Posted 7/17/2005 03:46:00 PM

PS. Afterword from Martin Kramer:

I was present to hear this talk by Rubin (click on his link):
In my report of the conference, I wrote this:
"The presence of Said was very much felt in the room. One panel, in
particular, devoted itself to recitation of his saintly virtues. A certain
panelist, one of Said.s former students (Andrew Rubin), who talks the talk
from Palestine to Proust, is an uncanny mimic of the great man, down to
his intonation and mannerisms. Discipleship rises (or maybe sinks) to a
new level."

http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=710

Posted 7/17/2005 02:49:00 PM

1. An Open Letter to the Tenure Committee at Georgetown University
http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=710
Open Letter to the Tenure Committee at Georgetown

Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Sunday 17 July 2005, 7:42 am
Dear Colleagues:

A few days back, Frontpage Mag published an essay of mine concerning
assistant professor of English at Georgetown Andrew N. Rubin. Rubin has
attempted to construct an entire academic career at Georgetown around his
sycophantic pieces signing the praises of Edward Said. Rubin has no
credentials at all in Middle East Studies (nor did Said for that matter),
speaks no Middle East languages, has not lived in the Middle East, yet
claims for himself academic authority to make pronouncements over the
causes and culpabilities involved in the Middle East conflict. Rubin has
also published ludicrous accusations based on no evidence whatsoever , on
the weight of accusations made by Iraqi Ba.athist loyalists to Saddam
Hussein, claiming that the US has engaged in systematic assassinations of
Iraqi intellectuals. I strongly urge the Tenure Committee at Georgetown
to review Rubin.s history of publishing ludicrous such baseless claims in
his articles, while posing as an academic representative of Georgetown
University.

Rubin was evidently upset by my essay and responds, after a fashion, in an
"open letter" to me, published on the anti-American pro-terror
Counterpunch web magazine (http://counterpunch.com/rubin07162005.html).
There he accuses me of being a threat to the
Western Enlightenment (!!!), of trying to suppress free speech, and of
being indifferent to the supposed "sufferings" of Palestinian Arabs.

Besides a willingness to issue pronouncements on issues about which he
knows nothing and has no credentials, all the while citing his position at
Georgetown as if it confers upon him pontifical authority in such matters,
Rubin has a long history of pseudo-scholarship, as documented in my
article, and his current "open letter" just illustrates his lack of
scholarly capacity even further.

For Rubin, criticizing an anti-American or an anti-Jewish columnist is
equivent to McCarthyism and denying that columnist free speech. Rubin
criticizes my own publicist writings without giving any evidence of having
read any besides my critique of himself.

Rubin then goes on to bemoan the "Israeli occupation" which "has gone
longer than the Japanese occupation of Korea" in his words, but of course
has not gone on longer than the Korean occupation of Korea. Rubin whines
about Palestinians being inconvenienced by Israeli security measures, but
has never said a single word in condemnation of the mass murder of
hundreds of Israeli civilians that make those security measures necessary.
Rubin whines about Palestinian ambulances being delayed at checkpoints,
but has not a word to say about those same ambulances routinely being used
to transport bombs and murderers. Rubin whines about Israel.s security
fence, with never a word about what made the construction fo the security
fence necessary.

Rubin is absolutely convinced that the right of Palestinian not to be
inconvenienced must always come ahead of the right of Jewish children to
sit in cafes and to ride buses without being murdered. Jews have no
rights in Rubin.s learned opinion, and certainly not the right to
self-defense. Rubin.s real reason for opposing Israeli security measures,
including its security wall, is that Rubin favors the "right" of the
"Palestinians" to continue to murder Israeli civilians without hindrance
nor obstacle. Rubin is pro-terror and pro-murder.

Rubin has not a single word to say about the circumstances that resulted
in Israel "occupying" the West Bank and Gaza Strip in the first place in
1967, and has nothing to say about the fact that the causes of that
"occupation" have not been removed. Nor does he care that the PLO has
proved over the past 13 years that any removal of Israeli "occupation"
will only result in escalated terrorist atrocities by the Palestinians.

The English lit teacher Rubin insists that Israel needs to end its
"occupation", denouncing the "the false principles upon which existence of
both Israeli and Palestinians subjects are founded." Did he learn about
those principles in some course on John Steinbeck or on LeRoi Jones?
Israel.s own foolish attempts to remove that "occupation" in the framework
of the "Oslo Accords" produced 1800 murdered Israelis, most of them
civilians, many of them children. Rubin offers Israel no reason to
believe that ending its "occupation" will result in reduced violence
rather than all-out Arab escalation and genocidal war. That is because he
has none.

Rubin accuses me of being indifferent to the suffering of Palestinians. I
am indeed indifferent to the "suffering" of Palestinians involved in
terror, those being the bulk of the Palestinians who have been killed by
Israel, and regret only that more such were not killed. As for "innocent"
Palestinians killed as bystanders, I am as concerned for their suffering
as I am for the suffering of German civilians in Berlin and Japanese
civilians in Tokyo in 1944. Those responsible for the suffering of
Palestinian civilians are the same PLO terrorists who use civilian areas
to attack Jews and hide among civilians. Rubin is unwilling to condemn
those responsible for the suffering of innocent Palestinian bystanders.
The only form of self-defense for Israel this English lit prof is willing
to allow is complete capitulation to the demands of the terrorists.

Rubin is a pseudo-scholar who confuses toadying for Edward Said with
research. He shills for Said not because of Said.s insights into
literature but because Rubin likes Said.s anti-Jewish pro-terror
radicalism. Rubin exhibits his own extremism and anti-Semitism (and let.s
not hear any nonsense about how Rubin can.t be an anti-Semite if he was
born Jewish) for the pro-terror, anti-Jewish web magazine Counterpunch.

Georgetown can do better and deserves better. Let Georgetown show the
world it still maintains academic standards!

Thank you.

Professor Steven Plaut

University of Haifa

2. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=709
Juan Cole issues a Call to Spy on his Critic

Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Sunday 17 July 2005, 6:11 am
One of the best blogs on the Middle East is operated by Prof. Martin
Kramer, a leading Middle East historian and scholar. Kramer has in the
past done an exceptionally brilliant job in exposing the pseudo-scholar
Juan Cole and his errors and fabrications. Among other things, Cole
likes to repeat infantile conspiracy theories and blamed 9-11 on Ariel
Sharon. Cole was a leading critic denouncing Harvard.s Lawrence Summer
when the latter said the campaign to divest from Israel is anti-Semitic.
Cole this week issues a new "warning" that if the US is again attacked by
the Islamic terrorists whose causes Cole supports, it will all be the
Israelis. fault.

Kramer notes that in recent weeks, Professor Juan Cole, blogger
extraordinaire, has been even more over-the-top than usual, and I.ve been
busy calling him on errors and elisions. The other day, he responded at
his weblog with this appeal to his admirers at a left-of-center online
forum called Daily Kos to spy on and investigate Prof Kramer:

"Please do up an oppo research diary on Martin Kramer. Who is he? Where
did he come from? When he was head of the Dayan Center in Tel Aviv, to
whom did he report in the Israeli intelligence community? Who funded his
work on Hizbullah? Was he fired from heading the Dayan Center? How does he
suddenly show back up in the US after a 20-year absence with a book that
blames unpreparedness for 9/11 on US professors of Middle East Studies
instead of on the Israeli Mossad and the US CIA/FBI? What was his role in
getting up the Iraq War and in advising the US on the wrong-headed
policies that have gotten so many Americans killed? Who pays his salary,
now, exactly? What are his links with AIPAC, and with the shadowy world of
far-right Zionist think tanks and dummy organizations?

Cole has in the past publicly threatened to sue Kramer for his exposes on
Cole. Cole has endorsed conspiracy theories concerning the CIA about
which one ordinarily has to go to neo-nazi web sites like RENSE to read,
and he links his own personal web page to those of neonazis Kurt Nimmo and
Justin Raimondo. While whining when other people criticize him, Cole
himself does not hesitate to reprint on his own web page ludicous smears
he picks up from anti-Semites like those two.

Harvard Magazine recently cited Daniel Pipes in describing Cole as an
"intellectual thug". Cole regularly smears Pipes. While I almost always
agree with Dan, I think he was in error here and meant to say
"pseudo-intellectual thug".

For those wishing to follow Cole.s pseudo-scholarship, we suggest regular
visits at Kramer.s and Daniel Pipes. web sites.

3. The .T. Word at the Independent

Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Sunday 17 July 2005, 5:52 am
In its July 13 coverage of terrorist atrocities, The Independent, a
leftonewspaper in the UK, wrote in its frontpage news report: "The
terrorists responsible for the Tube and bus attacks in London have been
revealed as home-grown suicide bombers." The same day another news item
appeared headlined "Palestinian militant kills two in attack on shopping
mall". One wonders why that newspaper call a suicide bomber in London a
terrorist but a suicide bomber in Israel a militant. Is terrorism defined
the ethnicity of who is being murdered?

http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=708

4. If you have not done this, you should check it out...

Point your internet browser to www.google.com

type "french military victories" in the search box

and click on the button just below the search box that says "I'm Feeling
Lucky"

Posted 7/15/2005 11:58:00 AM

1. The Toady for Terrorism from Georgetown University
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18788
Edward Said's Georgetown Toady
By Steven Plaut
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 15, 2005

Georgetown University may be one of the few places on earth where someone
can build an entire academic career based upon sucking up to the late
Edward Said's corpse. Edward Said had been a Professor of English
Literature at Columbia University, but is better known for his open
support for terrorism, his denunciations of the PLO for not practicing
violence ENOUGH, for his endorsements of violence against Jews and even
his participation in rock throwing at Jews, and for his misrepresentation
of himself as someone who knows something about "Orientalism" or Middle
East scholarship. In reality, Said had no credentials at all as a Middle
East scholar, a slight matter that never prevented him from defaming the
acknowledged leading experts in that field. Said was an Egyptian who
liked to pretend to be a Palestinian, and much of his career was devoted
to spreading autobiographical disinformation.

Shilling for Said has become a fashionable career on many college campuses
in the US. The misnamed Middle East Studies Association is essentially a
lobby group for Said's notions. "Peace Studies" professors on US campuses
often indoctrinate hapless students in Said's "ideas". Nevertheless,
Andrew N. Rubin seems to be unique.

Rubin has quite literally built virtually his entire academic career upon
shilling for Edward Said. Rubin's vita is crawling with
Said-cheerleading. Like Said, Rubin teaches English literature, and .
again like Said . Rubin has no credentials at all that could qualify him
as an expert on Middle East history and politics. Said could at least
read Arabic, while Rubin is little more than an anti-Israel Jewish
Marxist. The closest Rubin ever gets to anything Arabic is when his
Bash-Israel and Bash-America articles get published in the
Holocaust-Denying anti-Jewish Egyptian daily, al-Ahram.

Rubin is an untenured assistant professor of English at Georgetown
University. He also holds a M.A. in Critical Theory (which is academic
Newspeak for Marxism) from the University of Sussex. He holds a PhD from
Columbia's English Department, still haunted by Edward Said's ghost.
Rubin's greatest "academic" achievement seems to be that he co-edited with
one Moustafa Bayoumi (an English prof at Brooklyn College, and another
Said toady), the "Edward Said Reader". Most of Rubin's vita consists of
sycophantic articles about Said, including "Techniques of Trouble: Edward
Said and the Dialectics of Cultural Philology," .Intellectual Giant -
Edward Said: Criticism and Theory," in the PLO-controlled Journal of
Palestine Studies and .Edward W. Said (1935-2003). in Arab Studies
Quarterly (Fall 2004). Rubin also likes to sing Said's praises while on
the lecture circuit.

Now Edward Said may have known a thing or two about English literature
back when he was still lecturing students at Columbia, but it was only in
his own mind and in those of people like Rubin that Said was any sort of
Middle East historian or expert. While singing Said's praises as his main
form of academic "research", Rubin also feels no hesitation to bash true
acknowledged experts and world-class writers on the Middle East, and
especially Fouad Ajami. Like Said, Rubin the English professor dislikes
Ajami because Ajami is an Arab who is partly pro-Israel and decidedly
anti-terror.

Rubin is active in a number of groups and journals devoted to demonizing
Israel and bashing America, and he is director of at least one. Rubin
single-handedly runs the International Coalition of Academics Against
Occupation. This is an anti-American propaganda outfit devoted to
spreading the ludicrous invention by Rubin that the United States went a
deliberate campaign of assassinating Iraqi intellectuals. This
fraudulent claim by Rubin has by now been reprinted by numerous media
outfits around the world. Rubin's "evidence" that the Americans (in some
places he says it was really Israeli Mossad agents) were running around
Iraq murdering intellectuals is apparently that some Iraqi Ba'athist
followers of Saddam, the sorts of people who lop off heads of captives,
told Rubin this was so. Rubin has been working at collecting a list of
signatories to his petition against these imaginary assassinations. His
list includes Noam Chomsky, Joseph Mossad, and people of similar
orientation.

Over the past year, Rubin has published his fairy tales about these
imaginary assassinations under titles such as "The Slaughter of Iraq's
Intellectuals" - among other places - in the British New Statesman.
There Rubin writes:

" Since the occupation began, some 200 leading Iraqi academics, most of
them in the humanities and social sciences, have been killed. Is the CIA
responsible?... Control, intimidation, and even murder of Iraqi
intellectuals, professors, lecturers and teachers has become more or less
systematic since the US-led invasion of Iraq began in March 2003.... Some
allege it is Mossad, the Israeli secret service, which obviously has an
interest in a weak and possibly theocratic Iraq - the better to declare
Arabs undemocratically minded terrorists. ("It's not personal; it's
business," one professor in Baghdad says of Mossad's possible motives.)"

Evidently what stimulated Rubin's powers of imagination in fabricating
these "assassinations" was the American-initiated campaign of
de-Ba'athisation in Iraq, whereby Ba'ath loyalists were dismissed from
many positions of authority and power after Saddam was toppled, including
some in the universities. "Yet the US repression of academics was less
about protecting academic freedom than a kind of American McCarthyism
abroad," opines Rubin.

Rubin then goes on to defend the curriculum of totalitarian Baathist
propaganda that was proliferated by these "universities" back when Saddam
was in control, no doubt very similar to what iscurrently being taught in
the Georgetown University Department of English. Rubin's take is this:
"Yet despite the tyranny exercised over Iraqi society by Saddam Hussein,
the university classroom was (some professors often claim) a relatively
autonomous space for learning and instruction, where professors, lecturers
and students could be openly critical. They could even criticise the
government." Sure, and we bet Rubin was told this was so by at least one
Ba'athist primary source! We sure hope the tenure committee at Georgetown
University is listening!

When not toadying for Edward Said and the Iraqi Ba'athists, Rubin also
toadies for Yassir Arafat, and authored a sycophantic piece praising the
arch-terrorist when Arafat graciously croaked. Rubin's writings are
featured on the PLO's web pages and Rubin publishes in the Journal of
Palestine Studies. The Middle East Quarterly describes the Journal of
Palestine Studies as a "PLO propaganda organ disguised as an academic
journal; for example, it routinely refers to the creation of Israel as
an-Nakba (.catastrophe' in Arabic)." Orbis, Fall 1988, p. 637, describes
the Institute of Palestine Studies, publisher of the Journal of Palestine
Studies, as "an arm of the Palestine Liberation Organization."

Rubin also turns out anti-Israel and anti-American articles for Egypt's
al-Ahram. In one such piece, he bashes Israel for daring to build a
security fence designed to prevent Arab mass murderers from murdering
Jewish civilians. He lists assorted pseudo-statistics about how many
Palestinians have been inconvenienced by the wall, but with never a single
mention of the reason why Israel was building the wall in the first place:
the long history of atrocities conducted against Israeli civilians by the
PLO and its affiliates. That piece is reprinted in Counterpunch this
week, since Alexander Cockburn can never resist the impulse to publish
self-hating, bash-Israel leftist Jewish toadies for terrorism.

In the same piece, Rubin comes up with a "peace plan". After repeating
Said's statements about how autonomy for Palestinians would amount to
"Bantustans" (and after a hundred years of atrocities, who says the
Palestinians even have a moral right to a Bantustan?), Rubin adds:
""Nations could impose a 'Human Rights Tax' on companies contracted to
supply goods (bulldozers for example) and services to the Israeli
government's efforts to build and reinforce the wall. It may serve as a
kind of prelude to what appears to be a growing and globally orchestrated
movement to divest from Israel so long as it continues its illegal
occupation and refuses to remove the wall in its existing form." How
about a human rights tax on any companies doing business with Georgetown
University Department of English, which we all know is situated on
occupied Indian land?

Rubin was one of the American academics to rally to support Columbia's
jihadnik professor Joseph Massad when the latter was under investigation
for his open anti-Semitism and classroom misbehavior. Rubin published an
open letter on a PLO-run web site denouncing Congressman Weiner when the
latter criticized Massad and supported the need to investigate him. Rubin
writes there:

"I have known Professor Joseph Massad for ten years personally and have
read many of his incisive books, essays, and articles that have widely
expanded our knowledge of the historical sources and effects of Zionism in
this world, and I find your charges of anti-Semitism against him
dishonest, defamatory, and even barbaric in its conflation of the
criticism of various forms and practices of various Zionist ideologies
with the hatred of and the discrimination against Jews.... You will, I
assure you, find nothing anti-Jewish about his work, rather a
strong-minded and razor-sharp analysis and criticism of the emergence and
practice of different forms of Zionist ideologies and Israel.s ongoing
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza; its attempt to militarily,
politically and physically destroy a population of human beings living
since 1948 as refugees and exiles . and under military occupation for over
35 years."

Split infinitives are hardly Rubin's biggest sin.

So little time, so many objects of Rubin's pro-jihad toadying! In that
same letter, Rubin declares, "Like you, I am an American-Jew and condemn
anti-semitism wherever I see it." The only problem is that the only place
where Rubin is capable of seeing it is in Israel's efforts to defend its
civilians against the Islamofascist terrorists that Rubin supports and
serves.

2. No Orange for Jews, Says Arab Party

Posted by Myles Kantor @ Thursday 14 July 2005, 11:45 pm
The Arab Israeli party Balad recently petitioned Haifa.s district court to
prohibit Jewish organizations from using orange in protests against the
dispossession of Israelis in Gaza. Balad Knesset member Azmi Bishara,
whose previous activities include speaking in Syria at a memorial for mass
murderer of Arabs Hafez Assad and calling for "resistance" against Israel,
remarked, "We have used the color orange since 1999, during three election
campaigns. Therefore, we claim the color orange is clearly a political
symbol associated with Balad, and in spirit, it has become ours. "

This is a remarkable mix of illogic, arrogance, and aggression. The Haifa
court rejected the petition this week.

When Bishara and Balad use a word like freedom after this attempt to
muzzle others, the only reasonable reaction is contempt.

3. Israelification of Europe:
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1121135429383&p=1006953079865

4. "Root causes":
http://jewishworldreview.com/0705/thomas_terrorism_root.php3

5. Israeli MD is Hero of the London Undergound

Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Wednesday 13 July 2005, 5:19 am
Well, you will not hear about it on any of those anarcho-fascist nor
left-wing neonazi web sites all trying to prove that Jews or Israelis
planted the bombs in the London metro, but a quiet hero of the rescue
operation was an Israeli physician with a lot of experience in treating
trauma victims of terrorism, Dr. Benny Meilik who - with his family - were
on a visit to London when the bombs went off. He was staying is a hotel
next to one of the stations bombed. He raced in to the station and
started treating people, 100 victims treated by him in all.

The tunnel was in danger of collapse and is one of the deepest on the
network, sitting 50 meters below ground. Meilik told staff who he was and
got down on to the platform, to which passengers were being led. He set
about working out who needed urgent care there on the platform and who
could be moved to hospital. One victim, who had two broken arms, emerged
to tell reporters he had been helped by an "Israeli hero."

In his work as an emergency surgeon and consultant at the Tel Aviv Medical
Center, he has worked saving lives from terror attacks across Israel. He
had come on vacation to the UK because he wanted some peaceful, reflective
time with his wife Libby, away from the trauma of treating victims of
violence.

The first subway victim in London identified by name was Jewish. You will
not read about THAT on any anarcho-fascist web sites either.

6. London Learns from the Bombings . Not!

Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Wednesday 13 July 2005, 5:09 am
Still think the Brits have actually learned something from their latest
experience with teh Islamofascist "activists"?

Well, think again. It turns out that the speaker at a conference in the
UK sponsored by the British police is to be Tariq Ramadan, so report The
Sun and the Times. The Egyptian born Islamofascist is due to speak at
The Middle Path conference on July 24, this only 17 days after the London
bombings.

He will address young Muslims at the Islamic Cultural Centre near Regent.s
Park alongside other academics, with the 9,000- cost of his trip being
partly paid by the Metropolitan Police and the Association of Chief Police
Officers (ACPO).

Ramadan is a Swiss Arab anti-Semite with ties to al-Qaeda. A while back
the Kroc Institute at Notre Dame "University" tried to sponsor Ramadan for
a stint as a visiting scholar at Notre Dame but the US would not give him
a visa. Asked if car bombings were justified against US forces in Iraq,
he answered: .Iraq was colonised by the Americans. Resistance against the
army is just.. France has also banned the bum.

Ramadan openly endorses terrorism. Ramadan has long been a darling of
London.s commie mayor Red Ken Livingston, who has also sponsored talks by
the terrorist. The Sun called for Ramadan now to be banned from entering
Britain. We wonder what the rank and file Bobbies will ahve to say about
the police force ponying up support for Ramadan.s milk fund.

The Middle Path conference is being organised by the Da.watul Islam
charity which caused anger last year by inviting Yusuf al-Qaradawi,
another controversial cleric, to Britain - a visit that was supported by
Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London.

7. Conspiracy Nuts:
http://blogs.chronwatch.com/archives/2005/07/the_london_cons.asp

Posted 7/12/2005 04:41:00 PM

1. Turkish Sheep Join the Israeli Labor Party!
450 Sheep Jump to Their Deaths in Turkey
Fri Jul 8, 9:59 PM ET

ISTANBUL, Turkey - First one sheep jumped to its death. Then stunned
Turkish shepherds, who had left the herd to graze while they had
breakfast, watched as nearly 1,500 others followed, each leaping off the
same cliff, Turkish media reported.

In the end, 450 dead animals lay on top of one another in a billowy white
pile, the Aksam newspaper said. Those who jumped later were saved as the
pile got higher and the fall more cushioned, Aksam reported.

"There's nothing we can do. They're all wasted," Nevzat Bayhan, a member
of one of 26 families whose sheep were grazing together in the herd, was
quoted as saying by Aksam.

The estimated loss to families in the town of Gevas, located in Van
province in eastern Turkey, tops $100,000, a significant amount of money
in a country where average

GDP per head is around $2,700.

"Every family had an average of 20 sheep," Aksam quoted another villager,
Abdullah Hazar as saying. "But now only a few families have sheep left.
It's going to be hard for us."

2. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=675
Friend of Chamish?
Still Thinking of Sending Junior to Harvard? Why you should think again!

Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Tuesday 12 July 2005, 9:35 am
Dr. John Mack had been a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School
and Pulitzer Prize-winning author for many years. An automobile accident
claimed the life of the alien abduction researcher a few months back. He
was hit by a car while crossing a busy London street. He was 74. He
failed to get his UFO clients to beam him up in time.

Mack rocked the academic world when he released a "study" that concluded
alien abductions are real! Naturally, he was also a leftist moonbat, and
in his case we quite literally mean MOON. Mack operated his own
"institute" that "documents" UFO abductions, evidently with Harvard money!
It is a tax-exempt 501c3 nonprofit organization and is still around.

Mack, who outlined his findings in the best-selling 1994 book Abduction:
Human Encounters with Aliens, ruled out psychosis or childhood abuse as
explanations for victims. hairraising memories. The theory that victims
are merely dreaming doesn.t correspond to accounts, he claimed. The
"expert" also rejected the notion that abductees are lying to obtain fame.

Plus, he insisted, there.s a mountain of physical evidence to back up the
stories. Much of it is in Steven Spielberg movies. He also believed in
auras and indicated that he believed that some of his wife.s gynecological
problems may be due to aliens. Harvard kept him on staff in the name of
academic freedom.

The publication of this book raised anxiety levels at Harvard, and Mack
was subjected to a 15 month investigation of his work by an ad-hoc
committee. The committee issued no formal censure, but lectured Dr. Mack
on his method of approaching the subject and suggested that he develop a
mulitidisciplinary approach to the study. Mack did so with a Harvard
conference in 1999 that included abductees, astrophysicists,
anthropologists, and psychologists from various disciplines of psychology.
Psychology Today thinks he was a kook.

The BBC recently ran a piece celebrating Mack and his UFO "clients". PBS
recently ran a long special based around an interview with Mack. It gave
equal time to UFO believers and skeptics. IS this really how we want our
tax money spent?

3. BBC Stops Calling them Terrorists . Again

Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Tuesday 12 July 2005, 4:16 am
No sooner do we at FPM give the BBC credit for starting to use the "T"
word and refer to Islamofascist terrorists as terrorists, rather than
activists and militants, when the BBC rethinks itself and STOPS!

The Beeb has now announced that it has re-edited some of its coverage of
the London Underground
and bus bombings to avoid labelling the perpetrators as "terrorists".

Early reporting of the attacks on the BBC.s website spoke of
terrorists but the same coverage was changed to describe the attackers
simply as "bombers".

The BBC.s guidelines state that its credibility is undermined by the
"careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments".
Consequently, "the word .terrorist. itself can be a barrier rather
than an aid to understanding" and its use should be "avoided", the
guidelines say.

Rod Liddle, a former editor of the Today programme, has accused the BBC
of "institutionalised political correctness" in its coverage of British
Muslims.

Posted 7/12/2005 11:10:00 AM

1. The British Left Rallies to Support the Goals of the London Bombers
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18730 (For clean copy
and links, open web page)
Britain's Unholy Alliance
By Steven Plaut
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 12, 2005

Well, I am sure you were all relieved to hear that neither Red Ken
Livingstone, the mayor of London, nor George Galloway, the British
pro-Baathist MP, were among the victims of the al-Qaeda bombers in London.
While parts of the British Left have even exhibited some brand new outrage
at "terrorism", much of it is reverting not only to character but to
caricature of itself.

First, incredibly, the liberal British press is actually using the "T"
word. They are referring to the London Underground perps as terrorists.
Why is this so unusual? Because the liberal British media have been
religiously scrupulous in referring to all terrorists and mass murderers
who attack Jews as "activists" and "militants".

It is suddenly like a parallel universe out there, not the one with which
we are familiar. The 'activists' and 'militants' are suddenly
referred to as "terrorists". Even the Guardian and most notably the BBC
have discovered the 'T' word. It was suddenly not a legitimate form of
protest against occupation to mass-murder civilians in such mainstream
media outfits, although it certainly is among the British radicals. Maybe
it was because the "activists" in this case were not simply murdering
Jews. Most however, while condemning the perps, insisted that the
"underlying cause" of the atrocities was that Britain had joined the US in
the war against Islamofascist terrorism, and also insisted that the REAL
damage of the bombings would prove to be that the British establishment
would institute oppressive anti-democratic measures. In these claims, the
British press was not saying much that was distinguishable from what the
pro-terror Arab media were saying.

The Independent wrote: "Aside from the human distress, these bombings have
done more to ease the course of illiberal legislation through Parliament
than anything else ever could." The Guardian was full of commentaries
claiming Britain was just getting its comeuppance. The Telegraph carried
an Op-Ed telling its readers that London was bombed because of poverty in
the Third World and because of Britain's guilt in global warming.

But while the mainstream British liberals may have been showing some rare
common sense in at least their willingness to call a terrorist a
terrorist, the left-wing radicals and Lunabrits were having a field day.
Britain has more than its fair share of socialists, "Trotskyists" and
"anarchists". [I have never quite figured out why designer-jean radicals
imagine that they are "anarchists" and have long believed that a better
description of such groups would be "anarcho-fascist".]

The "Trotskyites" issued a statement blaming the bombings on the British
government, stating, "The British government cannot avoid its
responsibility for these terrible attacks, which are a consequence of its
support for war and occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best way to
ensure that there are no more such terrible attacks is for British troops
to be withdrawn from there immediately." Meanwhile, "Solidarity Online"
condemned both political-Islamist terrorism and US and British
imperialism. The "Movement for a Socialist Future" announced: " Terrorism
cannot be defeated by the "war on terror", which only deepens the problem
because it refuses to address the causes of terrorism.

Perhaps most incredible was the speed with which left-wing fascists and
conspiracy nuts discovered "evidence" that the bombs were placed by Jews
and not by Arab terrorists. Within hours of the bombings nearly every
anarcho-fascist, communist, Palestinian, and neonazi web site on the
planet was publishing a new conspiracy "theory" of the bombings. Most of
these had long been promoting a similar conspiracy "theory" about the
9-11 bombings, which held that either the Bush Republicans or the Israeli
Mossad had really knocked down the WTC towers while blaming the poor
al-Qaeda Arabs for the crime.

Under their new "theory", Israeli former Prime Minister and current
Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had received "advanced warning" of the
bombings, and had been advised to remain in his hotel. These "advanced
warnings" prove that it was actually Israeli or Jewish agents who had
planted the bombs in London in order to get the Brits angry at poor
innocent Moslems.

Now as a matter of fact, Netanyahu did in fact receive a "warning", but it
was from the British police and it was AFTER the bombs went off but before
the full picture was clear, and the cops suggested to him that it would be
prudent to stay in his hotel. Conspiracy nuts turned that into "evidence"
that Israel was responsible for the bombings. There were in fact some
reports that Israel had tipped off British Intelligence before the
bombings that an al-Qaeda attack against London might be imminent, but
that is not exactly the "proof" of nefarious conspiracy that the
conspiracy nuts were seeking.

One interesting place to look for reactions to the atrocities in London is
the British version of the "Indymedia" flagship web site of the
anarcho-fascist movement. It was crawling with articles that insist that
al-Qaeda is innocent of the bombings and being blamed for them because the
conservatives need a patsy. Some postings claimed they were placed there
by the CIA. Others went to lengths to clear al-Qaeda. Then there are
the postings claiming that the bombings simply serve Blair.s interest in
silencing the Left and their Islamist allies, and insisting that Blair.s
people placed the bombs. And of course the postings blaming the bombings
on the Jews or Israelis. John Pilger showed up on the site to blame
Blair for the bombs: "They are 'Blair's bombs', and he ought not be
allowed to evade culpability with yet another unctuous speech about 'our
way of life', which his own rapacious violence in other countries has
despoiled."

The UK Indymedia site even ran the raving article by San Francisco Dennis
"Justin" Raimondo, editor of the neofascist pro-terror "antiwar.com" web
site and columnist for Pravda. Raimondo had invented a "theory",
crayoned into a self-published "book," claiming that Jews, and not
al-Qaeda, knocked down the WTC on 9-11, this all on the basis of the fact
that some Israeli moving men were picked up that day for visa violations
and were found to have some dollar cash in a dirty sock.

Raimondo.s UK Indymedia piece (also published on his own antiwar.com site)
claims that the Israelis planted the London bombs. Raimondo's evidence?
The same fraudulent claims about how Netanyahu supposedly got "advance
warnings of the bombs". But one of the most bizarre developments was
that no sooner did Raimondo's lunatic "theory" appear across the web than
a vicious attack against Raimondo was launched on some of those same web
pages by Swedish neonazi "Israel Shamir." It seems that Raimondo, who is
an anti-Semite, published a piece calling "Shamir" an anti-Semite, which
he is. Raimondo wrote, 'Shamir caters to his deranged constituency of
Jew-haters,' and - somewhat mysteriously - Raimondo did not mean that as a
compliment. Keeping these people apart is becoming such a burden!

In contrast, a nice critique of the Indymedia anarcho-fascists was
published by the Freedom Institute of the Republic of Ireland, denouncing
the Indymedia pro-terrorists. These Irish freedom fighters denounce the
"anarchists" for violent rioting in Scotland against the G8 leaders
meeting there, forcing police to divert manpower from London area just
when they were needed there: "The regulars at the Institute for Autonomy,
where most of the Indymedia UK inner circle hang out, are almost certainly
unharmed, as they were engaging in recreational public disorder hundreds
of miles away in Scotland and successfully diverting police resources from
the capital. Well done compadres!"

The conspiracy "theory" about the Jews having placed the bombs spread
through the internet, appears by now on every "Indymedia" web site, and
has been repeated on such lunatic web sites as "The Simon", which wrote:
"Considering the only Al Qaeda cell to ever be uncovered was a front for
the Mossad, you.d think the perpetrators could at least come up with a
clever new booga-booga name to grab headlines. Their arrogance is
startling."

Meanwhile, George Galloway, Saddam Hussein.s paid agent in British
politics, issued a statement about the bombs this week. You will not be
surprised to learn that the lesson he insists that Britain draw from the
mass murders is that the "occupation" of Iraq must be ended and of course
that Israel must be destroyed:

"We urge the government to remove people in this country from harms way,
as the Spanish government acted to remove its people from harm, by ending
the occupation of Iraq and by turning its full attention to the
development of a real solution to the wider conflicts in the Middle East.
Only then will the innocents here and abroad be able to enjoy a life free
of the threat of needless violence."

Tariq Ali, a British Moslem leftist and pro-terror militant, wrote an
article blaming the bombings on the West's mistreatment of Moslems.
Reprinted widely, including on Counterpunch, it stated, "The principal
cause of this violence is the violence that is being inflicted on the
people of the Muslim world. The bombing of innocent people is equally
barbaric in Baghdad, Jenin, Kabul as it is in New York, Madrid or London.
And unless this is recognized the horrors will continue.... The real
solution lies in immediately ending the occupation of Iraq, Afghanistan
and Palestine. "

Counterpunch, always to be relied upon to support anti-Western terrorists
even when they target Alexander Cockburn.s own homeland, has already come
out with at least one article that supports the terrorist bombers. It ran
a piece by notorious British neonazi Gilad Atzmon, famous for his
justifying the burning down of synagogues, and so openly anti-Semitic that
large numbers of British leftists have been urging the Socialist Workers
Party in the UK to cut all ties with him. Atzmon writes about the London
bombings that the real lesson should be:

"It tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals.
More than anything else it tells us that we have a moral duty. It is down
to us to stop our governments. It is our duty to stand up and to demand
the resignation of Blair who is responsible for the death of so many
Iraqis and arguably now many Innocent Britons. We must remember that
voting in a non-ethical politician makes us all into active shareholders
in a criminal company. It tells us that we must never again give our
votes to war criminals."

Cockburn is truly a disciple of Oswald Mosley, who also cheered Britain's
enemies while London was being bombed.

Finally, British lunacy is not restricted to the anarcho-fascists and the
Albion lunatic fringe, but also can be found smack at Number 10 Downing.
It is in the form of Cherie Blair who really "understand the motives" of
the London bombers, justifying them and wishing to bond with them to find
new common ground and mutual understandings. Cherie is so whacky that her
pro-terror comments have been set to disco.

In fighting the terrorist threat to London, Tony Blair could do nothing
more productive then muzzle his Misses. Cherie Blair has a long history
of anti-American, pro-terror activism and statements. You may recall that
she was the leading British voice denouncing the supposed mistreatment of
al-Qaeda prisoners in Gitmo, and never mind that it turns out that they
eat better than US troops do. And she dissed the American legal system -
calling it a "grandfather clock" among "21st century timepieces" - and
suggested it could learn lessons from Europe. She claims George Bush
"stole" the election. Pro-terror Marxist web magazines love her. She
has been up to her plucked eyebrows in a sleazy scandal involving
Australian real estate, in cahoots with a notorious conman down under, in
what the Brits are calling Cheriegate.

She provoked outrage in the British Jewish community two years ago when
she said she understood why Palestinian suicide bombers were driven to do
what they did. She told Palestinians that she understands and justifies
suicide bombers.

So to be consistent, shouldn.t she apply her same "reasoning" to the perps
of the London subway bombings?

2. We are ALL Israelis Now:
http://www.augustafreepress.com/stories/storyReader$35548

3. Thought for the Day:

They seek him here, they seek him there;
Those Yankees seek him everywhere.
Is he in Heaven, or in Malawi,
That damned elusive al-Zarqawi?

4. Academic Totalitarianism
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18711

5. Prager on Leftist Sedition
http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=18737

6. The AP and Terror Cheerleading:
http://www.honestreporting.com/articles/45884734/critiques/Bad_News_From_London.asp

Posted 7/10/2005 09:13:00 PM

(Apologies for duplicate posting)

The Disengagement of the Wisest Men of Chelm
by Steven Plaut
who discovered this long missing yiddish tale of the wisest men in the
world
In the back country and steppes south of Warsaw, there stood a small
stedtel, a little Jewish village, named Chelm. Renowned across the Pale,
the villagers of Chelm were famous for their sharp wits, their inventive
brains, and their capacities for resolving difficult problems. The
villagers were all very happy, if impoverished, and spent their lives in
quiet contemplation and meditation. The many wise men of Chelm included
the ex-officer from the grenadiers Reb Yitzhak, the village idiot Reb
Shimon, and the ex-commander of the cavalry horses - Reb Ehud. These were
opposed by Arik, the chunky village Constable, who had the temerity to
oppose their policies and seek to get himself elected in their place as
Chief Rebbe.
The town was structured around a central square, next to which stood the
shul, a small library, a mikveh, the blacksmith, and the home of Chief
Rebbe himself with his many wise and learned sons. Behind these stood
alleys in which the simple menschen of Chelm lived: the tailors, tinkers,
peddlers and cobblers, together with their chickens, horses, and milkcows.
And at the very edge of the village stood the barn in which visitors could
have their carriage horses housed and tended to.
One day, a small cloud of smoke could be seen from the village square,
rising above this very same barn. The Rebbetzin ran in to the cheder and
grabbed the bell sometimes used by the Chief Rebbe to call the tardy
bocherim to study. She rang it as loud as she could and screamed "Fire in
the barn, Fire in the barn."
All of the wise villagers of Chelm immediately congregated in the town
square. "Quickly, to the barn," called the Chief Rebbe Yitzhak, "Let us
put out this fire before it threatens the whole town."
They raced to the edge of town, and there they saw that the entire barn
was ablaze. The walls were already collapsing inwards on the handful of
poor animals lodged therein. The entire barn floor was covered with dry
straw, which caught fire rapidly.
A long sigh arose from the assembled. "No doubt the fire was started by a
careless stable boy, smoking a pipe," opined Mendel the cobbler. "Yes,"
agreed Motke the butcher, "and it was careless to have left so much dry
straw lying around. The entire tragedy might have been avoided had we
earlier used better judgment." "Never mind that now," said Tevye the
foolish milkman, "That is all spilt milk, a matter about which I know a
great deal. We still need to do something lest the entire town be engulfed
in these flames. They are getting hotter by the minute and will spread
destruction."
"You are right," said Reb Yitzhak, who liked to tell all people they were
wrong, even when they disagreed with one another. "What we need to do is
to cover these flames quickly with new straw. This will dampen the
temperatures in the barn, hide the flames behind new cover, and protect
the rest of the town from destruction."
"You are making a Purim spiel, right?" objected Tevye the foolish milkman.
"That is no solution at all. It will just make things hotter and more
destructive."
"Oh you think so, mister chucham gaon?" said Reb Shimon, who suddenly took
over the Yeshiva, after a deranged student shot Reb Yitzhak in the middle
of the battle against the fire. "SO you do not like my solution, don.t
you? All right then, YOU tell us all how to make the flames disappear and
make the barn rematerialize."
"I am afraid there is nothing that can save the barn at this point,"
answered Tevye reluctantly. "We simply have to write it off as lost.
Maybe we were foolish to allow conditions that lead to its catching fire
in the first place."
"You are dodging the issue," objected the Rebbe Shimon. "I am waiting to
hear how you plan to save the barn from destruction."
"I am afraid there IS no such solution," sighed Constable Arik. "The
village is so poor that we have no fire fighting equipment. There are no
hoses in the town that could reach the barn from the well. We could set up
a bucket brigade but will not be able to do so in time to prevent the
demolishment of the barn. The best we can do is to make sure the situation
does not get WORSE. There are other structures in the town in danger of
catching fire from these sparks. We need to exert all our efforts in
making sure the damage is contained."
"You see," said Reb Shimon. "That big yente Arik does NOT have a solution
to the problem. So we must stop all this chinik-hocking and pursue MY
solution at once. The current situation is INTOLERABLE!!"
The villagers followed the lead of the new Chief Rebbe Shimon. They
gathered up bundles of dry straw from neighboring shacks and shanties.
They tossed them onto the flames of the fire in the barn. It seemed to
work, for the flames could no longer be seen below the bundles of dry
straw, merely smoldering smoke.
"Hurrah," proclaimed the bocherim from the Chief Rebbe's cheder, "We have
succeeded! We must run to the shul and say the birkat hagomel blessing at
once."
"But before they took their leave, new flames suddenly sprung up from the
piles of straw they had brought and tossed in to the barn.
"Gevalt," moaned the Rebbe Shimon, "you see we did not act quickly and
decisively enough. More straw!!"
"Are you entirely meshugana? Are you shikkered ad lo yada?" objected
Tevye. "Did you not just see that your idea failed? It just made the
inferno WORSE! The fire now is even MORE dangerous!"
"What do you know from fighting fires, mister smarty gotkes," replied Reb
Shimon. "Besides Constable Arik already admitted that he does not have a
better solution, one that would work and save the barn."
Meanwhile, Reb Ehud was elected by the common villagers to serve as Chief
Rebbe to replace Reb Shimon, who reverted to his earlier function of
village jester. Reb Ehud ordered the villagers to double their efforts.
They quickly raced to nearby homes and stables and brought out more
bundles of straw. They doubled their efforts and redoubled the size of the
straw piled into the barn.
The flames disappeared beneath the new fresh straw and Reb Ehud ordered a
special celebration, with kiddish wine from the shul's pantry.
But before the bottles could be opened, new flames shot up from the ruins
of the barn and the neighboring inn and cottages burst into flames from
the flying sparks.
"Faster, you lazy ones," screamed Reb Ehud. "You are not working hard
enough to bring straw. We need to try something new now."
Reb Ehud ordered the villagers to take shibboleths of straw and light
their ends from the flames and to toss them into alleys and buildings
several streets away from the barn. "This will spread the heat around,
lowering the temperatures and will result in the fire diminishing and
cooling off."
"A complete madman," groaned Tevye the foolish milkman incomprehensibly.
"Can't you see that everything you did until now just made things WORSE?
Now you will create even GREATER destruction!"
"Shah shtil," replied the Rebbe. "We are still waiting to hear YOUR
solution for saving the barn and putting out the fires."
"But there IS no solution. I explained this to you. The only thing to be
done is to prevent the catastrophe from growing larger."
"Idiot," said the shamash from the shul, agreeing with his Rebbe. "Can't
you see the current situation is unbearable. The barn is demolished and
more buildings are now in flames. We cannot simply sit back and tolerate
the intolerable. If you cannot offer a real solution, then hold your
tongue. If not, we will have you imprisoned by the Cossacks for criminal
incitement and sedition."
New piles of straw were brought in now from every part of the village and
tossed upon the flames. The flames leapt from rooftop to rooftop, burning
all of the unfortunate fiddlers and chickens up there. Fire crept towards
the village square and now threatened to burn the shul and the sacred
scrolls.
The villagers saw the damage and broke into collective lamentation, as if
it were the ninth day of Av. There was no choice.
The villagers assembled in the square and voted Reb Ehud out of office,
electing Constable Arik as the mayor and Chief Rabbi. At last we will now
see some serious action against the fire, insisted Tevye hopefully.
Constable Arik has long campaigned against the use of straw to fight the
inferno and the villagers can count on his reversing the failed and
foolish policies of his predecessors.
.Thank you for your faith in me,. pledged the constable, now elected mayor
and Chief Rebbe. .I promise to put out the fire quickly. My plan is very
simple. We will end the fire by disengaging from it. And we will
disengage ourselves from it by separating it off from ourselves using a
large pile of new fresh straw..
Tevye the milkman could not believe what he was hearing.
"There is only one last chance to save the town from destruction," warned
the newly elected Mayor Arik. "All is not yet lost if we just fight this
catastrophe with all of our beings and all of our souls and all of our
strength. SO all of you together now, with every fiber of your beings. And
you too this time, Tevye. I beseech every one of you. Follow my lead!
We will defeat the fire this time because I have a completely new strategy
of disengagement! So all together now.
.MORE STRAW!!!"

Posted 7/10/2005 12:23:00 PM

http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=666
Profiling Supporters of Terror

The MSM spend so much time debating the profiling of potential terrorists
that they never quite get around to discussing the profiling of people who
SUPPORT terrorism. What the world needs is a clear system of profiling
PRO-Terrorists, so that ordinary citizens in Peoria can beware and be wary
of the true agendas of such people.

A pro-terrorist is someone who thinks that al-Qaeda terrorism has "roots"
in the form of legitimate grievances of terrorists. You know, grievances
of Palestinian graduate students planning suicide bombings and Saudi oil
millionaires joining al-Qaeda. Their main grievances of course being
Israel.s very existence and the failue to restore Saddam Hussein to power.

A pro-terrorist is someone who thinks that terrorism is due to
"occupation" by Israel of Israeli lands and "occupation" by Allied troops
of Iraq and Afghanistan.

A pro-terrorist is someone who thinks Israel is an "apartheid state",
whereas we all know that it is the only state in the Middle East that is
NOT an apartheid regime.

A pro-terrorist speaks about solving the problems of terror via "justice",
but by "justice" they mean the genocide of Israelis.

A pro-terrorist thinks that the US and Britain need to alter their regimes
along the lines of the leftist "vision" as the only possible way to stop
terrorism.

A pro-terrorist thinks that arms should never be used against terrorists
and can only legitimately be used to "resist" Israeli occupation and the
anti-terror campaign of the West.

A pro-terrorist thinks Western greed and selfishness are the root of all
problems.

A pro-terrorist thinks that anti-Americanism is based upon true caring and
compassion.

A pro-terrorist opposes US intervention anywhere in the world unless it is
to be in support of Palestinian terrorists.

A pro-terrorist does not consider anti-American or anti-Jewish terrorists
to be actual terrorists but rather to be "activists" and militants".
Israeli troops who arrest people planning suicide attacks are the REAL
terrorists.

A pro-terrorist opposes Israel.s security wall because such a wall might
make it harder for Palestinians to conduct mass murders of Jewish
children.

A pro-terrorist opposes "racial profiling" because it might help prevent
Islamofascist terrorism.

A pro-terrorist insists that only American and British isolationism is a
permissible form of combat against Islamofascism.

(It should be noted that some seeming conservatives, like Anthony Gregory
over at LewRockewell.Com, are as clearly pro-terror as are the usual
leftists and "anarchists" correctly so profiled.

2. "Rabbi" Woodstock on the need to grant the London bombers "justice" for
their causes:
http://list.haifa.ac.il/pipermail/alef/2005-July/004953.html

Posted 7/09/2005 10:46:00 PM

Columbia and the Academic Intifada

Efraim Karsh

Since its birth in 1948, Israel has faced down numerous attempts to
destroy it or undercut its right to exist. War, terrorism, economic and
diplomatic ostracism, UN resolutions, media vilification, not to mention
the spread of anti-Semitic libel, have all taken their toll. Recently a
new, seemingly more confined but no less difficult challenge has been
added: an effort to harness the perceived moral and intellectual force of
professional scholars in the campaign to de-legitimize the Jewish state.

I am not just speaking of the anti-Israel and anti-Jewish campaign that
erupted on Western campuses simultaneously with the launch of the
Palestinian terror war in September 2000, and that intensified as Israel
took steps to contain it. To this has been added classroom denigration of
the state of Israel and its supporters, and even open advocacy of its
destruction.

Last April.s decision by Britain.s 48,000-strong Association of University
Teachers (AUT) to boycott Haifa and Bar-Ilan universities is the most
obvious example of this latter phenomenon. The decision, subsequently
rescinded in the face of an international outcry, had nothing to do with
scholarly considerations: Israel is the only Middle Eastern country where
academics enjoy complete and unrestricted freedom of _expression. Nor did
it reflect an honest sense of solidarity with the Palestinian universities
of the West Bank and Gaza, which for the past decade have been under the
control not of Israel but of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Rather, the
boycott was a frank attempt to single out Israel as a pariah nation, to
declare its existence illegitimate. As the Haifa academic Ilan Pappe,
whose (false) claim of persecution by his university provided the pretext
for the boycott, pleaded with the AUT on the eve of its resolution:

I appeal to you today to be part of a historical movement and moment that
may bring an end to more than a century of colonization, occupation, and
dispossession of Palestinians. . . . The message that will be directed
specifically against those academic institutes which have been
particularly culpable in sustaining the oppression since 1948 and the
occupation since 1967 can be a start for a successful campaign for peace
(as similar acts at the time had activated the anti-apartheid movement in
South Africa).

In other words, Israeli scholars were to be ostracized not for any
supposed repression of academic freedom but for their contribution to the
creation and prosperity of the state of Israel, a racist, colonialist
implant in the Middle East as worthy of extirpation as the former
apartheid regime of South Africa. With this as the boycott.s goal, small
wonder that one of its prime movers, Sue Blackwell of Birmingham
University, posted a picture on the web of herself wrapped in the
Palestinian flag and headlined .Victory for the Academic Intifada..

Still, however despicable such efforts by open Israel-haters, most of whom
claim no knowledge of Middle Eastern affairs, it pales in comparison with
a far more insidious development in the field of Middle East studies
itself, the training ground of future scholars, opinion-makers, and policy
experts. Here the textbook example is the department of Middle East and
Asian Languages and Cultures (MEALAC) at Columbia University in New York,
whose faculty members have been plausibly accused by students of abusing
their positions in order to vilify Israel, to promote anti-Zionism, and to
stifle free discussion of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

In the fall of 2004, the David Project, a Boston-based advocacy group,
produced a video titled Columbia Unbecoming. In it, various students
recounted their personal experiences of classroom bias and intimidation.
Three professors came in for particular criticism.

Hamid Dabashi, the head of MEALAC, was accused of, among other things,
canceling classes to attend, and to permit his students to attend, a
pro-Palestinian rally on campus that featured a call for Israel.s
destruction. George Saliba, who teaches Arabic and Islamic science,
allegedly told a Jewish student in a private discussion that she had no
claim to the land of Israel or any right to an opinion on the
Israel-Palestinian question because, unlike his brown-eyed self, .You have
green eyes; you.re not a Semite.. On another occasion Saliba reprimanded a
student who had questioned his habitual substitution of the term Palestine
for Israel, as if to deny the existence of the Jewish state: .Oh, so
that.s the ax that you have to grind? Why Israel is being called Palestine
in my class? What about the plight of the Palestinians? Why isn.t that
what you are talking to me about?.

Students were even more critical of Joseph Massad, a protg of the late
Edward Said. Among the more serious accusations were Massad.s likening of
Jews to Nazis and his disparagement of Israel as a racist state.
Reportedly, Massad taunted one student, who had served in the Israeli
army, .How many Palestinians have you killed?,. and informed another that
he would not .have anybody here deny Israeli atrocities.. One student
recounted Massad.s telling his class, .The Palestinian is the new Jew, and
the Jew is the new Nazi..

In December, faced with growing public indignation, Columbia.s president,
Lee H. Bollinger, grudgingly announced the appointment of a committee to
review student complaints. The committee.s composition gave a clear signal
of Bollinger.s own disposition. Three of the five members were known
critics of Israel, and two of these three had signed a petition calling on
Columbia to divest its holdings from companies selling arms and military
hardware to Israel. (An anti-divestment petition had also attracted wide
support on campus, but none of the five had signed it.) Another member had
served as Massad.s dissertation adviser, and shortly before being
appointed to the committee had signed a letter decrying press reports
about MEALAC.s prejudice as .the latest salvo against academic freedom at
Columbia..1

In its report, released at the end of March, the committee predictably
circumvented the core issue. Focusing on .significant deficiencies in the
university.s grievance and advising procedures,. it ruled that Massad had
acted inappropriately by responding .heatedly. to .a question that he
understood to countenance Israeli conduct of which he disapproved,. while
consigning to .a challenging gray zone. his taunt about the number of
Palestinians a student had supposedly killed. At the same time, the panel
had nothing but praise for .Massad.s dedication to, and respectful
attitude toward, his students. and for his .willingness . . . to permit
anyone who wished to do so to comment or raise a question during his
lectures.. Indeed, so open-minded was Massad in the committee.s estimation
that his .pedagogical strategy. actually .allowed a small but vociferous
group..presumably, pro-Israel students..to disrupt lectures by their
incessant questions and comments..

Adding insult to whitewash, the committee found .no evidence of any
statements made by the faculty that could reasonably be construed as
anti-Semitic.. Above all, it scanted the majority of the complaints, which
centered on none of these matters but rather (as the committee itself
noted) on .what a number of students perceived as bias in the content of
particular courses. as well as on charges that .particular professors had
an inadequate grasp of the material they taught and that they purveyed
inaccurate information..

All this was too much even for the New York Times, which had been overtly
sympathetic to the Columbia faculty throughout the crisis. .Most student
complaints,. it now editorialized correctly, .were not really about
intimidation, but about allegations of stridently pro-Palestinian,
anti-Israeli bias on the part of several professors.. Since the committee
had failed, in the words of the Times, .to examine the quality and
fairness of teaching,. the university was still left with the need .to
follow up on complaints about politicized courses and a lack of scholarly
rigor..

This at least cuts to the heart of the matter. The issue is not whether
professors should treat their students with due respect, as indeed they
should, but whether they should be permitted, under the guise of academic
freedom, to pass off personal bias and open political partisanship as
scholarly fact. That the committee avoided this issue is hardly a
surprise. For when it comes to honest scholarship, there can be no
question of where George Saliba, Joseph Massad, and Hamid Dabashi stand.

Massad, for example, who emphatically dismissed the charges against him as
part of a coordinated hate campaign by Israel and its right-wing
supporters in America, recently published a series of articles in the
English-language edition of the prominent Egyptian paper al-Ahram. There
he repeatedly derided Zionism as a form of European imperialism and Israel
as .a racist Jewish state. (or .a racist settler colony.), openly
advocating its replacement .by a secular democratic bi-national state..the
PLO.s shorthand slogan since the late 1960.s for a Middle East without
Israel. Turning the history of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on its
head, Massad claimed that .Jewish colonists were part of the British
colonial death squads that murdered Palestinian revolutionaries between
1936 and 1939 while Hitler unleashed Kristallnacht against German Jews..
Thus, he concluded, .the ultimate achievement of Israel. was the
.transformation of the Jew into the anti-Semite, and the Palestinian into
the Jew..

Hamid Dabashi echoed Massad.s anger at the .malicious defamation of my
department with no basis in truth. (as he wrote to the Spectator,
Columbia.s student paper). In his own public statements and writings,
however, Dabashi has if anything outdone Massad in concocting a scenario
of the Middle East in which Israel not only has no legitimate place but
can hardly be said to exist, except as an unnamed Dark Force.

.I flew to Palestine and landed in Ben-Gurion checkpoint,. Dabashi wrote
of a brief visit in February 2004 .to four Palestinian cities.: Gaza City,
Ramallah, Nazareth, and Jerusalem (the last two of which are, at recent
report, still in Israel). During his weeklong stay in the country that
.they call .Israel,.. the only non-Arab civilians he noted were knots of
ultra-Orthodox Jews .rushing to some unspecified destination.. Nowhere to
be seen in the streets of Jerusalem, evidently, were the Jewish
Israelis.men, women, and children.who constitute the vast majority of the
country.s population. Instead, he found the streets inhabited by heavily
armed soldiers .with very long machine guns hanging from their necks,. as
befits .a military base for the rising predatory empire of the United
States..

Back at the Ben-Gurion .checkpoint. on his return flight to New York,
Dabashi was struck by an airport scene resembling something out of the
pages of Hannah Arendt.s reflections on the .banality of evil.. Before him
was not a departure lounge but

a fully fortified barrack, with its battalion of security forces treating
all the transient inmates with equal banality. It was not just colored
Muslims like me that they treated like hazardous chemicals. It was
everyone. .One,. as in our quintessential humanity, melted in this fearful
furnace into a nullity beyond human recognition.

But his torture was not over; once on line to board the aircraft, Dabashi
was forced to contemplate with horror .a young couple and their five
children, all boys and all with yarmulkes on their heads,. the mother
pregnant, the father .murmuring something under his breath,. the children
.each eating a McDonald.s hamburger. I presume McDonald.s makes kosher
hamburger. I was quite nauseous..

Only after having finally escaped from this .massive machinery of death
and destruction. to the safety of Manhattan did Dabashi permit himself a
detached scholarly meditation on the origins of so .miasmatic [a] mutation
of human soul into a subterranean mixture of vile and violence.. Where
could it have come from? His answer:

Half a century of systematic maiming and murdering of another people has
left its deep marks on the faces of these people. . . . A subsumed
militarism, a systemic mendacity with an ingrained violence constitutional
to the very fusion of its fabric, has penetrated the deepest corners of
what these people have to call their .soul.. No people can perpetrate what
these people and their parents and grandparents have perpetrated on
Palestinians and remain immune to the cruelty of their own deeds.

Like Massad, Dabashi found a home for his lucubrations in al-Ahram, a
paper that itself regularly features anti-Semitic articles and cartoons.
His thoughts on the nature and history of Israeli society tell much about
the tenor of the academic department he had the privilege of heading at
one of the world.s great universities. They also prompt a question of
their own: where do such ranting constructions of reality have their
origin?

A lengthy historical treatise could be written in answer to that question,
but the first place to look is at the career and writings of Edward Said,
the patron saint of Middle Eastern studies in its current incarnation.
Like Dabashi, Massad, and many others, Said, who died in 2003, made a
specialty of appropriating the experience of the Jews as his own, even
while belittling Jewish collective identity and savaging the Jewish state.

.I don.t find the idea of a Jewish state terribly interesting,. Said told
an interviewer for the Israeli paper Ha.aretz in August 2000. .I wouldn.t
want it for myself. Even if I were a Jew. I.d fight against it. And it
won.t last. . . . Take my word for it. . . . It won.t even be remembered..
Making his own vision of the future explicit, he added: .[T]he Jews are a
minority everywhere. A Jewish minority can survive [in Arab Palestine] the
way other minorities in the Arab world survived..

In his published work, Said discounted altogether the historic Jewish
attachment to Palestine and misrepresented Israel.s creation and
subsequent struggle for survival as a predatory colonialist endeavor to
occupy another people.s land and to dispossess the indigenous population.
Missing from his account were such inconvenient facts as the Arabs.
outspoken commitment to the destruction of the Jewish national cause, the
sustained and repeated Arab efforts to achieve that end from the early
1920.s onward, and the no less sustained efforts of the Jews at peaceful
coexistence. In his account, Zionism emerged instead as an offshoot of
European imperialism at its most rapacious. As for the Palestinian Arabs,
they were Zionism.s hapless victims, .whose main sin [was] that they
happened to be there, in Israel.s way..

Like his protg Joseph Massad, Said invoked the Holocaust only in order to
deny the reality of Jewish identity and history. .I am one of the few
Arabs who have written about the Holocaust,. he boasted to Ha.aretz. .I.ve
been to Buchenwald and Dachau and other death camps, and I see the
connection.. But his acknowledgement of the Nazi murder of European Jews
was merely a tactical ploy. As he candidly explained, .by recognizing the
Holocaust for the genocidal madness that it was, we can then demand from
Israelis and Jews the right to link the Holocaust to Zionist injustices
toward the Palestinians..

Said spared no effort at hammering home that linkage. In the mid-1980.s,
for example, he compared the notion of Jewish statehood with Nazi
Germany.s .organized [program of] discrimination or persecution.. .I do
not want to press the analogy too far,. he wrote in 2002, on the second
anniversary of Arafat.s terror war, .but it is true to say that
Palestinians under Israeli occupation today are as powerless as Jews were
in the 1940.s..

A strange assessment on the anniversary of a Palestinian war that had
already resulted in the bloody murder of some 700 Israelis and the
wounding of thousands more in daily terror attacks. But then, Said was
also quick to dismiss Palestinian terrorism itself as a figment of
Israel.s imagination, .invented so that its own neuroses can be inscribed
on the bodies of Palestinians.. Unhindered by his lack of any professional
knowledge of Israeli society or politics, he indicted Israel as .a country
whose soul has been captured by a mania for punishing the weak, a
democracy that faithfully mirrors the psychopathic mentality of its ruler,
General Sharon, whose sole idea.if that is the right word for it.is to
kill, reduce, maim, drive away Palestinians until break...

Although he mobilized the machinery of post-modernist .discourse. to
construct his portrait of Israeli reality, Said was no more original in
his choice of rhetoric than his acolytes after him. The repudiation of
Jewish nationalism has, in fact, been a staple of Arab propaganda ever
since the early 1920.s, was institutionalized in the PLO Covenant of 1964,
and received international codification in the UN.s 1975 resolution
declaring Zionism .a form of racism and racial discrimination.. Almost as
antique is the equation of Zionism with Nazism and colonialism. Within a
year of its creation in 1964, the PLO had produced a short pamphlet,
titled Zionist Colonialism in Palestine, foreshadowing Said.s
.postcolonialist. arguments.

Take, for example, the pamphlet.s description of the birth of Zionism:

The frenzied .scramble for Africa. of the 1880.s stimulated the beginnings
of Zionist colonization in Palestine. As European fortune-hunters,
prospective settlers, and empire-builders raced for Africa, Zionist
settlers and would-be state-builders rushed for Palestine.

Here is the same idea as rendered in Said.s The Question of Palestine
(1980):

Zionism . . . coincided with the period of unparalleled European
territorial acquisition in Africa and Asia, and it was as part of this
general movement of acquisition and occupation that Zionism was launched
initially by Theodor Herzl.

Or consider the pamphlet.s explanation of the main difference between
Zionism and 19th-century European colonialism:

Unlike European colonization elsewhere, . . . Zionist colonization of
Palestine was essentially incompatible with the continued existence of the
.native population. in the coveted country.

And here is Said:

Zionism was a colonial vision unlike that of most other 19th-century
European powers, for whom the natives of outlying territories were
included [emphasis in original] in the redemptive mission civilisatrice.

And the Jewish state.s ultimate objectives? According to the pamphlet,
.the Zionist concept of the .final solution. to the .Arab problem. in
Palestine, and the Nazi concept of the .final solution. to the .Jewish
problem. in Germany, consisted essentially of the same basic ingredient:
the elimination of the unwanted human element in question.. Said avoids
such highly charged terminology, but his gist is unmistakably the same:

There is, of course, the charge made by National Socialism, as codified in
the Nuremberg Laws, that Jews were foreign, and therefore expendable. . .
. Then there is the almost too perfect literalization that is given the
binary opposition Jew-versus-non-European in the climatic chapter of the
unfolding narrative of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Lying propaganda is perhaps to be expected from a revolutionary
organization committed to eliminating by violence a longstanding member of
the United Nations. Its introduction into the college classroom is another
matter. But it is here that Said.s influence has been unrivaled, and well
beyond the confines of Columbia, his own institution. Catapulted to
international stardom by his 1978 book Orientalism, a blistering attack on
supposed Western perceptions of the Middle East and Islam, Said used his
celebrity status to blur, if not to erase altogether, the dividing line
between political propaganda and academic scholarship. He was quickly
followed by legions of disciples, many of whom would make their careers in
departments of Middle East studies by consciously patterning themselves on
this .Salah al-Din [Saladin] of our reasoning with mad adversaries,. to
quote Dabashi.s perfervid eulogy of his intellectual hero.

And herein lies the crucial importance of the Columbia case. Far from
being an exception, its classroom teaching is emblematic of the pervasive
prejudice that has afflicted the field of modern Middle Eastern studies
for quite some time.2

That prejudice is fueled in equal parts by money and ideas. We have seen
where some of the leading ideas come from. The money comes from oil-rich
Arab countries that have created endowed chairs or research centers over
which they exercise lasting control. Only last year, Harvard was forced to
return a $2.5-million donation from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for the
creation of a chair named after the UAE.s ruler, Sheik Zaid ibn Sultan,
when it was revealed (again by student initiative) that an Arab think tank
connected with Zaid was promulgating anti-American and anti-Semitic views.
Columbia, by contrast, went out of its way to hide the UAE.s $200,000
contribution to a newly endowed chair in modern Arab studies and
literature, and then insisted on retaining the money once the link had
been exposed. Fittingly, the chair is named for Edward Said.

It is difficult to overstate the tenacity of the resulting infestation of
Arab dogmatism in Middle East studies as a field. Over the last two
decades, one would be hard-pressed to find books on the Arab-Israeli
conflict issuing from Middle East-studies departments that present the
Jewish state in a dispassionate, let alone a positive, light, and hardly
any such items appear on course reading lists. Thus, at Columbia, the
syllabus for Joseph Massad.s fall 2004 survey course on the Middle East
included, in addition to readings from the canonical Edward Said and the
subtler Orientalist Albert Hourani, a single work on Israel: a
three-decades-old screed by the French Marxist historian of Islam, Maxime
Rodinson, whose title, Israel, a Colonial-Settler State?, says it all.
Scholars daring to defy the general stigmatization of Israel have been
attacked and marginalized.

Above all, the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), the largest and
most influential professional body for the study of the region, whose
2,600-plus members inhabit departments of Middle East studies throughout
the world, has become a hotbed of anti-Israel invective. Past presidents
of the association like Joel Beinin of Stanford and Rashid Khalidi of
Columbia.the latter holds the Edward Said chair.have, in one form or
another, publicly advocated the destruction of Israel as a state. Joseph
Massad won MESA.s prize for the outstanding Ph.D. dissertation in the
field, and the resulting book was warmly reviewed by three past MESA
presidents, not to mention by Said himself.

Given these circumstances, it was only natural for a group of prominent
MESA members to send a letter to Columbia.s president in support of the
beleaguered MEALAC staff, or for the association.s president-elect, Juan
Cole of Michigan, to rush to the aid of Massad.the victim, as Cole put it,
of .a concerted campaign. by .the American Likud.. .In parlous times like
the post-9/11 environment,. Cole stormed, .demagogues grow powerful and
American values are endangered. Massad is the canary in the mineshaft of
American democracy..

Even if the Columbia leadership were to do the decent thing, by
acknowledging the ongoing bigotry of its professors and by disciplining
the offenders, such action would only address the symptoms and not the
causes of the pervasive anti-Israel and anti-Jewish bias in the field of
modern Middle East studies. Not only is the academic intifada against the
Jewish state thriving, the reigning terms of discussion it has introduced
for understanding Middle Eastern reality have become perfectly normal,
perfectly conventional, perfectly accepted in academic discourse. It will
take more than a single student protest to undo the rot that has settled
into the study of the Middle East and that is now quite comfortably at
home in Western universities.

Efraim Karsh is head of Mediterranean studies at King.s College,
University of London. His new book, on the history of Islamic imperialism,
will be out next year from Yale.

1 The best and most dogged reporting on the Columbia affair was done by
Jacob Gershman of the New York Sun.

2 For chapter and verse, see Martin Kramer, Ivory Towers on Sand: The
Failure of Middle Eastern Studies in America (2002).

2. "The Nation", anti-Semitic leftist rag, celebrated David
Yellow-Wind-in-his-Shorts Grossman:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20050711&s=grossman

3.Was Cherie Blair a Partial Cause of the Terror Blitz in London this
Week?

Posted by Plaut's Complaint @ Saturday 9 July 2005, 3:30 pm
Does Cherie Blair now really "understand the motives" of the London
bombers, justifying them and wishing to bond with them to find new common
ground and mutual understandings?

In fighting the terrorist threat to London, Tony Blair could do nothing
more productive then muzzle his Misses. Cherie Blair has a long history
of anti-American, pro-terror activism and statements. You may recall that
she was the leading British voice denouncing the supposed mistreatment of
al-Qaeda prisoners in Gitmo, and never mind that it turns out that they
eat better than US troops do. And she dissed the American legal system -
calling it a "grandfather clock" among "21st century timepieces" - and
suggested it could learn lessons from Europe. She claims George Bush
"stole" the election. Pro-terror Marxist web magazines love her. She
has been up to her plucked eyebrows in a sleazy scandal involving
Australian real estate, in cahoots with a notorious conman down under, in
what the Brits are calling Cheriegate.

She provoked outrage in the British Jewish community two years ago when
she said she understood why Palestinian suicide bombers were driven to do
what they did. She told Palestinians that she understands and justifies
suicide bombers.

So to be consistent, shouldn.t she apply her same "reasoning" to the perps
of the London subway bombings?

Cherie is such a moonbat that her pro-terror comments have been set to
disco. http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=660

4. Makor Rishon Mocks Chamish (in Hebrew only):
http://makorrishon.co.il/article.php?id=4017

Posted 7/08/2005 11:39:00 AM

Britain Suddenly Discovers the "T" Word
http://moonbatcentral.com/wordpress/?p=646

Well, I am sure you were all relieved to hear that neither Red Ken
Livingston, the commie mayor of London, nor George Galloway, the British
pro-Baathist MP, were among the victims of the al-Qaeda bombers in London.

Incredibly, the British press is actually using the "T" word. Yes, they
are referring to the London Underground perps as terrorists. Why is this
so unusual? Because the British media have been religiously scrupulous in
referring to all terrorists and mass murderers who attack Jews as
"activists" and "militants".

It is suddenly like a parallel universe out there, not the one with which
we are familiar. The ..activists'. and ..militants'. are suddenly
referred to as ..terrorists.'. Even the Guardian and the BBC have
discovered the ..T'. word. The governments of Europe, which ordinarily
spend their days insisting that Israel deal with terrorists through
capitulation, were suddenly enraged, expressing their disgust.

It was suddenly not a legitimate form of protest against occupation to
mass-murder civilians. The British newspapers did not not issue special
editions documenting the abuses of human rights by Britain, nor bemoan the
..grievances'. of those angry at the UK. Not a single Euro-politician
made a speech denouncing the illegal British occupations of the Channel
Islands and Gibraltar.

The World Court in the Hague did not begin an indictment of the UK for the
conditions of its illegal occupation of Cornwall, not to mention Scotland,
Wales and Ulster. Museum and convention hall exhibits were not opened
documenting the social and economic inequalities that plague British
Moslems, which obviously are what really drove the London bombers.

And the BBC has not demanded that the Brits re-examine their own behavior,
to discover which manifestation of their arrogance provoked the Al-Qaida
savages. The networks were not full of messages about how Moslems regard
Gibraltar as their own holy land and that only their liberation to Moslem
control can bring peace.

The European parliament did not send millions of Euros to fund leftist
politicial organizations in London devoted to encouraging British soldiers
to refuse orders and to desert and refure to serve in the army. There
were no protests against British plans to implement ..profiling'. at its
airports and train stations. The Scandinavians did not demand that the UK
open up dialogue with the bombers, and British liberals did not lecture
their countrymen about how there are no police nor military problems to
the challenges of terrorism. Human rights groups did not demand that any
captured subway terrorists be treated as prisoners of war with full Geneva
Convention privileges and good lawyers.

And unlikein Israel, British leftist professors are not (yet) marching in
solidarity with the bombers and demanding that the world establish a
boycott of British universities because of the grievances of the bombers.
British poets have not sung the praises of the bombers. Students on
British campuses are not marching with al-Qaida banners and posters of
Saddam, nor do they chant, ..In Blood and Fire we will redeem thee,
Gibraltara.'. British schools are not teaching the poetry composed by
al-Qaida poets, nor did the Opposition in the Parliament demand that the
British national anthem change its words to make British Moslems feel more
welcome and less alienated in the UK. British citizens who engage in
espionage for al-Qaida are not declared candidates for a Nobel Peace
Prize, voted rector of a Scotland University, nor have their posters
carried in peace marches.

The State Department Washington did not threaten trade sanctions against
Britian if it took military action against the bombers. Not a single
newscast referred to the Isle of Wight nor Wessex as a settlement. The
British left did not send reps to Geneva and Oslo to negotiate secretly
with the bombers. French politicians did not puff themselves up and
lecture the British about their cruelty and insensitivity. Kofi Annan did
not demand that talks begin. The International Solidarity Movement failed
to send crews of human shields to protect the homes of al-Qaida members in
Northern London. Yale students did not announce a campaign to divest from
the UK. Tikkun magazine did not devote a special issue to the suffering
and pain of the bombers. Special teach-ins on human rights abuses by the
UK were not held at Berkeley, nor did the students re-enact street theater
in which cruel bobbies bully poor Pakistani passengers getting on trains
with large suitcases. Jimmy Carter did not offer to serve as liaison
between the government of London and the bombers.

We will know that the world has reverted to normality when it discovers
that the Madrid bombings were all somehow the fault of the Jews. Some
neonazi web sites are already spreading the invention that Israeli Finance
Minister Bibi Netanyahu was warned in advance of the attacks and so stayed
in his British hotel, and so the same conspiracy kooks who claim Dem Joos
knocked down the WTC on 9-11 have a new "theory".

Counterpunch, always to be relied upon to support anti-Western terrorists
even when they target Alexander Kockburn.s own homeland, has already come
out with an article that support the terrorist bombers. It runs a piece
by notorious British neonazi Gilad Atzmon, famous for his justifying the
burning own of synagogues and so openly anti-Semitic that large numbers of
British leftists are urging the Socialist Workers Party in the UK to cut
all ties with him. Atzmon writes about the London bombings that the real
lesson should be:

"It tells us that we must never again give our votes to war criminals.
More than anything else it tells us that we have a moral duty. It is down
to us to stop our governments. It is our duty to stand up and to demand
the resignation of Blair who is responsible for the death of so many
Iraqis and arguably now many Innocent Britons. We must remember that
voting in a non-ethical politician makes us all into active shareholders
in a criminal company.. It tells us that we must never again give our
votes to war criminals."

Cockburn is truly a disciple of Oswald Mosley.