Something must be happening when even an Al Jazeera host gets behind a pro-Israel meme

In perhaps a sign more people in the Arab and Muslim world are seeing the world’s double standards when it comes to Israel, Al Jazeera TV host, Dr. Faisal Al-Qassem, posted this pro-Israel meme on his Facebook page yesterday...

Norman Finkelstein: The Anti-Semites' Favorite Jew

The documentary film American Radical is a sympathetic look at Norman Finkelstein, the former DePaul University professor who was denied tenure after a very public spat with renowned Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz.

The whole film is now available to be viewed online at Al Jazeera English.

Finkelstein is notorious as a vociferously anti-Israel Jew who published The Holocaust Industry, which accused Jews of not being interested in Holocaust remembrance so much as manipulating the Holocaust to extort money and support for Israel from Europe. That work solidified Finkelstein as the favorite Jew of the neo-Nazi movement. His shameless, ongoing use of his family's suffering in the Holocaust as validation of his one-sided critiques of Israel earned Finkelstein contempt and discredit as a propagandist.

The documentary is a fascinating look at a fanatic who was raised in an environment of activist extremism. The product of a hysterical mother was a dogged researcher who is less an academic than a polemicist. His  presented facts frequently lack context, but there is an indication that Finkelstein is well aware of that. His work is to serve a cause, and that cause is Palestinian activism, not the truth of the complexities of the Israeli/Palestinian and Israeli/Arab conflict.

One of the ironies of Finkelstein's life, which the film demonstrates, is that Finkelstein was both made and undone by his obsession with one particular book: From Time Immemorial: The Origins of the Arab-Jewish Conflict over Palestine.

That book, by Joan Peters, was intended to bolster the Jewish claim to both Historical Palestine and modern Israel by denigrating the Palestinian claim to that land. Finkelstein's doctoral thesis was able to establish that this popular best seller was based in part on shoddy, if not fraudulent scholarship. That exposé propelled Finkelstein to prominence as a critic of Israel. It was also his undoing, when he accused Alan Dershowitz of plagiarizing from Peters' book by using the same Mark Twain contained in From Time Immemorial. Dershowitz was cleared of plagiarism, but the spruious accusation and the acrimony that Finkelstein incurred  from making it irreparably damaged his reputation and made him persona non grata to university administrators across America.

At about 90 minutes, American Radical is a worthwhile glimpse at one of the stranger personalities in the world of grievance politics. You can see it here. 

Man almost raped by magic cat in Guantanamo! Love that al-Jazeera!

Al-Jazeera broadcast this interview in which a former Guantanamo prisoner claims that Jews at Guantanamo put magic spells on the prisoners. He knows this from the time an invisible cat tried to rape him.

The interviewer takes him very seriously, because all of this is very credible in that backwards part of the world.

Israeli firms building Palestinian city angers extremists on both sides

About 20 Israeli suppliers are helping to build the first modern Palestinian city in the occupied West Bank, but only after agreeing not to use products or services from Israeli settlements.  

The announcement of involvement by Israeli firms has angered Jewish settlers, who accused the suppliers of caving in to an international boycott of settlement goods and businesses...


The West Bank city of Rawabi, being built 30km north of Jerusalem, is a key part of a plan by Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, to lay the groundwork for a future Palestinian state, regardless of progress in peace talks.  

Masri said that he tries to use Palestinian suppliers if possible, but when necessary turns to Israeli firms on condition that products and services from territories Israel occupied after the 1967 war - the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights - are not used...


Dani Dayan, a settler leader, said that Israeli companies agreeing to the Palestinian conditions are "a capitulation to the boycott." 

Palestinian activists and their supporters have launched a global boycott campaign to persuade investors to divest Israeli holdings and boycott Israeli companies over the illegal occupation.

The economic impact has been negligible, but for Israel the negative publicity has been unwelcome.

Israel accuses boycott advocates of trying to delegitimise it and argues that many foreign companies with ties to authoritarian regimes are not similarly targeted.

Palestinian Prime Minister Fayyad has publicly advocated the boycott of settlement goods in the West Bank and, earlier this year, his government passed a law imposing heavy penalties and jail time on Palestinians who work in settlements.

But there have been few alternative sources of employment for the estimated 21,000 Palestinians who work in settlement construction, agriculture or industry. As a consequence, the law is reportedly not being enforced..


Ahmed Moor, a Palestinian-American freelance journalist, said that when he first heard about the Rawabi plan, he was "repulsed".  

In an article for the Mondoweiss website, he described it as "something so clearly alien, something so obviously conceived in an alien mind, masquerading as Palestinian". 

Moor also took exception to the fact that the Jewish National Fund (JNF), established by the Zionist Congress in 1901 to acquire land for Jewish settlement, had donated thousands of trees to be planted in Rawabi...

Alon Badihi, an executive director of JNF, was subsequently quoted by The Jerusalem Post as saying: "The JNF was mandated by the Israeli government as the national forest service for the Land of Israel. This project was carried out under that mandate."

Financed with money from the Qatari government, Rawabi is eventually intended to house 40,000 people and to create 5,000 permanent jobs.


The entire article is at al-Jazeera

Mr. Naomi Klein does hack journalism job on Canada/Israel relationship

Avi Lewis, who is responsible for the worst peice of journalism a lot of people have ever seen, is so biased, he isn't even on the CBC any more.

Never the sharpest tool in the shed,  one has to feel a certain measure of sympathy for Avi. It must be hard to be the least intelligent member of a family known for being bright, articulate advocates for a cause. It must be hard being the least intelligent member of his own household.

But despite his many, many deficiencies, he still keeps trying. Here he is trying to paint a sinister picture of the Canada/Israel relationship for his employer, Al Jazeera.

With his typical lack of insight, Lewis suggests that the Conservative government's support for Israel is partially motivated by an effort to court the Jewish vote away from the Liberals. A simple look at the census would have told Lewis that Muslims outnumber Jews by a two to one ratio in Canada, so if it were a vote-gaining ploy, it's a terrible strategy. (He also keeps talking about BDS!) But it's Avi! I know better than to have high any expectations of him.

At least with the Al Jazeera gig,  Avi's found his natural home.