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Sunday, May 9, 2010

[The following, by Zach, is crossposted from The Brothers of Judea.]

Just when I thought MJ Rosenberg couldn't surprise me with his chutzpah, he takes it to the next level. In his latest work on the Huffington Post, written on Friday, he stands with Judge Goldstone against the people who would seek to call him out for his leveling of injustice in apartheid South Africa. If you don't know what that refers to, click here for the story. Basically, Goldstone was quite happy to collaborate with the injustices meted out by the South African apartheid government, including sentencing dozens of innocent people to capital punishment. It certainly calls into question his objectivity and trustworthiness, and is especially ironic since the anti-Zionist crowd has canonized the man for his one anti-Israel activity.

Now in my mind, MJ Rosenberg has the reputation of a literary "attack dog" who searches out his target of the week and attacks them with fury. Last week it was Stephen Schumer and Jeff Goldberg, this week it is Goldstone's detractors. What is ironic this time is that Rosenberg is shocked and offended to find that people who disagree with Judge Goldstone are using the ad hominem attack in place of a counter argument. Rosenberg ought to be offended; that's his tactic of choice. Hey Zionists! Stop stealing Rosenberg's strategy! Find one of your own! But enough of that, let's get right into his article:

"The Israelis will never tire of their obsession with Judge Richard Goldstone. Because he had the temerity to write a United Nations report calling Israel's actions in Gaza "war crimes," they are utterly unhinged by the man."

That wasn't bigoted or anything, was it? I have a feeling that if I were to call the Palestinians "utterly unhinged" Rosenberg would be the first one in line to call me a racist. Even more telling, Goldstone's report accused both Israel and unnamed Palestinian groups of war crimes. He has said that if it were to be submitted to a court of law, there would have been nothing proven. What a surprise. Rosenberg can't be bothered to mention this.

"Their obsession is personal because they have no way to knock down the facts about the Gaza war (1400 Palestinians killed, including 320 kids) while only 13 Israelis were killed, four by friendly fire....In other words, the Israeli government cannot win any argument about the Gaza war if they deal with the facts."

First of all, it's pretty ironic for him to be complaining about Israel's supporters for going after Goldstone personally when just last week he was saying things like, "Jeff Goldberg of the Atlantic is a little young for the "oy, the goyim are coming to kill us" disease." But I guess that's par for the course at this stage.

I'm sure I've already talked about before about how claiming that "X number of Palestinians were killed in Cast Lead" as if to imply that hundreds of them weren't also members of Hamas or other terrorist organizations is basically lying by omission. Further, note Rosenberg's use of the term "kids" when as I have said before, the term "teenagers" would be closer to the truth, as Hamas actively recruits minors around 15-17 as soldiers.

Secondly, Rosenberg seems to be implying that Israel and it's supporters haven't come up with a response to Goldstone's report that is fact-based. He could not be more wrong in that case. Israel's supporters have made many attacks on the report itself, and Goldstone has simply ignored them. The truth is that in this case, Goldstone has been exposed as not nearly the man we thought he was, and Rosenberg is finding that truth just a little too difficult to stomach. Quite ironic for a man who, when he isn't insulting people with different politics, will contort facts to create a fake "expose."

Rosenberg continues with quoting the articles in question, which I thought was quite fair of him. Usually he tries to distort what his opponent says and hopes that his readers don't notice the difference. He then turns the attack on the people who spread out the new information about Goldstone, such as Alan Dershowitz and Ed Koch.

Rosenberg punctuates this with sentences like, "By next week, there will be many more of these columns and blogposts, all parroting the line," and "And thanks to the wonders of the internets, I can keep updating this column to add new names and links.The March of the Penguins!" In his headline he refers to them as "the Lobby's media friends." This is quite ironic because, again, he loves it when other people link to him and pass on the articles that he writes. I guess that when confronted with actual facts that he can't refute, all he can do is sneer at his enemies for writing about it. Seriously, can you imagine a more hypocritical thing for someone like Rosenberg to say?

Finally, we have this:

"Note: none of the people who write with such fervor about long defunct South African apartheid ever write about the only apartheid they can do anything about: it's on the West Bank. Right now. And these guys tend to flip out if you even mention it.

Oh so many responses!
1: The link in "right now" is a Youtube link to the 60 Minutes piece about the West Bank. The poster on Youtube claims that it exposes "Israel's apartheid" but that is not what the 60 Minutes people say.
2. Rosenberg is now on record for claiming that Israel is practicing apartheid, in contrast with all legal definitions of the term. I for one intend to remember this in the future.
3. He also claims that his enemies are dredging up South African apartheid even though it is "long defunct." Rosenberg, however, has no problem bringing it up in his comments section multiple times if he can slander Israel for it's past actions:

rosenberg4.jpg

Feel free to look at the context, but there isn't any. It is simply Rosenberg writing on the thread complaining about Israel's relationship with South Africa, even after he begrudged his opponents in his article for doing the same. Of course, he also pretends to be solely motivated by human rights, but never talks about the gender apartheid practiced throughout the Middle East. In fact Rosenberg's only writing about Saudi Arabia, a clearly apartheid state, is about a "hilarious" movie made by Saudis. I'm sure the movie is quite funny. That doesn't change the fact that Rosenberg is a giant hypocrite.

At this point we are done with Rosenberg's article, but I thought I would finish with another comment of his from the talkback thread:

rosenberg3.jpg

Yeah, thanks for really telling us what you think about "these people," Mr. Rosenberg. Let the hate flow through you, it will make you powerful. Oh, and for the Gaza War to be a "crime," doesn't there need to be some kind of a conviction? Or is that just for ordinary people who aren't Israel?

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