sentences. Two members of the SLA accused of torture at Al-Khiam prison received life sentences. The death sentence was recommended for 21 SLA members, but in each case the military reduced the sentence. Certain other individuals were barred from returning to Southern Lebanon for a number of years.^[9]"

So, is Prof. AbuKhalil using the term "scot-free" in a way that does not immediately and readily come to mind when regular, English speakers do?

If he changed the meaning of 

"scot-free" 

that is designated in the dictionary to mean 

without any penalty, 

 to:  

sentences for one to two years, of three to 15 year, life sentences 

and death sentences (though later commuted), 

should he not have informed his readers* about his creative perversions of universally established lexical meanings?

________________ 

* To AbuKhalil's credit, he does inform his readers when an error is made, either deliberately or unwittingly. But it is a selective kind of self-incrimination. And he blames this on "a certain rashness in my personality." 

So here is the thing: Our perpetually pissed prof is not unaware of his propensity to misreport, or disreport, but he is indifferent to any misreports and misinformation he furnishes about Israel. That means he is fully conscious and conscientious about the necessity for ethical and truthful reporting, except in special cases. Is this not a de-facto admission that when it comes to Israel, AbuKhalil is an unreliable narrator who is not to be trusted on any account? That when it comes to Israel, any lie, distortion, myth and false facts are admissible? And why does Israel get this special treatment of "anything goes" from the Prof? Could it be that feasting on his hatred for the Jewish state is more important than truth? Whatever is the reason, it is not an impulse we would expect from a professor in an academic institute in a democratic country.
__________

Addendum, December 14 2013:  When someone feeds on an exclusive and steady diet of this sort of poisonous food, no wonder they get to a point where they openly hallucinate about murdering Jews (or, as the ever politically-correct prof, would say, Zionists, or Israelis), as in this case:

"It is the sharpest thing I own and cuts through everything like butter and just holding it makes me want to stab an Israeli soldier "

Untitled
(because I couldn't find anything that can capture the perverseness of this phenomenon)


The hypocrite from the state university of California posted this sickening video on his website, with a title that implies he is horrified by the cold hearted murder of two Syrian youths by so-called "rebels". My suggestion is not to watch the video, just take a look at the post. It is truly disturbing. 

Try to find on AbuKhalil's blog anything at all that remotely resembles moral outrage when Israeli children are murdered, and in much gorier manner.

Consider AbuKhalil's record for the name "Fogel" on his "News Service". This is what you'll get.. 

If you search for "Itamar", this is what you'll get. Another thinly veiled slander that the murders were actually not perpetrated by Palestinians and only serve as a pretext to harass Palestinians.

It appears, and I am not making any solid propositions here, only impressions, that the professor is indifferent to the horrors visited upon Israeli children by Palestinian terrorists and their facilitators.  What does it mean?

Manufacturing  Slanders:

AbuKhalil's readership must be the most gullible, superstitious and conspiratorial-minded on the Internet. How else could he manage to sell them a factoid and its very opposite within the span of hours, and they would consume it without a query?

 

Prof. AbuKhalil  has been repeatedly insisting on his blog that Israel's concern about chemical weapons being used against its citizens is a lie and a propaganda ploy, presumably aimed at eliciting world sympathy for itself.

Here is one typical example:

"Every few years, the Israeli government resorts to the gas masks propaganda scheme.  I mean, how many times are we supposed to be fooled?  Also, who threatened whom?  It was clear that Israel has been threatening Syria with military intervention and not vice versa.  For record."

 

If it is a lie and a ploy, then nobody in Israel is in any danger and in any need for a gas mask, right? 

No according to the professor. It seems that only Israeli Jews do not need these gas masks. When it comes to Palestinians, it appears that the prof. is convinced that they do need them. 

 

  Here is the prof. today, making this sarcastic comment: 

 

 gas masks in Israel: for Jews only 

 

From John:  "Just to let you know - regarding gas masks - that i am living in a Palestinian israeli village and have been asking people today if they have a gas mask - Judging by their responses, I think its safe to say that very few of Israel's 20% (mostly living in the north) have one."

One may well wonder: If AbuKhalil knows with such persistent conviction that Israel's gas mask  distribution is for show only, why would he even be concerned about Palestinians not getting gas masks? 

From The Jerusalem we learn that:

"The Israeli government only provides gas masks to legal residents of Israel. Tourist and temporary residents have to privately purchase gas masks.”
They also provided a list of places where people can buy the masks.
According to Home Front Command figures, as of this week only 60 percent of Israelis have gas masks."

It appears that abuKhalil's little incitement tricks are the lies. Israeli citizens and legal residents are eligible for free gas masks, whether they be Jew, Christian or Muslim, whether they be Arabs or Druze, or  Martian. An American Jew  on a visit to Israel is not eligible for a free gas mask.

Israeli injustice

An Angry Arab Moment

By which I mean that it is either a superb example of Prof. AbuKhalil's cognitive dissonance* or a confirmation of my own on-going suspicion that the blogger is actually in the service of the Zionist World Conspiracy. How else can you explain this fulmination:

"Friday, November 18, 2011

Israeli injustice

"Many liberals, who feel they are a waning minority in Israel, fear that the bills will weaken the judicial checks and balances that have prevented a judicial slide into populism or religious zealotry. They particularly worry about the rise of judges such as Noam Solberg, a religious-nationalist from Alon Shvut, a Jewish settlement in the West Bank, whom right-wingers want appointed to the Supreme Court. In judgments in Jerusalem’s district court, where Mr Solberg sits, a policeman was controversially acquitted of the manslaughter of an unarmed Palestinian." I hate the reference to "Israeli liberals" or "Israeli leftists". They are akin to saying: a moderate and reasonable white supremacist."

The intention is to demonstrate the levels of illiberalism and "white" supremacy in the ethos of Israeli public, you know, in the style of South Africa's Apartheid and America's Jim Crow South before the civil rights movement. It is so bad, in fact, that Abu Khalil jeers at the notion of Israelis being liberals and Leftists at all. Yet as you click on the link and begin to read the article he relies on for his "news", this is the first thing recounted:

"WHEREAS Israel’s voters have been moving to the nationalist and religious right, most of its top judges have clung to a more liberal and secular view of the world. On November 10th Salim Joubran, one of three Supreme Court judges deciding the fate of the country’s former president, Moshe Katzav, upheld his conviction for rape. Almost no Israeli batted an eyelid, even though the judge who dispatched the eighth head of the Jewish state off to jail was an Arab, from a community that now makes up one in five of Israeli citizens"

So one wonders how the point AbhKhalil is making is proven or demonstrated by this article. It is obvious that the gist of the article contradicts AbuKhalil's reading of it or his summary judgment about the impossibility of Israeli liberalism or Leftism. Surely as a learned professor who teaches political science at California State University, Stanislaus and as a visiting professor at UC, Berkeley (so he claims on his website), he would realize that this type of juxtaposition does not add up to what he is trying to push but rather undermines not only his own argument but also his credibility both as a reliable reader and reporter of "news". It's as if he deliberately acts as a witness against himself.

___________

* "Cognitive dissonance is a discomfort caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance. They do this by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and actions.^[1] Dissonance is also reduced by justifying, blaming, and denying."

Who speaks for the Arab people?

Priceless gleanings from "Angry Arab News Service":

 The cute terrorist:

"He told me that when Wadi' would stumble on a matter that required a solution, he would watch cartoons until he would come up with something. "

Who was this cutie pie,  and what kind of inspiration was he looking for in Mickie Mouse cartoons?

According to wikipedia,  Wadi Haddad  was he leader of the "military" wing of  Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), organized attacks on Israeli targets, including airplan highjackings, the most famous being  the Dawson's Field hijackings of 1970, and Entebbe.  He employed the services of  much feared and fabled arch-terrorist "Carlos the Jackal"*. Later, Haddad decided to expel Carlos from his team after the latter had been accused of refusing to kill two hostages, and possibly stealing ransom money, following the 1975 assault on the OPEC conference in Vienna. Haddad organized the Entebbe hijacking in June 1976.

Such and such are the objects of Prof. AbuKhalil's adulation.
 
* "Carlos was forced out of the PFLP by Wadi Haddad shortly after the OPEC kidnapping because he ransomed the Saudi and Iranian ministers instead of killing them, and because he was suspected of keeping part of the ransom for himself. Thus, despite reports to the contrary, he was already out of the organization when it orchestrated the famous hijacking of an Air France jet to Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976. But that portion of the ransom he turned over to Haddad, at least $10 million, was used to finance this and many other terrorist attacks against Israeli and European targets"
_____________


Clarity:

 So Niall Ferguson can't be racist because his "best friend" is gay and he is married to a bigot who was born in Somalia

A person who does not like gay persons is a homophobe, not a racist. A person who does not like any race but his own is a racist. But you wouldn't know any of it, because Prof. AbuKhalil is hardly interested in linguistic precision. Because anger makes you really stupid and the first type of stupidity is the misuse of language. I suspect that both Ferguson and his lovely wife, Aayan Hirsi Ali, have provoked his anger not only because they are both critical of Islamic violence and repression of human rights, especially true in the case of the lady, but especially because neither of them shares his apocalyptic view of Israel. In AbuKhalil's moral system, there is no greater sin than not regarding Israel as the greatest evil in the universe from the beginning of time.

____________

Spokesperson:

Who speaks for the Arab people?

The answer: Western government officials and Western correspondents of course, as in: " but it now appears in the eyes of the Arab world

But the answer is: Angry Arab, of course, (with a few exceptions, like this one).

Careful not to find

Prof. AbuKhaliil, the professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC, Berkeley and all that, has been sneering about an Haaretz report of a Lybian opposition figure who made a statement not totally hateful to Israel. He piles on the corrosive contempt for the very idea in two additional posts * and vouchsafes to his credulous readership that it was all a Zionist fabrication. He, Prof. AbuKhalil, went to much trouble googling "him in several languages a few weeks ago, can only be found in Israeli media. I find it really funny how desperate Zionists are." The man, Ali Shibani, is nowhere to be found except in Israeli media.

Well, I have3 done a little googling myself, and from Abukhalil's own formulations looked for key words: "the Libyan opposition" Israel haaretz, and found this, that led me to this article in Haaretz which seems to be the source for Abukhalil's phoney mirth and guess what I found?

It took me all of 60 seconds to find the proper name of the Lybian opposition figure and to check up on his materiality

This:

"Ahmad Shabani says recognition of Israel by future elected Libyan government is 'very sensitive question. The question is whether Israel will recognize us'."

is not the name the Angry googled and with good cause. As long as he was looking for "Ali Shibani", he could be sure that no such Lybian spokesperson could be found. And it was imperative NOT to find him, or else all those conspiratorial delights about Zionist media manufacturing news would have to be discarded, and we can't have that, can we?

Other sources that seem to suggest that Shabani (sometimes spelled Shebani) exists, alive, kicking and sentient, are:

This, from March 11, 2011:

"EU leaders are set to meet to further discuss the issue on Friday in Brussels. Shabani, the spokesman for the Libyan opposition council, told Al Jazeera that the "legal basis [for an intervention] is clear", and that the UN was ... "

This:

"Ahmad Shabani, a spokesman for the Libyan opposition's national council, told Al Jazeera the opposition was heartened by the move. "We are very happy about that, hopefully it's not late... and hopefully it makes a difference," he said. "

I will say it again, in Hannah Arendt's words:

"the hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness
against himself... only the hypocrite is really rotten to the
core."

______

* Looks like these two posts no longer exist on AA's blog. I wonder why. (Checked: September 10, 2011)

The Tartuff of Marxism-Anarchism "Critiques" Religion


Here he gives his rationale:

... critique of clerics, priests, and rabbis is a national duty and obligation.  Remember that the clerics of Al-Azhar were partners with Sadat in his humiliating deal with Israel.  And the Lebanese Shi`ite cleric, Hasan Mushaymish, has been convicted of spying for Israel.  ... Karl Marx ...said in his introduction to A Contribution to Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right that "and the criticism of religion is the prerequisite of all criticism".

How does Prof. AbuKhalil  explain the necessity to criticize Arab clerics by the Arab masses? Does he bring up the religious oppression of women, of free speech and of free thought the clerics preach to the believers? Does he take a stand against the virulent antisemitism of Muslim clerics?

No. His only criticism begins and ends with one argument: It is absolutely mandatory to "criticize Religion" because of the one or two (if that) religious clerics that happen to support normalization with Israel.

AbuKhalil's stand against religion is essentially the same as his vaunted devotion to Marxism- Anarchism. The only factor that matters is whether something is for or against Israel. He calls that criticism, and he actually brags about it, feeling himself to be standing, no doubt, side by side with Dawkins and Spinoza.

Marx stated in Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

 "Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.
The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.
Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself."

I highlighted in red Marx's main point about the corrosive influence of religion on the rational human being's mind. Now take the self-adorned as Marxist, Prof. AbuKhalil's argument against the clerics and compare it with Marx's  argument for the abolition of religion. Is there any point at which the two connect? Is there a shared spirit of indignation against what clerics do to their own flocks?

What kind of a Marxist is he? A Tartuffian Marxist. Or/and an idiot.

BBC coverage

 The truth shall make you free

Prof. AbuKhalil provides an invaluable resource of information. In this post from today, 22 November 2012, he quotes a correspondent (someone he corresponds with by email, I presume) as saying, in an aggrieved tone:

BBC coverage

Khodor sent me this:  "Just to let you know, I dont have the video but I personally saw the 10:00 pm BBC news yesterday and the guy said something along the lines of " People in Gaza have a culture of martyrdom and there is no sadness or grief". He also mentioned the IDF throwing flyers and said people listened to the advice and left along routes the IDF promised not to bomb. I wish I can find the video to send. Does not differ much from what other journalists you mentioned in your blog were saying."

The implication of the grievance could be one of two possibilities: One, that the information is a lie thus implying the BBC  is an instrument of ZOG, or two, that while the veracity of the information is not being disputed, the complainant is outraged by its being presented on the BBC. Why? Perhaps because it casts a more benign light upon the IDF, which should be shown as only brutal? Perhaps because it interferes with AbuKhalil's most cherished narrative, that Israeli soldiers deliberately, pre-meditatedly and malevolently target innocent civilians?

In my humble opinion, the second possibility makes more sense. The first possibility, the truth of the information, is easily verifiable, from a 20 seconds google search that produced the following report:

" In preparation for a possible impending ground incursion, and in an attempt to minimize civilian casualties, even at the cost of losing the element of surprise, the IDF has dropped another round of warning leaflets over some of the neighborhoods in the Gaza Strip. The flyers call on civilians to leave their homes for their safety, and the IDF details the routes they should take. A translation of the leaflets’ content is below:

The first leaflet:

To the residents of Sheikh Ajlin, Tel Al-Hwa, Rimal South, Zeitoun, Sjaiya, Turkeman and Sajiya Jadida: For your safety, you are required to evacuate your residences immediately and move towards the central Gaza city, via Al-Khara, Jma’at Al Dul Al Arabia, Al Aqsa Al Qudsiya, Um Alaimoun, Salah A-din, Al-Maqsurra, Hal’s Mjdad. In the central Gaza city, you are required to stay between the areas of Salah A-din from the west, Amar Al-Muchtar from the north, Al-Nasser from the east and Al-Quds St. from the south.

- Israel Defense Forces.

The second leaflet:

To the residents of of the outskirts of Shati, Al-Atatra, Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun: for your safety, you are required to evacuate your residences immediately and move towards central Gaza city via Al-Falujah, Al-Udda and Salah A-din. In the central Gaza city, you are required to stay between the roads of Salah A-din from the west, Amar Al-Muchtar from the north, Al-Nasser from the east and Al-Quds St. from the south.

- Israel Defense Forces."

I assume Prof. AbuKhalil, a bona fide professor  at an American university with a good standing, entrusted with the teaching of young students the arts of reading critically, would have checked to see whether the information was true or not. Assuming he is just as capable as finding information on the Internet as I am, I have little doubt that he knows, for a fact, that this information is correct.

So that leaves us with the second possibility for the aggrieved tone: That the BBC presented news that could cast a favourable light upon IDF's rules of engagement in fighting a war targeting terrorists embedded within a civilian population. The complaint suggests that the BBC should not have made this information available to the average British taxpayer. In other words, the BBC should have concealed this information from its viewers, which is tantamount to a dissemination of a lie. If these IDF's actions are not known, then that leaves the Palestinian version of civilian being deliberately targeted by Israel intact and unchallenged. In other words, AbuKhalil expects the BBC to collude with his perspective in which the Israel side is just a black block of evil and malfeasance.

Interesting, from a Prof. at a university duty bound by academic ethics to teach students the truth, and how to find out as much of the truth as possible.

__________

Addendum:  Another example of the professor's courageous standing up for truth in reporting:

Zionism is always racism

"The Tel Aviv municipality has placed security guards at entrances to public bomb shelters that opened Saturday night in the southern part of the city after homeless people, mostly migrants from Africa, tried to sleep there." 

 

I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that Prof. AbuKhalil, who is intelligent and some would even go as far to say highly intelligent,  knows exactly what this information means: that, following the long ranch missiles lobbed at Tel Aviv by Hamas, the city opened up its public air raid shelters, to serve the people who find themselves in public places when the air raid sirens sound. These shelters are there to provide protection from air raids, not for homeless people, whatever their race, to sleep in. The same way that the Metro stations in Montreal  are there to serve the public and not s a place for homeless people to sleep in. Even on the coldest nights in Montreal, homeless people are not allowed to sleep in Metro stations.  So there is nothing particularly racist or heartless about homeless people in Israel being turned away from shelters meant to protect the public against attacks from the air. 

Yet you wouldn't know these very simple facts from AbuKhalil's way of presenting the information. What do you call such an intellectual, who tells his readers not the truth but a slanderous perversion of facts and contexts?

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"??

The New Moral Frontier: It's not a lynch if the victim is a Jew 

In recent news: 

Two Israeli journalists covering Palestinian riots in Beitunua, near Ramallah, were attacked by masked Palestinian rioters on Friday.

The journalists, Walla Arab affairs analyst Avi Issacharoff and a cameraman, were attacked after a Palestinian woman claiming to be a journalist set the rioters on them, Issacharoff told Channel 10 News on Friday evening.
 [--]
 The two were beaten by masked men and suffered bruising before being evacuated from the area by plainclothes Palestinian Authority security officers, who then transferred them to the custody of the IDF’s Civil Administration for Judea and Samaria.

Look how the BDS Angry-in-chief characterizes the near-goring of two Israeli journalists:

"... two Israeli journalists said they were nearly “lynched” by a Palestinian mob."  Today, I NEARLY invented a cure for cancer."

Now see how he characterizes similar (very few) incidents in the past when the victims were Arabs:

Zionism is a mass hate crime

lynching Arabs in Israel:

that Israelis habitually lynch Arabs,

This is Zionism: “Two Palestinians narrowly escaped a lynching attempt in Jerusalem Tuesday evening after they were assaulted by dozens of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The two Arabs were wounded, while a Jewish resident who protected them with his body was stabbed.” (thanks Rashid)
Posted on July 23, 2008 by As'ad

According to Haaretz, following the incident in Zion Square:

Four minors between the ages of 13-15, including one girl, were arrested on Sunday in connection with the attack at Zion Square, in which one victim was seriously injured and three others were slightly hurt.

***

Let's look at some records:

The professor says that  that Israelis habitually lynch Arabs,

 Googling " lynching of Arabs by Israelis" produced 409,000 results . 

I looked at the first 5 pages. There were lynching stories and near- lynching stories but only one  story about a "near lynching" of  Palestinian youths by Israeli-Jewish youth, the same incident I mentioned above.

Other lynching and near-lynchings stories were about Palestinians murdering or attempting to murder Israeli -Jews, one attempt to lynch a Palestinian family mistaken for Jews. ("She spoke to them in Arabic and only then did they understand that we ourselves are Arabs, and left us alone. I hit the gas and drove away as fast as possible.” According to him, the youth clearly mistook them for Jews: “Me and my wife look Jewish, even the police officer who arrived said ‘at first sight I was sure you were Jews.")

Then there are other Arab-on-Arab lynchings, like this one:

They had been "caught red-handed," working for Israel, and so were executed.
According to the Associated Press, who also photographed the grisly spectacle, masked Hamas gunmen had forced the six men suspected of collaborating with Israel to lie face down on the street, then shot them dead. Later, while an angry mob stomped and spat on five of the bodies, the sixth was tied to the back of a motorcycle. “Spy! Spy!” the people screamed as the corpse was dragged off.

There are websites where one can find accounts of these lynchings that ended in death. All you need is to look for them.

But I think in view of these records  we will be justified in puckering our brow at Prof. As'ad AbuKhalil's manner of reporting gory near-murders and lynches. And we may wish to ask the respectable Professor who teaches young Americans at a bona fide good university in the US:

Why does he claim that "Israelis habitually lynch Arabs," when the record shows that it is Palestinians who seem to be unable to resist lynch-mobbing lusts?

Why does he belittle the serious near-lynching of Israeli journalists when not too long ago he referred to a violent clash among youths as a lynching, and extrapolated from this lie that Israel is in the habit of lynching Arabs?

One would be forgiven for concluding that for the venerable, justice-loving professor, it is almost as if the murder of an Israeli Jew is a normal occurrence, only to be expected, nothing to be exercised about.  His justice juices begin to flow furiously only when an Arab is killed (or almost killed) by a Jew.

He has no inclination for law and justice when Palestinians are summarily lynched for the suspicion of collaborating with Israel:

According to the West, those collaborators should be respected and their freedom of movement ensured because such are the rules of Western freedom of expression.  I can say this: Palestinian treatment of collaborators over the years has been far less brutal and indiscriminate than French resistance treatment of Nazi collaborators.  There is no question about that."

So we see a professor who is in charge of forming the minds of future generations of Americans, promoting, on his well-attended website, distortions of historical, easily-verifiable records, perversions of notion of justice, contempt for human life, justifications for murder and valorization of gory revenge as a reasonable recourse of action.

Of course he is not a man of peace. As can be evidenced from the most cursory perusal of his "news" service. This is the man whom universities trust with educating the young. This is what a BDS mover and shaker looks and sounds like.

Make no mistake: The BDS movement reflects this man's values. 

He tries, here, to put some distance between himself and the BDS movement, as if it does not go far enough:

"I count myself as BDS supporter, advocate, and even spokesperson but I am categorically against the existence of the State of Israel"

However, as we see from the quote he provides from Norman Finkelstein  he is fully aware that there is no light between his position and that of BDS:

"... the BDS movement “think they are really clever” by covering up their real intentions when they call for a “three-tier” agenda of ending the occupation, demanding the right of return for all Palestinian refugees and equal rights for all Arabs in Israel. “You know and I know what the result is. There is no Israel!” he said."

" I am categorically against the existence of the State of Israel", says the self-proclaimed
"BDS supporter, advocate, and even spokesperson". Which is exactly what Finkelstein claims is the goal of the BDS movement: "There is no Israel!” 
_____

It all hangs together, the subhumanization of Israelis and the avowal to have Israel eradicated.
People who support BDS should know what it is they are supporting.