We're just a few hours from this week's episode of One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show, both the most technologically solid and the most cheerfully optimistic radio on the Internet. Tonight's show will focus on one of the more popular anti-Israel taglines, the apartheid smear that's become a leftist mainstay and a Spanish schoolyard blood libel. It's Israel Apartheid Week around the world - they've even got a Wiki entry - so we might as well talk about it. As always you can head over to the episode page or the show page, and from there you'll be able to hear the show, participate in the chat room, or call in live. Today's official blurb:

Omri discusses the global anti-Jewish bigotry and anti-Israel media bias that plays on the "apartheid" smear. From campuses like the University of California Irvine, where Muslim students stand in the center of campus and militantly chant anti-Zionist slogans, to Spanish schoolhouses where children are instructed to send antisemitic postcards to Israelis - the most venomous and explicitly genocidal blood libel is quite simply mainstream in Western educational institutions. Dan Diker calls in to provide the broader week-in-geopolitics, focusing as always on Middle East dynamics and their international consequences.

As always the top of the show will include a rundown of what's going on with Iran, including this Obama walkback on the content of sanctions and this Obama walkback on the timing of sanctions. It seems like there are only three options: this administration really thought Iran would respond positively to engagement, this administration really expected China and Russia to hop on board a workable sanctions regime, or this administration really wants Iran to get nukes. So either they're idiots or they're idiots or they're trying to detonate US hegemony in the oil-soaked Middle East. Not to ruin the ending, but they're idiots.

Since the world doesn't stop turning for anti-Jewish Western academics and teachers - no matter how much they'd prefer otherwise - Dan Diker will indeed join the show to discuss diplomacy and geopolitics. Hopefully this week we can get through the updates without the Blog Talk Radio soundboard dying. Fingers crossed.

References:
* Israel angry over anti-Semitic postcards sent by Spanish schoolchildren [Telegraph]
* The Apartheid Libel [One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show]
* Is Iran's Fist Still Clenched? [Official Site]
* Obama Giving Up On "Crippling" Iran Sanctions [MR]
* Clinton appears to extend timeline for Iran sanctions [YNet]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* European Antisemitism
* Academia

I'm been egregiously lax about posting Council results - or about posting anything - but this week's results were such crush that I wanted to direct your attention to the winning post. JoshuaPundit's account of his recent heart attack took the voters by storm:

Having a heart attack tends to focus you on what's important. Like breathing, which I thoroughly recommend. There I was, coming back into the house after swimming some laps when I suddenly became aware of pains that were roughly like a bad case of heartburn and shortness of breath. And no, I did not immediately think heart attack. It didn't go away after about a half hour... in fact,the pain increased and was joined with a certain light lightheadedness and a cold sweat. So I dialed 911. Contrary to popular legend, I was able to get through immediately and was promptly switched from the main operator to the paramedics, where the dispatcher took me through my symptoms, advised me what to do and literally stayed on the line with me and held my hand - I do not exaggerate - until the paramedics got to my home.

The Council runner-up was The Razor's take on Chinese motivations, Iran's nuclear program, and why the two line up so well. Probably nothing a little smart power can't solve, so no worries.

The non-Council winner came from the Daily Caller and was about the Pentagon's ongoing refusal to recognize what happened at Ft. Hood. The runner-up post from Harry's Place dealt with Andrew Sullivan's antisemitism. There's a lot more in the article than just Andrew Sullivan's antisemitism, of course: Israel, the global campaign to delegitimize Jewish statehood, the woe-is-me victimized ethos of rhetorical thugs, etc. But Andrew Sullivan's antisemitism runs as a kind of thread throughout the whole thing. A very antisemitic thread.

References:
* Life 2.0 - Turning Hindsight Into Foresight [Watcher Of Weasels]
* Life 2.0 [JoshuaPundit]
* Failing at force protection: The misguided Pentagon report on the Ft. Hood massacre [Daily Caller]
* Sullivan [Harry's Place]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* American Politics
* Multiculturalism
* Global Antisemitism

Last seem on MR endorsing John Kerry for President on anti-Bush grounds, this cretin has resurfaced with even more sage wisdom:

"There is strong evidence that the attacks were staged. If they can make Avatar, they can make anything," Mahathir told the Conference for the Support of Al-Quds (Jerusalem), as quoted by local media... Voicing his disappointment that Barack Obama had not yet ended the war in Afghanistan or closed the US terror detention center at Guantanamo, he explained that "there are forces in the United States which prevent the president from doing some things. One of the forces is the Jewish lobby." Jews "had always been a problem in European countries. They had to be confined to ghettoes and periodically massacred. But still they remained, they thrived and they held whole governments to ransom," Mahathir said.

It's true. If they can make Avatar they really can make anything. And although as a theological matter there's "nothing Jewish" about Avatar, "Navi" is Hebrew for prophet and that's certainly more than enough to conclude that Jews were behind 9/11. Given this kind of incisive analysis from this kind of powerful politician, it's difficult to understand why Muslim public discourse is stuck in a conspiracy-wallowing rut.

Speaking of which: have you ever noticed how Walt and Mearsheimer's Israel Lobby thesis - which they insist absolutely must not be understood as a Jewish Lobby thesis - keeps getting cashed out as a Jewish Lobby thesis? It's almost as if they courted popularity by vaguely confirming people's worst prejudices, smirking throughout about how they're merely raising questions.

That little dig about Kerry at the beginning, incidentally, wasn't meant as a guilt-by-association thing. John Kerry has lots of bad ideas, but genocidal anti-Jewish scheming aren't among them. It's just interesting to see the kinds of people who find the Democratic agenda amenable to their geopolitical and social goals. Cf. Hamas, endorsement of Obama. (Via Courier Mail)

References:
* Kerry Scores Another Huge Endorsement [MR]
* If US Could Create 'Avatar', It Could Fake 9/11 Attacks: Mahathir [Jakarta Globe]
* Tzvee's Talmudic Blog: Is James Cameron's film Avatar Jewish? [Tzvee's Talmudic Blog]
* Carter hugs Hamas, Hamas hugs ... Obama? [Hot Air]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Global Antisemitism
* Islamic Antisemitism
* World News

She spent the Gaza War hysterically hyperventilating about how the "the destruction of the jews in Israel has been assured." Then she insisted that Israel was firing missiles on itself so it could have a pretext for massacring Palestinians. Then she dressed up as Hitler, donned a swastika, and had herself photographed baking "Jew cookies" in ovens.

So naturally she's feeling pretty good about the latest Israeli medical ethics controversy turned media-fueled blood libel. Pretty good indeed:

Of course even the HuffPo piece she links to notes (a) that the controvery has nothing to do with what happened in Gaza "last year" but in fact is decades old and (b) that not "by a long shot" did Israelis specifically target Palestinians for organs. But whatever. It feels really good for her to believe that her bigoted anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are true, so true they shall be asserted to be.

References:
* The destruction of the jews in Israel has been assured [MR]
* The Day in Israel: Thurs Mar 5th, 2009 [IsraellyCool]
* Roseanne Barr Dresses Up As Hitler, Bakes "Jew Cookies" In Oven [MR]
* Obligatory Post About New Organ Harvesting Story That Provides "No Evidence" For Organ Harvesting Libel (UPDATED) [MR]
* POLL: What's The Next Anti-Israel Libel That Media Outlets Will "Prove"? [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Liberals Unhinged
* Anti-Israel Journalism
* Global Antisemitism

Prove is in quotes because, per the Berekeley professor who launched this hatefest, the decades-old incidents have nothing to do with the Swedish organ theft story. It's a medical ethics disaster - a bunch of messy consent issues and religious sensibilities are involved - but were Palestinians targeted? Scheper-Hughes again: "not by a long shot."

And yet she choose to give succor to mouth-breathing anti-Jewish bigots because - quote - "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, (is) something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered." I'm not sure why she didn't just come out and use the phrase "pound of flesh."

In any case we're officially off on another round of organ theft stories. Iranian Press TV has shifted their ongoing blockbuster coverage of the "international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs" from the most recent revelation - "Tel Aviv's plot to import Ukrainian children and harvest their organs" - to Jews who steal Palestinian kids' organs.

Eventually that's going to get boring - these kinds of hateful highs only last so long - and so I'm interested what you guys think next "proven" blood libel will be. That there will be a next one is a given. That's how addicts behave when their buzz wears off. They'll go looking for new evidence of some new imagined Israeli atrocity. When they don't find anything genuine - on account of how it exists only in their feverish imagination - they'll lower their standards for what counts as proof and hold their hatefest anyway. Think of it as not being able to score the good stuff and settling for whatever's available.

I've put up a poll on what you think the next media-legitimized anti-Israel canard is going to be. Justify your vote under this post on the Mere Rhetoric Facebook page, or sound off if you think there's an option I didn't include.

Naturally you'll want to consider why some anti-Israel accusations get traction while other don't. It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the tenability of the accusations themselves. Until this recent story broke, "Israeli organ theft" were so untenable that the Swedish reporter who published the original libel was in the process of recanting. But the canards were still in broad circulation. Meanwhile Hamas has been trying to get the world to take notice of Israel's plot to dump aphrodisiac gum on Gaza for a while. They seem pretty convinced it's happening. Thus far no journalist has rushed into that particular investigative breach.

ORIGINAL - Elegant. This morning's breathless AP story all but promises to confirm the organ harvesting blood libel leveled against Israeli Jews last summer. That version had IDF soldiers deliberately killing Palestinians to harvest their organs. This headline screams "Israel harvested organs in '90s without consent." The first few paragraphs of this story all reference that original story. The Berkeley academic behind this story is quoted as saying she leaked the allegations because of that original story.

No wonder the original weasel headline has already morphed into the more explicit "Israel Admits Harvesting Palestinian Organs."

Except it turns out that - at best - the two stories bear only a passing resemblance to each other. One was about IDF soldiers deliberately killing Palestinians for their organs during Cast Lead last year. The other is about pathology work on dead Israelis and Palestinians done through 2000 with what doctors at first thought was family consent. Even this Berkeley Professor, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, admits the two stories are for all intents and purposes distinct. As for the implication in the newest headline about targeting Palestinians, again per Scheper-Hughes: not "by a long shot."

Of course the AP doesn't tell you any of that until the very end, which is where they inform readers that there's still "no evidence" for the Swedish blood libel.

The very end is also where you discover Scheper-Hughes's excuse for publishing what she she must have known would reinforce mouth-breathers quoting from the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion. She did it, you see, because of "the symbolism, you know... just in terms of its symbolic weight":

Complaints against the institute, where autopsies of dead bodies are performed, at the time of Hiss' dismissal came from relatives of Israeli soldiers and civilians as well as Palestinians. The bodies belonged to people who died from various causes, including diseases, accidents and Israeli-Palestinian violence, but there has been no evidence to back up the claim in the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet that Israeli soldiers killed Palestinians for their organs. Angry Israeli officials called the report "anti-Semitic."

The academic, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Berkeley, said she decided to make the interview public in the wake of the Aftonbladet controversy... Scheper-Hughes said that while Palestinians were "by a long shot" not the only ones affected by the practice in the 1990s, she felt the interview must be made public now because "the symbolism, you know, of taking skin of the population considered to be the enemy, (is) something, just in terms of its symbolic weight, that has to be reconsidered."

Mainstream media outlets will go out of their way to ignore the obvious religious motivations of the Fort Hood shooter. Wouldn't want to reinforce religious stereotypes! Academics will spin elaborate argumentative edifices - sliding from denial to rationalization to justification - to explain why even discussing domestic terrorism smacks of ulterior motives.

A small pogrom - the only victim was a candelabra that the AP is calling a menorah and which I'm assuming was a hanukkiyah - but nonetheless thoroughly charming:

Dozens of people led by an Orthodox priest smashed a menorah in Moldova's capital, using hammers and iron bars to remove the candelabra during Hanukkah, officials said... there was no official reaction from Moldova's Orthodox Church, which is part of the Russian Orthodox Church and counts 70 percent of Moldovans as members. The national government said in a statement that "hatred, intolerance and xenophobia" are unacceptable. Jewish leader Alexandr Bilinkis called on the Orthodox Church to take a position over the priest's actions.

According to Wikipedia, by the by, the word "pogrom" - originally coined to describe a singular kind of historically-rooted anti-Jewish violence, characterized by a distinctive cluster of motivations and behaviors - is now a a term for general violence. Couple this with what's happening to "antisemitism," and soon physical anti-Jewish bigotry will recede into the background. Because that's what happens when you run out of words for describing something distinctive. It just goes away.

Well except in Spain, where what started with individuals hurling antisemitic insults at Israeli ambassadors has now become a crowd thing:

According to referee Alfonso Alvarez Izquierdo, "From the 14th minute and on five other occasions in the first half, (anti-Semitic) chants... were directed at the visiting goalkeeper by the home fans behind the goal, every time he touched the ball," the referee said in his match report posted on the Spanish federation Web site... The fans waved Palestinian flags and also shouted "murderer" at Aouate. Aouate sounded unfazed by the chanting, telling local media that, "This happens to me every time I play here in Pamplona. It really makes me happy that we won." This is not the first time that the Israeli 'keeper has been subjected to anti-Semitic taunts by Osasuna fans. In 2006, while playing for Deportivo La Coruna, he also came in for some untoward treatment.

And also probably except in France, where things have somehow gotten worse since French Muslims first started kidnapping Jews and torturing them for sport: "they cut bits off the flesh of the young man, they cut his fingers and ears, they burned him with acid, and in the end poured flammable liquid on him and set him on fire."

Hating Jews is fun again, ingrained at every level of French public life and throughout most of the EU. We don't actually know how deeply it's ingrained, since the Europeans refuse to keep good numbers on antisemitism:

One Jerusalem Radio's Omri Ceren Show continues in its new later poll-tested time slot, kicking off at 6:30pm PST and running for an hour. You can listen live - which allows you to call in, get on the air, and participate in the chat room - from the TOCS page on Blog Talk Radio. No big interviews or gimmicks today - although, looking ahead, there are a slew of interviews piling up on the other side of the New Year - which is probably good since there's a ton of stuff going on in the Middle East this week.

More than one person in the last 24 hours has described Israel's current diplomatic position as "the worst situation since 1967," which I actually think might be an understatement. Israel hasn't had this much tension with the United States since 1956, and the legitimacy of the Jewish State hasn't been under this much pressure since the birth of the state.

Both segments with Diker today are handed over to that topic, from what why the EU did it to why Israel couldn't stop it to what it means for the peace process. It's a much fuller geopolitical appraisal than, say, the sputtering outrage I was able to muster in posts and segments last week - although there still is something to be said for the basic moral outrage of having the EU sanction Jordan's ethnic cleansing of the Old City in the name of human rights.

In between that: Hezbollah's takeover of Lebanon and what it means for Iran's global expansion (background), the status of Netanyahu's vaunted settlement freeze, how Europe's "humanitarian" spinelessness in the face of political Islam swamps this Swiss minaret gambit, and a bunch more.

References:
* The Omri Ceren Show - Martin Sherman Wrap Up, Changes To The Show (POLL!) [MR]
* The Anti-Israel Diplomatic Endgame? [Omri Ceren Show]
* Sweden: It's Time For The EU To Lock In Jordan's Ethnic Cleansing Of East Jerusalem [MR]
* TOCS - 6:30pm PST - Diker On Iranian Expansionism, Sweden's Attack On Jerusalem, Etc. [MR]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* The Omri Ceren Show
* Islam In Europe
* European Antisemitism

It's unclear whether Human Rights Watch has reinstated their anti-Israel investigator Marc Garlasco yet. His obsessive collecting of Nazi regalia got him suspended a few months ago, but reader JM says that Garlasco's HRW bio page doesn't reflect the suspension - and that it used to. I asked a second guy who would know and he didn't remember anything like that, and there's no way to definitively check. Gigablast reports that HRW had disabled caching on the page, which would explain why none of the search engines have an old copy.

Either way it won't be very long now. Doug Bandow has a post up on HuffPo - HuffPo being where Garlasco started his rehabilitation with innocent protestations of naivety before having sympathetic journalists write him up in Esquire - hinting that Garlasco's good to go:

I'm thinking a bit more about my collecting these days after the controversy that erupted over Marc Garlasco of Human Rights Watch, who collects World War II German militaria. It is the most popular military genre, but Garlasco was attacked as a Nazi-sympathizer by people who don't like his analytical work critical of Israel. Garlasco--whom I have never met--seems to have survived the kerfuffle, but the controversy demonstrated not only Washington's tendency toward the ad hominem but also a more general failure to understand collectors. Collectors collect. The doing often is as important as the what. Few collectors collect because they identify with the politics behind the items they are accumulating. In fact, many can't even explain why they like what they like.

I'll admit that I "don't like" Garlasco's reports, though in fairness they're an objectively unlikable pile of systematic and repeated - to say nothing of inaccurate - smears and fabrications, all of which he happily funnels to legacy and new media outlets.

Not that it matters. Motivation and bias are things you get to attack after you disprove something. So a pro-Israel activist might say "given that Garlasco's anti-Israel publications have been repeatedly debunked, it's relevant to investigate what's so consistently undermining his objectivity." Less argumentatively legitimate: "even though Garlasco's critics are undeniably right, you should ignore how a Nazi-obsessed investigator fit in so well at our organization because those critics don't like us and you do." And since we're on the topic of what exactly is getting proven, it's flat false to imply that I ever accused him of being a Nazi sympathizer, bigot, or racist.

The way I know that is because I wrote things like "Garlasco's not a vulgar racist. He's simply not. He's someone torn by sensibilities that make him wildly inappropriate as a choice for a Middle East investigator" and "I would guess that he clings very, very tightly to the belief that he's a history buff who happens, for purely familial reasons, to be utterly fascinated by the Nazis." Which are all the things that Bandow pedantically claims people "fail to understand."

The only caveat I added - a minor one, admittedly - is that anyone riven by an inchoate obsession with the color and pageantry of Nazism ought abstain from multi-year campaigns to demonize the Jewish State and drag Jewish officials in front of politicized international tribunals. Garlasco was drawn to Nazi collectibles for some reason. The guy wasn't collecting postage stamps, even though his Nazi grandfather presumably mailed stuff.

This emerging theme of vague "people" engaged in "ad homs" so as to undermine "work critical of Israel" has nonetheless become quite the pro-HRW talking point. When HRW founder Robert Bernstein turned his back on the organization for its anti-Israel pathology, that was the reality-based community's instinctive go-to. And here's HRW program director Iain Levine sounding exactly the same note:

The sublime thing about sports is how they bring people together, cutting across racial and national lines to highlight the essence of our shared humanity. Unless you happen to represent the Jewish State in modern-day Europe. Then fuck you:

The two Israelis won gold and bronze medals at the European Cup fencing tournament for under 17s. Dana Stralinkov, 14, won gold and Alona Komarov, 13 won bronze. But the Austrian official in charge of arranging the national anthems played when the winners went on the podium said he could not locate the recording of 'Hatikvah'. After a few minutes of silence, the two teens sang the Israeli anthem themselves, with no backing track.

Good for those girls, who knew what to expect after the same thing happened in Sweden. The Austrian official who approached the podium actually said that he had the old Israeli national anthem available, which was an interesting rhetorical gambit insofar as it's the only thing he could have said to decrease his credibility.

You'd think everyday Austrians would be more grateful, given how Israeli engineers have single-handedly boosted their ski season by creating "snow refineries." I can understand how that kind of innovation would fail to sway the country's Muslim population - this is a community where the cause celebre is a teacher who distributed anti-Jewish pamphlets to students and where 44% of teachers believe that Muslims are inherently superior - but shouldn't the rest of the country be appreciative enough to keep track of even one Hatikva recording?

Maybe they lost it in a Swiss bank vault. Have they thought of checking there?

References:
* Israel fencing teens sing anthem lost by Austria [Jewish Chron]
* European sports officials rude to Israeli fencing champions [LA Examiner]
* Israeli snow brings early winter to Austrian ski resort [AFP]
* Muslim community hits back over banned teacher [Austrian Times]
* Austria: Study Finds 8% of Teachers in Islamic Schools Support Spreading Islam Through Violence, 44% Teach Their Kids They're Better Than Non-Muslims.... [Weasel Zippers]

Related Mere Rhetoric Categories:
* Europe Coverage
* European Antisemitism
* Global Antisemitism

Cherry picking nutroots comments sections and finding antisemitism - not a neat trick. Finding the same antisemitic meme in comments across six top nutroots blogs - still not a particularly neat trick because what do you expect from Daily Kos, Wonkette, HuffPo, ThinkProgress, FiveThirtyEight, and DU? But closer!

What would be really interesting is if blogs like HuffPo had been randomly filtering Lieberman's health care calculations through an Israel prism for weeks. Then their commenters' anti-Jewish dual loyalty canards would go from being mere seething bigotry to something more like institutionalized habits of thoughts that lends themselves to symptomatic outbursts.

HuffPo contributor M.S. Bellows, "Fate of Healthcare Reform Is in Joe Lieberman's Hands", October 9, 2009:

But if Lieberman intends to become a Republican next year, he will lose that chairmanship anyway. And, with Democrats holding both the White House and solid majorities in both houses, Lieberman has no realistic chance of advancing his hawkish, pro-Israel foreign policy agenda despite being chair. Lieberman has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, from jettisoning his chairmanship now and becoming a hero to the Right by singlehandedly stopping Barack Obama's signature domestic policy initiative in its tracks.

His duly incited audience responded with charming observations like "Joe is not an American supporter other than our military and welfare money to the theocratic state of Israel" and "If the fate of health care reform is in Lieberman's hands, it's doomed. Lieberman doesn't vote for anything that isn't Pro-MIC and Pro-Israel."

Fast forward to today's half bluff / half bombshell. Why would Lieberman do it? Tough to say. It could be because he's an experienced political hand who knows he has enormous leverage to insert specific health care reforms he's been pursuing for years. Or it could be, per this self-styled analyst at FiveThirtyEight, that he wants Obama to give Israel the green light to expand settlements and start a war across West and Central Asia:

Liebermann is playing political games for Israel. He wants this administration to let them do what they want, ie, expand settlements to their hearts content, use Iraqi air space for an attack, etc. He knows he can get concessions on Israel on his HC vote.

Of course there's room for nuance here. This DKos strategist doesn't think Lieberman wants Israel to bomb Iran. Apparently the Senator's actual plan is to install a warmongering GOP President who will have America do the bombing, albeit 4 years from now when it would no longer matter (?):

The full rankings for last week's Watchers contest are worth reading in full. The top Council blogs focused mostly foreign policy and the top non-Council posts did almost precisely the opposite. A good mix.

The top Council post from Joshuapundit dealt with the latest round of "anti-Zionst" government and media witchhunts. Two notable things: (1) any concrete accusations against the Jewish State are demonstrably and admittedly false and (2) those false accusations all happen to sound exactly the same as age-old antisemitic dual loyalty canards. Strange how that keeps happening:

And speaking of paying attention, that's brings me to another piece that hit the news today. Laura Rozen, one of the Politico's Leftist 'foreign policy experts' ran a story under this cheerful headline: "Maryland scientist arrested for attempted espionage for Israel." Here are some more headlines on this story: "Moon scientist Stewart Nozette held as Israeli spy in FBI sting" (The London Times), "Top US scientist accused of trying to spy for Israel" (The British Telegraph), US scientist charged with attempting to sell military secrets to Israel (al-Guardian), US scientist Stewart Nozette charged with trying to sell secrets to Israel (The Christian Science Monitor),

Only one thing wrong with these headlines. Israel wasn't involved in the least. What we actually had here was an FBI sting where someone posed as a Mossad agent, and Nozette made it known that he had secrets to sell for cold, hard cash. The agent could have just as easily said he was from Britain's MI5, or the French Sûreté, or the Russians. It would have made no difference.

The runner up Council post from Bookworm Room makes it clear that venom is being sprayed at our allies all over the world. Not so much at our enemies though.

The non-Council posts all focused in one way or another on the post-partisan era of unity we've entered since the Obama inauguration. Whoever's compiling Obama's enemies list, described by the top non-Council Real Clear Politics post, is apparently the one exception:

But this White House seems to feel they're different. It's not just that the current occupant of the Oval Office has a particularly thin skin when it comes to criticism - which is especially ironic given that he's been the recipient of more glowing press coverage than possibly any candidate or president in modern American history. But not since Nixon conjured up an "enemies list" have we seen the full weight of the Office of the Presidency brought to bear in such a targeted and deliberate effort to delegitimize a media organization critical of the President... The current presidency, as much perhaps as any in history, is built upon the foundation of the President's personal popularity. President Obama has, out of necessity, become the Salesman-in-Chief for his progressive agenda. But as the White House continues to struggle adjusting to the reality of governing versus campaigning, it is either unwilling or unable to brook criticism of the President or his policies. Thus FOX News is targeted as the enemy.

Almost difficult to understand how a Cult of Personality built on a utopian promise of unity could devolve into thuggishly scapegoating one group after another for "dividing" the country and blocking "the people's will." If only there had been historical examples that academics who unceasingly attacked Bush could have used to speak out against the dangers of charismatic leaders who run on promises of literally remaking the world.

Instead we just wrapped up another round sheer, incoherent political rancor. We were treated to left-of-Democrats Republicans calling the cops on journalists, Democrats rhetorically dismissing the conservative base from "this reality," and even to the eye-roll inducing spectacle of Obama being gushingly proud of his idiotic Nobel Peace Prize. All of that comes via non-Council runner ups The Weekly Standard, Rick Moran, and Toby Harnden, writing about lefties who also must have missed the post-partisan memo.

References and related after the jump...

The State Department was quite adamant about Honduras reopening Radio Globo, which had been closed down by the government for broadcasting Zelaya's calls for mass chaos:

The U.S. State Department is calling on Honduras' de facto president to immediately rescind an emergency decree that limits constitutional rights such as freedoms of expression, travel and public congregation... "This decision was made because (Zelaya) was calling for insurrection ... but I'm going to listen to the other powers of the state and we're going to make the most wise decision in the interests of Honduras," Micheletti said... In the wake of Micheletti's decree... the Canal 36 TV station and Radio Globo were reported closed.

But while Honduras has been reinstating most civil liberties, Radio Globo has remained closed despite US objections. Which is a shame because they really seem like solid folks:

The U.S. Ambassador in Honduras has condemned anti-Semitic remarks by a local radio news director who has been an outspoken opponent of the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya... commenting on the rumors alleging Israeli involvement in the crisis, Romero referred to the "famous Holocaust" and added that "I believe it should have been fair and valid to let Hitler finish his historic vision."... "I cannot help but note the irony that you and Romero came to visit me last week to seek support after your station was closed by the de facto authorities," [Amb] Llorens said in his letter.

I'm not sure closing the radio station was a good idea and - all things considerede - it should be reopened. But this is who you end up rubbing shoulders with when you make a point of intervening on the side of totalitarian thugs. Pro-Zelaya antisemitism starts at the very top:

The Jewish Film Festival, duly funded by Jewish Federation, decided to hold a Rachel Corrie screening. They publicized the event to venomously anti-Israel groups. They organized a talk by Corrie's committed Israel-hating mother. They even went so far as to link up with some explicitly pro-Hamas extremists. Then they were surprised when their festival became a bubbling cesspool of antisemitism. Who could have predicted that?

There's really no way to describe the Mos Eisley Cantina feel of an anti-Israel San Francisco event. Suffice to say that "sea of black broken by the occasional green Hamas hat or banner" isn't too far from the literal truth.It's rare that you get to call out a leftist or Jewish organization for being openly pro-terrorist - usually they prefer to wallow in mere terrorist apologism - but the Jewish Voice for Peace, the American Friends Service Committee, the Rachel Corrie Foundation, and the International Solidarity Movement took that plunge a while ago.

Maybe that's unfair and they have some other way that their anti-Zionist fantasies about the destruction of Israel play out. But probably not and, in any case, they were pretty psyched to be there.

It's OK though. Because the Festival organizers - which, I should probably mention again, get their paychecks and their funding courtesy of Jewish donations - did all this in the name of opening up dialogue. That's why, per this post at The American Muslim, the festival gave Michael Harris of San Francisco Voice for Israel 5 whole minutes to suggest that maybe standing in front of military bulldozers to protect terrorist rocket smuggling tunnels is a bad idea.

Of course the assembled crowd turned on him and started celebrating the pro-boycott Jewish organizations that had hijacked the festival, transforming the entire spectacle into a clamorous morale-booster for the anti-Israel left. But whatever:

The audience settled back into subdued groans for a few phrases, but when Michael accused Jewish Voice for Peace and the American Friends Service Committee of being backers of terrorism, the audience erupted into applause at the mention of each name... The concern for respectful treatment of Cindy Corrie's presentation at the end of the film was also unwarranted. The audence was so completely supportive of her, her daughter and Palestinian rights that there was not a hint of the hateful messages with which the organizers had been deluged prior to the showing. It was astonishing. Although the audience was by no means all Jewish, a large number clearly were.

Oh, it's not all that astonishing.

I'm posting two videos from the festival, though they're both a bit overwrought and long. The first is an overview of the groups that attended and that are playing a not insignificant role in boycotting, isolating, and destroying the Jewish State. The second is difficult to describe but begins with Rachel Corrie's mom on stage explaining why Israel must be shunned and goes downhill from there.

On the eve of the Palestinian unity government that will finally allow Obama to backslide on his promise not to deal with Hamas, a little reminder of exactly the kind of genocidal cretins our government will be talking to:

You have to appreciate the headline on the Jerusalem Post writeup though - "Hamas children's TV program again calls for the 'slaughter of Jews'":

All Jews must be "erased from our land," Nassur, a stuffed bear... explained to a child who called in to a September 22 show. "We want to slaughter them, Saraa, so they will be expelled from our land... we'll have to [do it] by slaughter."... "Generally the program also transmits good messages to kids like drinking milk or asking parents permission to do something, but we also find these very problematic messages like the call to kill Jews," she said.

And that's just this specific show. It doesn't even cover Hamas stage productions like "Jews Drink the Blood of Muslims to Please Their God":

That Swedish organ theft blood libel that went viral in the Arab world - legitimate because the obsessive anti-Zionist gumshoe who wrote it was "just asking questions." His question-filled investigation of the Chinese government, which admits that it actually does harvest prisoner organs, is presumably still pending. Because he doesn't seem to have written this one up yet:

China has launched a national organ donation system to try to reduce its dependence on body parts harvested from executed prisoners, who make up the majority of donors, state media reported Wednesday. Organ transplantation in China has long been criticized as profit-driven and unethical, with critics arguing death row inmates may feel pressured to become donors, violating personal, religious or cultural beliefs... But in a rare disclosure about an industry often criticized for being opaque, the China Daily newspaper said Wednesday that more than 65 percent of organ donors come from death row. Though the figure could not be confirmed with the government, Vice Health Minister Huang Jiefu has publicly acknowledged in recent years that most organs used for transplants are taken from executed prisoners, though only with prior consent.

Of course there's no millennia-old racist trope - enshrined in European religious and literary tradition - about how the Chinese steal human organs. So that wouldn't be as much fun to write.

At times like this I like to remember the words of Syrian Minister, Warwick PhD, Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and antisemitic whack job Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban: "In 2003, a medical conference showed that Israel is the only country in the world in which the medical profession does not condemn stealing human organs and does not act against those involved in such a crime." Although if there actually was an international human rights conference about organ theft there's no doubt Israel would come in for unremitting condemnation. And that China wouldn't come up at all.

References:
* Organ-Harvesting Zionists Trying To Stifle Brave Swedish Expose On IDF Atrocities [MR]
* Arab World Pretty Psyched About Swedish "Organ Theft" Blood Libel, Palestinians Launch Formal Investigation [MR]
* China moves to cut use of executed inmates' organs [AP]
* Articles Which Threaten Israeli Security [Asharq]

Previously:
* Today In Nuked MR YouTube Videos
* Harvard Newspaper: Totally Our Bad About That Holocaust Denial Ad We Just Printed
* HRW Suspends Their Nazi Obsessed Anti-Israel Investigator, Keeps Rest Of Anti-Israel Team Intact (Plus: Entertaining Garlasco-Related Hate Mail)

First thing's first: Elder of Ziyon is the guy who stumbled onto Garlasco's creepy and overly autobiographical Amazon review page. The lump sum of my subsequent work mostly involved the ability to Google "Marc HRW Flak" and take screenshots. I mention this both because Elder's work is consistently on point when it comes to debunking HRW and its ideological ilk - see both the Garlasco debunking that put him on the scent and his initial comments on the Goldstone Report that just dropped - and because that's where you should be directing your hate mail. Simple fairness demands that pearls like this...

What a load of shit you right on your blog. Obviously you don't have too much time for reading and education, twat. Bas Finnis

... and this...

Why not apply your website/blog to sway the Israeli government away from its Nazi-like behaviour?... Or perhaps you support the behaviour of Israel which places you amongst the Nazis .... not against them! Mathematemike

... get spread around evenly. Plus MR has already gotten enough approbation. As Stan texted me at 4:16am, this blog has joined the ranks of venerable right-wing fanatics everywhere:

The group, Human Rights Watch, had initially thrown its full support behind the analyst, Marc Garlasco, when the news of his hobby came out last week. On Monday night, the group shifted course and suspended him with pay, "pending an investigation," said Carroll Bogert, the group's associate director. "We have questions about whether we have learned everything we need to know," she said. ... Yaron Ezrahi, a professor of political science at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, said he did not believe that Mr. Garlasco's interest in memorabilia could support allegations of "premeditated bias." He said, however, that Human Rights Watch's credibility might have been wounded because Mr. Garlasco's hobby "has armed the right-wing fanatics" who "work day and night to demonize any individual or organization that raises questions about the military practices of Israel when they end up even with unintended civilian casualties."

The real question is what Human Rights Watch is investigating. Presumably they're not investigating Garlasco's obsession with Nazism itself, since by their own correct admission there's nothing intrinsically wrong about collecting WWII paraphernalia. And it can't be a process-level investigation about what Garlasco revealed during hiring since I doubt they have a "do you intend to write a detailed 430 page tome on shiny Nazi medals" question on the screener.

Whatever. "Anti-Zionist" organ harvesting blood libels are back in fashion in Europe and the Middle East. The editors of the Crimson should have stood their ground and insisted that they were "just airing questions." That's the problem with kids these days. They're unwilling to stand up to the neocon Zionists who are trying to stifle legitimate debate over Israel:

The head of Harvard University's student newspaper is blaming an ad that questioned the Holocaust on "a miscommunication." Harvard Crimson president Maxwell Child said in a letter to readers Wednesday that his staff initially rejected the ad. But Child said the decision "fell through the cracks" in the three weeks between the ad's submission and its publication Tuesday... The ad came from longtime Holocaust denier Bradley Smith and questions the Nazis' use of gas chambers. Smith's ads have appeared since the late 1980s in campus newspapers nationwide.

The ADL guy in the article expresses himself confused. How could an institutional culture develop on campus where venomous anti-Jewish incitement is close enough to legitimate discourse to slip through the cracks? Yeah, I can't figure it out either:

A recent paper co-authored by the academic dean of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government was "explicitly targeting American Jews," according to Alan Dershowitz... The paper was added to the Harvard Kennedy School Web site while students were on spring break. An abridged version of the paper was published in The London Review of Books. Some students at Kennedy School disagreed with Dershowitz. Debra Decker thought the paper was "just his [Walt's] opinion."

The best and the brightest.

References:
* Organ-Harvesting Zionists Trying To Stifle Brave Swedish Expose On IDF Atrocities [MR]
* Arab World Pretty Psyched About Swedish "Organ Theft" Blood Libel, Palestinians Launch Formal Investigation [MR]
* Harvard: Holocaust denial ad 'a mix-up' [JPost]
* Harvard dean accused of anti-Semitism [JPost]

Previously:
* NYT Now Getting Its Cutting Edge Political Analysis From Electronic Intifada
* Scholars Countering British Boycott, Circulating Petition
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears

ORIGINAL: Thanks to everyone who's emailing about this in the context of the Marc Garlasco controversy, but I intentionally passed up mentioning the "Flak88" who posts regularly on Stormfront.org. I'm sure it's not the Marc Garlasco Flak88 who posts on the medals forums.

The Stormfront Flak88 is the top hit for a bunch of searches on that handle, not least of which is "flak88 israel." But the Stormfront Flak88 is a vulgar racist who complains about unclean Turks and then complains even more that they're the only ones in Germany who sing nationalistic songs. He has challenges spelling, writing sentences, and conveying thoughts. He lists himself in Europe while the Marc Garlasco Flak88 puts New York in all his profiles. Same handle, different guys.

If it was proven that the Marc Garlasco Flak88 was the same as the Stormfront Flak88, I'd consider that strong evidence against my previous post. For all his faults real or imagined, the HRW Marc Garlasco is neither crude nor stupid. I would guess that he clings very, very tightly to the belief that he's a history buff who happens, for purely familial reasons, to be utterly fascinated by the Nazis.

I think that's one convenient bridge too far, and that his obsession colors the rest of what he does. I think he has very strong but tangled beliefs about Jews and the Jewish state that spring from a place that has nothing to do with level-headed analysis. But nothing I've read and no one I've spoken to leads me to believe he's an unsophisticated racist like Stormfront Flak88.

It's easy to get over-excited about these things, and collector Garlasco's medals are insanely creepy. But we shouldn't get distracted from the real scandal. This guy has spent the last few years producing untenable anti-Israel boilerplate for human rights organizations, UN committees, and international tribunals. Every time pro-Israel groups suggested that no one could make this many mistakes innocently they were told to stop "stifling legitimate criticism of Israel with implicit accusations of antisemitism." Hmmmmmm.

UPDATE: Also: while it's normally a good guess to associate "88" with the well-known hate symbol, in this case its a relatively innocuous reference to the 88mm caliber Flak gun.

Again: Garlasco's not a vulgar racist. He's simply not. He's someone torn by sensibilities that make him wildly inappropriate as a choice for a Middle East investigator. How he got to that position and stayed in that position despite error after debunked error goes to the heart of HRW's inappropriate obsession with and bias towards Israel. They couldn't notice anything wrong with the way he approached the conflict because, well, that's how they all approach the conflict. That's the scandal - that despite having ideological inclinations and personal tics, he fit right in.

References:
* Marc Garlasco - Is HRW's Anti-Israel Investigator A Nazi-Obsessed Collector? [MR]

Previously:
* Human Rights Watch Holds Saudi Fundraiser, Promises To Demonize Israel
* Human Rights Watch Shill Has Meltdown - Rants About "Sharanskys Of The World," Dares Critics To Find "One Incident" Of HRW Bias (UPDATED: Nasrallah Bragged About Using Human Shields)
* Human Rights Watch Earns Their Saudi Pay, Publishes Another Thinly-Sourced Report Demonizing Israel (UPDATE: Video Of Hamas Soldiers Hiding Behind White Flags)

UPDATE: I've published a critical followup to this post, both because I've gotten specific emails accusing Garlasco of being a Stormfront.org contributor (100% not true) and because there's a general risk that this controversy is becoming one about him personally (misses the point). He's a guy who has a lot of inchoate sensibilities when it comes to Jews and the Jewish State, and there's obviously something going on that's consistently tilting his reports in an anti-Israel direction. If he was just incompetent then 50% of his mistakes would favor Israel.

He should never have been tasked with producing reports about the Middle East, if for no other reason than there's something moving him other than level-headed analysis. It's not straightforward and its not vulgar, but it's obviously doing work.

But this isn't about him as an individual. It's about HRW's institutional culture, where people couldn't tell that something was amiss because everyone holds the same opinions he does. His anti-Israel biases are literally institutionalized in that organization. As I said at the bottom of this post, this is their mess as much or more than it is his. More elaboration at the followup.

ORIGINAL: There are two Marc Garlascos on the Internet. One is a top human rights investigator who, having joined Human Rights Watch after several years with the Pentagon, has become known for his shrill attacks on Israel. The other is a Marc Garlasco who's obsessed with the color and pageantry of Nazism, has published a detailed 430 page book on Nazi war paraphernalia, and participates in forums for Nazi souvenir collectors.

Both Marc Garlascos were born on September 4, 1970. Both have Ernst as their middle name. Both live in New York, NY. Both have a maternal grandfather who fought for the Nazis. I've put links and screenshots on all this after the jump, and you can click through for full-sized versions. It's hard to escape the conclusion that both Marc Garlascos are the same person.

Bloggers and activists concerned about Israel have been baffled and frustrated by the first Garlasco almost since he joined HRW. On his public photography site he posts gratuitous Palestinian and Lebanese death porn in between galleries of cute Western-looking kids playing soccer (no link - keeping his kids out of it). He provides a seemingly never-ending stream of interviews to all kinds of outlets, where he spins tales about ostensible Israeli atrocities. The only problem is that many of these tales - per Soccer Dad and IsraPundit and Elder of Ziyon and NGO Monitor and CAMERA and LGF - are biased and inaccurate. That doesn't stop Garlasco from putting them into the kind of HRW reports that make their way into international anti-Israel condemnations and academic anti-Israel dissertations.

Then there's the second Marc Garlasco, who I caught wind of from Elder of Ziyon. Elder had just finished tearing apart another one of HRW Garlasco's anti-Israel reports when he found the Amazon profile of collector Garlasco. This Garlasco's Amazon book reviews show a nearly obsessive knowledge of Nazi-era Luftwaffe Flak and Army Flak. A little more searching revealed that he's written a gigantic book on the subject that retails for over $100. He regularly participates in forums about Nazi medals under the handle Flak 88, where he posts galleries of his prizes and admires what others have managed to collect. On those forums he uses the email marc@garlasco.com, which points to a family genealogy site he set up in 2002.

If both Garlascos are the same, Human Rights Watch almost certainly knows about his creepy hobby. It took me less than an hour on Google to confirm Elder's hunch to my satisfaction, and not much longer to lock the whole thing down. There's even an Amazon widget displaying Garlasco's book at the bottom of his Huffington Post article, though that may be automatically generated. The book might even be listed on his CV because, after all, none of this is illegal. Just potentially unseemly.

The collector Marc Garlasco certainly doesn't keep his day job secret from his fellow memorabilia collectors. There are at least two public references to his life as an HRW investigator on the forums. In one thread he posts dozens upon dozens of pictures from his collection at the end of 2007, which he describes as having been a "very lucky" year. A friend responds "Jeez Louise!! I had no idea HRW paid the big bucks!!" In another thread he comments on a badge and gushes "I would kill for that - WOW!" A friend responds "now now, HRW boy, don't go overboard!"

So we have to assume he's not leading a double life and that his employers know about his extracurriculars. If so we can also safely assume they've investigated the numerous demonstrable errors in his anti-Israel writeups. They presumably concluded that his apologism for antisemitic genocidal Hamas lunatics is unrelated to his obsession with antisemitic genocidal Nazi lunatics. That would be interesting to hear.

If Garlasco has been less than forthright about what he does in his off-time - and if HRW hasn't taken an hour to Google him and figure it out for themselves - that would be interesting in a different way.

Either way, someone needs to explain why he keeps getting sent to the Middle East to write debunked report after debunked report, lest people suspect that he has an unseemly motive for his consistently anti-Israel errors.

Bouthaina Shaaban is a Syrian Minister, a Warwick PhD, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, and was once awarded the Arab League's "Most Distinguished Woman in a Governmental Position" Award, something I'm assuming they rotate among their two or three eligible contestants. She's also kind of an antisemitic cretin, and this week she's particularly excited about that excerable Swedish blood libel:

The investigative report written by Swedish journalist Donald Bostrom... about Israeli occupation forces killing Palestinians with the objective of stealing their organs raised a political and media storm in Israel meant to cover up a horrible crime perpetrated for years... [in 1992] Palestinians started to witness a sharp rise in the number of young Palestinians disappearing and of bodies of Palestinians killed by occupation forces being returned with organs like hearts, kidneys, livers and eyes missing...

Bostrom writes. "On several occasions I was approached by UN staff concerned about the developments. The persons contacting me said that organ theft definitely occurred but that they were prevented from doing anything about it... I traveled around interviewing a great number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza... who told of how their sons had been deprived of organs before being killed. One example that I encountered on this eerie trip was the young stone-thrower Bilal Ahmed Ghanam".

Of course those same Palestinian families have reported that they told Bostrom no such thing. And of course the editor of Bostrom's paper, the venerable Aftonbladet, also admits that there's no evidence of organ theft.

None of that matters: conspiracy theories do their persuasive work not by achieving mainstream public acceptance but by bringing something into the realm of acceptable public debate. Done and done.

Shaaban then elaborates on her antisemitic fantasy, breathlessly recounting lurid details that would have made the Nazis roll their eyes. The line "it was clear that Bilal's body was slit from his abdomen up to his chin" is particularly striking, though you won't want to miss her full paragraph about an impromptu Israeli torture scene. It involves IDF soldiers shooting the victim in his limbs and his stomach before dragging him through a field. How that left his organs sufficiently intact for transplant remains unclear, though it's obviously not an operation beyond the means of diabolical Zionist Jew medicine.

The constant repetition of expertise, the whiff of slightly-too-specific details, and the hint of overcompensation in words like "definitely" and "clear" - those are all part and parcel of conspiracy rhetoric. But those verbal tics plus the gruesome obsession with imagined Jewish atrocities is a combination rarely found in such perfect form outside the Arab world. Pay particular attention to how the usual threads of conspiracism - expertise, details, overcompensation - get seamlessly woven into the rest of this feverish antisemitic tapestry:

The latest in a series. It's a perfect topic: a glimpse into how the other side thinks, an appreciation for what they're willing to say out loud, and - most importantly - easy content for me. Since we're a couple weeks away from the total insanity that will break out over the Goldstone Report - this is the report that will blame Israel for the civilian deaths caused by Hamas's use of human shields - how about we start with one of that organization's more charming contributions:

Deleted comment:

haychex: ahh well, what are you going to do.. when they're right, they're right.. zionism is terrorism and Israel has no place in the UN.

And here's Hezbollah - Iran's other human-shield adoring regional proxy - moving around the missiles the UN has ostensibly ensured they don't have:

Rejected bon mot from that video:

J4archae: Hezbollah should acquire nuclear weapons and eliminate fcukng zionist scum jews off the face of earth.

No worries though. He's just talking about the genocide of Zionist Jews. So no antisemitism there.

References:
* Right of Reply: Isolating Israel through language of human rights [JPost]
* HRW: "No Basis" For Claims That Hezbollah Used Human Shields. MR: What About All The Photos And Videos [Video] [MR]

Previously:
* We Get Mail - Irony Impaired UC Irvine Liberals Are Stupid
* Today's Nuked YouTube Comments From MR's Iranian Anti-Semitism Post
* We Get Mail - Pro-Holocaust YouTube Cretin Edition

Not the first time he's trotted this out: in February he blamed the genocide in Darfur on the Jewish State. But that was theoretically the old bad Gaddafi. This is the rehabilitated Gaddafi who's reaching out to the West in response to Obama's super-sophisticated engagement. This is the re-legitimized Gaddafi who gets to hug returning arch-terrorists released by Western countries.

Turns out, once a batshit crazy antisemite always a batshit crazy antisemite:

Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi blasted Israel at a special African Union summit on Monday on the eve of celebrations to mark his 40-year rule, accusing the Jewish state of causing all the woes facing Africa. Israel is "behind all of Africa's conflicts," Kadhafi told some 30 African leaders gathered under a huge tent at Tripoli airport for the summit focused on the continent's trouble spots, including Sudan's Darfur and Somalia. He demanded the closure of all Israeli embassies across Africa, describing Israel as a "gang" and saying it uses "the protection of minorities as an excuse to launch conflicts."... "As African brothers we must find solutions to stop the superpowers who are pillaging our continent," he said.

Sure he's coming from a place of frothing pathological hatred. The desire to find a central villain whose removal would solve everything the central impulse behind conspiracy theories.

But is the upshot really all that different from the central assumption of Obama's Mideast foreign policy, which blames regional instability on the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on insufficient Israeli concessions? There's certainly not much daylight between Gaddafi's garbage and Chas Freeman's wild-eyed histrionics about "The Lobby" that controls US publishing and distorts the close alignment between the "values" of the US and Arab States.

The degree to which Freeman's visceral sensibilities line up with the rest of the Obama administration is something that people might want to debate. But the degree to which "linkage" is the official policy of this administration is a lot less cloudy.

References and previously after the jump...

MR reader David M emails, in response to the post about the 1,350 hardcore Saddam supporters that State is importing into Southern California:

and Jews? Jews are on welfare all around the world they are no different than Palestinians. If they are not on welfare than they make their money on war, porno, sex, alcohol, tobacco, etc. The USA writes the largest welfare check every year. Jews always like to play the victim card so they can cry about how they are being mistreated and how everyone is an anti-Semite when in reality the biggest racists on earth are Jews. The wars of 48, 67, etc., never ended, why do you celebrate victory when according to Christians you will always be in a state of war.

Which I think is so unfair, because I don't even smoke.

References:
* State Dept Importing 1,350 Palestinian Saddam Supporters From Iraq Into Southern California [MR]

Previously:
* We Get Mail - Pro-Holocaust YouTube Cretin Edition
* UC Irvine Muslims Attacking and Slandering MR - SCORE!
* Troll Finds MR's MySpace Page

Are you kidding?

The International Federation of Journalists has expelled the Israeli branch after refusing to allow it to pay the same reduced amount of dues levied on neighboring countries, such as Jordan.... The liberal-leaning New York Jewish Forward noted that the expulsion... "raised the specter of another effort by international unions to boycott Israel for political reasons."... The Federation has had an anti-Israeli bias in the Middle East for some time, but the turning point was its condemnation of Israel's bombing of the Hizbullah-backed Al Manar television... The Federation "refused to understand that Al Manar is not exactly a superb media outlet," said Shibi... [their] anti-Israeli bias also was clear when it sent Arab journalists to investigate the accidental killing of a Gaza-based photographer for Reuters during counterterrorist operations in Gaza. "No one talked with any Israeli journalists," Shibi pointed out.

Iran is the world's leader in jailing journalists:

In just the last 13 days since the disputed June 12 election, Iran has become the world's leading jailer of journalists. A report released Tuesday by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran listed the names of 23 Iranian journalists who have been arrested and detained by the government.

They beat the former editor of a leading newspaper into a coma:

Reporters Without Borders is very worried about imprisoned journalist Saeed Hajjarian, the former editor of the newspaper Sobh-e-Emrouz, who was taken to hospital on the evening of 3 July, apparently in a coma. Hajjarian was arrested at his Tehran home on the night of 15 June despite being badly handicapped. His wife [and his doctor] have written an open letter to the authorities calling for his release. "He must not remain in prison if you want him to stay alive," they say in the letter.

And that's not even counting the arrest of Saberi, who went from being a journalist to getting ransomed by the regime in exchange for IRG agents who targeted our troops in Iraq.

But it's Israel that's violating journalistic norms. You don't think that there's something else - something other than level-headed analysis and strict ethical reasoning - bubbling up from from beneath the surface? That would be really unseemly.

References:
* International Journalists Union Expels Israel [A7]
* Iran: Now the world's leader in jailing journalists [LAT]
* Iran - A foreign reporter freed, but jailed Iranian journalist is reportedly hospitalised in coma [Newswire]
* Iran: Journalist's Conviction Tainted by Secrecy [HRW]
* The 9th of July, the 18th of Tir [Ledeen]

Previously:
* IHT Publishes Repugnant Sophisticated Excuses For Legally Mandated Iranian Sexism
* Just A Reminder: Arab Media Is A Cesspool Of Genocidal Anti-Semitic Incitement
* Reuters: Hamas Delegation Off To Iran To Talk About Their Awesome Awesomeness

The added bluster of his strutting "I'll say it" - as if he's breaking some kind of taboo by launching into his conspiratorial histrionics - is a particularly nice touch:

Consider this more proof that anti-Semitism is exclusively a conservative phenomenon. Buchanan is very well-respected within the mainstream conservative movement. That's why he drops this kind of wisdom on conservative outlets like MSNBC. That and the well-known conservative position that democracy is overrated. (h/t: BDH)

References:
* Wright: Wait, did I say Jews control Obama? I meant "Zionists" [Hot Air]
* Video: Pat Buchanan's Inner Franco [LGF]

Previously:
* Liberal Christian Organization Very Proud That It Has Only a Large Minority of Anti-Semitic Members
* Mere Rhetoric: Liberal Think Tanks, Majority Of Democratic Voters Condemn Israeli Self-Defense In Gaza
* Surprise! Poll Finds Significant Anti-Semitism Among Democrats

This is like the time when 69% of Democrats said Israel shouldn't retaliate to years of Hamas rockets, and supine liberal Jewish groups wrote it off as a policy difference over Israel. Except without the excuse that it has anything to do with Israel:

Neil Malhotra, of Stanford Business School, and Yotam Margalit, who teaches political science at Columbia, report on a survey of 2,768 American adults in which they "explored people's responses to the economic collapse and tried to determine how anti-Semitic sentiments might relate to the ongoing financial crisis." They asked, "How much to blame were the Jews for the financial crisis?"... But what the Stanford and Columbia academics find "somewhat surprising" is the partisan breakdown among the American public: "Democrats were especially prone to blaming Jews: while 32 percent of Democrats accorded at least moderate blame, only 18.4 percent of Republicans did so (a statistically significant difference)." Why is this surprising? Because of "the presumed higher degree of racial tolerance among liberals and the fact that Jews are a central part of the Democratic Party's electoral coalition."

It's not particularly surprising on a "tolerance" level, if only because venomous liberal sexism and racism long ago eclipsed the left's hypocrisy on anti-Semitism.

But the difference is worth bearing in mind the next time you hear that evangelical Christians only back Israel because they want to bring about the apocalypse. This is a standard trope that gets trotted out to deflect attention from the left's reluctance to support Israel, the implication being that evangelical support isn't real support either. Of course that's always been a smear. But now it turns out that not only is conservative support genuine, but many liberals have motives for opposing the Jewish State that extend to their antipathy towards Jews. (h/t: MR reader LG)

References and previously after the jump...

References:
* Liberal Think Tanks, Majority Of Democratic Voters Condemn Israeli Self-Defense In Gaza [MR]
* Kristol: Democrats, Republicans, and Jews [Weekly Standard]
* Progressives Spreading Around Fake Palin Bikini Pic, Gloating About Inexperience And "Patriotic Valley Trash" [MR]
* THE VILE BILE WE HAVE TO PUT UP WITH [Malkin]
* OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Pastor John Hagee, Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church [FAQ: Debunking Liberal Myths About Evangelical Support For Israel] [MR]

Previously:
* NJDC Tool Aaron Keyak Helpfully Illustrates How Liberal Activists Sneeringly Cocoon Themselves In Asinine Arguments And Dishonest Smears
* Palin Speech Now Online, Liberal Jewish Groups Reach New Heights Of Pro-Obama Denials, Fabrications, And Smears
* Democrats Take a Brave Stand Against Israeli Self-Defense Israeli Self-Defense and Other Stuff Too

CNN says at least two wounded.

We'll have to wait until the MSM informs us if this is a skinhead who was driven by Fox News to commit an act of domestic terrorism or a misguided gentleman of indeterminate religious affiliation who is "mentally unstable."

I'm actually inclined toward the former. This has the feel of a White Supremacist who blames Jews for his personal ills and broken friendships. As opposed to this morning's prominent Obama-linked Black Supremacist who blames Jews for his personal ills and broken friendships.

UPDATE: Yeah, it was a White Supremacist. LGF has more, and make sure you check the spinoff links to background at places like JWF.

References:
* Shooting reported at Holocaust Museum in Washington [CNN]
* SF Chron Declines To Print Reports of Confessed Terrorist Motives. Loads Up "Mental Instability" Template Instead. [MR]
* Rev. Wright on Obama: "Them Jews aren't going to let him talk to me" [Hot Air]

Previously:
* CAIR: Complaining About The Anti-Semitic Attacks We're Inciting Is A "Distraction"
* Video: Obama Outreach Coordinator Meets With CAIR Reps, Terrorist-Endorsing Preachers (Plus: FBI Testimony Links CAIR To Terrorists)
* Counterterrorism Study: Could It Be That Domestic Islamic Orgs Are Staging Discrimination Controversies?

Stephen Walt, Apr. 28, 2009:

Iran has zero -- repeat, zero -- nuclear weapons today, and even if it were to acquire a few at some point in the future, it could not use them against nuclear-armed Israel without committing national suicide. Let me say that again: national suicide. And could someone please explain to Netanyahu that a group of devout Muslim clerics aren't likely to fire warheads at a land that contains the third holiest site in Islam?

Iranian Army General Commander Ataollah Salehi, speaking for the group of devout Muslim clerics who run Iran, May 4, 2009:

"I Do Not Think We Will Need More Than 11 Days to Wipe Israel Out Of Existence... Nothing can prevent Iranian missiles from targeting the heart of Israel, if Iran is subjected to a military strike by Israel. This was the response of the Iranian military commanders to the Israeli statements about a possible military strike against Iran, because of its insistence on obtaining nuclear energy. Yet an [Israeli] attack seems improbable to the Iranians, because Tel Aviv does not have the ability to go through a war with Tehran."

That was one day after Ahmadinejad made a nudge-wink observation that Israel is a "germ" that will soon be destroyed. He wasn't making any threats mind you. He was simply conveying his objective, level-headed sense for the course that international geopolitics is likely to take. And you can be sure of that, because he said so himself!

And that wasn't even the dumbest part of Walt's post. That part was when he cited NYT tool Roger Cohen as support for the argument that "there is no evidence that Ahmadinejad has any particular animus toward Iran's own Jewish community." The statement - and the column it came from - is of course a paradigm of slack jawed credulity. But whatever. Do you have a PhD? Do you work at the NYT? No you do not.

This isn't the first time that Walt has made a bad faith case that Israel's pathological enemies are just kidding about their genocidal boasts. But I liked the touch of condescension at the end of this one, where he instructed Netanyahu to let J-Street redraw Israel's borders. Because J-Street - they're pro-Israel.

References and previously after the jump...

Maybe they lost the memo about how it's not anti-Semitic. It certainly looks anti-Semitic, so unless you get the physical memo it's an easy mistake to make:

The controversial cartoon by syndicated cartoonist Pat Oliphant that appeared on the New York Times and the Washington Post websites last month, and was also used by other American newspapers, has since been reproduced on neo-Nazi websites worldwide... Oliphant depicted a woman carrying a baby being pushed off a cliff by a goose-stepping headless figure holding a Star of David with sharp fangs. The cartoon has also now been reproduced, with the caption "Zionist Nazism," on the website of the Lebanese terrorist group, Hezbollah.

This nudge-wink "it's just anti-Zionism" game has always been a little surreal. No newspaper would ever publish an article accusing a black politician of "publicly lynching his opponent in the press." The unseemliness of inverting the history of anti-black violence would border on bigotry. And no newspaper would ever print a cartoon that depicted cascading Sub-Saharan instability as a black male "Africa" assaulting a white female "Europe." Invoking racist tropes to incite public outrage is, well, racist.

But Israeli Jews as baby-killing Nazis? That just sophisticated and brave anti-Zionism.

I'm actually surprised that anti-Israel partisans are still bothering with the formality of "Zionist Jews" as opposed to just "Jews." It's the equivalent of those "Death To All Juice" signs at the pro-Hamas rallies, where the fanatics unblinkingly insisted that they weren't talking about Jews at all. Except I guess that editors would treat "Juice" as a typo and ask Mearsheimer to correct it.

So "Zionist Jews" it is.

References:
* WaPo/NY Times's "anti-Semitic" cartoon becomes Hezbollah propaganda [NRO / Tom Gross]
* "Death to all juice": Calling for genocide with plausible deniability? [Jihad Watch]
* John Mearsheimer - Not Anti-Semitic. Just Anti-Semiticish [MR]

Previously:
* Israeli Public Diplomacy Expert : British Boycott Is Vicious Anti-Semitism
* John Mearsheimer - Not Anti-Semitic. Just Anti-Semiticish
* Hamas Decides to Be Helpful, Illustrates Many Ways International Law is Structured Against Israel

Stephen Walt has been condescendingly mocking people who think that Chas Freeman is a Saudi tool:

Jonathan Chait says I'm "paranoid," that I "went bonkers" in a recent blog post, and that my scholarship is "wildly hyperbolic." He says his real objection to Charles Freeman's appointment as chair of the National Intelligence Council is that Freeman is an "ideological fanatic" (isn't it odd that this quality went undetected during Freeman's lengthy career as a public servant?) and that Freeman's other critics were mostly worried about his relations with Saudi Arabia (as if this had nothing to do with their views on other aspects of our Middle East policy). Nice try, but it is abundantly clear to almost everyone that the assault on Freeman has been conducted by individuals -- Chait included -- who are motivated by their commitment to Israel and who are upset that Freeman has criticized some of its past behavior.

I'm not sure that "undetected" means what Prof. Walt thinks it means:

I thought I would see what former Secretary of State James Baker thought of Freeman. Chas Freeman appears twice in the index of James Baker's book The Politics of Diplomacy...

From the start, they [the Saudis] were always advocates fro the massive use of force. We knew that if it came to war, permission to launch from Saudi bases would be automatic. And we suspected that the King was also willing to bear any burden asked by his American benefactors. Even so, I was urged by our ambassador, Chas Freeman, to go easy on the numbers. "They're strapped for money," he told me before the meeting. "Don't press for too much right now." I disagreed. (p. 289)

Our ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Chas Freeman, suggested to me that perhaps we shouldn't ask quite so much of the Saudis. As a result of their previous commitments to Desert Shield, he said, they had a liquidity shortage that Saud hadn't wanted to admit to me. It seemed to me to be a classic case of clientitis from one of our best diplomats. "I'm going in front of the Congress and I'm asking them to go ahead and fund this effort," I said, "and I've got to explain that American blood will be spilled. If you think we're not going to ask the Saudis to pay for this, you've got another thing coming." It was the last I ever heard from him about going easy on the Saudis in terms of the costs of the operation. (p. 373).

How strange. Walt is usually so vigilant in ferreting out foreign influences on US policymaking. Maybe he just really hates Chinese dissidents.

And for the record, the problem with Freeman isn't that he "has criticized some of Israel's past behavior." The China stuff aside, it's because believes that 9/11 happened because of US support for Israel. That, if you don't know, is bullshit. So putting him in charge of figuring out our enemies' motives makes as much sense as putting the guy who fundamentally misdiagnosed the Asian financial meltdown in charge of the US economy.

References:
* The best defense is to be offensive?: A response to Chait, Goldfarb, and Goldberg [Walt]
* James Baker on Chas Freeman [Mark Hemingway / NRO]
* Questions About Chas Freeman Go Beyond Israel (Updated) [Daled Amos]
* What Osama Bin Laden Doesn't Like About America [Parapundit]

Previously:
* The "Iran Lobby" Moves Into The White House
* Obama's New Saudi-Funded Spy Chief: "The Lobby" Controls US Publishing, Shuts Down Arguments About How The "Brutal Oppression Of The Palestinians" Caused 9/11
* Former Ambassador To Saudi Arabia Chas Freeman To Be Appointed To Top Intelligence Post, Join Obama's Anti-Israel Intel Team (Plus: He Blames US-Israel Ties For 9/11)

Oh please:

A British official says a U.K. diplomat has been suspended following his arrest for an alleged anti-Semitic rant in a London gym... He allegedly used foul language and criticized Israel's conduct during the conflict in Gaza and allegedly made an offensive comment about Judaism. Merron says the police investigation continues.

Technically he said that Israelis should be "wiped off the face of the Earth" and was physically unable to stop shouting "fucking Israelis, fucking Jews." But why let details get in the way of writing "allegedly" over and over again? It's not like calling for the destruction of Israel is outside the spectrum of acceptable British public discourse:

Here's the ever delightful Azzam Tamimi watched by George Galloway in London "Today we are all Hamas", "Israel has dug his grave", "That Embassy there will one day be a Palestinian Embassy" (So no return to 1967 borders but the destruction of Israel?)... Here's George Galloway's "speech" from the same rally calling on the crowd to "shut down the Israel shops in those shopping centres, selling stolen goods grown on stolen land". Is all Israel "stolen land"? "We hope the great people of Egypt will have risen up and swept away the dictator Hosni Mubarek" How welcome will George Galloway be in Egypt now?

This is a country where public intellectuals take the existence of subversive Jewish cabals as a simple matter of fact:

A top British scientist drew fire from American Jewish organizations on Monday, after remarking that the American Jewish lobby is "monopolizing American foreign policy." Professor Richard Dawkins, a leading evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, was quoted by the British Guardian newspaper as saying last week: "When you think about how fantastically successful the Jewish lobby has been, though, in fact, they are less numerous I am told - religious Jews anyway - than atheists and (yet they) more or less monopolize American foreign policy as far as many people can see. So if atheists could achieve a small fraction of that influence, the world would be a better place."

This isn't the Walt-Mearsheimer-Duke move, where you spin a conspiracy fantasy as a pretext for anti-Semitic cant. It's even more basic: anti-Jewish conspiracy theories are just everyday in Britain. They're part of the collective pool of cultural facts and resources. They're what there is.

British newspapers are printing anti-Semitic cartoons that are so vulgar that the State Department calls them out. London playwrights - when they're not creating new anti-Jewish plays - are actually innovating on Dickens's anti-Jewish Fagin depiction.

Make anti-Semitic tropes respectable enough, of course, and the inevitable result is open pathological hatred. So London street protesters have taken to depicting "The Jew" eating babies:

The impromptu German policy of tearing down Israeli flags to chants of "Alluh akbar" is now official police policy. Synagogues are being vandalized. Holocaust memorials are being trashed. So I dunno, maybe?

I would like to know why pacifism gains so much strength every time it is directed against Israel. How come the newspaper pictures of the war are so one-sided and pro-Palestinian? Could it be that anti-Semitism is again prevalent in Germany, only this time it conveniently disguises itself as being anti-Israel? The answer is complex. I have met anti-Semites in this country, but I also ran into a lot of philo-Semites here. Some people here seem to feel less guilty of the German past when Jews "also" act violently. And, of course, there are also those, who reflexively root for the underdog, the Palestinians.

Luckily Berlin's Center for Research on Anti-Semitism has an ambitious plan to deal with all this: they're going to combat Islamophobia. That should do the trick.

References:
* Israeli Flag Now Functionally Illegal In Germany And Britain Because It "Provokes" Violent Anti-Semitic Mobs [MR]
* German police ban Israeli flags [JPost]
* Vandals break windows at synagogue in Germany [TopNews Law]
* German Anti-Zionists Momentarily Forget That They're Not Anti-Semitic, Trash Anti-Nazi Memorial [MR]
* Is German pacifism ignorant or anti-Israeli?
* 'German center ignores Iranian threat' [JPost]

Previously:
* Germany Keeping Iran Afloat Diplomatically And Economically
* Pictures Of German Students' Anti-Semitic Pro-Palestinian Rampage (Plus: Not At All Anti-Semitic Berkeley Protesters Keep Attacking Jews)
* Mecca Pilgrims' Chants Under-Emphasize Peaceful Nature Of Islam

Now what is it about this that's striking me as familiar?

An Israeli citizen residing in Kaikoura, New Zealand has informed Ynet Friday that a local pub, the Strawberry Tree, placed a sign outside its door reading, "Israelis not welcome before shelling (in Gaza) stops". Two other Israeli tourists encountered a similar restriction at a café located in another part of the country. Kaikoura, located on the east coast of New Zealand's South Island, is a tourist hub known for its dolphin shows. "The pub's owner has extreme views; in the past he worked as a photojournalist in Gaza, and inside the pub a sign reading 'Free Palestine" has been hanging for some time now," the Israeli citizen, who wished to remain nameless, told Ynet. "It is alarming the (conflict in Gaza) has resonated to this region and in such a one-sided way." The Israeli continued to say that "the owner expressed his aversion to the supposed racism on Israel's part - but he himself is acting in a racist manner when he screens his patrons according to their nationality."

Shrill anti-Zionism has been spreading through New Zealand for a while so this is hardly a surprise. And it's not like they're the first people - even this week - to mix rank racism with anti-Israel sentiment.

Still - I would think they'd want to pay a little more attention to the unstable terrorists of unknown religion that they're breeding and a little less to Israeli self-defense. Though that wouldn't provide the same thuggish, unseemly thrill so fair enough.

References:
* New Zealand pubs ban Israelis over Gaza operation [YNet]
* Israeli tennis star Shahar Peer faces Gaza protest while playing in New Zealand [Ha'aretz]
* Top US Communication Listserv: Hey, How About Some Anti-Israel David Duke Pamphlets? [MR]
* New Zealand Hijacker 'Was Known' to Police: Finally Identified as Asha Ali Abdille [JWF]

Previously:
* As Far As Smirking Anti-Semitism Goes, UC Irvine Muslims Have Really Outdone Themselves
* Insane Anti-Semitism At UC Santa Cruz
* What Institutional European Anti-Semitism?

One of the Muqata's readers watched as German police broke into his house to tear an Israeli flag out of his window:

Today, 10.000 people demonstrated against Israel here in my hometown Duisburg (Germany) and to express their solidarity with Hamas. So, my girlfriend and me put two Israel flags out of the windows of our flat in the 3rd floor. During the demonstration which went through our street the police broke into our flat and removed the flag of Israel. The statement of the police was to de-escalate the situation, because many youth demonstrators were on the brink of breaking into our apartment house. Before this they threw snowballs, knifes and stones against our windows and the complete building.

Fanatics that are "provoked" by visible Judaism seem to be a bit of a thing in Britain as well. Far from following the Germans' example and letting venomous anti-Semitic Muslim mobs erode centuries-old Western rights, British police are... well no, actually, they're doing the exact same thing:

I was there last night - in fact me and my mate were one of the first to arrive. As we crossed from the station and walked towards the embassy, we were greeted by lunatics waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags. In front of us walked a young man, wearing a kippah. He got out of his bag an Israeli flag and was immediately taken to the side by two police officers. After questioning him for about 10 minutes, he was issued a caution. After he was released we went up to talk to him - he showed us the police caution - and I kid you not - it stated that by getting out an Israeli flag he was causing provocation to the pro Palestinian demonstration.

A picture of the Israeli flag being torn down in Germany:

A picture of Hezbollah's flag being raised in Britain during Lebanon II:

Metaphorical, no?

References:
* Day 16 of the War, Sunday, January 11, 2009 [Muqata]
* Violent Gaza protests reveal how gentle civilised Britain has changed into something very ugly indeed [Phillips / Daily Mail]

Previously:
* Britain Has the Highest Number Of Anti-Semitic Attacks In Europe: "Are You English Or A Jew"? [Video]
* This Week's Anti-Semitic Chic
* Anti-Jewish Violence Skyrockets In Europe - Maybe It's Not Just Anti-Zionism After All

"Hate mail" posts are the easiest posts ever:

you are the vilest sort of pustule laden cunt ever to steal oxygen on this here planet. may you and your damned naai cohorts suffer the most extreme torture ever to be conjured by the sickest human mind. to say "to hell with you" would be cursing the devil.......

Pustule, for MR's foreign audience, is "a small swelling similar to a blister or pimple." It's not often found in sentences that include the depreciated "this here" definite indicator. And I don't have to tell you that "naai" is as per the original. I assume he meant "Nazi."

So do you think it's a college liberal, a political Islamist, or a white supremacist? I'm thinking college liberal: you can only trot out that last "cursing the devil" zinger if your social circle consists entirely of fashionably outraged stoners who'll giggle at that sort of thing.

Previously:
* We Get Mail - We're Forced To Explain Why Happiness Is Good
* I Get (Unhelpful) Mail
* We Get Mail - Pro-Holocaust YouTube Cretin Edition

There are really smart anti-war libertarians who - while harboring no delusions about the threat of political Islam - think that we should approach the Muslim world by overwhelming it with capitalism. The neo-conservative response is that fanatic ideology trumps even the lure of consumerism. This is what academics like to call an empirical question:

Bahrain's parliament is pressing the Gulf Arab emirate's government to reopen the country's Israel Boycott Office, which was closed two years ago under pressure from Washington. Prior to its closure, the boycott office had overseen government efforts to bar entry to Israeli-made goods in accordance with the Arab League's economic and trade embargo against the Jewish state. At a meeting held late last week, the legislature's committee on foreign affairs, defense and national security also called for an end to all formal contacts with the Jewish state. "Now that the committee has agreed on reopening the office, we request the Foreign Ministry to support the decisions by the representatives of the people and to put an end to all forms of contact between Bahrain and the Zionist entity," committee chairman Adel al-Mouawda said, according to Gulf News.

Technology plus pathological ideology inevitably equals technology in the service of pathological ideology.

References:
* Bahrain may reopen Israel Boycott Office [JPost]
* Hey Gals, Check This Out - Saudi Marriage Official Advises Your Husband Not To Have Sex With You When You're His 1 Year Old Toddler Wife [MR]

Previously:
* Arab And Muslim Countries Reject French Book Fair Because It's Just Too Jewish
* UN Children's Fund: Israeli Billionaire Just Too Jewish To Give Money To World's Children (Also Too Jewish For The UN: Ultra-Liberal Reform Jews)
* We Can't Win This One With Capitalism

Hey, you think they invited any Jews?

Former U.N. chief Kofi Annan and several former European leaders attended a conference on religion in Tehran on Monday, offering what some saw as a gesture of support for the moderate opponent of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hosting the gathering. Mohammad Khatami, the moderate former Iranian president... hosted the event. Former Irish president, Mary Robinson, and former prime ministers of Italy and France, Romano Prodi and Lionel Jospin, are also attending the conference, entitled "Conference on Religion in the Modern World." However, the soft-spoken critic Khatami reacted angrily when asked whether the high-profile visitors at the conference reflected a backing for his possible bid for the presidency. "This conference has nothing to do with presidential elections," Khatami chided reporters. Some of the other prominent names at the venue included former Portuguese president Jorge Sampaio, Sri Lankan ex-president Chandrika Kumaratunga, Sudan's former prime minister Sadeq al-Mahdi and former UNESCO director general Federico Mayor.

I'm thinking no Jews, which is what happened when Saudi Arabia tried to hold a similar conference. We're talking about a country where state TV theorizes about how George Soros is conspiring with John McCain and how Meet The Parents pushes "the character of the Jew". And if there are Jews there they should be criticized - along with these other tools - for legitimizing a genocidal anti-Semitic regime. This "boosting Khatami" pretext is asinine: he won't run and if he did this conference wouldn't help and if it did he still wouldn't win and if he did he still wouldn't have any real power and if he did he still wouldn't be a moderate. But hey, it sounded good!

Just for completion's sake: here's a report from a week ago that says that Israel won't attack Iran and here's a report from last week that says that Israel will attack Iran. Conclusion: we don't know anything about whether Israel is going to attack Iran. What we do know, though, is that the mullahs are most definitely building a nuke.

References:
* Former global leaders in Iran to support moderate [iStockAnalyst]
* Why not hold it in Mecca? Oh, yeah …. [Hot Air]
* Iran: McCain plotting Iranian revolution with, um, George Soros [Hot Air]
* Good news: Hidden Zionist agenda of “Meet the Parents” exposed [Hot Air]
* Iran's New Moderate Cleric Not A Moderate, Will Lose Anyway (Plus: Even The French Are Laughing At Obama's Idiotic Iran Policy) [MR]
* MR Reacts to Bloggers' Conference Call With Israeli Ambassador Uri Lubrani - Public Diplomacy Probably Won't Work, and Counting On It Is Probably a Bad Idea [MR]
* U.S. won't allow Israeli attack on Iran: TV report [Reuters]
* Warning signs of an Israeli strike on Iran [Times Online]
* Mere Rhetoric: Helpful Reminder - We Don't Know Anything About US And/Or Israel Plans To Hit Iran [MR]
* Israeli Military Intel: Iran "Halfway" Toward Nuclear Weapon (Plus: Syria, Hezbollah, And Hamas All The Way Toward Every Other Kind Of Weapon) [MR]

Previously:
* Syrian-Based Palestinian Terrorist: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, And Palestinians Prepared To Attack Israel
* Iran Takes Over Hezbollah After Hezbollah Takes Over Lebanon (Plus: State Department Naturally Urging Israel To Cede More Land... To Hezbollah)
* Skewz.com Podcast: Mere Rhetoric Gets Interviewed About Israel, Iran, Politics, Etc.

This is exactly how the Nazis did it, right? I only ask because "Jews = Nazis" is now the standard anti-Israel line for Arab governments and liberal activists. It's almost like they're wildly exaggerating just so they can make a particularly vicious, borderline anti-Semitic smear:

The creative minds inside Israel's Border Police have invented a new crowd control weapon, one that pays homage to that devil of a stinker, Pepé Le Pew... Imagine the worst, most foul thing you have ever smelled. An overpowering mix of rotting meat, old socks that haven't been washed for weeks - topped off with the pungent waft of an open sewer. Imagine being covered in the stuff as it is liberally sprayed from a water cannon... The smell... apparently lingers on the skin and in hair for days and can be smelled from quite a distance... neither soap nor tomato sauce is doing the job.

The smell is so awful that police stations can't even store it, while the actual substance is 100% nontoxic.

Vicious lunatics go on violent rampages where they alternate between attacking police and screaming for Israel's destruction. In response the Jewish State develops cutting-edge technology to minimize injuries - and still has to bear the brunt of the UN's condemnations. Nothing to worry about though - those condemnations come from clearheaded and objective anti-Zionism. Obviously.

References:
* Israel's new weapon [FP Passport]
* Libya spurs UN protest with Nazi remark [JPost]
* Terrorist Loving British Tool: Israel Running "Concentration Camp", Gaza Like Darfur [MR]

Previously:
* The IDF Is The World's Most Moral Army (Humanitarian Coordination Edition)
* The Most Moral Army In The World - Soldier Testimonials [Video]
* Still the World's Most Moral Army

Eye On The UN sent this out earlier via email

"Equality" at the United Nations under the management of the Organization of the Islamic Conference
October 8-9, 2008: The only two substantive planning sessions for the UN's so-called "anti-racism" conference - known as Durban II - were deliberately planned over major Jewish holidays, including the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, Yom Kippur.
September 30, 2008: By contrast, in order to observe the Eid holiday to mark the end of Ramadan, the United Nations shut down totally in both New York and in Geneva.

Which is weird, because you'd think that they'd want to celebrate Eid with something more dramatic. Like calling Israelis Nazis while they themselves go around burning thousands of books. Or appointing Khaddafi Prize founders and anti-Semitic Truthers to report on imagined Israeli human rights abuses. Or at the very least condemning Israel in the UNHRC a couple dozen times or calling for an anti-Israel boycott or something.

Anything short of genocidal anti-Semitism just feels like kind of anti-climactic, ya know? Although I guess that's what last week was for.

References:
* UN Delegate: Israelis Are the New Nazis [Gateway Pundit]
* United Nations Organization Destroyed Thousands of Books [NY Sun]
* To Sounds of Cheers, UN Human Rights Council Elects Khaddafi Prize Founder to Expert Post [UN Watch]
* Shock: UN appoints pro-Zionist conservative as special envoy to Israel and Palestine [Hot Air]
* Video: UN Watch Exposes UNHRC [Daled Amos]
* UN summit: Boycott Israel [YNet]

Previously:
* How Badly Does the UN Draft Screw Israel? Part IV: UNIFIL Will Not Get a Chapter 7 Mandate
* UNSC Brushes Aside Ahmadinejad's Genocidal Rant, Focuses On What's Important (Plus: Of Course Obama-Linked Fundraisers And Liberal Christian Groups Welcomed Ahmadinejad)
* UN Children's Fund: Israeli Billionaire Just Too Jewish To Give Money To World's Children (Also Too Jewish For The UN: Ultra-Liberal Reform Jews)

To be clear: it's not the tolerant, multiculturalist Blue Staters who are painting swastikas and beating up Jewish kids. It's the intolerant, anti-Semitic Blue Staters whom the tolerant, multiculturalist Blue Staters are wont to make excuses for:

The Jewish community of Rockville, Maryland was shaken up over the weekend, after unknown perpetrators spray-painted several swastikas early Saturday on homes in a predominantly Israeli neighborhood in the Washington, D.C. suburb. Police have launched an investigation into the incident, which they have labeled a hate crime... Several months ago, Israeli children were attacked in what residents say was an anti-Semitic assault. As a result, members of the community have requested increased security.

It's probably just over-exuberant anti-Zionism - nothing to worry about. At least that's what not a few of the blogs and blog posts on Obama campaign websites would probably insist. Although it's weird - if "anti-Zionist" isn't a codeword for "anti-Semitic", why are there almost a dozen pages on barackobama.com harping about the "Jewish Lobby"?

Switching coasts: remember that time in 2004 when USC's Muslim Student Association spread a lighthearted Holocaust joke through their listserv? Or that other time in 2005 when USC's Muslim Student Association spread a series of not-so-lighthearted Holocaust jokes through their listserv? My understanding is that the University very, very sternly instituted a series of sensitivity workshops. Shockingly these very, very serious measures seem not to have taken:

Muslim students at the University of Southern California are enraged by the school's recent decision to remove from a student group's website an Islamic text that encourages the murder of Jews. Until recently, the website of the now-defunct Muslim Student Association, which is hosted on the university's servers, had featured the full text of the hadiths, the words of Mohammed that are not found in the Koran. One of those hadiths calls on Muslims to "fight against the Jews and...kill them," and promises that even the stones and the trees will assist Muslims in that gruesome task. A statement issued by the Muslim Student Union at USC suggested that the hadith was being taken out of context, and called the school's decision to remove it from the website "unprecedented and unconscionable." The Muslim Student Union accused the USC administration of practicing unfair censorship.

Pressure brought to bear on the university forced the Provost's hand - which was duly noted and commended. But that wasn't before the issue had to be repeatedly emphasized by Reut Cohen and the David Horowitz Freedom Center. Turns out, century-old passages urging the murder of Jews inspire something a little less placid than calm and measured anti-Zionism.

Incidentally - you know who tells students that Arab anti-Semitism is just an over-exuberant reaction to Zionism? USC professor Laurie Brand. Hey - you don't think that this kind of "scholarship" has anything to do with campus environments in which Arab anti-Semitism is excused as an over-exuberant reaction to Zionism, do you?

References:
* Israelis in D.C. suburb shaken up after swastikas painted on homes
* Anti-Semitic Pages at Barackobama.com [IsraPundit]
* At the Official Obama Site: 'How the Jewish Lobby Works' [LGF]
* How Hate Starts On College Campuses [MR]
* USC Muslim Student Union Slips Into Open Anti-Semitism [MR]
* California Muslims angered they can't incite murder of Jews [Israel Today]
* USC provost orders USC-MSA to remove genocidal hadith from website on campus' internet server [Reut Cohen]
* California Muslims angered they can't incite murder of Jews [Reut Cohen]

Previously:
* MR In USC Paper's Not Entirely Unbiased Report On Coulter's Campus Speech
* Fun with Student Groups: 9/11 Conspiracy Group at USC
* Anti-Semitism as Anti-Zionism

Well this got real big real fast. It's now on Israel At Level Ground, BtB, Daled Amos, Solomonia, and a whole bunch of others.

There were three action alerts in my inbox this morning, each of increasing vehemence. I deleted the first one after I realized that it was accusing Google of anti-Semitism and the second and third ones based on their subject lines. Because if the hysterical accusations during the "Jew" Googlebombing dustup demonstrated anything - good intentions do not necessarily grant bloggers a robust grasp of new media technology). I figured that this was more of the same - pathologically anti-Israel users create content, a Google technology automatically indexes the content and makes it available, Google as a corporation gets blamed. Close. The article is written by Andre Oboler a social media expert and comp sci professor - so he knows the difference between platform and content. His concern is at the bottom:

Virtual Israel, as represented by Google Earth, is littered with orange dots, many of which claim to represent "Palestinian localities evacuated and destroyed after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war." Thus, Israel is depicted as a state born out of colonial conquest rather than the return of a people from exile. Each dot links to the "Palestine Remembered" site, where further information advancing this narrative can be obtained. Many of the claims staked out in Google Earth present misinformation... The inclusion of virtual Palestine, superimposed on Israel in the core layer of Google Earth, is an example of replacement geography advanced by technology. Those wishing to explore Israel in Google Earth are immediately taken to a politically motivated narrative unrelated to their quest. Google should remove the narrative and treat Israel as it treats every other country on the globe. The core layer of Google Earth should be ideology free and not serve as a platform for indoctrination or a campaign to wipe Israel off the virtual map... Disturbingly, Google has incorporated the Palestinians' overlays and their accompanying narrative into its core maps of Israel. As Google maintains editorial control over its core layer, it has responsibility for its content, which it clearly has not adequately exercised.

Yes and no. First a little background: Google Earth is a GIS platform. It takes arbitrary data inside a layer - provided it's in the right format and says where it's supposed to go - and then projects it on a map. Any user of sufficient skill can create a layer with anything they want and then make it available to everybody else. The layer in question - this "Virtual Israel" thing - has points representing a bunch of Arab villages that either never existed, were never destroyed, or were destroyed long before Israel existed. Vicious and false - but not Google's fault any more than a webpage saying the same thing is Google's fault. Oboler's claim seems to be that Google incorporated this layer into their default installation of Google Earth - almost as if when you searched for "Israel" on Google itself you got a sponsored anti-Israel page at the very top. The problem is that - as near as I can tell - there is no "Virtual Israel" layer in the Google default. The misleading information that's pissing everybody off is there, but it seems to be in a different layer - and not one that there's an easy solution for.

Remind us again: three times is a trend right?

Barack Obama has another chance, and it comes from someone within his own circle. James Meeks, former state senator, pastor of another South Side church, and both a political ally and "spiritual adviser" of Obama, blamed "Hollywood Jews" for bringing the world Brokeback Mountain. And Meeks also has a lot of antipathy towards a key Democratic voting group — gays and lesbians... A spring 2007 newsletter from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) named Meeks one of the "10 leading black religious voices in the anti-gay movement"... On a more personal level, Meeks has reportedly blamed "Hollywood Jews for bringing us Brokeback Mountain" and actively campaigned to defeat SB3186, an Illinois LGBT non-discrimination bill... That sounds pretty similar to Reverend Eric Lee, who blamed "Hollywood Jews" for negative stereotypes in popular culture at an event commemorating Martin Luther King earlier this month.

Now the thing is that Obama's spiritual advisers - Wright and Lee and now Meeks - are pretty unsophisticated when they're branding Jewish art as degenerate (they're not particularly original either, but that's probably a separate post).

Obama's foreign policy team, on the other hand, is much more careful. You'll never find subtle minds like Malley, Susan Rice, Power, Kurtzer or Brzezinski scapegoating American Jews for the world's ills - although Brzezinski still came so close that the campaign had to disingenuously deny he was an adviser right before they disengenuously claimed that Dennis Ross was working for the campaign. But that group largely limits itself to merely blaming the Jewish State for the brunt of American failures in the Middle East up to and including the failure of Oslo II. Their collective solution? Do everything possible to pressure Israel to give up land - or, failing that, just go ahead and invade. Yes, really

Oh - except there was that time that Obama military adviser Tony McPeak blamed the Iraq War on American Jews. That wasn't very subtle. Maybe the Democratic pundits on this morning's Sunday shows - to say nothing of Lawrence O'donnell on HuffPo - are onto something with this Wes Clark For VP idea. He'd fit in perfectly.

UPDATE: Looks like Meeks isn't the only Obama spiritual adviser being talked about this morning for his anti-Semitism.

References:
* Anti-semitism Barack Obama can fight! [Hot Air]
* Obama: I have a deep faith [Chicago Sun Times]
* Degenerate art [Wiki]
* Obama Defenders: What Brzezinski Guy? (Plus: That's Not Even Their Worst Argument) [MR]
* Obama's "Pro-Israel Advisers" Don't Actually Exist. As Such. [MR]
* Obama's Foreign Policy Advisers Not Exactly Fans Of The Jewish State (Plus: Brzezinski Snubs Israel After Tete-A-Tete With Assad) [MR]
* Top Obama Foreign Policy Adviser: No Seriously, We Are Totally Going To Screw Israel When We Get Into Power [MR]
* Obama Draws Line In The Sand: Invading Israel OK But Calling Hillary A Mean Name Is A Firing Offense [MR]
* Top Obama Adviser Explains Iraq War: Turns Out, It's The Jews' Fault. Again. (Plus: Ha'aretz Political Correspondent’s Pro-Obama Apologism Getting Increasingly Desperate) [MR]
* Wesley Clark for VP! [HuffPo]

Previously:
* Obama May Or May Not Think That Israel Is An Important US Ally
* Anti-Israel Activists To Anti-Israel Voters: Don't Worry, We Pretty Much Own Obama
* Obama's Anti-Hamas Stance Short On Change And Hope, Long On Rank Hypocrisy

Open anti-Semitic attacks are becoming something of a trend in the US. The recent drip drip drip of anti-Jewish violence contributes to a broader overall trend - the overwhelming majority of hate crimes in the US are against Jews:

Not only are anti-Islamic hate crimes way down, but they're a fraction of overall religious hate crimes. The overwhelming majority of such crimes target Jews, something CAIR and other Muslim groups don't seem all that concerned about. In 2006, a whopping 66% of religiously motivated attacks were on Jews, while just 11% targeted Muslims, even though the Jewish and Muslim populations are similar in size. Catholics and Protestants, who together account for 9% of victims, are subject to almost as much abuse as Muslims in this country.

You know why you don't hear about them? And why in all liklihood the numbers are lowballed? Guess:

"Hate crimes," specifically those occurring against Jews, are frequently omitted from such classification. Meanwhile, acts that victimize Muslims, regardless of their motivation, are usually reported as "hate crimes."... At about 6:20 last Tuesday, March 18, 2008, 25 year-old Uria Ohana, a rabbinical assistant, was assaulted by three Muslim men inside the subway station at Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street in Park Slope. As Ohana proceeded through the turnstile, 18 year-old Ali Hussein grabbed Uria Ohana's yarmulke from his head; Ohana gave chase, and was assaulted by Hussein's accomplices who were shouting "Alla hu Akbar"... The incident received very little media attention, and the motive was not initially recorded as a bias or "hate crime." "This happens frequently," admitted this source, adding that the pressure from Muslim special interest groups is much greater than from other similar organizations... He also stated that since 9/11, law enforcement officials have acquiesced to the pressure and demands by Islamic special interest groups to treat most crimes against Muslims as "religiously motivated," even in the absence of any proof. Acts such as graffiti randomly sprayed on a mosque, for example, is classified as a "hate crime." It does not matter that the mosque might be one of several buildings in a specific area that has been tagged or sprayed by vandals."

Meanwhile actual Nazi graffiti sprayed all over UCI Irvine's apartments is written off as a rent dispute. And self-declared terrorists targeting and running over Jews? That's just mental instability.

References:
* Two Anti-Semitic Attacks In Two Weeks In US Northeast [MR]
* Hyping Hate Crime Vs. Muslims [IBD]
* NY D.A. Source: Crime stats skewed on behalf of Muslims [Northest Intelligence Network]
* More Nazi Imagery on UC Irvine's Campus. Administration on Hate Speech: "One Person's Hate Speech is Another Person's Education". [MR]
* SF Chron Declines To Print Reports of Confessed Terrorist Motives. Loads Up "Mental Instability" Template Instead. [MR]

Previously:
* Anti-Semitism as Anti-Zionism
* MR Comments on Today's Search Terms
* Walt and Mearsheimer Publish Insipid Anti-Semiticish Book. MR Officially Takes Back Original "No Way They're Anti-Semites" Position.

The first was last week when a molotov cocktail was thrown at the home of a Jewish Agency envoy...

A Molotov cocktail was thrown Saturday into the home of a Jewish Agency envoy residing in Rhode Island in the north-eastern United States. The envoy, who was home at the time, was immediately evacuated to a nearby hotel following the incident. The incident took place at 2 am (local US time) when a Molotov cocktail was throw through the living room window of the envoy's apartment. He was in a different room at the time, and was therefore not injured. The Molotov cocktail set a nearby yard on fire, but firefighters dispatched to the scene easily extinguished the flames.

... and yesterday a Brooklyn rabbi was surrounded and attacked by six Muslim men screaming Allahu akbar:

Rabbi Ohana, assistant head rabbi of Chabad-Lubavitch of Massachusetts, was about to get on the F-Train at Fourth Avenue and Ninth Street in Brooklyn. The young Muslim assailants grabbed rabbi Ohana's yarmulke (skullcap), and when he went to them to get it back, they beat him and shouted, "Allahu Akbar." One of the Muslim attackers ran away into the street and was hit by a car... He was arrested by police. But three to four other Muslim assailants--whom you can bet will attack other Jews--escaped and are free.

Not for nothing, but if these were Muslims being beaten CNN would right now be asking if the country is erupting into a wave of anti-Muslim violence. Of course if these were Muslims being beaten that'd be a much rarer event than an anti-Semitic attack.

References:
* US: Molotov cocktail thrown into home of Jewish Agency envoy [YNet]
* "Religion of Peace": Krystallnacht, USA? - Five Muslims Beat Jewish Rabbi in Brooklyn [Debbie Schlussel]
* The Myth Of The Anti-Muslim Hate Crime Wave [CQ]

Previously:
* Anti-Semitism as Anti-Zionism
* If Anti-Zionism Isn't Supposed to Be Anti-Semitism, Someone Should Probably Tell the Anti-Zionists
* Anti-Semitism As Obsession (The "What Would Make You Care About That" Question)

We've begun posting some of the contributions that anti-Semites make on the YouTube videos we post. We've been just sending them into the ether, but people should have a small sense of the kind of cretins that inhabit YouTube. First up a couple nuked comments from the anti-Semitic Iranian cartoon:

Iranali786: I think what the cartoon shows is right. The Americans kicked Hitler's ass so hard Germany was reduced to rubble. But the clever Jews , always the businessmen , created a monster out of the rubble. The monster is ISRAEL.
ikfaldugod: No, theyre just stealing your money by charging absurdly high interest rates.

And now a sampling of the comments nuked from the clip we've got of Barbra Striesand singing the Hatikva. Because why shouldn't anti-Semitic cretins be literally everywhere?

sonya841: jewish spirit my ass.? . .u bastard u seem 2 have hate in u, thank God im not Jewish im Christian
sonya841: garbage garbage nothing but garbage. . .oh my goodness Barbara is so? ugly. . .

Just overflowing with charming, nuanced hate. And while we're on the subject of anti-Semitism: does anybody know what a "Kak-Jew" is? It keeps coming up in the anti-Semitic garbage that we receive from some group calling themselves The Akurians. And wow are these guys batshit crazy: [link goes through Google cache]:

Akurians are those Proven Knowers who choose to belong to the Spiritual Tribe of Akuria. Akurians obey and teach all Holy Laws and Statutes, and their lives are spent in devoted pursuit of all Great Mysteries, all Infinite Knowledge, and all Infallible Power of the Most High Lord God of All Creation. Their every breath is a living prayer of true service, for which they are become Beloved unto the Most High. We do everything the Salvation Army does, except preach Zeus

Etc etc. These guys aren't really on the radar, but we still hate being insulted when we don't even know how. So if this is a term of art, any clarifications would be much appreciated.

References:
* Today's Nuked YouTube Comments From MR's Iranian Anti-Semitism Post [MR]
* Video: Vicious Iranian Anti-Semitic Anti-Zionist Cartoon [MR]
* Tuesday Hatikva - Oh Yes, We've Posted A Clip Of Barbra Streisand Singing Hatikva [Video] [MR]

Previously:
* John Mearsheimer - Not Anti-Semitic. Just Anti-Semiticish [MR]
* Arab World Too Pathologically Anti-Semitic To Accept Israeli Water Tech And Expertise [MR]
* We Get Mail - Pro-Holocaust YouTube Cretin Edition [MR]

We've been nuking literally dozens of vulgar anti-Semitic comments every few weeks since we posted that breathtaking example of Iranian anti-Semitism. We're going to start posting the nuked comments here so there'll at least be a record of those cretins' viciousness:

generalmike133: even jews had!! who financed hitler? who provided fuell?
persiandudeee: lol awsome video, it's true jews are using the "holucust" as an excuse but the real truth is that the jews were actually nazis themself:D Hitler hisself was also a jew:D

They really believe that, and there are more of them every day.

References:
* Vicious Iranian Anti-Semitism [photonh2o / YouTube]

Previously:
* Ron Paul Supporter: No Jew Money Here
* Compare And Contrast: Israeli FM Greets Ramadan By Attending Meal With Muslim Leaders. Hamas Greets Yom Kippur With Music Video About "Chunks Of Flesh Of Jews"
* We Get Mail - Pro-Holocaust YouTube Cretin Edition

Hey, remember that time when Bush got Olmert to agree to a peace conference by promising that only countries ready for normalization with Israel would be invited? And then a bunch of countries got invited who refused to let Jewish Israeli reporters talk to their ambassadors in DC and ran a bunch of vicious anti-Semitic cartoons in their government papers back home:

While Arab leaders trekked to Annapolis for the summit, Arab newspapers, many of them government-funded, have been running cartoons depicting Israel as violent and untrustworthy, according to a survey of Arab media conducted by the Anti-Defamation League. The cartoons often use anti-Semitic themes, such as depictions of ugly, greedy Jews in religious garb, to convey their messages. While some of the cartoons come from places with declared belligerent policies toward Israel, such as Syria and the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, others come from what the American government has called "moderate" states, such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar, and even government-funded newspapers in Jordan and Egypt... An example of classical anti-Semitic depictions came from Oman's Al-Watan paper, which published a November 16 cartoon showing a religiously-attired Jew standing behind a gagged and seated Uncle Sam and speaking in his stead to a crowd of Arab listeners.

Oh wait. That was right now. Good to see that the peace deals with Egypt and Jordan are working out so well. Getting that kind of peace with Saudi Arabia and Syria is definitely worth tearing Israel apart and voluntarily accepting blame for refusing to be wiped out in the Six Day War. Sign us up for two. Because it's so normal and peaceful, you see.

References:
* Vicious Iranian Anti-Semitism [photonh2o / YouTube]
* Annapolis As A Rosetta Stone For How Anti-Israel Bait And Switch Diplomacy Works [MR]
* Normalization left out in the rain [MR]
* 'Moderate' Arab papers showcase anti-Semitic cartoons ahead of summit [MR]

Previously:
* Palestinians: We Won't Show Up To Annapolis Unless The State Department Screws Israel By Inviting Arab Countries To Make Demands
* Ha'aretz Headline: "Israel to go on high terror alert due to Annapolis peace summit"
* Arab League Decision To Attend Annapolis Already Not Paying Any Dividends At All In Bahrain (Plus: It's The Whole "Touching Jews" Thing Again)

Full slate of posts today explaining why we're all totally effed. This stuff is about the lightest it's going to get today.

* The problem with blogging the low-level French intifada is that everybody makes the same "French youths of indeterminate religion" joke about the rioters. We wish they would come out and just declare that they're Quakers like we suspect they are. Sarkozy's got a rough few years ahead of him.

* Maybe not that rough.

* Question: will Israel's incredibly sophisticated environmentalism make the left hate the Jewish State less? Answer: no.

* We heart Amazon's classification of Walt and Mearsheimer's "the Jews and their Christian tools have taken over the US" contribution to public discourse.

* Figures.

Previously:
* France - How Did It Come To This?
* Ann Coulter Embraces France: Hot
* No New Sanctions On Iran. Sophistication On Display.

* Are the Democrats really stupid enough to blow the easiest electoral layup in the history of political sports analogies? Yes: sometimes Nancy Pelosi seems just straggeringly unintelligent. No: not if Reuters can help it.

* Remember the time when Noam Chomsky said that anti-Muslim violence was a greater threat in the West than anti-Jewish violence? Turns out, that was incorrect. According to, you know, numbers.

* Berkeley Moonbat Falls Out of Tree - Click

* It turns out US sanctions against Iran don't work. We're as shocked as anybody. We thought, ya know, maybe this time. FYI - they're going to get nukes.

* Daniel Levy participated in diplomatic missteps that, taken together, have put the Jewish State under existential threat. That said, his dig outstanding backgrounder on the pre-Annapolis Israeli political landscape.

* We heard that this douchebag got housed at this debate last weekend. We weren't there, so we can only rely on the eyewitness testimony of every single person we've spoken to.

* This is why we use Skype when we're in Israel. Did you know that every Israeli McDonald's has free Bezeq wireless, effectively making the country a giant, mostly free cell phone network? That has nothing to do with this story, and our punchline doesn't really make sense anyway. But we like our Skype phone a lot and kind of thought you should know that.

Previously:
* How Stupid Does Liberal Make-Believe Have to Get Before the Jewish Journal Won't Publish It?
* Josh Marshall, Liberal Sophisticate: Conservatives Should "Grow Up" About Ahmadinejad's Desecration Of Ground Zero
* Liberal Tech Blogger: "Since When Did A Circuit Board On A Sweatshirt Look Like A Bomb"

Seriously, it's not:

Many lessons may be learned from the decision of University of St. Thomas President Dennis Dease to uninvite and then invite Desmond Tutu to speak on his campus... Another lesson is about jumping to conclusions without evidence. Tutu's canceled invitation received international notoriety because many thought it was part of a pattern of widespread Jewish pressure to censor Israel's critics. But President Dease demolished that idea. "I was under no pressure from any pro-Israeli groups or individuals, nor did I receive any requests from them to refrain from inviting Archbishop Tutu to speak," he declared. That an esteemed Catholic university leader would feel compelled to make such a public denial is sad testimony to an upsurge of sinister theories about Jewish power in America today.

The beauty of conspiracy theory, of course, is that it takes evidence of disproof and transforms it into proof. It's not even particularly difficult. President Dease says that pro-Israel influence had nothing to do with his decision? That just proves how much control pro-Israel groups really have, because they were able to force him to issue a denial.

A central plank of the Walt And Mearsheimer conspiracy theory has always been that the US attacked Iraq because of Israel. The idea is so stupid that even the sophistication-enamored Obama was moved to unequivocally repudiate it. There's also the small problem of this:

Israeli officials warned the George W Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilizing to the region and urged the United States instead to target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former Bush administration official Lawrence Wilkerson. Wilkerson, then a member of the US State Department's policy planning staff and later chief of staff for secretary of state Colin Powell, recalled in an interview that the Israelis reacted immediately to indications that the Bush administration was thinking of war against Iraq. After the Israeli government picked up the first signs of that intention, said Wilkerson, "The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy - Iran is the enemy."

No problem for the average conspiracy theorist, who will just say that the report is an Israel Lobby lie. But Walt And Mearsheimer are not your average conspiracy theorists. Their solution: Israel talked the US into invading Iraq to set up the invasion of Iran. Of course they did.

References:
* Mark B. Rotenberg: What we can learn from the Tutu affair
* Obama Distances Himself From Book on U.S.-Israeli Relations
* Israel urged US to attack Iran - not Iraq

Previously:
* Turns Out, It's the Jews' Fault
* Surprise - It's the Jews' Fault!
* Super! Overuse Of Flu Vaccine Antiviral Creating Vaccine Antiviral-Resistant Bird Flu (Plus: It's The Jews' Fault)

Wow. Really? Does she have eyes? Here is a radical imam leading a UCI crowd in screams of hatred against "baby killers" (details here):

Here is a radical imam advocating a UCI "Intifada" against some nudge-wink enemy of Muslims. Maybe he means global warming (details here).

Not that UCI Muslims needed to be told to embrace violent Intifada - they've been dressing up like terrorists during their events for years. Just a few of those many pics after the jump, plus a special blockquote about Hillel's moral cowardice that we're quoting for posterity.

Idiots:

The Hillel Foundation of Orange County has called off its investigation into alleged anti-Semitism at UC Irvine and has instead directed its resources to promoting Jewish life on campus, an official said Tuesday. The foundation began investigating allegations at UCI in February after a number of incidents on campus, including Muslim students disturbing a lecture by Daniel Pipes, a Middle East scholar and defender of Israel.

“We wanted to focus more on the campus and improving Jewish life at the university,” said Jeffrey Rips, the executive director of Hillel Foundation of Orange County. The investigation was canceled over the summer, said Rips, who declined to say what, if anything, Hillel’s inquiry turned up or why the foundation’s leaders did not announce it... In 2003, a Holocaust memorial was vandalized, and a display criticizing Zionism was burned down in 2004.

Their students are vicious anti-Semites who bring even more vicious anti-Semites to UCI's campus:

Most of them are just cheap thugs, but not a few of them are very very likely out and out terrorists.

If their administrators are not anti-Semitic then they're too spectacularly obtuse to be in academia: when they're not giving friendly interviews to hate groups who publish their sound bites alongside threats of anti-Semitic violence, they're defending anti-Semitic hate speech as "another person's opinion". The school newspaper is practically a showcase of anti-Semitism invective.

We do like how Hillel says they don't have the resources to check whether there's anti-Semitism on the campus. We did this post in 15 minutes using Google site search - imagine what someone could do with, oh we dunno, a whole day! No wonder Jewish students are literally transferring out of UCI. And no wonder the Hillel has stopped investigating the utter failure of Jeffrey Rips to protect the interests of Jewish kids on campus.

On the plus side, just think of how much easier "improving Jewish life at the university" will be when there are only a dozen or so Jews living there (h/t: Jeffery).

References:
* Jewish org. nixes UCI probe [Daily Pilot]
* As Far As Smirking Anti-Semitism Goes, UC Irvine Muslims Have Really Outdone Themselves [MR]
* UC Irvine Muslim Student Union To Conclude Anti-Israel Week By Declaring "UC Intifada" For Palestine [Video] [MR]
* Amir Abdel Malik Ali at UC Irvine 10/05/2006 [standwithus / YouTube]
* Two Videos: Daniel Pipes Shouted Down At UC Irvine - UCI Administration Proud Of Insane Muslim Student Union Hate Speech [MR]
* Terrrorists Hiding in Plain View at UC Irvine [MR]
* UC Irvine Gives Interview to Anti-Semitic Hate Group, Wonders Why Everyone Thinks There's Anti-Semitism on Their Campus [MR]
* More Nazi Imagery on UC Irvine's Campus. Administration on Hate Speech: "One Person's Hate Speech is Another Person's Education". [MR]
* Logic, Anti-Semitism On Display In UC Irvine Newspaper. Except For the Logic Part. [MR]

Previously:
* UC Irvine Course Description: American Unilateralism Responsible For Islamist Barbarism
* Carter's Appearance At UC Irvine Provides Opportunity For Snark About Peace Treaties, Tears About American Academia
* Reut Cohen Has Details, Video Of UC Irvine MSU Activities: Ward Chuchill, Anti-Semitism, Physically Harassing Her, Etc.

Original: Oh well that's just great:

Scientists in Sweden have found that Tamiflu, the frontline drug for fighting a pandemic, survives unscathed as it passes through the human body. It could then be taken in by waterfowl, which are often found near sewage outlets and are potential incubators of avian flu virus. Repeated exposure to oseltamivir, the generic name for Tamiflu, could make those viruses resistant to it. Tamiflu-resistant avian virus could then quite possibly infect a person already suffering from human flu. Rolling the dice again, the two viruses could combine to create a hybrid virus embodying the worst of all possible worlds: virulent, transmissible and resistant to the only therapy that can avert a catastrophe. Dr Jerker Fick, from Umea University, cautions that countries should curtail their use of the drug to stop it becoming ineffective. Japan, in particular, needs to rethink; one in three flu patients there receives oseltamivir.

And wouldn't you know it, it's the Jews' fault. That and everything else. Seriously, between running the Iraq war, killing Hezbollah MPs, and filling the world with disease - where do Jews still find to convince the Palestinians to become suicide bombers in order to undermine the noble cause of Palestinian statehood?

Update: Tamiflu's an antiviral not a vaccine. Thanks to MR reader Paul for the gentle correction.

References:
* Flu-free winter is down the pan [Times]
* Bird Flu: Another Israeli weapon? [Simply Jews]
* Mere Rhetoric: Hezbollah: Israel Is Killing All Of The Anti-Syrian Lebanese MKs (Plus: Most Eye Roll Inducing Pro-Hezbollah Media Spin Ever) [MR]

Previously:
* Jimmy Carter: The Only Reason It Seems Like I Ignore Darfur And Obsess About Israel Is Because Darfur Isn't A Genocide
* Va. Tech Anti-Conspiracy Theory Intervention
* Anti-Semitism As Obsession (The "What Would Make You Care About That" Question)

The international left obsesses about imagined Israeli war crimes as opposed to much worse actual war crimes and imagined Israeli human rights abuses as opposed to much worse actual human rights abuses. Jimmy Carter has come up with maybe the most pathetic excuse ever just so he can keep obsessing about Israel. The British Foreign Minister actually said that of course Israel has very little to do with Al Qaeda's influence - but that the world should intervene in Israeli affairs anyway because at least it's something.

This month's TNR has an article up about the pervasiveness of this fundamentally anti-Semitic obsession with finding a Jewish angle to every story. Wouldn't you know, it's about Want and Mearsheimer [quote moved to after the jump -- ed]:

Walt and Mearsheimer - they of "the Israel Lobby is so powerful that it can't be criticized" - were brought into yet another college to bravely stand up to the Jews who control US policy (and also to the Christians that the Jews have corrupted - that's why it's not anti-Semitic). Normally we wouldn't bother blogging it, but this is annoying and stupid enough to merit attention:

The event, hosted by Alice Bach and the Hallinan Project for Peace and Social Justice, brought authors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer to discuss their book, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy. Over 100 people from Case and the community attended the talk. Attendees came for many different reasons. Blogger Jeff Hess, having read the book and the Anti-Defamation League's response to it, was curious about the central question of the book, "Can you say anything critical of Israel or are you trapped as a cheerleader?" Students from other colleges were in attendance as well. "I don't know much about the U.S./ Israel relationship," said Patience Fiodembo, a student at John Carroll University. "I have heard some controversial things about John Mearsheimer; I want to see what he's about." Bach introduced the two authors, remarking that their book "provoked both howls of outrage and cheers of gratitude for challenging what had been a taboo subject in America."

Yes, those decades of enforced censorship on American campuses, where saying anything bad about Israel would merely get you tenure and mountains of accolades for being edgy. It must have been so hard for anti-Israel academics before Walt And Mearsheimer broke the taboo. It's kind of weird that all anti-Israel library books have copyrights going back to the 1950s. Must be a conspiracy.

Also: we teach an intro to argument class. Pretty basic stuff, and we actually spend a lot more time discussing political controversies than we do on orthodox argumentation theory. Still: liberal blogger Jeff Hess? D+ at best.

We again remind the three liberals who read this blog: how someone says something reveals much about their motives and their character. If a right-wing politician criticized an NAACP campaign by complaining that "the NAACP is publicly lynching its opponents," the left would (correctly) howl in outrage. And yet hurling around the most disgusting anti-Semitic canards - greed, dual loyalty, well poisoning, etc - is taken as a sign of sophistication and bravery on the left. Anything in the name of anti-Semitism anti-Zionism we suppose (h/t: MR reader Doris).

References:
* Case hosts controversial talk on Israel lobby [Observer]

Previously:
* Israel And AIPAC: We'll Respond To Walt And Mearsheimer When Their Vicious Anti-Semitism Gets Sophisticated Or Relevant (Plus: MR Is Suspicious About Leftist Pro-Mearsheimer Enthusiasm)
* Walt and Mearsheimer Publish Insipid Anti-Semiticish Book. MR Officially Takes Back Original "No Way They're Anti-Semites" Position.
* Anti-Israel Censorship Watch - Walt and Mearsheimer Redux

Three times means it's is a trend. Statements about Jewish money and dual loyalty are now more or less officially on the spectrum of things Democratic politicians say. Some Democratic political will talk about how Walt And Mearsheimer are brave for saying that Jews (and those poor Christians that Jews have corrupted) are leading the US to war. Other Democratic politicians will condemn them. Big tent.

Senior Democratic Congressman James Moran accuses rich Jews of having dual loyalty and undermining the US and Democratic reactions range from muted to carefully congratulatory. No worries though. It's not like he's advising one of their lead Presidential candidates. That's a different Democrat:

(1) Forget the Walt And Mearsheimer stuff. The guy in charge of American national security under Carter should have one job and one job only - going door to door in America saying "I'm sorry I lost Iran to Islamofascism and established a policy of appeasement that led to the war of our time."

(2) At least he hasn't blamed "New York money people" for undermining American national security. That's a third very prominent Democrat who did that.

(3) If Walt and Mearsheimer are so sophisticated and not at all anti-Semitic, why is it that the people who appropriate them - and we're talking elected representatives and prominent intellectuals, not David Duke - keep picking the most anti-Semitic sounding parts of their work to defend? This is about Moran and Wes Clark here, not Brzezinki. Brzezinki is much more careful)

Nice to see that Democratic Jews have managed to leverage their slavish and almost pathetic loyalty t the Democratic Party. Old line: you may be able to vote for Democrats on social justice grounds, but at least be honest enough to admit that you're empowering an rabidly anti-Israel base to put pressure on genuinely anti-Israel politicians via entrenched anti-Israel diplomatic and legislative institutions. New line: you're voting for anti-Semites.

Not that this will do anything to dent the inexplicable devotion that American Jews have to the Democratic Party. The combination of inertia and banality - to say nothing of the most insipid kind of fashionable LA Times "oh it's such a complicated cycle of violence" nonsense - appears to have firm control over that particularly sophisticated part of the electorate.

References:
* I Am Beginning To Sense A Trend [Red State]
* Obama advisor raises concerns [YNet]
* MR Has A Question For Democratic Jews: Are You Fucking Retarded? [MR]
* Why Don't Jewish Democrats Care That Their Party Hired A Radical Anti-Semitic Imam? [MR]

Previously:
* Obama: "I'm Not Saying Israel Should Have To Take Risks For Peace, But..."
* Democrat Bill Richardson: James Baker Should Be The US's Envoy To Israel
* This Week's Litany Of Reasons Why Democratic Jews Are Either Anti-Israel Or Lying To Themselves

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

Edited for brevity after the jump, with original spelling and grammar intact. It's from a YouTube cretin named theboyyouluv. He insists that he's a proud Syrian, although apparently he's not proud enough to actually live in Syria - where, naturally, YouTube is blocked. It's kind of interesting how he admits that his hysterics about Israel are part of a larger strategy to suppress guilt about the Holocaust and pave the way for a contemporary anti-Jewish genocide. It's more honest than what most Europeans will say out loud. So 2 points for that.

Alas, several thousand points off for the phrase "your a bastered race."

In a way they're absolutely right: when it comes to anti-Semitism Walt and Mearsheimer are total amateurs. They're still running the "we're being silenced argument" - even fanatical anti-Semitic imams have figured out that they sound silly screaming that from the podiums of talks they've been invited to give.

Anyway, JPost has a pretty decent article about how AIPAC and the Israeli government intend to counter Walt and Mearsheimer's The Israeli Lobby (subtitle: "how the Jews came from across the ocean, corrupted good Christian Americans, and tricked them into betraying their country"). The basic strategy: do nothing. Israel can't go around countering the claims of every vaguely disgruntled, largely discredited academic who discovers that "hey, these Jews make pretty good scapegoats". It's got all of its resources tied up dealing with the ones who are already on UN committees:

If you believe that Walt and Mearsheimer are beyond the reach of reason because reason has nothing to do with their book - and Walt and Mearsheimer are obviously beyond the reach of reason because reason has nothing to do with their book - then this seems like a pretty good strategy. What are you going to do? Point out that the US has acted against Israeli interests dozens of times? Talk about how the first crack in the wall of contemporary Israeli deterrence came when Bush I wouldn't let Israel respond to Iraq's missile launches? Go over the total inanity of their observations ("well no you see Professors, actually all interests have lobbies in Washington, DC - so the existence of a pro-Israel lobby isn't proof of anything at all"). How about this: if they really think that's a good argument, they take a junior high social science class and then, when they've learned about our three branches of government, we'll have a talk with them.

Now the conspiracy theory nuts will say that AIPAC isn't responding because they're scared of the overwhelming truth of the book (the classic claim of the irrelevant lunatic: "they're only pretending to ignore me because they're scared of me"). But if AIPAC answered all of the claims, then the conspiracy theory nuts would point to the organized public campaign - which would come complete with true rebuttals from politicians - as proof of AIPAC's power. That's the essence and the beauty of conspiracy theories - they already account for everything that might be used as disproof.

After the jump: how to see if your average anti-Israel academic is a provably anti-Semitic fraud.

The full Walt and Mearsheimer book is out today, over a year after the pair first radically distanced themselves from the rest of the academic world by putting their disdain for the Jewish State into print. Do you think they took so long with the second half of the book because they had trouble translating it out of the original German?

Here's the New York Times story. It is different in absolutely no way from what you expect it to be. This is where we'd usually link to some careful point by point refutation of their scholarship, but honestly... eh. Why go through the motions of even pretending that reasons or arguments have anything to do with the on-the-ground dynamics of anti-Israel animus?

When a distinguished professor insists that he believes in an untenable conspiracy - one that happens to sound remarkably similar to vicious anti-Semitism - because of laughably disprovable assertions like "Al Qaeda's grievances regarding US/Israeli ties are suppressed by the US media"... You're supposed to do what? Show him the thousands of articles in the US media about the degree to which US/Israeli ties are a motivation for Al Qaeda? When he utters insipid nonsense like "you can tell that Israeli interests are hostile to the US because if they weren't then Israel wouldn't need a lobby"… you're supposed to do what? Bring in a 16 year old high school student to tell him that every interest on the planet is represented in DC - and on both sides of every issue?

This isn't about arguments or evidence. These are not naturally stupid people - they must have a sense of their position. And if they don't - if they're really that deep in conspiracy theory "we're the sane ones everyone else is crazy" land - then whatever has made them stupid is far beyond the reach of mere logic. After the jump, our one year transition from "aww... they're just pitiable, declining academics" to "they're Jew-baiting so that they can win the adoration of rank bigots".

Another soppy and kind of pathetic screed is making its way across lefty boards and listservs, bemoaning how hard it is for anti-Israel activists and academics like Walt and Mearsheimer to get a fair hearing these days. Our version was forwarded from AcademicsforJustice@yahoogroups.com - because it's important that the few, lonely anti-Israel academics scattered in dark basements across America's college campuses look out for each other. But you can also find a copy forwarded to this newsgroup by NOMOREWAR_FORISRAEL. Charming and interesting, the kinds of people that make common cause these days:

Yeah, it's really hard out there for anti-Israel academics. If this morning's Google News roundup is any indication - "Is It Time to Rein in AIPAC?", "Courting and Countering the Christian Zionists", etc - Walt and Mearsheimer are in actual, physical danger of literally drowning in positive coverage. And drowning is bad.

Previously:
* Brown University Outrage: Anti-Israel Academics Organize Conference To Attack Pro-Israel Critics, Shut Out Pro-Israel Speakers and Students
* Walt and Mearsheimer's Best Defense For Their Anti-Semitic-ish Accusations Is In Trouble
* Mark Steyn Mocks, Laments James Baker

Sudanese refugees fleeing the massacres in Darfur are fleeing to Israel because Human Rights Commission member Egypt refuses to feed them and keeps beating them to death:

And just think - for fashionable intellectuals, the fact that the UN focuses exclusively on Israel is proof of Israel's immorality. At least - as Powerline just got done reporting - Jewish Republican Senator Norm Coleman is trying to do something about it. That's probably not anything that Jewish Democrats want to consider - after all, the Democrats have also been at the forefront of criticizing the UN-led international demonization of Israel. Right?

Picture stolen from AK Sommer, who got it from some geek named Idan.

References:
* Egypt nabs 20 Sudanese at Sinai border [JPost]
* Calling Out the U.N. [Powerline]

Previously:
* Israel Politely Requests That UN Allow UNIFIL Soldiers To Do Their Damn Jobs
* Boston Globe Notices UN Is Not Entirely Fair To Israel (Plus: Lebanese Muslims Pissed That Even Israel Is More Humane Than Syria) [Video]
* UN Human Rights Commission Makes It Official: They Will Only Monitor, Condemn Israel

We know we really ought to care about this. Academic freedom and what not. But honestly, it couldn't happen to a nicer anti-Semite:

To be honest, we are kind of torn about this. For someone who's published a fair amount to get rejected because of the content of their work - it goes against deeply, deeply ingrained sensibilities. But we're not free speech absolutists, and that extends to tenure. So on this issue, we'll choose to die on some other hill.

References:
* US Jewish prof. refused tenure due to Shoah views [JPost]

Previously:
* AbbaGav's Inspired Description of Ahmadinejad
* British Journalists Put Holocaust Denial On The Spectrum Of Respectable Positions
* Over 100 Iranians Condemn Iran's Holocaust Denial Conference

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

And now, a little bit of MR's least read yet consistently updated pet peeve: Walmart's inability - despite having a logistical system that makes the US military look like a 7 year old's lemonade supply chain - to get their Nazi t-shirts out of Walmart stores. Recently discovered locations that are still selling the t-shirts, which bear the insignia of the Nazi 3rd SS Division Totenkopf, almost 30 weeks after Walmart promised to get them off the shelves:

* Washington, DC
* Clemsford, MA
* Commerce City, CO

We've got an idea that'll get Walmart's attention: find 5 places in the country where they're still selling the t-shirts. Surreptitiously replace the Nazi symbol with a picture of Mohammed's face. Then leak it to CAIR and let them leak it to some of their more "moderate" mosques. The ensuing "nice store, you wouldn't want anything to happen to it just because you're selling pictures of Mohammed" tidal wave of "concerns" will get be more than enough to Walmart moving.

Because apparently the idea of not selling Nazi insignia just because Jews might get offended isn't really all that much of a motivator any more.

References:
* 3rd SS Division Totenkopf [Consumerist]

Previously:
* Walmart Declares That They'll Be Done Getting Rid Of Their Nazi T-Shirts... Reasonably Soon
* MR Readers Want To Know: Is Walmart Still Selling Nazi Shirts For the 25th Week In A Row? Why Yes, Yes They Are.
* Can We Get Someone To Please Do Something About The Nazi T-Shirts Walmart Is Selling?

Public diplomacy - having put its faith in the ability of governments to appeal directly to foreign populations - is not precisely a home of radical right-wing sensibility. It presumes, among other things, that people who hate America or Israel do so for the reasons that they give, and that if those reasons are answered then their hate will be somewhat mitigated. We're pretty sure that people claim to believe anti-Israel and anti-American lies because they already hate Israel and the US, not the other way around.

Still, this is a matter of sensibility. We're talking about a community of scholars who are at their furtherest right still well left of center. And within the public diplomacy community, Israeli Prof. Eitan Gilboa is easily among one of the more prominent scholars. So it's worth noting how totally conclusive he is about the motives behind the British boycott:

You can quibble with his solution - to demonstrate Israeli good will by appealing directly to the British public in the form of expanded cooperation. But when an international scholar of not exactly rightist reputation is saying these things about colleagues in other universities - to say nothing of his low opinion of Israeli useful idiots - then intellectualized anti-Semitism has gone from nudge-nudge wink-wink to openly vicious and vaguely genocidal.

References:
* Cooperation is the answer [YNet]

Previously:
* US Public Diplomacy, Tact Don't Extend To Israel
* This Is Why Public Diplomacy Will Fail - Islamists Take It Over And Use It For Propaganda
* Public Diplomacy Means Always Having to Say You're Sorry

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

Before we begin, here's what the US investigation of the USS Liberty - having concluded that Israel's attack on the US spy ship was an accient - said about anyone who would ignore the overwhelming evidence that they compiled:

And now here's what Australia's The Age recently allowed to muddy their opinion page:

We love the phrase "If blank did..." It allows you to get away with making the most baseless insinuations and then jumping to wild conclusions. "If The Age is run by a bunch of viciously anti-Semitic Martians hell-bent on enslaving humanity, we have to make the hard decisions and nuke them immediately". Jagoffs.

Anyway, the slow infiltration of the Anglosphere - the birthplace and home of circumspection as a cultural value - is actually becoming a little troubling. We expect vicious demogaugoury from certain European circles - not a few authors have noted that anti-Semitism is almost palpably in the air on the Continent. It occassionally condences into wild swings of public opinion, but what's happening here is a little different. In Britain and Australia it's much harder to get public opinion moving - but it's also harder to alter its course once it picks up a certain inertia (h/t: MR reader Lana)

References:
* Return Of The USS Liberty [Honest Reporting]
* Six Days Of War 40 Years Of Secrecy

Previously:
* 4 Out Of 5 American Jews Agree - Self-Destruction Really Does Taste Better
* Telegraph Publishes Demonstrably False, Vicious Anti-Israel Libel As Fact - USS Liberty Edition
* Dead Horse Story of the Day: USS Liberty Bombing An Accident

Actually, there are more militant feminists subscribed Hottie Wednesdays than there are total MR readers who seem interested in this Walmart scandal. While we're at it, the general lack of outrage from the Jewish community about this 22 week issue is frankly staggering. We don't understand where the resources are going - is Mel Gibson making Passion II and we just didn't get the memo? Anyway, this is called the blogger's prerogative to abuse the patience of the reader:

Well, let's give Walmart the benefit of the doubt: maybe they just don't have a very well-development distribution and tracking system. Although - we bet they would build one real fast if the face of Mohamed had made its way onto a t-shirt.

References:
* Walmart Nazi Tshirt Watch: Week 25 [Consumerist]

Previously:
* Update: Walmart Still Doesn't Care Enough To Pull Nazi T-Shirts
* Walmart Declares That They'll Be Done Getting Rid Of Their Nazi T-Shirts... Reasonably Soon
* Can We Get Someone To Please Do Something About The Nazi T-Shirts Walmart Is Selling?

And we're done with week 1 of the UCI MSU's annual anti-Israel hatefest. This year they've really outdone themselves by actively searching for how to be most offensive - in this case, claiming the Holocaust as their own and diluting the horror committed to Jews - and wrapping it up in the thinnest of nudge-nudge wink-wink liberal veneers. Bravo.

It's just insane out there. Reut Cohen has been doing her best to document some of the more absurd atrocities, but she's being overwhelmed both by the Muslims and by the flaming incompetence of what passes as Jewish leadership on today's American college campuses:

She's got video on that, but we've not going to embed it because we're hoping that for every 10 of you that go over there, at least one will RSS her. And that'll be one more person reading about the surreal swamp of anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that has spread across the UC Irvine campus. You should also click through to this post, which has video of Churchill that moved Reut to dub him "one of the most hateful individuals [she's] ever come across". Bold words for a UC Irvine Jewish student.

Besides, we're not particularly concerned with reminding you that Churchill is an overly pretentious, woefully undereducated, not very bright anti-Semite (nb. he's not an anti-Semite because he criticizes Israel - he's an anti-Semite because the viciousness with which he criticizes Israel is so incongruent to the actual facts that there must be something far more vicious driving him). But again, whoever doesn't know that already can't be helped by us. Psychotropic drugs are the minimum that they need.

That said, here'swhat concerns us:

That, unless we're very much mistaken, is what the kids refer to as "physical intimidation". It should also be what campus security referred to as "physical intimidation", but it was against a Jewish student so we can understand how it because "free speech". What kind of "speech" was being expressed by insinuating that the mob was getting the small Jewish girl "on tape" is kind of beyond us, but maybe the academic interpretation of free speech is just so much more nuanced. Not that this "small Jewish girl" isn't perfectly capable of swatting the gnat that won't stop buzzing around her. But she shouldn't have to - and she certainly shouldn't have to physically stand alone in the crowd without some representation from the major Jewish campus organizations. Maybe they were too busy serving Ward Churchill cake - actually, wait, they were too busy serving Ward Churchill cake. Incidentally, if you'd like to let the UC Irvine administration understand that you think dimly of their refusal to shield a dissenting student from physical harassment, Reut has details and documentation of the incident here.

Let's not mince words: the fact that Reut gets virtually no support from the official UCI Jewish student organizations - and that at times she and Hillel work at cross-purposes because she's insufficiently accepting of radical Muslims - represents a staggering failure on the part of the organizations that are supposed to be grooming Jewish student leaders. The few students that are willing to stand up to anti-Semitic thugs are getting overwhelmed by waves and waves of anti-American and anti-Israel campus activity, driven by radicalism and effective because it has the loose organization of a criminal gang. An ostensibly pro-Israel organization gave Ward Churchill a t-shirt to sarcastically wear around while he wailed pathetically about how he's being persecuted by Jews neo-conservatives.

References:
* Clips from Churchill's Lecture [Reut Cohen]
*Video: Ward Churchill on Anti-Semitism, Terrorism and Israel [Reut Cohen]
* Ward Churchill Speaks at UCI Sponsored by the MSU [Reut Cohen]
* Ward Churchill on 9/11 and "Little Eichmanns" [Reut Cohen]

Previously:
* UC Irvine Muslims Attacking and Slandering MR - SCORE!
* Jimmy Carter To Visit UC Irvine. Perfect.
* As Far As Smirking Anti-Semitism Goes, UC Irvine Muslims Have Really Outdone Themselves

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

When you're a member of an organization that ranges from the counterproductive to the hateful, you have two choices: try to reform it or conclude that the mob is too big, rabid, or dedicated - and cut off your ties with them. For years, Jewish members of the American (and international) left have been insisting that the wave of anti-Semitism sweeping their movements is a reason for them to stay involved and fight harder. The center-right - and we flatter ourselves that we can still make a claim to that designation - has been insisting with equal vehemence that the contemporary left has too much invested in the tangled web of anti-Americanism, anti-globalism, anti-militarism, and latent anti-Semitism to be reformed. The proof, as they say, is in the pudding:

You want some confirmation of Rosenberg's intuition that the activist left is too defensively myopic to entertain criticism - or be amenable to reform? Go check out the comments on his post. We'd make some random selections (there's certainly enough viciousness to make that easy) - but we don't want to be accused of cherry-picking. It's typical "stop trying to use accusations of anti-Semitism to stifle legitimate criticism of Israel" - except as always (a) no one is doing that and (b) it's been a long time since any criticism of Israel in any form was "stifled".

Because you know that this kind of stuff - including the designations as top post and the comment from Kos himself - are just some peripheral bad apples:

Four out of every five American Jews regularly vote to empower politicians slavishly obedient to these people.

References:
* Jewish Daily Kos Member Quits Over Rampant 'Israel Bashing' [NewsBusters]
* Goodbye Daily KOS
* MR Has A Question For Democratic Jews: Are You Fucking Retarded?

Previously:
* The Ugly Left - Failed Singer Reunites With Harvard ...
* Blogish Anti-Semitic Stereotypes, Now With More Funny
* Does Kos Just Get to Make Things Up Now?

Los Angeles has the largest Israeli ex-pat population on the planet. Yes, larger than even NYC - no offense meant to our friends in the Capital of the World, but your burekas suck and your hummus is not nearly as good as you think it is. But if you think that "it couldn't happen here", you are very much mistaken:

Now admittedly the message is a little... unclear. Doesn't the note kind of sound like a rightwing Jew complaining that Weiss is a Nazi because he doesn't care about Jewish American children (ala settlers calling Rabin, Barak, Sharon, etc Hitlers or IDF troops Nazis). We kind of doubt that's what's going on though: (1) most people simply aren't that crazy and (2) as Rick Richman explained late last year, Weiss is one of the good guys. It's more likely, this is just a random quote that the LAT took from the notes because they were totally incoherent, LA Observed says that there was white supremacist graffiti included in the vandalism, which means that this is probably just a straightforward hate crime. But no matter how it turns out, LA is seeing a spike of anti-Semitic hatred across the board:

It could very much happen here.

References:
* Swastikas pasted on councilman's office [LAT]
* Israeli Troops Are Not Nazis, Criticism Of The Right Edition [MR]
* The Children and Missiles of Sderot [JPundit]
* Swastika at Jack Weiss' office [LA Observed]

Previously:
* UC Irvine Gives Interview to Anti-Semitic Hate Group, Wonders Why Everyone Thinks There's Anti-Semitism on Their Campus
* USC Muslim Student Union Slips Into Open Anti-Semitism
* ADL Thinks Real Hard, Identifies Religious Threat to American Jews - Christians!

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit
* The Astute Bloggers

Looks like Brown University is in some pretty good company when it comes to conferences that mask their anti-Semitism by calling it "anti-Zionism":

We love how the answer to "you're creating an environment of vicious anti-Semitism" is "that's not against our rules". These people run Universities. Wrap your mind around that.

References:
* Pro-Israel group decries UC Santa Cruz `new anti-Semitism'
* Brown University Outrage: Anti-Israel Academics Organize Conference To Attack Pro-Israel Critics, Shut Out Pro-Israel Speakers and Students [MR]

Previously:
* Reminder: Hysterical Anti-Zionism Doesn't Get You Off The Hook For Bigoted Anti-Semitism
* Muslim Anti-Semitism Is Not Anti-Zionism. No, Really. It's Not.
* Even 40 Years Ago, Anti-Zionism was Already Anti-Semitism

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

UC Irvine blogger Reut Cohen is all over this latest outrage:

The only Holocaust survivor that they've brought in to speak also happens to be a member of the International Solidarity Movement. The other two speakers are as follows: a lunatic anti-Semitic anti-Zionist imam from DC and a disgraced plagiarist who makes ever our academic commitment look admirable. If you guessed that the latter is Ward Churchill - and that UCI's Muslim Student Union managed to wrap anti-Americanism into their annual week of particularly intense Israel hatred - then you're the big winner. In a manner of speaking.

References:
* "Holocaust Memorial Week" Hosted by the MSU, SPJ and WSA [Reut Cohen]

Previously:
* Google Trends: Lots of People in Irvine Have Weird Tendency to Sound Like Anti-Semites
* Two Videos: Daniel Pipes Shouted Down At UC Irvine - UCI Administration Proud Of Insane Muslim Student Union Hate Speech
* UC Irvine Muslims Attacking and Slandering MR - SCORE!

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

The degree to which this pontiff can do no wrong is just getting kind of absurd at this point:

There's even a section that emphasizes how literal interpretations of holy texts risk fundamentalism. That, you'll remember, was the central issue during last year's anti-Pope riots. It's also one of the central sensibilities that seperates Judaism and Catholicism on one side from the dominant interpretations of Islam on the other side. Not that this has anything to do with the Pope's stance on anti-Semitism - we assume that just comes from being a hell of a guy.

Bonus preempt: on the Pope's stance on gay ordination.

References:
* World's Roman Catholic bishops to face anti-Semitism [JPost]
* Yes, the Pope Is Catholic - His Argument vs. Hitchens's Straw-Version of His Argument (Plus, We Ask Hitch To Come Home) [MR]
* Believing Too Little and Believing Too Much (Plus: Surprise! Pope Benedict Doesn't Hate Gays) [MR]

Previously:
* Benedict Media Coverage Wrapup
* BBC: Maybe Pope Benedict Is Not So Stupid After All
* NYT Editors Condescend to Pope Benedict XVI, Complain That His Really Good Points Hurt People's Feelings

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

So then there was the time that Walmart didn't bother removing shirts with Nazi insignia for three months. And then there was that other time a little bit later when Congress investigated, which led to sincere promises of quick resolution on Walmart's part.

And now there's the time, an amazing 22 weeks after they first found out about the shirts, where Walmart has still not removed the shirts:

And that's what a global conspiracy gets us - tentacles in government offices, business headquarters, and media newsrooms, but no way to get storm trooper t-shirts pulled off the shelves at Walmart. You know that those things would've been gone in a day if they were "insensitive to Islam". But Nazi insignia? Apparently not insensitive enough to Jews to pull. We ask again, as we've asked many times: why isn't the ADL all over this? They're hypersensitive to every other perceived slight against Jews anywhere in the US - but take an actual instance of something that smacks of celebrating Nazism, and nada.

References:
* Can We Get Someone To Please Do Something About The Nazi T-Shirts Walmart Is Selling?
* Walmart Declares That They'll Be Done Getting Rid Of Their Nazi T-Shirts... Reasonably Soon
* Walmart Nazi Tshirt Watch: Week 22 [Consumerist]

Previously:
* Global Mainstreaming Of Anti-Semitism, EU Parliament Edition
* No One Is Seriously Using "Accusations Of Anti-Semitism" To Stifle "Legitimiate Criticism Of Israel". Seriously.
* Nazi Toy Soldiers In Korean Apple Seller Store (Plus: Multiculturalism Is An Excuse)

In a more or less sensible discussion of the latent anti-Semitism and rank hypocrisy of the British anti-Israel boycott, Richard Cohen has to go and say this:

We hereby call bullshit and shenanigans on this nonsense. Bullshit because nobody does this. Shenanigans because we're getting a little bit tired of this fetishistic journalistic urge to "acknowledge" that pro-Israel organizations are in control of public discourse about Israel. It kind of hurts to have to point it out: the very fact that journalists are always talking about how pro-Israel organizations stifle criticism of Israel is logically necessary evidence that pro-Israel organizations do not control public discussion. Now conspiracy theory lunatics can always answer this point by theorizing that the Israel Lobby allows criticism of itself so that people won't know how truly in control it is. But that sort of paranoia can get you locked up in the loony bin - and should get you locked up.

But maybe we're wrong. Maybe Jewish organizations really are suffocating any criticism of Israel. It's just that we can't hear the wheezing and coughing over the din of millions and millions of solitary sophisticates and intellectuals flooding the airwaves with criticism of Israel. The internet being what it is, there's a very real chance that there are more leftists complaining about how Jews call them anti-Semitic than there are actual, living Jews.

References:
* Why Boycott Israel? [WaPo]

Previously:
* If Anti-Zionism Isn't Supposed to Be Anti-Semitism, Someone Should Probably Tell the Anti-Zionists
* Anti-Semitism as Anti-Zionism
* Mainstreaming of Anti-Semitism (Comedy Festival Edition)

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

Lynn-B is exploring a particularly ugly strain of evangelical anti-Semitism. One of the angles you can take on this story is that evangelical anti-Semitic conspiracies are not dead:

This is obviously a problem. Anyone who says that they're totally comfortable with the Israeli-evangelical alliance is either naive or ideologically obtuse (or lying).

But at worst, latent evangelical anti-Semitism is a reason to make alliances with evangelicals who are trying to fight that anti-Semitism. Now the hard question: if there are anti-Semites in both the Democratic and evangelical ranks, why do we keep advocating alliances with evangelicals of good intention but not Democrats of good intentions.

This is a critical distinction: we have yet to see compelling evidence that the Democratic party can be pulled out of their inchoate, seething swamp of self-righteous, anti-Semiticish talk of the "Israel Lobby" and "New York moneypeople". By now they're not just showing their fangs, they're viciously snarling. This is the viciousness of betrayal - Democrats have taken the Jewish vote for granted for so long that they take criticism as a personal insult. It's like a dysfunctional relationship, where the husband reacts with irrational anger to a wife who begins to show independent interests and opinions. Like we said, the divorce is going to be ugly.

Oh, and one last thing: of course we admit that there's a healthy strain of latent evangelical anti-Semitism. We're just not sure it's in the Republican party.

References:
* Nuts with a vengeance
* Screw The Democratic Party
* The Democratic Party and American Jews: The Divorce Is Going To Be Ugly
* Is Jimmy Carter Just An Old-Fashioned Christian Fundamentalist, Anti-Semitic Bigot?

Previously:
* ADL Thinks Real Hard, Identifies Religious Threat to American Jews - Christians!
* USC Muslim Student Union Slips Into Open Anti-Semitism
* American Library Association: Zionism Is Racism

What a bunch of dumbasses:

There's a lot more where that came from. Lots of neat stuff about how Israel's government is responsible for the rockets falling on Israeli civilians. Which means that it's responsible for the fact that Hamas members hate Jews for religious reasons that stretch back millennia. Which means that the Israeli government needs to pass some environmental legislation ASAP, because Israeli kids are obviously ingesting large amounts of lead.

In other news, a Hamas preacher cited the Koran in his call for absolute and unremitting genocide against Jews. You know how we found that story? By typing "hamas jews" into Google News. Because that's always what Hamas is saying. It's not like these people are bashful, ya know?

References:
* Leftist lights torch for Fatah commander at alternative ceremony [YNet]
* Hamas preacher cites Koran in calling for mass murder of Jews [Israel Insider]

Previously:
* European Media Bias - Really?
* NATO Softens Up Israel
* Palestinian Government Publishes Holocaust Denial On Web As Part Of ''We?re Not Even Trying To Hide It Any More'' Campaign (Also: The Rhetoric of Anti-Semitism - Introduction)

Up 50 percent, and qualitatively more violent:

You know who we feel for? The poor, downtrodden anti-Zionists who are being persecuted all over Western Europe for their brave and lonely stand against Israel. Like Tony Greenstein of the self-hating Jews Against Zionist - if only they had a little more popular support, they would be able to fight back against the suffocating pro-Israel censorship in Europe and get their message out to the world. Seriously, our hearts just bleed for them.

Exit preempt: we're not calling him a self-hating Jew because he opposes Israel. We're calling him a self-hating Jew because he supports people and campaigns that lead to actual violence against Jews. Also see Meryl's post on what these statistics say about anti-Semitism vs. Islamophobia.

References:
* Report: Anti-Semitic attacks up 50% [JPost]

Previously:
* Anti-Semitism as Anti-Zionism
* Reminder: Hysterical Anti-Zionism Doesn't Get You Off The Hook For Bigoted Anti-Semitism
* Muslim Anti-Semitism Is Not Anti-Zionism. No, Really. It's Not.

Making suitable adjustments for nuance at the edges, how we publicly remember and mourn the past is a function of the words we have to talk about it. Linguistic invention and destruction happen all the time, of course, but it happen sslowly and jarringly. As Orwell knew, losing a word very often means losing the concept that goes with it. Last year we wrote about the Orwellian underpinnings of the term "anti-Semitism". It was created out of whole cloth by German racists who wanted to make institutionalized Jew hatred seem respectable and scientific. And they more or less won - "anti-Semitism" is how you label Jew hatred in English.

We've also talked a little local and global campaigns to dilute even the term "anti-Semitism". From the UN to local letters to the editor, people want to change "anti-Semitism" from meaning "hatred for Jews" to meaning "hatred for Semites". There are two goals here: (1) to make it impossible to specifically accuse Arabs of anti-Semitism (because they're Semites too) and (2) to make it impossible to talk about hating Jews in any general way (since the specific word for it would be gone).

And just in case you were willing to consider that these campaigns are the result of innocent linguistic naivety: Bill Poser over at Language Log has caught one in a moment of startling and unintentional honesty:

Ahmadinejad has been going about this all wrong. Denying the Holocaust is an uphill battle - if you want to destroy people's ability to remember it, it's much easier to destroy the language they have to talk and think clearly about it.

References:
* The Nizkor Project
* "Dr. Maxtor" and Anti-Semitism [Language Log]
* The Orwellian Origin and Development of the Term "Anti-Semitism" [MR]
* More Evidence of New Anti-Israel Rhetorical Strategy: Orwellian Destruction of Language [MR]
* Ahmadinejad target of Holocaust Remembrance Day speakers

Previously:
* Over 100 Iranians Condemn Iran's Holocaust Denial Conference
* Europe Remembers the Holocaust
* Reuters Coverage Of Iran's Holocaust Conference: Sigh

Cross-posted to:
* The Astute Bloggers

Sigh:

Never again. (h/t: MR reader Efrat)

References:
* Finding a 60-year-old treasure

Previously:
* Arab and Muslim Conspiracy Theories - Iranian Holocaust Denial Edition
* Europe Remembers the Holocaust
* Linking Zionism to the Holocaust - Not Just Offensive, But Also Stupid

And again:

"Possible" anti-Semitism you say? What about the drawing makes you think it might have been "possible" anti-Semitic?

Oh. Well that certainly does seem like it might "possibly" be anti-Semitic. Honestly, we can't imagine how this happened in an academic environment where such a clear line is drawn between frothing, seething, vicious "anti-Zionism" and outright anti-Semitism.

Stupid anti-Semites. They should have put a Star of David on the board instead of a swastika. Then they could have claimed that their little picture wishing for the murder of Jews was a "stand against Israeli colonialism". Professors across the country would have applauded them for their bravery, and concerned Jewish students would have been attacked for trying to "stifle legitimate criticism of Israel". Oh well. We're sure they'll get it right the next time.

References:
* Anti-Semitic sketch found in Bloomberg

Previously:
* Breaking: Hate Reaches Another LA-Area UC Campus - Swastika Graffiti At UCLA
* USC Muslim Student Union Slips Into Open Anti-Semitism
* Aww... Po Baby Doesn't Want To Talk

Cross-posted to:
* Israpundit

They were probably just expressing their "legitimate criticism of Israeli policies:

These guys too - just your average anti-Israel activism:

At least the first one is being investigated as a hate crime. With the second one, gosh we just don't know - could be any explanation, really.

And it's not that we think that all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism, or that all anti-Semitism is tried to opposition to Israel. It's just that the last few years' wave of anti-Israel invective sounds like hate, feels like hate, and keeps resulting in hate crimes. So we're beginning to think that the distinction between the two is a little bit academic. Not like good, rational academic. More like sophistic excuses for vicious anti-Semitism academic.

References:
* FBI Offers Reward In Bomb Scare
* Crude bomb targets Montreal Jewish community centre

Previously:
* Reminder: Hysterical Anti-Zionism Doesn't Get You Off The Hook For Bigoted Anti-Semitism
* Anti-Semitism as Anti-Zionism
* Even 40 Years Ago, Anti-Zionism was Already Anti-Semitism

There's really no point to this video, except maybe to show that you don't have to scratch the "peace movement" very deep before you find some pretty ugly thuggishness. Although the open boasting about how they're intimidating the media might qualify as blogworthy:

Because the problem with Lebanon II is that the global media wasn't representing Hezbollah's side of the conflict fairly. Obviously.

References:
* Muslim Peace Rally [GooTube]

Previously:
* Hezbollah Threatens Tel Aviv - MR Gives You Tomorrow's Pro-Hezbollah Media Spin Today
* Here's the Thing About the Anti-Israel Media: They Lie - Visual Version
* Muslim Peace Rally

Of all the excuses to put on the blood libel known as I Am Rachel Corrie, pretending that you're educating somebody has to be the very dumbest:

Rachel Corrie was in no way extraordinary, nor was she particularly ethical. She was a soppy-eyed, droopy-faced terrorist enabler with a weak will and an identity crises temporarily solved by substituting her incoherent passion about the "plight of the Palestinians" for genuine thought. She was prone to outbursts of the worst kind of empty thuggish boasting, going half way across the world to burn American and Israeli flags because it made her fantasy of being a "resistance fighter" more "authentic". If she hadn't been accidentally killed, she would sitting in her parents' house fabricating tales of glorious anti-Israel battles on MySpace to impress other soppy-eyed, droopy-faced teenage girls who want to drop out of the system, stop shaving their legs because of the patriarchy, and march arm-in-arm with the disempowered in glorious revolution. So yeah, we suppose that her point of view has a right to be expressed - but with a billion blogs of pathetic activists writing poetry about how desperately awful the world is and how their parents just don't understand them, do we really need one more?

Who cares if it was an accident or not? She was guarding a terrorist tunnel. She had the opportunity to move. She counted on the Israeli army that she spit on to protect her in a way that no Palestinian terrorist would ever spare an Israeli. But having never really been told that the universe won't go out of its way to protect her from the consequences of her stupidity, she didn't bother to check whether the soldier could even see her. He couldn't. She died trying to help the Palestinians develop a terrorist infrastructure to blow up Israeli children. No pity. Sic semper ill-raised burnout hippies living out their half-formed, latently anti-Semitic fantasies of violence and martyrdom.

Anyway, this article is about how Seattle Jewish organizations are rising to the challenge of answering the artistic left's anti-Israel propaganda. Click through if you're interested...

References:
* Rachel Corrie, spotlighted yet again [JPost]

Previously:
* OK, Sure She's A Terrorist Enabler - But The Kids Love Her
* What You Get When You Vote For Democrats - Why Would John Edwards Say Something As Stupid As "Israel Is the Greatest Threat To World Peace"?
* American Liberal Activists Are So Cute, With Their Smugness And Their Superiorly And Their Not Being Very Smart

This afternoon's One Jerusalem conference call was with former House Majority Leader Tom Delay. On the call with us were Jim Hoft (Gateway Pundit), Pamela Geller Oshr (Atlas Shrugs), Anne Lieberman (Boker Tov, Boulder), and Daled Amos (Daled Amos). As always, Allen Roth was moderating the call and audio will be made available soon on the One Jerusalem frontpage.

Let's not mince words: the Republican situation going into 2008 is dire. As if there weren't enough real reasons to be disillusioned with the Bush administration, the Democrats have added a new arrow to their quiver: making shit up. The media's handling of the attorney firing dust-up is more or less proof positive that there's nothing Democrats can't turn into a scandal. We have reached a point where Ann Coulter is actually sounding reasonable when she talks about how it's "illegal to be Republican."

The Left is united ideologically, financially, and politically. If you're not worried yet, go check out David Horowitz's Discover the Networks site. They've got a database that tracks how Leftist donors, activists, and organizations have begun pooling their money and making common electoral cause. This isn't your parents' identity politics, where women and blacks used to march together to show solidarity. This is about politically obliterating the Republican party and bureaucratically stymieing conservative causes - which, in today's landscape, includes the pro-Israel movement.

In response, Delay is trying to reinvigorate grassroots activism. He's pushing a grassroots site called Coalition for a Conservative Majority, which will hopefully become a virtual clearinghouse for grassroots causes. He's even started his own blog, and it's quite good. The posts are being written by someone signing as "NJ Conservative", and it actually reads like an real blog - the the look is right and the tone is right. It's as good a step as any other - something needs to be done, and fast, to unite the right against what's rapidly emerging as one of the most organized political juggernauts in recent memory.

In the non-Internet world Delay has a new book out titled No Retreat, No Surrender. It's an autobiography, not a theoretical work - but it does its job of outlining broad contours and values for a kind of revived successful conservative movement. Here's one of the parts about Israel:

Over and over and over again, evangelicals insist that their alliance with Israel is built on the most laudatory of values and mandated by Christian faith. And over and over and over again, the left slanders this alliance. Most recent and stark example: Wonkette West Coast overlord Ken Layne:

So on one side you've got every important evangelical in the country insisting that evangelicals have to support Israel on the basis of genuine affection and Biblical injunction. They say it in interviews, they preach it to their parishioner, they write it in their books, and they print it on the back of pamphlets.

On the other side, you've got millions upon millions of liberals who have transformed their apocalypse myth into conventional wisdom. This slanderous nonsense is a token of sophistication in a breathtaking number of liberal corners. Which gets back to Delay's central point: Democrats can make up anti-conservative stories out of whole cloth, and they still get disseminated as if they were totally reasonable positoins. That's the kind of coalition that the Republicans face in 2008, and it spans. political, journalistic, media, and academic forums. And time is running out to counter-organize.

Full disclosure: I blog for Gridskipper, which is owned by Gawker Media, the same company that owns Wonkette

References:
* One Jerusalem
* Shooting Elephants in a Barrel
* Discover the Networks
* Coalition for a Conservative Majority
* Tom Delay
* OneJerusalem.org Conference Call: Pastor John Hagee, Senior Pastor of Cornerstone Church [FAQ: Debunking Liberal Myths About Evangelical Support For Israel] [MR]
* John Edwards Expresses Concern Over Israel-Iran War, Loses Nomination [Wonkette]

Previously:
* JPost Drops Bombshell: Democrats Illegally Communicating With Hamas Terrorists
* Democrats Take a Brave Stand Against Israeli Self-Defense Israeli Self-Defense and Other Stuff Too
* [Video] What You Get When You Vote For Democrats - Empowering Conspiracy Theory Wackos

Actually, we kind of think that if you're a leftist anti-Zionist then you probably are anti-Semitic, since you likely support self-determination for every ethnic group except Jews. But that's not the point of this post.

There seems to be this weird idea in leftist rhetoric that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism are mutually exclusive. Like you can't be both an anti-Zionist and an anti-SAemite at the same time, so if you declare yourself to be an anti-Zionist then you get a pass on anti-Semitism (how convenient...) The result is predictable: UC Irvine Muslims hire speakers who hatefully spit out conspiracies about "Zionist Jews" who control the media, the banks, and the US government. But it's supposed to be OK, because they're talking about Zionist Jews, not all Jews. Except they're not - it's a nudge-nudge wink-wink that everyone gets, and when they say "Zionist Jew" they mean "Jew".

Also, it results in this:

Now of course, this vicious bigot would have described his assault on Wiesel as anti-Zionist, because the "Holocaust myth" supports Israel. We're not interested in going through a long psychoanalysis of why, no, actually, this guy really is an anti-Semite. For this post, we just want to establish a very obvious,, very limited point: someone can be anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic at the same time. It's not as if this is a tough concept. And yet anti-Israel activists act as if they get a free pass when they smear Israelis with anti-Semitic accusations of well-poisoning, double-loyalty, etc - all because the Jews they happen to be talking about are also Israel.

So the point bears a little repeating: some people are both anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. Watch, we can even prove it rigorously:

(1) Some people oppose Israel's existence because they hate Jews
(2) We call people who oppose Israel "anti-Zionist"
(3) We call people who hate Jews "anti-Semitic"
(4) Therefore, some people who are anti-Zionist because they are anti-Semitic. QED.

Declaring oneself to be an anti-Zionist shouldn't get you off the hook for anti-Semitic invective - and yet, in far too many progressive movements, it most certainly does.

References:
* Amir Abdel Malik Back On The UC Irvine Campus [MR]
* Wiesel’s Near-Abduction by Holocaust Deniers Weirdly Uncovered [Observer]

Previously:
* Even 40 Years Ago, Anti-Zionism was Already Anti-Semitism
* If Anti-Zionism Isn't Supposed to Be Anti-Semitism, Someone Should Probably Tell the Anti-Zionists
* John Mearsheimer - Not Anti-Semitic. Just Anti-Semiticish

[Cross-posted to The Astute Bloggers]

Sulaiman Arain is a fifth year UC Irvine engineering student, and he just had a letter published in UCI's student newspaper. In this letter, he attempts to do his best impression of what political argumentation looks like:

Now, to the extent that the Muslim students he's defending were wearing pro-Intifada shirts (read: not peaceful), this is a little bit dishonest. Also a reason it's dishonest: the UCI Muslim Student Union regularly brings in speakers who celebrate Hezbollah's violent attacks on Israelis. One more reason it's dishonest: having Israel get overrun by the so-called refugees - as he clarifies later, all 10 million of them, up to the fifth generation - would result in an anti-Jewish bloodbath. We're talking about the darkest pits of global anti-Semitism, where resentment and hate have served as the basis for what passes for ideology for half a century.

But let's pretend he's telling the truth, and he's only advocating wiping out the Jewish state - and not any particular Jew (because that's exactly how it would happen). It's still anti-Semitic.

(1) When placed in the context of leftist human rights activism, it often coexists with the claim that just about every ethnic group, no matter how trivially distinct from other ethnic groups, deserves their own state. Except the Jews, who don't. So Palestinians, despite being very close to Egyptians or Jordanians, deserve their own state. But Jews, who have been hounded throughout history, do not. That, it seems to us, is anti-Semitic.

(2) Let's assume that all the lies about Israel are true: it is a genocide-implementing, apartheid-enforcing state. By these measures, it's at worst as bad as Serbia or South Africa. And yet - and this is crucial - no one has ever advocated wiping those states off the map. Both the policy of destroying Israel and the viciousness with which it is advocated point to something particularly illogical and ugly - in a word, anti-Semitism.

Oh, and one more thing:

The thing about Palestinians guaranteeing basic human rights to Jews as they're overrunning them with 10 million of the most anti-Semitic people on the planet - stupid. The thing about the right of returning meaning the destruction of Israel - unusually honest. Or at least more honest than the Saudis and the Europeans.

References:
* Calling for Israel’s Destruction Not Anti-Semitic [New University Online]

Previously:
* UC Irvine Course Description: American Unilateralism Responsible For Islamist Barbarism
* FrontPage Writeup On UC Irvine: Jihadism Deeply Entrenched. Nice That UCI Hillel Is Finally Noticing.
* UC Irvine Muslims React to Anti-Terrorism Memorial

We're sure that when he writes "Jews", he actually means Zionists:

"What do you want," asks the institutional anti-Zionist, "People came out against it! Stop complaining!" The worry here is not that this is permissable to say in polite European company - although, honestly, it is permissable. The point is that this is now one of the things that's routinely said out loud. It's condemned by popular opinion, but popular opinion takes notice of it. It's part of the public discourse.

We recently discovered that there's actually a name for this phenomenon. It's called the Overton Window, and it more or less describes how you can move the window of acceptable discourse by saying things even more unacceptable. So once, it would have been absurd to suggest that Israel give up security just to "test" whether the Palestinians will kill them this time. But in a world where global leaders and Western media outlets are openly questioning Israel's right to exist - well, opening the borders and hoping for the best seems positively tame.

We live in a world where the most vile anti-Semitism is openly aired in the halls of power - and they're getting more shameless about it every single day.

References:
* EU parliament deputy's Anti-Semitic booklet sparks outrage [Ha'aretz]
* Anti-Semitism: France’s National Shame [FrontPage]
* Overton Window [Wikipedia]

Previously:
* Global Mainstreaming Of Anti-Semitism, South Korea Edition
* Global Mainstreaming of Anti-Semitism, Comedy Festival Edition
* Global Mainstreaming Of Anti-Semitism, Hollywood Edition

Well that's nice. From an AP report filed last week - it looks like people at Hillel have noticed that something's not quite right on UCI's campus. The Zionist Organization of American has had a discrimination lawsuit pending against the UCI administration for two years, so it's nice to see that the center-left Jewish groups have taken notice:

That little "hearsay" dig was added because students have been asking Hillel to be more militant for years, more or less to no avail. The solution proposed by the Hillel leadership has almost always defaulted to "more dialogue" with the Muslim students bringing in speakers who literally advocate genocide (wonder what those conversations would've been like...) So yeah, one might say that "there's a lot of people who are really concerned". Ah well, better late than never.

For bonus eyerolling, click through to the story and read the quotes from Hillel officials trying to wrap their minds around the situation. "There esems to be... an atmosphere of dislike for the state of Israel". Hey, you think? No really, these people are very good at their jobs.

References:
* Jewish group forming task force on anti-Semitism at UC Irvine [SF Gate]

Previously:
* UC Irvine Gives Interview to Anti-Semitic Hate Group, Wonders Why Everyone Thinks There's Anti-Semitism on Their Campus
* Terrrorists Hiding in Plain View at UC Irvine
* UC Irvine Outrage - Muslim Student Union Brings In Rabid Anti-Semite

Honestly - dozens upon dozens of eminent sophisticates and scholars devote their time to excusing the most vicious anti-Semitism as "justified criticism of Israel" or "anti-Zionism". What did you expect to happen?

The explicit characterization of Jews as the root cause of social ills - or as the single barrier blocking utopian ambitions - is particularly scary. That's always the element that really gives ummpf to genuinely genocidal projects. But even that has been reintroduced only because of the pervasiveness of fashionable, intellectual anti-Zionism. You're used to hearing it as the claim that resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will solve all of the problems in the Middle East. But it's essentially the same claim - but for the Jews, most of the problems in the world would go away.

References:
* Wiesenthal Center denounces ‘Nazi-like depiction of Jews’ in book [MR]

Previously:
* Walt and Mearsheimer Week 3 - Enough With the "Oh But They're So Qualified" Thing
* Arab and Muslim Conspiracy Theories - Iranian Holocaust Denial Edition
* Jew Banned From Wearing Star Of David Because It Pisses Off His Muslim Students

Hot Air nails exactly the right angle on the Cairo Mein Kampf book selling extravaganza:

And for what it's worth, that collapse is going to happen very, very soon:

And Carter's even wrong about how both sides observing Camp David. The Egyptians have failed to live up to their treaty obligations over and over again. And in recent years, they've all but explicitly broken the treaty several times. Even the book fair can be seen as an (albeit implicit) violation of the cultural normalization clauses in the Accords, but that's not as bad as when the Egyptian government officially declared that places like Eilat are Palestinian land. That is a direct and open and flagrant violation of the parts of Camp David where Egypt commits to recognizing Israeli sovereignty over all of mandated Palestine except Gaza and the West Bank.

But hey, at least they haven't been armed to the teeth by decades of US arms transfers. And at least their radicals aren't pursuing nukes. And at least Israel still has the Sinai as a buffer zone in case war breaks out. Jimmy Carter - globetrotting peacemaker!

Previously: Carter Should Not Be Accepting Boatloads Of Money From Radical Islamists, Egypt To Pursue Nuclear Program, Olmert's Disclosure Of Israel's Nuclear Capability: At Wost, Harmless

We tend to do a lot of futile screaming about the blase acceptance of genocidal anti-Semitism as just another point on the political spectrum. People tend to do a lot of eye-rolling at us. While we hesitate to extrapolate from a single data point, here's a Hollywood writer equating those who would ostracize anti-Semites (rightly or wrongly) with those who would ostracize anti-McCarthy activists. The context is Mel Gibson's Academy Award possibilities, and the Jewish voters who influence same:

Charming. This isn't dispositive, of course. Merely symptomatic.

Further reading: Elie Wiesel Isn't Really That Naive - Mainstreaming of Genocidal Anti-Semitism Edition, The Real Problem With Gibson's The Passion, Blog Roundup - 2006-08-24

Yet another report has shown that global anti-Semitism is skyrocketing. New links between European and Muslim countries -and among Europeans, Muslims, and European Muslims - are adding strength to increasingly genocidal hatred and bigotry. Some people are suggesting that this new wave is the result of Israel or of Israeli policies. Those people are either delusion, ignorant, or idiotic.

Anti-Semites don't hate Jews because they oppose Israel.

They oppose Israel because they hate Jews.

Previously: Even 40 Years Ago, Anti-Zionism was Already Anti-Semitism, They Did It Because They Hate Jews, USC Muslim Student Union Slips Into Open Anti-Semitism

We've read these two paragraphs at least ten times. Tell us if we're crazy, but that quote is totally incoherent right?

If a "large... minority" is anti-Semitic, doesn't that mea