Monday, May 3, 2010
[The following, by Matt, is crossposted from The Brothers of Judea.]
Darling of the left, trusted "asaJew" and "journalist" Max Blumenthal took it upon himself to cover the Stand With Us pro-Israel rally in New York City a week ago and published his results on the HP in an editorial entitled, "Extremist Pro-Settler Lobby Rallies Against Obama while Schumer and Weiner Pander". I'm going to say two things before we get started. First, I'm going to talk mainly about Blumenthal's video, which I've embedded below. Second, Blumenthal is most famous in my mind for his infamous video "Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem", in which he interviewed less than 20 clearly intoxicated American teenagers who said racist things about President Obama, and used those interviews to show that clearly all of Israel feels the same way and Israelis are all racists. That is the kind of person we're dealing with here, with the journalistic integrity of a weasel.
Please watch this video so you can see the extremists in action.
So, now that we've seen the hate, what really happened in NYC? First, what was actually extremist in that video, with hateful being defined as something the average Israeli and American would not agree with?
- One woman called President Obama a "Nazi"
- Several people stated their belief that Gaza and the West Bank should belong to Israel
- One man talked about how Gaza should belong to Israel and the Palestinians there should have to live under Jewish law.
- One woman insisted that the money should keep coming no matter what, but Obama shouldn't demand anything from Israel.
That's it. Out of the 1,500 people who were there, these were the worst people Max Blumenthal could find. People who are further to the right than the average HPer (and me), certainly, but hardly the kind of extremists you will find in a Students for Justice in Palestine meeting or a pro-Hamas rally.
Let's also talk about how Max Blumenthal behaves as a journalist. The one demonstrator in the trenchcoat asks Mr. Blumenthal a very good question, "What would you do if New Jersey hated New York and possessed nuclear weapons?" with New Jersey being a metaphor for Iran and New York for Israel. Blumenthal prefers to dodge the question and poke fun of the demonstrator instead. The demonstrator doesn't get distracted though, and keeps after Blumenthal, but he never gets his answer. You have to wonder why Blumenthal chose to leave this humiliation in the video.
According to other sources, these are examples of the kinds of signs present at the rally, "God Bless Our Ally Israel. Tea Party for Israel"; "Obama Listen Up! The American People Stand with Israel"; "You May Bow to Mitzraim (Egypt) But Keep Off Yerushalayim"; "Conference of Presidents: World Jewish Congress, American Jewish Congress, UJA. Betrayal. You Failed Us In 1939 and You've Failed Us Again"; "President Obama: Your Recklessness is Endangering America, Israel, and World Freedom."" Are these kinds of signs nice? No. Are they politically extreme? I don't think so, they are just expressing political views different from Mr. Blumenthal's own. You can tell from the first example that these Americans are politically on the right on other issues as well, but their criticism is not just directed at the President but at their own leadership as well.
A quote from Beth Gilinsky, organizer of the rally, "Obama has no right to dictate to Israel. He should focus on the danger of a nuclear Iran and pressure the Palestinians for peace". Jeez, how extreme! Advocating for peace with the Palestinians and acknowledging nuclear Iran could be dangerous! Clearly, she's crazy.
Let's take a look at some truly extreme rallies that Max Blumenthal would choose not to cover because he agrees with the politics. Here's a video posted by StandWithUs that you need to watch.
A pro-Palestinian protester declares "Jews go back to the ovens" and "Jews are fossil fuel" while his friends smile and look on. How about the UC Irvine incident, when students stood up and called Israel all sorts of things while trying to silence Ambassador Oren? Max couldn't be bothered to talk about the Irvine incident, probably because he wasn't there to interview the Jewish students and see how extremist they are.
So, let's recap. Pro-Israel rally extremists: Don't like Obama's policies, want more land for Israel, wants lots of US money. Pro-Palestinian rally extremists: Don't like Jews, don't like free speech, don't like Israel. Good thing Max Blumenthal is covering the pro-Israel rallies, can't let controversial statements like "The American People support Israel" escape the public's notice!
Little Lie
- The blog post states the protesters were "over 1,000 New York-area Jewish extremists", while in reality a good portion of the protesters were Christian and a few were Hindu. They also came from Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, as well as the NY area.
Not to mention the busload from greater Boston, which was about half Christian Zionists and about half Jews, the vast majority of them Russians.
And of course, Blumenthal plays games with the numbers. The organizers said 2,000; the police at least 1800. Rosen says 1500. It would easily have been many more if the weather were nice.
Blumenthal also does a hatchet job on the speakers, not quoting at any length, omitting the preacher from Harlem, the Hindu and Sikh leaders as well as serious intellectuals such as Joan Peters and Michael Ledeen or the folks who connected the dots between our big banks and, through their Sharia-compliant banking programs, the money that flows to terrorists. Your basic Follow the money" meme.
It's easy to walk into the crowd of any rally and find some fringey people or some who are ignorant and ill-informed. Focusing on them to the exclusion of others and using that footage to characterize the event is a lie. It's simply dishonest.
He probably left that encounter over the New Jersey metaphor in because it shows how un-hip the demonstrator is by being so out of touch with contemporary pop culture, making it OK to snicker at him and dismiss anything he has to say.
Pretty well made propaganda ... a prime showcase for why we need to insist on journalistic integrity for the news we read/watch.