Showing posts with label max blumenthal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label max blumenthal. Show all posts

Thursday, November 15, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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Wednesday, February 01, 2017

Mondoweiss has an article that says that there is a "Zionist connection" to the Quebec mosque shooter - because he "liked" the IDF on his Facebook page.

Ali Abunimah, of Electronic Intifada, made the same claim.

This is the level of discourse that the anti-Israel crowd uses. They know it is garbage but they always try to find the most ridiculous connections between anything Israel-related and any mass murderer or reprehensible human being in a pathetic attempt to discredit Zionists. (In one example they tried to link me to mass murderer Anders Breivik by falsely claiming that I praised his manifesto in an article where I called him "evil" and a "psychopath.")

I tweeted how ridiculous this logic is after Max Blumenthal did the same thing:



So I decided to see how easy it is to link Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada and Blumenthal to the neo-Nazi site, Stormfront, using their own methods.


Stormfront doesn't just put a Facebook "like" to these anti-Israel sites. It quotes them repeatedly.

Stormfront has quoted both Mondoweiss and Electronic Intifada over 100 times each! Ali Abunimah himself is quoted by the neo-Nazi site some 36 times. Philip Weiss manages to get quoted 90 times. Max Blumenthal gets quoted  (almost always approvingly) over 80 times.  

Clearly, neo-Nazis have a warm space in their hearts for Philip Weiss, Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal. 

Keep in mind that I am in no way saying that these anti-Israel sites and writers are neo-Nazi. They are politically distant from the far-Right (except for the fact that both the far Left and far Right are antisemitic.)

But I am saying that if you accept the stupid methodologies of Mondoweiss and EI and Blumenthal, then you must accept that they themselves have a lot in common with and inspire neo-Nazis, by their own stunning pseudo-logic.

Joking aside, the neo-Nazi ties to these individuals and sites are far deeper than the supposed Zionist links of the neo-Nazis. Hundreds of quotes linking them are far more significant than a Facebook "like."

EI and Mondoweiss truly are the research arm for neo-Nazis. And that is beyond dispute.

So every time they claim that some far right murderer and terrorist is linked to Zionists, point out that they are much more "guilty" of this linkage than Zionists are - by their own methodology. Feel free to use the image I created. Let's see how much they like taking their own medicine.

(By the way, I'm quoted in Stormfront too a couple of times. For example, they were excited that I discovered a UNRWA official posting [fake] Hitler quotes on Facebook. In other words, they were on the UNRWA official's side, not mine.) 



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Monday, February 23, 2015

Yesterday, I pointed out a false Ma'an story claiming that Israel deliberately opened up "dams" to flood Gaza with excess rainwater. As I pointed out, there are no dams near Gaza; there are some reservoirs but no evidence that they released any water.

This is one of those obvious lies that start getting believed by being repeated year after year, and even AFP ended up reporting that Israel opened up dams without doing a modicum of fact checking. ("Journalist" Max Blumenthal repeated the lie as well, as did Radio France International.)

Today, the claims were proven to be lies, as CAMERA reports:

Regarding the claim that Israel opened dams, thereby flooding Gaza, a spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) told CAMERA:
The claim is entirely false, and southern Israel does not have any dams. Due to the recent rain, streams were flooded throughout the region with no connection to actions taken by the State of Israel.

Prior to the storm, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories allowed the transfer of four water pumps belonging to the Palestinian Water Authority from Israel into Gaza to supplement the 13 pumps already in the Gaza Strip in dealing with any potential flooding throughout the area.
In addition, Nechemia Shahaf, the head of the Drainage Authority for the Shakma-Besor Region, confirmed to CAMERA that there are no dams which can be opened and closed in southern Israel. Shahaf said, "There is a diverting dam one meter high which directs water to reservoirs. This is a low dam which cannot be opened or closed." He also noted that the singular dam, which cannot be opened, is next to Kibbutz Gvulot, and approximately 20 kilometers away from Gaza.
But that was only one of the false stories claiming that Israel floods Palestinians.

IMEMC and Palestine News Network claimed that somehow Israel managed to flood a "refugee" camp by opening "barrages":
Aida refugee camp north Bethlehem city has drowned after Gilo Israeli settlement opened its barrages, throwing all excess rain and melted snow water onto the camp.

Aida camp is adjacent to the Israeli apartheid wall, which is backed by the Gilo settlement northwest, that opened the barrages to flood the homes of refugees.

The head of water pumps in the camp, Sami Hmedan, said that Israeli occupation authorities opens the barrage water with disregard to the Palestinians and without any official concerns.
Gilo as seen from Aida. Where are the "barrages"?
The only "barrage" between Gilo and Aida is the security barrier. If anything, that protected Aida from excessive flooding.

Or are they saying that those devious Israelis removed the "apartheid wall" to flood Arabs and then quickly put it back?

Who knows what crazy slander they will come up with next. But we do know that a percentage of those lies will end up in AFP and other mainstream media, because if there is something that Palestinian Arabs have learned over the years, it is that repeating their lies gets results.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Judge Dan, Bob Knot, Nurit Baytch, Rudi Roth)

Sunday, February 09, 2014

By any objective yardstick, the SodaStream/Scarlett Johansson episode was an unmitigated disaster for BDS. But Max Blumenthal, whose rabid anti-Zionism and series of provable and verified lies have ensured that he can no longer be published except in Mondoweiss and Arab news outlets, writes a fantasy about Scarlett Johansson to try to fit the facts of the past couple of weeks into his very limited worldview - and try to spin a major BDS loss.

Writing in the UAE's "The National," Blumenthal talks about how Hollywood celebrities used to publicly embrace Israel, but are less  likely to do so today.

The reason?
These days, celebrities who shill for Israel can expect to be relentlessly harried and forced to declare where they stand on Israel’s ongoing dispossession of Palestinians.

For those who have attached themselves to humanitarian do-gooder causes, the potential for PR damage is considerable — certainly enough to give them second thoughts. As the price tag on pro-Israel activity rises, some performers are quietly opting out of attractive deals before the controversy shatters their image.

But others like Scarlett Johansson, the comely blonde starlet described by Woody Allen as “sexually overwhelming” were not willing to let apartheid get in the way of a sizeable profit.

In January, the Israeli company Sodastream signed Johansson to promote its home soda-making machines in a $16 million (Dh58.8m) Super Bowl ad that featured her sucking suggestively on a straw off-and-on for two minutes.

Johansson, a standard-fare Hollywood liberal who proclaimed in 2008 that her “heart belongs to Barack”, cast her deal with Sodastream as a shining example of “conscious consumerism and transparency”.

She seemed oblivious to the fact that Sodastream operates out of Maale Adumim, an illegal Israeli mega-settlement built on privately owned Palestinian land whose master plan would eventually bisect the West Bank.
Blumenthal exposes his usual disregard for journalistic ethics and basic facts, of course - one minute of Super Bowl advertising cost about $8 million, not $16 million; the ad was only one minute long, Maale Adumim was not built on privately owned Arab land (except for 0.5% of it,) none of Mishor Adumim where SodaStream's factory is located was built on Arab land, even Israel's far left accepts that Maale Adumim would be part of Israel in any peace agreement, and in no way does it "bisect the West Bank."

He even says that Oxfam forced Johansson out, when the truth is the exact opposite.

Proving that Blumenthal is a liar is too easy.

The funny part is how desperately Blumenthal is trying to spin an episode that was a huge disaster for BDS into a victory.

His thesis that no major Hollywood figure today would support Israel as they did in the past is quite demolished by what Scarlett Johansson actually did do - although he blames her love of money, and doesn't mention that she isn't exactly hurting for cash.

True, there are some B-listers - washed-up rock stars and second-rate acts - that have bowed to pressure and joined the boycott of Israel. Why did they do that? Well, according to Blumenthal, it has nothing to do with what they really believe in.

It is because the Israel haters who push the boycott are bullies! And they are proud of it!

Blumenthal says it explicitly: "celebrities who shill for Israel can expect to be relentlessly harried." The haters expect that thin-skinned celebrities, who are allergic to controversy, will scamper away from any hint of trouble. Sometimes, they are right. It has absolutely nothing to do with the righteousness of their cause - it has to do with the fact that the haters can instantly raise an army of brainless Facebook drones to threaten people who are often not very self-confident to begin with.

Johansson not only pushed back against the BDSers  she pushed back on humanitarian grounds! She explained why the BDS goals actually would hurt the people they pretend to care about. She exposed their hypocrisy in a very public way. (This is another point that Blumenthal studiously avoids mentioning.)

This episode did not damage Johansson's star power one bit.

The biggest losers were Oxfam and the BDS movement itself.

Oxfam is now sputtering and making itself look idiotic as it tries to justify its desire to throw hundreds of Arabs out into the street without salaries or healthcare. The halo effect of Oxfam being a humanitarian organization has been considerably dimmed.

But Oxfam, in trying to defend itself, has in turn thrown the BDS movement under the bus! It has been publicly forced to say that it does not support boycotting Israel and it is distancing itself from haters like Max Blumenthal.

Whether that is true or not is besides the point - Oxfam does give plenty of money to organizations that do support BDS - but nevertheless a major humanitarian NGO is publicly saying that boycotting Israel  is immoral and beyond the pale, and it is jumping through hoops to make fine distinctions so that it cannot be accused of supporting BDS explicitly.

How on Earth can anyone think that BDS won?

The only people who can believe that are those who spend so much time lying that they can no longer distinguish truth from fantasy.

Like Max Blumenthal.


Wednesday, October 23, 2013

There is a great blog called "Bad News from the Netherlands." The point is to publish every single story that can make the Netherlands look bad, without any balance or context, to show that in the aggregate the methods used by Israel-haters to delegitimize Israel can be used against literally anyone. Looking at only that blog, you would conclude that the Netherlands is a racist, crime-ridden state that flouts international law and has no redeeming characteristics.

Max Blumenthal does exactly the same thing in his latest book about Israel - except he is far less objective than that blog.

Blumenthal's anti-Israel screed is called "Goliath." From what I can tell he took every possible activity by every possible Israeli Jew that can be remotely construed as negative, adding some hyperbole and eliminating context, and threw it into a book that is being hawked by the usual misozionistic crowd as evidence that Israel is rotten to the core.

While "Bad News from The Netherlands" only copies news stories, Blumenthal layers his hatred for Israel onto every incident, every anecdote, every piece of hearsay that he can find - as long as it makes Israeli Jews look like fascists (a word that he repeatedly associates with Israel in the book, as the index indicates.)

I decided to browse a little on the Amazon preview of the book, and saw this little non-anecdote on page 42:
Before any trip to Israel-Palestine, I receive a dizzying array of advice from jour-nalist and activist friends on how to pass through Israeli security with minimal harassment. A Jewish-American writer for a Palestinian diaspora publication told me she always wore blue-and-white clothing—the colors of the Israeli flag—and a gold Star of David necklace, and flirted openly with security officers of the opposite sex. A left-wing Israeli activist advised me to behave in an irritable, churlish fashion, blurting out terse responses to questions from security officers to avoid creating the perception that I was overcompensating for any "anti-Israel" intentions. Other journalist friends warned me to erase any and all Arab contacts from my phone, and to delete any material I had published about the Israel-Palestine conflict from my computer hard drive. They reminded me about Lily Sussman, the twenty-one-year-old Jewish American college student detained in December 2009 by the Shin Bet at Israel's border with Egypt because she was carrying suspicious items, such as an Arabic phrasebook. After two hours of intense interrogation, a baby-faced Shin Bet officer appeared to inform Sussman,"I'm sorry, but we had to blow up your laptop:' He then handed her a Macbook riddled with bullet holes. Luckily for Sussman, the bullets missed her hard drive.

After deciding that I was too lazy to purge my computer and cellphone of Arab contacts, I concluded that I had nothing to hide and that the Israeli intelligence services could not possibly be foolish enough to treat me as a security threat. I then reminded myself that I was an Ashkenazi Jew who would be automatically afforded special rights according to the designs of Zionism.

My Jewish privilege would be borne out during many trips in and out of Ben Gurion Airport. Whenever a security officer greeted me with the requisite opening question, "Are you Jeweesh?" I have learned to casually respond, "Of course." If I were ever asked if I had any Israeli family, I would tell them about all my imaginary cousins in Tel Aviv or about my imaginary Israeli girlfriend. "Are you thinking of marrying your girlfriend," a young female security officer asked me once., sure am!" I said with a bashful smile, bringing a satisfied grin to the face of the officer. Because the maintenance of a Jewish demographic majority is Israel's national priority, the production of Jewish babies is a key national priority. With my promise to inject top-grade Ashkenazi Jewish sperm into the ovum of a young Jewish Israeli woman, I was marked with a level-one security classification.

Each time I reach the kiosk at passport control on my way into Israel-Palestine, I do my best to appear calm, and even a little bit bored, while the officer examines my documents. With bated breath I wait for the loud thump of the metal visa stamp when it meets the pages of my passport. Only with that noise will I know that I have gained admission through the fortified frontiers controlled by Israel. As a sense of relief washes across my body, a single thought enters my mind that is constantly reaffirmed throughout my time inside Israel-Palestine: I am a lucky Jew.
Blumenthal admits that he travels to Israel often. He admits that he has never had a problem entering Israel. He admits that no one ever looked at his cell phone or computer.

Yet he spins a tale of nervousness, of suspicion. He gratuitously makes fun of the Israeli accent. (Would he ever do that to an Arab?) He pretends to know that the polite reaction to his lie about wanting to marryhis fake Jewish girlfriend is proof of Israeli bigotry. (I have no idea what a "level-one security classification" is. I'm pretty sure he made it up, something he has done before.)

And, of course, his repeated easy entry into the country only proves how terrible Israel is. Yet for some reason, every single time he is about to visit Israel, his friends keep offering advice on how to avoid the inevitable harassment.

This gives a small inkling of how skewed Blumenthal is.

To be fair, he does mention the case of Lily Susskind. I don't know what happened there.  It certainly sounds bad from his telling of the story. Clearly her "Jewish privilege" didn't protect her as Blumenthal claims it protects him.

Of course, Blumenthal - who pretends to be a journalist - doesn't bother to try to find out what really happened from the perspective of Israel's security. He implies that Susskind's Arabic phrasebook and equally innocuous items are the reason she was detained. What he doesn't mention is that Susskind was living in Egypt at the time.

Plus she had  a visa for Syria on her passport. A country that Israel is technically at war with.

Plus a hand-drawn map of Jerusalem.

Plus a photo on her phone of a graffitum saying "Fuck" next to a Star of David.

But to Blumenthal, the Arabic phrasebook is the only thing worth mentioning as an unreasonable excuse for her to be questioned.

His intent isn't to document reality, but to propagandize.

If he would have been honest, and told that story straight with context, then we can be properly upset at what appears to have been a gross overreaction on the part of the border officials.  I confess I don't understand why, if Susskind was considered safe enough to enter Israel, they had to (almost) destroy her computer.

Israel isn't perfect by any means, and it has to deal with problems that no other country has to worry about. I would find it hard to believe (in the absence of any other information) the the people who shot her laptop would remain in their jobs if this incident would have been pursued.

When 18 year olds are forced to grow up fast to help defend their country, sometimes they do very inappropriate things that would be considered normal pranks on any college campus. This doesn't justify it, but the country is a pressure cooker and blowing off steam is inevitable. It is not evidence of "fascism."

Nevertheless, even with all the pressures and insults and haters targeting the Jewish state, Israel consistently tries to improve. An honest journalist would mention that.

But Blumenthal isn't honest. He isn't a journalist but an Israel-hating ideologue who is willing to play fast and loose with the facts to get his point across.  He doesn't want to expose problems so they can be solved, he wants everyone to hate Israel as much as he does. He doesn't want to improve the Jewish state, but to destroy it.

Which is pretty much all that you need to know about this book.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Max Blumenthal has been thoroughly discredited as a journalist and even as a reliable source of any facts many times before, just on this blog. It is utterly inconceivable that any serious news organization would consider him a serious writer when his hate completely overwhelms his ability to absorb basic facts.

As I noted earlier today, the winner of Israel's version of The Voice was an Arab Christian woman, Lina Makhoul.

Blumenthal's reaction on Twitter? "Tokenism works!"

Think about that for a second. Blumenthal is utterly convinced that the Israeli Jewish public is deeply racist against Arabs. Yet when they vote for a singing competition, they have no compunction voting for an Arab that they supposedly hate.

Blumenthal's explanation? That, while safely anonymous in their homes, the Israeli public decided en masse to vote for the Arab singer, not because she was the most talented but because they wanted a token Arab to win, so that people like him wouldn't consider them racist!

And, of course, their ruse failed, because Blumenthal is so smart as to know how the evil Israeli racist mind works, and he knows that they knew that they were only covering up for their racism by voting for the one singer they really despised!

Not only in the final round, but in all of the rounds beforehand!

Blumenthal doesn't just ignore Occam's Razor, he twists it into a Möbius strip in his ridiculous lie.

It is important to note that anti-Arab racism does exist in Israel. Even Makhoul noted that she heard some racist comments while she was in the competition. Yet racism exists everywhere. People who actually care about racism would celebrate Makhoul's victory; but haters like Max are upset, because it disproves their own justification for their own irrational, sickening hate.

Make no mistake: the insane misoziony that people like Blumenthal exhibit - the irrational, crazed hate of everything Israeli - is no less reprehensible than the racism some of them pretend to care so much about.

Friday, January 18, 2013

Ha'aretz on March 22, 2006, reported:
Police and the Shin Bet security service foiled a suicide bombing yesterday that was planned for the Tel Aviv region. After a dramatic chase, police stopped a commercial vehicle carrying the suspected suicide bomber and eight other Palestinians near Kibbutz Sha'alvim, on Route 1, from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv. Police said that the suspect, an Islamic Jihad activist from the Jenin area, was carrying a bag containing between five and seven kilograms of explosives.

The Islamic Jihad network in the northern West Bank claimed responsibility for the planned attack. That network has been responsible for the last seven suicide bombings, which killed 26 Israelis.
Here is a AP photo taken after the high speed chase when Israeli special forces stripped and handcuffed the suspects:


Now, seven years later, Max Blumenthal tweets:

Blumenthal is implying that this is how Israel's border police act all the time. And he has dozens of worshipful fans who believe every lie he spouts.

Blumenthal pretends to be a journalist, but even if he was not aware of the provenance of the photo, any journalist worth the title would do a tiny amount of fact checking. And any newspaper who employs a reporter who tweets something so outrageous without checking would fire him on the spot.

This all just goes to prove, yet again, that the Israel-haters care not one whit about telling the truth.

(h/t Huffington Post Monitor via Ian)

Thursday, December 29, 2011

Max Blumenthal is a self-described journalist who has written op-ed pieces in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Guardian and elsewhere. He is considered respectable.

And a single tweet by him shows how he is anything but respectable, and anything but a journalist.

He first retweeted a link to an article from the pro-Hamas Middle East Monitor, quoting (but not linking to) a PLO document that claims that Israel killed 180 Palestinian Arabs in 2011.

But then he tweeted a "correction":

Update/correction via : 239 Palestinians killed by Israelis/Israeli forces in 2011

He didn't check the link for accuracy. He was sent a message that the real number of dead Arabs is much higher, and based only on that information he issued a "correction."

A quick look at the Occupied Palestine webpage shows that they list all people they consider "martyrs," but they are not claiming that Israel killed them all. This distinction is lost on Max, of course, who stated flatly that Israelis killed "239 Palestinians" in 2011. He didn't simply retweet - he added his own "facts."

So the ersatz journalist Blumenthal believes that the following people were killed by Israel:




Blumenthal didn't check this out - even though the links to most of the "martyrs" are right there on the website. No, he reflexively believes that whatever number is higher must be the true one. If a random person would have tweeted that the real number was 372, he would have believed it without hesitation.

By the way, the Al-Dameer Association for Human Rights counts 91 people killed by Israel in 2011. OCHA counts 115 up until December 20th.

The IDF number is somewhere in between, saying that about 100 were killed in military operations this year. And that only nine of them were civilians.

Which one is true? That would require research and skepticism. Only a journalist would bother to do all that work. And Blumenthal is no journalist.

He's a hack who will repeat whatever comes his way, as long as it conforms to his pre-existing hate of Israel.

Friday, December 09, 2011

I have discussed how Max Blumenthal had fabricated a quote from Karen Greenberg, director of the Fordham School of Law's Center on National Security. Greenberg made it crystal clear in two other interviews that she did not in any way assert what Blumenthal says she said, namely that (in Blumenthal's words) "Israeli influence on American law enforcement is so extensive it has bled into street-level police conduct."

Blumenthal defended his reporting in a followup article - and, ironically, this new article proves even more so that he plays fast and loose with the facts.

He writes:

Greenberg's statement to me did not come out of the blue: A book she co-authored with Joshua Dratel, "The Road to Abu Ghraib," contains a lengthy section on Israeli court rulings authorizing torture and torture techniques refined by the Shin Bet. In a subsequent article, Greenberg and Dratel proposed questions for Donald Rumsfeld about torture. Here is one: "Did your discussions of torture involve consulting experts in Israel..?"

Let's look at these two sources and see if Blumenthal is representing Greenberg's words correctly.

In her book "The Road to Abu Ghraib," she does not say that there were Israeli court rulings "authorizing torture and torture techniques." Quite the contrary. She writes:

According to the Israeli Supreme Court, however, there is a necessary balancing process between a government’s duty to ensure that human rights are protected and its duty to fight terrorism. The results of that balance, the Israeli Supreme Court stated, are the rules for a “reasonable interrogation” – defined as an interrogation which is (1) “necessarily one free of torture, free of cruel, inhuman treatment of the subject and free of any degrading handling whatsoever”; and (2) “likely to cause discomfort.”

Turning to the specific interrogation methods before it, the Court concluded that shaking, the “frog crouch,” the “shabach” position, cuffing causing pain, hooding, the consecutive playing of powerfully loud music and the intentional deprivation of sleep for a prolonged period of time are all prohibited interrogation techniques.

“All these methods do not fall withiin the sphere of a “fair” interrogation. They are not reasonable. They impinge upon the suspect’s dignity, his bodily integrity and his basic rights in an excessive manner (or beyond what is necessary). They are not to be deemed as included within the general power to conduct investigations.”

The Israeli Supreme Court explained that the restrictions applicable to police investigations are equally applicable to GSS investigations and that there are no grounds to permit GSS interrogators to engage in conduct which would be prohibited in regular police interrogation.

Blumenthal breezily says that her book proved that Israel's legal system authorized torture - when in fact it prohibited it, as Greenberg makes clear.

Now, how about his second quote, where he implies that Greenberg wanted to ask Rumsfeld whether the US learned torture techniques from Israel by consulting Israeli experts on torture.

Here's the entire context:

Based on a careful reading of the hundreds of pages of "torture memos" that poured out of the White House, the thousands of pages of military reports, investigations, and original documents that have emerged from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, as well as the flood of recent FBI e-mails and prisoner complaints that have emerged from Guantanamo prison in Cuba, we might -- as a lawyer and an historian who have been working in this area for the last two years -- suggest the following series of questions for Congress:

1. Does Torture Work? Given the detailed attention shown in the White House memos to describing three levels of interrogation (from questioning to physical abuse) to be applied in the war on terror, is there an underlying assumption that torture in fact really works? That it is more effective than ordinary means of questioning prisoners? And, if so, what does it work to produce? Have you considered whether it is a means of venting frustration or a means of obtaining reliable information? Is there clinical, verifiable evidence that torture produces better information more quickly and more accurately than other methods of interrogation? Did your discussions of torture involve consulting experts in Israel, the United Kingdom, Egypt, and elsewhere? If so, what did those sources have to say in recommending torture? Or was the administration convinced of the efficacy of torture before it began drawing up its legal documents?

Greenberg and Dratel are asking whether the US used expert information on the efficacy of torture when drawing up its policy - not whether the US learned torture techniques from Israel!

Less importantly, but no less deceptive, is how Blumenthal characterizes "Did your discussions of torture involve consulting experts in Israel...?" as one of the questions Greenberg and Dratel wanted to ask Rumsfeld, when in fact the question they were asking was "Does torture work?" and this was part of that category. The article talks about 37 questions for Rumsfeld; this was not "one of them" but only a small part asking for clarity on one of them.

In other words, Blumenthal's implication that Greenberg had previously accused Israel of teaching Americans torture techniques indeed comes "out of the blue." And the fact that Greenberg made clear to two reporters that she did not assert anything close to what Blumenthal says - and yet Blumenthal says "I stand by my reporting" - is yet another indicator that Blumenthal is not a reporter, but a crusader disguised as one.

His further speculation that Greenberg supposedly changed her story because "she was intimidated by Goldberg and the pro-Israel forces he represents" is, frankly, psychotic. Everyone agrees that Greenberg is an expert in her field, yet as soon as she explains that her position is at odds with Blumenthal's fantasies - he insults her by making up a conspiracy theory.

Blumenthal first makes up his mind as to what the truth is, and then will twist whatever facts he can to shoehorn them into his pre-existing bizarre and hateful worldview. He is in no way a responsible or even a serious journalist, and his track record proves that he plays fast and loose with the facts, if not making them up altogether.

(h/t a new blog called "maxblumenthalliar" - I have no idea who is behind it and it has no track record, but its points concerning the Greenberg book are valid.)


Wednesday, December 07, 2011

I had been reading on Twitter that an article by rabid Israel hater and serial liar Max Blumenthal contained a blockbuster quote that could not be verified - and now Jeffrey Goldberg has proven it:
A couple of Goldblog readers alerted me to a Max Blumenthal story in which Karen Greenberg, the director of the Fordham School of Law's Center on National Security, is quoted accusing Israel of teaching American interrogators the dark art of torture:
"After 9/11 we reached out to the Israelis on many fronts and one of those fronts was torture," Greenberg told me. "The training in Iraq and Afghanistan on torture was Israeli training. There's been a huge downside to taking our cue from the Israelis and now we're going to spread that into the fabric of everyday American life? It's counter-terrorism creep. And it's exactly what you could have predicted would have happened."
I was surprised to read this, because, though I don't know Karen Greenberg personally, I do know of her reputation for seriousness, and I was surprised she would make such an explosive charge without offering evidence that Israel was involved in such training.

Well, I called Greenberg, and it turns out that she, too, was surprised, because she said she never told Max Blumenthal any such thing. Here's what she told me: "I never made such a statement. I've never seen any proof of this. I told him I had heard a story out there about this issue, but that he should look into it and see if he could find evidence, because I have no proof of this charge. You have to be particularly careful when it comes to torture, you have to be careful not to overreach. He was looking for corroboration but I told him I didn't have any."
The Greenberg quote was the linchpin of the entire article - the necessary missing piece Max needed to make his circumstantial case blaming Israel for US police actions at Occupy protests - and Blumenthal just made it up.


Blumenthal has written for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, the Independent and other major news sites. They should definitely think twice before accepting anything from him again.

And, of course, Al Akhbar should fire him according to their own editorial policies which demand "high standards of factual accuracy, source accountability, and proper accreditation."

UPDATE: Mother Jones also spoke to Greenberg who similarly denied having said that. The article finds other mischaracterizations in the Blumenthal piece.

Blumenthal, meanwhile, stands by his quote of Greenberg, even after her denial. He assumes that the mighty Zionist forces have forced her to retract, I guess by threatening Israeli torture techniques.

Blumenthal claims that the Greenberg quote was peripheral to his piece. Of course, that is not true. No one denies that Israelis have been training a number of police departments in the US in counter-terrorism techniques; that is well known. Blumenthal's most sensational accusation was that Israel taught US police torture techniques - based on the fabricated quote from Karen Greenberg - and his broad implication, with zero proof, that local US cops were using methods they learned from Israel in the crackdown on the "occupy" protesters.

Even in the unlikely case that Blumenthal quoted her correctly, it is clearly out of context and her denial carries far more weight than Blumenthal's original quote. The fact that he refuses to correct it, or even to modify it to include her clarifying remarks, shows how unimportant the truth is to Blumenthal. He had a great quote and he will stand by it, even if he has no proof of it.

He also implies that Urban Shield is where Israelis teach their techniques to the police. But according to their website, it is where Israelis are learning their techniques - along with teams from Bahrain, Jordan, Singapore, Canada, Croatia, Qatar and the UAE.

Wednesday, November 09, 2011

Max Blumenthal has another column in Al Akhbar filled with provable lies.

It is entitled "Despite major rebuke, Washington Post's Jennifer Rubin endorses slaughtering Palestinians."

He writes:
On October 25, here at Al Akhbar, I drew attention to Washington Post "Right Matters" columnist Jennifer Rubin's re-tweet of a call by professional neocon Rachel Abrams for the mass murder of Palestinians. In my post, I urged readers to write Washington Post ombudsman Patrick Pexton and inquire if the Post has a policy regarding staffers who promote mass murder, ethnic violence, and hate speech. Yesterday, Pexton weighed in on the matter in his "Post Roast" column, crediting my post at Al Akhbar with exposing Rubin's re-tweet.
Pexton asked Rubin if her re-tweet was simply an innocent gesture intended to direct her followers to a widely discussed piece of inflammatory writing, or if it was an explicit endorsement of Abrams' call for murdering Palestinians, whom she described as "unmanned animals" and "child-sacrificing savages." Rubin replied matter-of-factly that it was the latter: she supported Abrams' message. According to Pexton, "But in this case Rubin told me that she did agree with Abrams. Rubin said that she admires Abrams, has quoted her a lot, thinks she’s an excellent writer and endorsed the sentiment behind the Abrams blog post."
Though Pexton stopped short of calling for Rubin to be fired, he concluded that by endorsing what amounted to a call for mass murder, if not genocide, "Rubin did damage to The Post and the credibility that keeps it afloat."
Now, look at what Pexton actually wrote:
But in this case Rubin told me that she did agree with Abrams. Rubin said that she admires Abrams, has quoted her a lot, thinks she’s an excellent writer and endorsed the sentiment behind the Abrams blog post. Rubin said, however, that she did not see it as a call to genocide against all Palestinians: “The post expressed an understandable desire for righteous vengeance against the kidnappers and human rights abusers of Gilad Shalit. It is a sentiment I share. If I were writing on The Washington Post Web site, I would not have used that language. . . but the sentiment underlying it — that the captors deserve the final penalty -- is one that I share.”

Abrams’s post is so full of dashes it’s hard to follow, but the subject of her run-on sentence does appear to be “captors” not Palestinians in general.
So while Blumenthal is accusing Rubin of supporting genocide - and using Pexton's column as proof - he is deliberately deleting the parts of the column that show, as I had proven before, that the original post said no such thing.

Similarly, Pexton's criticism of Rubin was for her judgment in retweeting a message that was, in his words, "over the top." Nothing to do with calls for genocide or mass murder, as Blumenthal says.

This is not a mistake. It is a deliberate deception on Blumenthal's part to misrepresent what Pexton and Rubin said. It is tantamount to libel. There is no way to spin this.

Al Akhbar's submission guidelines say
Al-Akhbar firmly adheres to the principles of journalistic integrity. Submissions selected for publication are expected to live up to high standards of factual accuracy, source accountability, and proper accreditation where necessary.
Yet even three hours after I wrote this information in the comments, not only is the article still up - but my comment has yet to be published.

Journalistic integrity, indeed.

Blumenthal used his earlier column to ask his unthinking drones to write to the Washington Post and demand that Rubin get fired. Wouldn't it make sense to write to Al Akhbar and demand that they drop Blumenthal as a columnist and apologize for propagating his lies?

Here's their contact form.


Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Ma'an reported last night:

Telecommunications in Gaza were severed late Tuesday, cutting off Internet, mobile phones and international landline connections for hours, a Ma'an correspondent reported.

Calls to Gaza were met with error messages or dial tones, and the blackout seemed to affect multiple platforms including regular landline services as well as mobile access including Israeli services.

Meanwhile, residents of Gaza near the border with Israel said army bulldozers were seen operating shortly before communications went offline. An army spokeswoman denied the account.
Tweeters were abuzz with the news, and many assumed that this was a deliberate act on Israel's part as preparation for some genocidal act. Ma'an's comments were typical:

yeah people here expecting big israeli assault on Gaza tonight. an from Gaza but can't state how i access in order not be interrupted by occupation(israeli entity)

israel is getting ready to attack,get ready
And on Twitter:
world focused on #londonriots , no one care about #GazaBlackout , have been for 12+ hour, israeli getting ready to attack

IMEMC darkly hinted that this was in preparation for an attack.

Max Blumenthal went further,asserting that this was a deliberate attack by Israel on Gaza:
Does #J14 have anything to say on Israel's terror attack on Gaza's civilian infrastructure? #GazaBlackout
He then realized he went a teeny bit too far:
Qualification: -alleged- terror attack on Gaza's civilian infrastructure. Still awaiting official gloating.
Alas, his deep knowledge of evil Israeli psychology was again off the mark. The IDF spokesperson tweeted this morning:
Contrary 2inaccurate rumors, IDF has no conectn to #GazaBlackout. last nght #IDF bulldozer didn't dig @ Nahal Oz. #transparency
Indeed, there were no bulldozers cutting cables, no massive invasion of Gaza, no airstrikes, and this morning after 12 hours the communications are slowly being restored - without Israel apparently doing anything to repair it. As usual, the Arab and anti-Israel rumor mill was way off base, not that anyone will admit it.

There can be only a few alternatives to explain this:

  • The IDF is lying.
  • There was a huge coincidence where landlines, cell phone lines and Internet all went down at the same time (there were some reports of electricity being shut off as well.)
  • Hamas has something to do with this.
I don't know if there is a single point of failure in Gaza's telecommunications lines; that information is important in determining whether it was a simple backhoe mistake or not. If there is a single point through which all of Gaza's communications flows, that is an astoundingly bad network architecture (although it is great for Israeli intelligence.) This article in Firas Press, if I am understanding it correctly, seems to say that there are three separate fiber-optic cables going into Gaza and that all of them were down.

I find it most interesting that people automatically assume that Israel is nefariously attempting to wage war under cover in Gaza, yet they cannot conceive that Hamas might be doing a dry run on how easily it can cut off Gaza from the world.

After all, Syria has been cutting the communications of towns that are being attacked, and the Arab world has a rich history of working overtime to censor and restrict freedom of expression. 

So how come practically no one is blaming Hamas?

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