It’s All About The Money: Bolton Cancels Appearance Promoting War With Iran Over Speaking Fee
By Eli Clifton | Think Progress | November 3, 2011
The 92nd Street Y and the Clarion Fund are having trouble getting the big names attached to their Iran war mongering panel on Nov. 7. First, New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Ethan Bronner canceled his appearance on the panel after ThinkProgress called attention to Clarion’s history of promoting anti-Muslim documentaries and the upcoming panel discussion’s role in promoting the organization’s bomb-Iran documentary, Iranium. ThinkProgress can now report that former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, an outspoken proponent of military action against Iran, has dropped off the panel as well.
But Bolton, who even appears in the film to warn about the existential threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon, was more concerned with his appearance fee than Clarion Fund’s track record of hyping Islamophobia. A spokesperson at the 92nd St. Y told ThinkProgress:
There were not the funds we originally thought there were to bring John Bolton up. We were very sorry that he couldn’t but that’s what happened.
A source close to John Bolton confirmed that Bolton was not attending the event because of the 92nd St. Y’s inability to pay for his appearance.
Obviously Bolton is free to charge a speaking fee, but given his dire warnings about Iran’s nuclear program and his prominent role in Iranium, it’s interesting that he would only appear at the event if his speaking fee was paid. In Iranium Bolton warns:
I think Iran has as a long-term objective dominance within the Islamic world and dominance in the Middle East as well as becoming a great power internationally. […]
All American administrations have consistently said that they find [that] Iran pursuing nuclear weapons is unacceptable. But unfortunately, unacceptable turns out not really to mean unacceptable. Since the various U.S. governments have not taken adequate steps to prevent Iran from achieving that unacceptable result.
Given Bolton’s prominent role in the film and his regular calls for harsher policies to confront Iran, it’s surprising that the matter of an appearance fee has led him to cancel an opportunity to promote Iranium and warn the country — the event will be simulcast in over 20 locations across the U.S. — about what he believes to be an existential threat. But apparently for Bolton, a notorious proponent of military action and use of force, the lack of a satisfactory speaking fee trumps the importance of warning the country about the threat of a nuclear Iran.
‘Adbusters’ seeks right of reply to ‘NYT”s smear of anti-Semitism and fails to get it
© Adbusters
By Kalle Lasn | Mondoweiss | November 5, 2011
Kalle Lasn here with a story about how the New York Times refused to give Adbusters [which Lasn edits] the right of reply. Here is the chronology of what happened:
1. October 3 letter from Adbusters Kalle Lasn to the editor of the New York Times:
In the wake of the #OCCUPYWALLSTREET movement, the New York Times has twice taken a swipe at Adbusters magazine, originators of the event. David Brooks led the charge in his October 10 column, The Milquetoast Radicals, falsely accusing us of being anti-Jewish.
In an earlier column, Mr. Brooks said: “Jews are a famously accomplished group. They make up about 0.2 percent of the world population, but 54 percent of the world chess champions, 27 percent of the Nobel physics laureates … 37 percent of Academy Award-winning directors … 51 percent of Pulitzer Prize winners for nonfiction” and so on. And yet, in his October 10 column he found something insidious about an article Adbusters ran seven years ago pointing out that 50 percent of the prominent neocons surrounding the Bush administration were Jewish. Why the double standard, Mr. Brooks? How is this different?
Then on October 17, Joseph Berger’s Cries of Anti-Semitism, but Not at Zuccotti Park, quoted an article in a conservative magazine founded by the American Jewish Committee which alleged that “the main organizer behind the movement — Adbusters editor Kalle Lasn — has a history of anti-Jewish writing.” Mr. Berger, why are you uncritically passing on other people’s allegations? Why didn’t you do your own research and come up with your own conclusions?
Adbusters is best known for its deconstruction of advertising, discontent with neoclassical economics and provocative takes on hot button geopolitical issues like the Israeli apartheid in Palestine. I invite readers to visit our web site, leaf through our magazine, look up what we’ve said over the past twenty years and decide for themselves if we are motivated by anti-Semitism or a sense of justice.
It seems the real story here is that I have somehow upset the pro-Israel and anti-Palestine stance that the New York Times has taken over many years in some of its editorials, columns and especially with the reporting by Isabel Kershner and Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief Ethan Bronner. Mr. Bronner is married to an Israeli citizen and has a son who served in the Israeli army. Ms. Kershner also has deep ties to Israel. Their often ahistorical, context-free reporting is partly to blame for what Adbusters has called “the United States of Amnesia.”
I think a cultural shift, a more nuanced and balanced perspective on Israel/Palestine, is in order at one of the great newspapers of the world.
Kalle Lasn Editor in Chief, Adbusters Magazine
2. November 2, New York Times letters department replies:
Mr. Lasn: Your letter as submitted is much too long for our letters column and refers to columns/articles that are now 2 and 3 weeks old. We do acknowledge that you deserve a right of reply, and we’d be willing to consider a much shorter letter that is focused on these two paragraphs:
“Then on October 17, Joseph Berger’s Cries of Anti-Semitism, but Not at Zuccotti Park, quoted an article in a conservative magazine founded by the American Jewish Committee which alleged that “the main organizer behind the movement – Adbusters editor Kalle Lasn – has a history of anti-Jewish writing.” Mr. Berger, why are you uncritically passing on other people’s allegations? Why didn’t you do your own research and come up with your own conclusions?
Adbusters is best known for its deconstruction of advertising, discontent with neoclassical economics and provocative takes on hot button geopolitical issues like the Israeli apartheid in Palestine. I invite readers to visit our web site, leaf through our magazine, look up what we’ve said over the past twenty years and decide for themselves if we are motivated by anti-Semitism or a sense of justice.”
If you’re agreeable, we can edit your letter along those lines and send it to you for review and approval, as we do with all our letters.
Best,
Sue Mermelstein, Letters Dept.
3. November 2, Kalle Lasn letter:
Ms. Mermelstein,
David Brooks’ and Joe Bergers references to Adbusters’ and Kalle Lasn’s anti Jewishness and anti Semitism have caused considerable harm to both our reputations in one of the most prestigious newspapers in the world and therefore I do not think your usual strict rules about length and time delay should apply in this case.
I am not prepared to cut references to David Brooks nor the paragraph that points to a pro-Israel and anti-Palestine culture of bias at the Times without which the basic argument in my letter does not make sense.
I am prepared to work with you to crisp up my letter without losing its basic thrust and argument.
I request that you pass this matter by David Brooks, Joseph Berger and your executive editor and explain to them why it is necessary for us to have a full right of reply in order to salvage the reputation of Adbusters and Kalle Lasn which you have damaged and defamed in a journalistically sloppy way.
I request that, not you in the letters department, but your executive editor make a final decision on whether to run our letter.
Please let me know.
Sincerely,
Kalle Lasn,
Editor in Chief, Adbusters magazine
4. November 2, New York Times’ letters editor responds:
Dear Mr. Lasn:
Thank you for your note to Ms. Mermelstein.
We respect your request for a reply, but we also reserve the right to edit letters in accordance with our standards. We believe that only part of your letter meets those standards.
It is not up to Mr. Brooks, Mr. Berger or the executive editor to decide whether to run a letter.
Sincerely,
Thomas Feyer, Letters Editor
5. November 2, Lasn letter:
Mr. Feyer,
I agree that it is not up to Mr. Brooks or Mr. Berger to decide whether to run the letter — I just thought they should know that a letter has been submitted.
However, given the considerable damage done to the reputations of Adbusters and myself in this matter and the larger political implications this has about the culture of bias at the Times, I think it is appropriate for us to ask for this decision to be made, not by you in the Letters Department, but by your executive editor . . . and I again respectfully ask you to pass this matter by her.
Tell her that we think it would be grossly unfair and against all journalistic standards for the Times not to give Adbusters adequate right of reply in this particular case.
Sincerely,
Kalle Lasn, Editor in Chief, Adbusters magazine
6. November 2, Feyer response:
Dear Mr. Lasn:
There is a wall separating news and opinion at The Times, so the executive editor has no say in what the opinion pages run.
We are willing to give you a chance to respond, but you have to be willing to be edited according to our standards. Everything that appears in The Times is subject to editing.
Sincerely,
Thomas Feyer
7. November 2, Kalle Lasn’s final email, to which there has been no reply:
Mr. Feyer,
I suspect you are refusing to run our letter because it it would once again open up a debate about the anti-Palestine culture at the Times that you do not wish to have.
Seems you have no problem taking swipes at the reputation of Adbusters, but are now unwilling to give Adbusters our legitimate right of reply.
The “chance to respond” you are giving us is grossly fair . . . it forces us to run a substantially watered down version which leaves out the crux of our argument against Mr. Brooks And Mr. Berger and would thus merely perpetuate the myth that there is something anti Semitic about Adbusters and Kalle Lasn.
I request a legitimate right to respond along the lines of our original letter. You have a right to edit our letter but not to neuter it.
I hereby demand that you pass this matter by your executive editor.
sincerely, Kalle Lasn
U.S. “Scholar” Propaganda About Syria
Moon of Alabama | November 3, 2011
A piece in Foreign Policy by Randa Slim, “a scholar at the Middle East Institute”, on the Syrian opposition claims:
a critical mass of Syrians has clearly opted for regime change
It does not provide one fact to support that conclusion. Scanning the news from Syria my impression is that the opposition to Bashar Assad, which obviously never achieved critical mass over the last months, is now shrinking.
Indeed just two days ago the Wall Street Journal prominently headlined: Syrian Activists Say Assad Gains Advantage:
Last week, massive crowds gathered in several cities, including Damascus, to pledge their loyalty to Mr. Assad. Syria’s state television, broadcasting scenes of crowds chanting “The people want Bashar al-Assad,” said some two million people gathered at the capital’s Ummayad Square last Wednesday. It broadcast fresh scenes of a loyalist demonstration in the southern city of Suweida on Sunday.”At one point, what we call the silent majority came to be aligned with the street protests at least from a humanitarian and moral point of view. But now they’ve stepped back again,” Mr. Hussein said.
One can assess the quality of the propaganda messaged by that “scholar at the Middle East Institute” from this passage further down in the FP piece:
Most of the Syrian opposition agrees on a few basic principles: toppling the Assad regime, maintaining the national unity of Syria, and remaining committed to the peaceful nature of the Syrian revolution. But there are sharp disagreements over dialogue with the regime, foreign intervention, and the militarization of the opposition.
So they are committed to a “peaceful” revolution but can not decide whether they want NATO to bomb their country or continue the militant guerrilla war against the regime.
And the discussion about that shows their principle commitments to stay “peaceful”?
If such incoherent writing expresses the “scholar-“ship of Randa Slim and the “Middle East Institute”, readers are advised to dismiss everything coming from that source.
UK army chief secretly visits Tel Aviv
Press TV – November 4, 2011
British military chief General Sir David Richards has secretly visited Tel Aviv earlier this week, the Israeli daily The Jerusalem Post quoted the regime’s military sources as saying.
Richards who is Britain’s Chief of the Defense Staff reportedly held several meetings with the senior commanders of the Israeli regime’s army though there are no details on the subject of his talks.
He also visited the northern parts of the Israeli occupied territories at the regime’s borders with Lebanon.
The secret visit comes as Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are reportedly making efforts to rally enough support in the cabinet to launch a military attack on Iran though an Israeli minister has dismissed a conflict as imminent.
“This issue [of military attack on Iran] should be discussed by the cabinet and put to the vote. But this event has not been taking place yet,” said the minister, who is a member of the eight-member ‘intracabinet’ group opposed to an attack on Iran.
The British media have also reported that Britain is developing plans for military action against Iran through deploying cruise missile-armed submarines and warships near the country’s waters to help a possible US strike.
This comes as it is widely believed that the media hype about an imminent attack on Iran is part of the psychological warfare over Iran’s peaceful nuclear program.
Nevertheless, Iranian officials have repeatedly pledged that any attack on the country will be costly to the aggressors.
Territory of Lies
The Israeli-Occupied Hearing on Alleged Iranian Terror
By Maidhc Ó Cathail | November 4, 2011
In the wake of the much-heralded FBI sting that supposedly foiled a dastardly plot by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard elite Qods Force – involving a bumbling, failed used-car salesman’s botched attempt to hire a reportedly Mossad-trained Mexican drug cartel – to blow up the Saudi ambassador in a crowded but fictitious Washington D.C. restaurant, a duly alarmed U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Homeland Security convened an urgent hearing on “Iranian Terror Operations on American Soil.” As evidence of Tehran’s supposed threat to the Homeland, the Committee heard testimony from “expert witnesses” who could best be described as propagandists for Israel. Commenting on the partisan line-up, an expert on U.S.-Israeli relations remarked, “If it wasn’t so serious, it would be satire.”
Among the five witnesses, two were from “conservative” think tanks closely aligned with the Israel lobby, while a third represented a supposedly more “progressive” pro-Israeli position. The first think-tanker to speak was Reuel Marc Gerecht, who cited his authority on the subject to explain away the Hollywood B-movie nature of the ludicrous murder-for-hire plot. “I might make a slight digression and just say all intelligence services aren’t as good as you think they are. And the Iranians are no exception. They make a lot of mistakes,” claimed the former Middle East specialist in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations. “So do not, for a moment, buy the argument from those who said it cannot be because this is too sloppy. This is the nature of the game. This is how it is done.” Gerecht, currently a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, went on to advocate an escalation of “the war and terror” [sic] against a supposedly emboldened Iran. “If they think they can get away with it, they will push forward, and they did get away with it,” he asserted. “Now, the only way that I would argue that you are going to stop that type of mentality and attitude is that you have to convince them that you will escalate. You don’t want to run away from that word, you want to run towards it.” In a July 19 report on the funding of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Eli Clifton observed that “its hawkish stance against Iran … is consistent with its donors’ interests in ‘pro-Israel’ advocacy.”
Next up was Dr. Matthew Levitt. “It is too early to tell what the consequences of Iran’s assassination plot may be,” he told the hearing, “but there should be no doubt the plot lays bare the myth that sufficient carrots – from offers of dialogue to requests for an emergency hotline to reduce naval tensions in the Gulf – can induce the regime in Tehran to abandon its support for terrorism, part with its nuclear weapons program, or respect human rights.” Instead, Dr. Levitt recommended applying the sticks of diplomatic pressure, pressing regional bodies to expel Iranian diplomats, building an international consensus against Tehran, military pressure, customs controls, financial pressure, and coordination with European and other allies “to allay their fears over the possible unintended consequences” of the latter. Levitt is the director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism & Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank created by AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, to “do AIPAC’s work but appear independent.”
In his testimony, Dr. Lawrence J. Korb counselled against military action, recommending instead that “[t]he Obama administration should use the Iranian plot to convince our allies to recommit themselves to enforcing the current sanctions on Iran.” Concluding by saying that “Iranian aggression toward the United States cannot be tolerated,” the Center for American Progress senior fellow advised the hearing that “it is important that the U.S. response to the Iranian plot furthers our long-term goals: deterring Iranian aggression and protecting U.S. national security.” Dr. Korb’s stated concern for American national security, however, has to be weighed against the two decades the former assistant secretary of defense in the Reagan administration has devoted to working for the release of Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli agent who “did more damage to the United States than any spy in history.”
Sandwiching the testimony by the three think tank fellows were two former U.S. military officers known to be supportive of the hawkish Israeli line on the Middle East. Hyping Iran as “our number one strategic enemy in the world,” retired U.S. Army Gen. Jack Keane suggested “we put our hand around their throat right now.” In 2007, Keane co-authored with Frederick Kagan the American Enterprise Institute-sponsored policy paper entitled “Choosing Victory: A Plan for Success in Iraq” which proposed the so-called “surge” beloved of America’s Israel partisans. Retired Marine Corps Col. Timothy J. Geraghty, who has been echoing all the standard Israeli propaganda against Tehran ever since the 1983 attack on the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit in Beirut under his allegedly negligent command, didn’t hesitate to blame Iranian-backed Hezbollah for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish centre in Buenos Aires. The U.S. ambassador to Argentina at the time, however, has said, “To my knowledge, there was never any real evidence [of Iranian responsibility]. They never came up with anything.”
During the hearing, the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Peter King, called for all Iranian diplomats at the UN to be “kicked out” of the United States for spying. That evening, his provocative statement was given traction through a live interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, who apparently just wanted to know “what’s goin’ on here?” The sincerity of Blitzer’s seemingly ingenuous concern about Iranian espionage on American soil is undermined somewhat by the fact that he was once editor of Near East Report, AIPAC’s bi-weekly newsletter, before serving 17 years with the Jerusalem Post, during which time he authored a sympathetic book on Jonathan Pollard. The title of that “slick piece of damage control” – Territory of Lies – would be a fitting description for the Israeli-occupied hearing on alleged Iranian terror.
~
Maidhc Ó Cathail is a political analyst and editor of The Passionate Attachment.
BBC Shame
By Craig Murray on October 31, 2011
BBC journalism hit a new low today. The BBC News channel devoted only a single sentence to Palestine’s diplomatic coup in gaining full membership of Unesco. It used that single sentence once at 18.23 and once during the following hour. And this is that single sentence:
“Israel says that Unesco’s decision to admit Palestine to full membership will damage the prospects for peace in the Middle East.”
No other view was given, We did not hear what Palestine says, or what Unesco says, or what any of the huge majority of 107 countries which voted for Palestine say. The only view we were given was the Israeli view, and there was no questioning or discussion of that view.
“Israel says” – what an astonishing opening two words to a report on a great day for Palestinian diplomacy. Everyone connected with BBC News should be utterly ashamed. Why don’t we just save the license fee and let Netanyahu’s office broadcast the news instead?
The vote incidentally was 107 to 14. It was a humiliating defeat for US diplomacy. Latvia, Tuvalu and Uzbekistan are among the states which did not follow the US lead against Palestine but which always have done in the past. The USA was also unable to coerce a single African state – I am proud of Africa, and Ghana in particluar.
Here is the list of the pathetic 14, the overwhelmingly defeated states which tried to block Palestine and which either have extreme neo-con governments or are completely susceptible to US aid blackmail – you can decide which are which:
Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Palau, Panama, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Sweden, United States of America, Vanuatu.
US apology demanded for anti-Iran ploy
Press TV – October 31, 2011
Iran has demanded an official apology from the US over its recent anti-Iran allegations and media hype, falsely claiming that Tehran plotted to assassinate the Saudi Arabian envoy to Washington, Press TV reports.
In a recent letter to the US government, Iran has insisted that American authorities must publicly apologize to the Iranian government and its citizens for the false accusations they publicized against Tehran in violation of international norms and regulations.
In the letter, the Iranian government also demanded compensation for material and moral damages caused by the American anti-Iran publicity campaign.
The letter has been handed over to the Swiss Embassy in Tehran which represents US interests in Iran since Tehran and Washington severed diplomatic relations in 1980.
According to the letter, the manufacture of such deceitful scenarios [against Iran] has become a permanent component of US policies against Iran.
The letter further cited the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 as another clear instance of US warmongering based on the dissemination of entirely false allegations.
After killing hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and US soldiers and wasting billions of dollars out of the pockets of American citizens, said the letter, the US has no other way out except to withdraw its military forces from Iraq.
On October 11, the US Justice Department accused Iran of plotting to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Washington Adel al-Jubeir, with help from a man suspected of being a member of a Mexican drug cartel.
‘NYT”s Gordon (who gave us Saddam’s ‘mushroom cloud’) relies on Israeli expert to interpret Saddam
By Philip Weiss on October 28, 2011
Call me conspiratorial, but here’s a story about the Israeli presence in our discourse that makes me want to take a bath. Wednesday’s New York Times ran a story about a collection of Saddam Hussein’s confidential documents that show him to have a conspiratorial turn of mind regarding Israel’s machinations in the Middle East.
But deep in that very story, the reporter, Michael Gordon, says that he relied on an Israeli expert who has access to the archive.
And–surprise—the article is highly favorable to Israel. It paints Saddam Hussein as an anti-semite who routinely misread other leaders and mistakenly saw an American-Israeli conspiracy in several actions of western governments in the 1980s and 90s, and particularly during the Iran-Iraq war.
I know: those Arab conspiracy theorists! But why is the New York Times turning to an Israeli expert? And doing so with so little transparency.
Near the top, the article says that the “voluminous” archive, seized by the Americans when they invaded Iraq in 2003, landed at the National Defense University, that some “outside researchers” examined a “small portion” of the documents, and that 20 documents were made public Tuesday in conjunction with a conference of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
It is not till the tenth paragraph that reporter Michael Gordon states his reliance on an Israeli expert to interpret the documents. Gordon writes that Saddam grievously miscalculated Iranian intentions in 1980, “according to Amatzia Baram, an Israeli expert on Iraq who has studied the documents.” (The article later identifies Hal Brands, an assistant professor at Duke, as another expert who has seen them.)
Here are those 20 documents that the Wilson Center released, on line. I’m guessing it’s a few hundred pages. A lot for a busy reporter to go through.
It is not clear from the article how much of the archive Gordon has gone through himself. It’s not clear how many nuggets Baram found for him. Call me conspiratorial, but I’d like to know.
Just who sent Michael Gordon to Saddam Hussein’s description of New York as a “Jewish city” that brainwashes UN officials? Who sent him to Saddam’s boast from 1982, during the Iran-Iraq war, “Once Iraq emerges victorious, there will not be any Israel… Technically, they are right in all of their attempts to harm Iraq”?
Who is Amatzia Baram? He gave a couple of interviews in the AIPAC newsletter Near East Report in 2002, making the case for ousting Saddam. Look at The Israel Lobby by Walt and Mearsheimer (pp. 259-260); Baram recanted in 2007, saying “If I knew then what I know today, I would not have recommend going to war, because Saddam was far less dangerous than I thought.”
And who is Michael Gordon? A guy with a famous episode of piping bad information about Saddam. In 2002 he paved the way to the Iraq war with an article saying that Saddam was getting nukes– the famous “aluminum tubes… mushroom cloud” piece in 2002, based on brilliant inside sources that proved to be hogwash.
Read Michael Massing’s devastating piece on Gordon’s reporting in the New York Review of Books.
Administration “hard-liners,” Gordon and [Judith] Miller added, worried that “the first sign of a ‘smoking gun’… may be a mushroom cloud.” The piece concluded with a section on Iraq’s chemical and biological weapons, relying heavily on the information supplied by Ahmed al-Shemri. “All of Iraq is one large storage facility,” he was quoted as saying…
Gordon and Miller argue that the information about the aluminum tubes was not a leak. “The administration wasn’t really ready to make its case publicly at the time,” Gordon told me. “Somebody mentioned to me this tubes thing. It took a lot to check it out.” Perhaps so, but administration officials were clearly delighted with the story.
Occupy Wall Street, Palestine solidarity movements smeared as “anti-Semitic”
Maureen Clare Murphy – The Electronic Intifada – 10/28/2011
In a news segment broadcast Wednesday night by ABC 7 News in Chicago, reporter Chuck Goudie claims that there is “a vein of anti-Semitism flowing through the movement that has Jewish leaders concerned.”
I and other activists have responded to this vile smear attack on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement, and the Palestine solidarity movement more generally.
In his report, Goudie purports to expose the “ugly underbelly of Occupy Wall Street” and cherry-picks unrepresentative, isolated cases of anti-Semitic speech to make it seem that anti-Jewish sentiment is a pervasive problem in the OWS movement.
Goudie also attempts to prove his point by saying that Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian-American community leader in Chicago, gave a speech at an Occupy Chicago rally in which Goudie claims Abudayyeh “spoke about destroying Israel.”
The short broadcast includes a seconds-long clip from a YouTube video of Abudayyeh’s speech — which was actually given at a rally held on the anniversary of the US invasion of Afghanistan, not at an OWS rally. Abudayyeh states in the clip “they [the Palestinians] will win their freedom and independence from Israel and from the United States” — a far cry from calling for the destruction of Israel, as Goudie states in his ad hominem attack.
Palestine solidarity conflated with anti-Semitism
Goudie also dangerously conflates Palestine solidarity with anti-Semitism by reporting that demonstrators brought a large Palestinian flag to a protest outside of Chicago City Hall on Wednesday. According to Goudie’s warped logic, a Palestinian flag is somehow a symbol of anti-Semitism because Rahm Emanuel is Chicago’s first Jewish mayor.
In a text report on ABC 7’s website accompanying the video of Wednesday night’s broadcast, Goudie writes, “The I-Team asked a spokesperson for the Occupy Chicago group why they displayed a Palestinian flag outside Mayor Emanuel’s office and why a Palestinian activist would speak about Israel at one of their events. They did not provide a response.”
To Goudie, it can be inferred, any Palestinian symbol of national liberation is inherently anti-Semitic and any Palestinian speaking about Israel an automatic offense.
Goudie also neglects to mention that he only asked Occupy Chicago for a comment less than two hours before his report was broadcast. He does not mention whether he made any attempt to interview Palestine solidarity groups or community organizations in Chicago.
Goudie finds “vein of anti-Semitism” where Jewish organizations don’t
Goudie claims that anti-Semitism in the OWS movement has “Jewish leaders concerned,” but the single representative of a Jewish organization interviewed by Goudie didn’t seem as concerned by the “vein of anti-Semitism” that is keeping Goudie up at night.
“There have been some isolated incidents throughout the country that have clearly alarmed us,” the Anti-Defamation League’s Chicago director Lonnie Nasatir tells Goudie in a tone best described as less than urgent.
No other Jewish community or organizational representatives are interviewed in the story; Goudie only references a Republication National Committee internal memo and Committee for Israel video which attempt to smear the OWS movement as anti-Semitic.
Indeed, major American Jewish organizations and Israel lobby groups are so far not terribly concerned by the OWS movement.
For example, in a press release for the American Jewish Committee entitled “Is ‘Occupy Wall Street’ anti-Semitic?” the group’s “specialist on anti-Semitism and extremism” Kenneth Stern addresses concerns that some anti-Semitic slogans have been spotted on OWS protesters’ posters.
Though he treats the presence of so-called “anti-Israel groups” who talk about “the issue of US aid to Israel” and advocate for boycott, divestment and sanctions as a potential problem, Stern takes to task fear-mongering reporting such as Goudie’s:
some recent complaints from partisan quarters and in the media alleging widespread anti-Semitism are unfair. They attempt to paint the episodic incident as routine and ignore both the repudiation in instances of anti-Semitism, as well as the hospitable environment for Jews. Yom Kippur and Sukkot were both celebrated at OWS.
Stern adds:
Still, one anti-Semitic sign is too many. We live in a world where an image or moment can be captured by a cell phone camera and put on the Internet within minutes. A picture may be the equivalent of a thousand words, but it should not be taken as reflecting the ideas of thousands of participants.
It seems that the “vein of anti-Semitism spreading to Chicago” is only in Goudie’s wild imagination.
Series of attacks on Abudayyeh
This is not Chuck Goudie’s first scare-mongering report on Hatem Abudayyeh — he has produced three such segments in approximately one year focusing on the Palestinian community organizer in Chicago.
Shortly after the FBI raided Abudayyeh’s home in September 2010 as part of a coordinated raid in multiple cities targeting anti-war and Palestine and Colombia solidarity activists, Goudie attempted to make shadowy connections between the raids and city grants received by the community organization Abudayyeh directs.
And in December 2010, Goudie and ABC 7 produced a similarly shallow report, repeating the non-story that Abudayyeh’s Arab American Action Network has received city funding, and “revealing” that White House visitor records show that Abudayyeh attended an event there described as “a large Arab briefing.”
In the same report, Goudie makes several lazy errors that are indicative of the quality of his work.
Abudayyeh is repeatedly described as a “Muslim community leader,” which while certainly not offensive, is not an accurate characterization of Abudayyeh’s work, which is community- rather than faith-based. Goudie also claims that individuals subpoenaed as part of the same federal grand jury investigation targeting Abudayyeh include a pair of women who traveled to the “West Bank of Israel” over the summer and their grand jury subpoenas compel them to testify on 5 January 2011 when in fact the grand jury summons was for 25 January 2011.
(Full disclosure: I am one of the now 24 activists whose homes have been raided and/or who have been served grand jury subpoenas — for more information, see stopfbi.net. I also have organized with Abudayyeh in Chicago for several years, and yes that’s me sitting next to him at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee panel in the ABC 7 December 2010 report. I have also interviewed Abudayyeh twice for EI — after his family’s bank accounts were inexplicably closed by TCF Bank and for this special report I co-authored with my colleague Nora Barrows-Friedman on the criminalization of the Palestinian national movement in the United States.)
Avoiding talking about the real issues
As a statement put out by me and several others yesterday makes clear:
By smearing the OWS movement and Palestinian community and solidarity activists, Goudie blatantly avoids discussing the real issues that are bringing tens of thousands of Americans to the streets in cities and towns across the country.
True journalism is about holding those in power accountable, not drawing grotesque charicactures of those speaking truth to power, as Goudie did in his report.
The following call to action was released on 27 October 2011: Full call to action at source
Maureen Clare Murphy is the managing editor of The Electronic Intifada and an activist based in Chicago.
NYT Bureau Chief To Appear On Panel For Islamophobic Organization’s Film
By Eli Clifton | Think Progress | October 26, 2011
The New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief, Ethan Bronner, has stirred up controversy over recent speaking engagements. But an announcement on the 92nd St. Y’s website shows that Bronner is now scheduled to appear on a panel hosted by the Clarion Fund, an Islamophobic organization, to discuss the “threat of a nuclear Iran.”
The invitation, as it appears on the Clarion Fund’s website, reads:
On Monday, November 7, 2011, at 7:30 PM, the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, NY will host a panel discussion about the threat of a nuclear Iran, interspersed with clips from the award-winning documentary Iranium. The panel will be moderated by the film’s director, Alex Traiman, and will be simultaneously broadcasted in over 20 communities throughout the U.S. (details below).
Panelists include:
John R. Bolton, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations
Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem Bureau Chief, The New York Times
Nazie Eftekhari, Director, Iran Democratic Union
Richard Green, Executive Director, Clarion Fund
Richard Perle, former Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, Bush administrationClick HERE for details and to order tickets.
Bronner and the 92nd Street Y are free to associate themselves with whatever organizations they choose. But the fact that the Times’ Jerusalem bureau chief is lending his name to a Clarion Fund event, and the promotion of a film which advocates for military action against Iran, raises further questions about Bronner’s growing record of engaging in activities which could produce the appearance of a conflict of interest or undermine the impartiality of his reporting.
The Clarion Fund, which was profiled in the Center for American Progress’ Islamophobia report, “Fear, Inc.,” distributed the inflammatory anti-Muslim documentary Obsession: Radical Islam’s War Against The West to 28 million swing state voters before the 2008 presidential election. Clarion is closely tied to Aish Hatorah, an evangelist, far-right, Israeli ultra-orthodox organization. Traiman, Iranium’s director and the moderator of the panel on which Bronner will appear, has close ties the Israeli far-right and lives in an ideological West Bank settlement.
Iranium, makes the case for attacking Iran and promotes an official U.S. policy of regime change. The film, much like the other documentaries produced by Clarion, portrays a clash of civilizations, promotes the view that Muslims value death over life and suggests that irrational hatred of Israeli and anti-Semitism is the only explanation for the frustration expressed by Muslim countries against the U.S.
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Max Blumenthal adds:
By agreeing to speak at the Islamophobic Clarion Fund’s 92nd Street Y event on November 7 beside neoconservative Richard Perle and uber-hawk John Bolton, Ethan Bronner is explicitly violating New York Times ethical guidelines. After I published my report about Bronner’s unethical business arrangement with a right-wing Israeli public relations firm, the Times‘ Standards Editor Phil Corbett sent out a memo to the entire Times staff reminding them about the paper’s guidelines for speaking engagements. A staffer leaked the memo to Gawker. It included the following stipulations, which Bronner is clearly violating:
Speaking fees are generally not allowed from companies, lobbying groups or other sources that might raise questions about our impartiality.
— Even if an engagement does not involve a fee, we should avoid situations that would create an appearance of favoritism or suggest too close a relationship between a Times journalist and the people or institutions we cover.
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From the Archives
After all I am a Proper Zionist Jew
October 27, 2009 | Gilad Atzmon
I am a Holocaust survivor
Yes, I am a survivor, for I have managed to survive all the scary accounts of the Holocaust: the one about the soap (1), the one about the lamp shades, the one about the camps, the mass shooting, the one about the gas (2) and the one about the death march (3). I just managed to survive them all.
In spite of all these fear inflicting stories, that were purposely installed in my soul since I opened my eyes for the first time, I have become a functional and even a successful human being. I somehow survived the horror against all odds. I even manage to love my neighbour. In spite of all the fearful, traumatic indoctrination I miraculously managed to master my cheering alto saxophone rather than the sobbing violin. … continue
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