Members of Daily Kos several weeks ago published a diary about antisemitism on this site. It listed eight subheadings about antisemitism they found on this site. The sixth one, Using Antisemitic Sources, was dedicated to my diaries. Ouch.
I consider myself a progressive. I embrace equality of the races, ethnic equality, gender equality, religious equality, equality for LGBT people. I don't support antisemitism, & think it a crackpot theory. I am a critic of Israel. I have slowly have changed my views of Israel from being the underdog to it being the oppressor & colonialist. This change was accelerated when I started getting e-mails from Gush Shalom. I decided I should try to do something.
I've become burned out by protests, organizing, the usual left methods of reacting to issues. I decided to start posting diaries on this site, & they slowly became focused mainly on the Israel/Palestine issue.
Because of several reasons, I embraced the concept of a video diary. That is, I have collected YouTube videos that show what is going on in Israel & Palestine. From early on, I wanted to counter the lack of news coming from Gaza. I found this guy, Palgaz, a Palestinian named Yousef al-Helou. I started using him regularly, & then this happened:
* [new] The use of Press TV as a source for "news"... (8+ / 0-)
is completely unacceptable at a Democratic and progressive site such as Daily Kos. Press TV engages in a modern-day libel (h/t to JHate - A blog about anti-Semitism):
September 9, 2009
New reports have surfaced on the arrest of yet another Jewish organ trading gang in the United States involved in the abduction of Algerian children.
Dr. Mustafa Khayatti, the head of the Algerian National Committee for the Development of Health Research, revealed on Sunday that the New York city police have arrested members of a Jewish gang who abducted Algerian children for their organs.
September 17, 2009
An international Jewish conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum as another shocking story divulges Israeli plot to harvest organs from Algerian children.
December 3, 2009
An international Israeli conspiracy to kidnap children and harvest their organs is gathering momentum as another shocking story divulges Tel Aviv's plot to import Ukrainian children and harvest their organs.
Press TV also hosts anti-Semitic commentators (see here and here).
Additionally, it must be noted that Press TV is sponsored and funded by the Iranian government. The United States Department of State classifies Iran as a state sponsor of terrorism. Please also note that the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a Holocaust denier.
As stated above, given this, it is unacceptable to use Iranian-government sponsored and funded Press TV as a legitimate news source at a Democratic and progressive site such as Daily Kos, particularly in the context of I/P.
As a sign of good will on my part, I await your response and hope that you will remove any "reports" from Press TV. If you do not, given the fact that you are now being made aware of the problems with this particular "news" source, I will HR your tip jar and report you to the administration for your use of this source and your refusal to remove the source after being provided evidence of the source's anti-Semitism.
Congress shall make no law...
by Mets102 on Fri Nov 19, 2010 at 09:57:30 PM CST
[ Parent ]
Note that Mets102 isn't quoting Yousef al-Helou or any of his videos, but some other yo yo working for PressTV. He also goes in for some Iran-bashing (if DKos is a progressive & democratic site, should we be mouthing the talking points of war-mongers?) & brought in Iranian Pres. Ahmadinejad & his crackpot views (to digress, do y'all know that Ahmadinejad is lucky he isn't sitting in jail on sorcery charges? See here & here. He fought the Ayatollah & the Ayatollah won.) But to make a long story short, Meteor Blades agreed with him & banned PressTV as an antisemitic source. I am waiting for MSNBC to be banned because it has Pat Buchanan as a commentator.
This still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. My source in Gaza was banned from this site because of nothing he did, but because of an article another guy wrote on the network. But onward.
I was still trying to find videos reporting from Gaza, & lo and behold, Ken O'Keefe entered Gaza & started putting up YouTube videos. I didn't know much about him. It turns out he ran a scuba diving company in Hawaii, believes in saving the oceans, served in the first Iraq war, supports the sovereignty & independence of Hawaii, is working on a trading company to export goods from Gaza, has burned his US passport & claimed world citizenship, & believes 9/11 was an inside job by the US & Israel. Antisemitic & a Truther. I did drop him, after some misgivings. The misgivings was that it appeared that the pro-Israel posters did seem to be on a campaign to stop news from Gaza being posted.
But that doesn't matter. Al Jazeera now has correspondents in Gaza, so steady news on Gaza will get posted at my diaries.
The Jeff Blankfort diary happened because I trusted Mondoweiss. I did not know Blankfort is known as a Holocaust denier. Where I know him from is from the Take Back Pacifica movement. This shows I do have to check my sources better.
In conclusion, I do think there is antisemitism on this site. Any struggle attracts crackpots, & the bigots seem to think anti-Occupation activists are sympathetic to their hate. We have to tell them NO.
The other side to this is that some defenders of Israel are too prone to play the antisemitism card. An example is here, where several members HR'd the diary's tip jar, & claimed in comments that the title was a ZOG 'dogwhistle.' Uh, NO.
The moderators here have their work cut out for them. They need to stop bigotry, but also need to not unreasonably stifle debate on an important foreign policy issue.
8:26 PM PT: I changed the words 'example of' to 'subheadings about' because people were confused about my meaning.
Tue Jul 12, 2011 at 12:02 PM PT: I changed my diary where it said 'any criticism of Israel was antisemitic' to 'the title was a ZOG 'dog whistle.'. I would have done that yesterday, but medical problems put me down for awhile.
Tue Jul 12, 2011 at 12:19 PM PT: I apologize to any posters who thought I was unfairly maligning them when I said in the diary that they thought any criticism of Israel was antisemitic. They have shown I was wrong. This is for JayinPortland, fizziks, JNEREBEL.