Friday, October 16, 2009
It's The Jewish Advocate again. This time they've brought out their "unbiased" pen to their report on last Saturday's Israel Hater's march through Brookline (see: Sticking It To The Jews in Brookline: March and Counter-March This Saturday).
Here's the trouble. When you're dealing with people who lie about their motivations and themselves, and you just quote what they say, you're simply propagating lies, not reporting, not informing. Once again, you need to turn to the internet for something approaching truth. If you're reading "traditional" news sources alone, you don't know anything.
Case in point is the Advocate's report on the march: A war of words on Beacon Street - Palestinian and pro-Israel groups face off in Brookline. Unfortunately, the article requires paid subscription (don't). But let me give you a case in point. Here's how it starts:
It was supposed to be a silent protest against Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank.
But things got a bit noisy on the streets of Brookline Saturday when the Boston Palestinian Equal Rights Walk encountered marchers mobilized in a last-minute blitz by pro-Israel protestors. Some 40 people wearing matching T-shirts and keffiyehs and waving Palestinian flags carried on a moving shout fest with some 25 people holding small blue-and-white signs and waving Israeli flags.
The Palestinian group set off at 1 p.m. to walk from Coolidge Corner to Copley Square, passing Temple Ohabai Shalom on Beacon Street and the Chabad House of Greater Boston on Commonwealth Avenue.
The protest was in conjunction with others organized around the country by the American Association for Palestinian Equal Rights, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit organization.
"The whole point of it is to walk in silence and dignity," said local organizer Kathy Felgram of Watertown, who is Jewish. "We're trying to make people aware that the media here carries only the Israeli side of the story and that there are gross injustices on a daily basis."...
Did the reporter go online and see what the AAPER was really about (the whole "Right of Return" thing) despite their innocuous description of themselves? No. Did she check out Kathy Felgran, the "Jew?" No. Felgran is one of those people who discover their Jewishness only when bashing Jews and Israel, as a look at her Facebook page would show immediately: "Religious Views: Jewish by birth, Bahai by choice. I love and respect the prophets of all religions." We await her march to bring attention to the persecution of Iran's Bahai's.
As to the rest, Kerry Hurwitz, one of the organizers of the counter-march, and also quoted in the article, has an excellent comment posted at the Advocate site. I reproduce it here in full:
There are a number of important facts not mentioned in the story.
Kath Felgran claims that AAPER/Code Pink (the co-sponsors) did not choose the time or place of their demonstration to harass or intimidate the Jewish community. However, the blog Solomonia (www.solomonia.com) has found this email, in which the organizers express great glee about holding the march in a predominantly Jewish area on Shabbat: "The effect of a silent march through the (mostly but not entirely) liberal Jewish neighborhood on the Sabbath with a banner saying Freedom and Equality for Palestine! should be striking indeed... "(see http://www.solomonia.com/blog/archive/2009/10/sticking-it-to-the-jews-in-brookline-mar/, http://groups.google.com/group/boston-stands-with-gaza/browse_thread/thread/3945d6df27867225#). Assuredly, one of the purposes of the event was in fact to antagonize and upset Brookline's Jewish community
Felgran also claims that AAPER stands only for "equal rights". This is untrue. AAPER's own literature states that they demand that the descendants of the Arabs who attacked their Jewish neighbors (and lost) during Israel's War of Independence be given the ability to claim property they abandoned over sixty years ago, whether they actually owned title to that property or not. The admitted purpose of this attempted `land grab' is to destroy Israel as a Jewish state. Of course, AAPER and its ilk are unwilling to consider any corresponding right to the 800,000 Jews who were expelled penniless from Arab nations during the same time.
AAPER's claim that certain Israelis laws discriminate against Arabs is also untrue. The laws AAPER objects to also exist in both the U.S. and many nations - benefits for those completing military or non-military national service (available to both Arabs and Jews), personal interviews requirements for employment, and a waiting period for non-citizen spouses to enter the country.
AAPER and other groups which support the Palestine Authority and Hamas have been disrupting pro-Israel events for many years. However, for themselves they demand the unconstitutional right to exclude others from public sidewalks and other public places. Fortunately, the police refused to cede to their demand that Brookline sidewalks be `Jew-free'.
The article also failed to mention AAPER's harassment of pro-Israel marchers. Despite the fact that is was supposed to be a silent march, AAPER and Code Pink members continually and vocally challenged those who disagreed with them. The organizers themselves have admitted that their members shoved and pushed the pro-Israel marchers. They failed to mention, however, that one of the AAPERs also attempted to rip an Israeli flag out of marchers' hands and destroy it, and had to be removed by his fellow demonstrators.
The AAPER event was disgraceful and reminiscent of the American Nazi Party's attempt to march in Skokie, Illinois in 1979. I am heartened and gratified that Israel supporters of Jewish, Christian, atheist, and other beliefs came out in support of freedom and truth.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: What's Become of the Jewish-Zionist Press? Part Deux..
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, p.73
You know, given the history of the persecution of Bahai in Islamic countries (since Muhammad was the final, absolutely last, climatic, that's all folks prophet, anyone in Islamic countries claiming prophecy after him was in fatal trouble) it seems suicidal for anyone claiming to be Bahai to have any favor of Islamic interests.
Not that there hasn't been a lot of that going on lately.