Yisrael Medad can't take a joke, Wonkette misses the high-road
Jew-liani.
We’ve all seen it already, right?
Well, West Bank-based blogger Yisrael Medad hadn’t. And even if he had, he apparently wouldn’t have gotten the joke. Which is cool and all — you wouldn’t normally expect an Orthodox religious settler to get all that D.C. politico insider baseball. Guys like Medad usually have other areas of expertise, like say, halakhic proofs legitimizing ethnic cleansing.
At any rate, in a nod to the brilliance of said video, Wonkette’s been on a roll with a tongue-in-cheek if mildly disconcerting branding of Rudy as “Jew-liani” in various posts to their blog. If anything, Medad should have accused Wonkette of serving that dish far past its expiration date. What was that, a month ago guys?
But instead, being unfamiliar with both the video and Wonkette’s naughty charm, Medad wheeled out the antisemitism charge, setting off a round of denunciations throughout the right-wing blogosphere.
Wonkette editor Ken Layne responded in poor fashion, going so far as to allude to taking possible legal action against Medad. He later followed up with a retraction and cited an inbox full of Lizard Freeper hatemail as the source of his outrage. Being familiar with the experience, I can empathize.
I wonder, had Jon Stewart made the same joke, would Medad have reacted in the same way?
~~~
If Medad really wants to go after an antisemitic website, he should investigate why it is that every time I post a comment to this article on Digg challenging Reagan-era economist Paul Craig Roberts’ assertion that the Mossad is conspiring with Bush to fake terror attacks in America, it gets voted out of existence.
Hey, helllooooo! It’s Tisha B’Av, atleast for those of us currently in Israel, and soon for those abroad. I came back from hearing Eicha, and THIS is what Jewschool had to add to my meditation on the state of our people on this mournful day?! What gives?
Are you sure that’s not the Ron Paul brigade voting you down? They’re pretty influencial on Digg.
“you wouldn’t normally expect an Orthodox religious settler to get all that D.C. politico insider baseball. Guys like Medad usually have other areas of expertise, like say, halakhic proofs legitimizing ethnic cleansing.”
I’m not feeling the love.
Well, at least you spelled my name right.
Allow me thought to respond to one charge: that of support for ethnic cleansing (the rest of what you think of me is just silly nonsense – I got the joke but I didn’t think it funny). You write -“Guys like Medad usually have other areas of expertise, like say, halakhic proofs legitimizing ethnic cleansing.” Well, I am not sure about others like me but I don’t legitimize ethnic cleansing. Don’t worry, I won’t take you court but permit me a few sentences here.
I believe that all who wish to live in this country, the Jewish, democratic state of Israel, the culmination of the Zionist movement’s effort to redeem, at this stage, the Jewish people, can and should on one condition: that they don’t try to subvert or alter what the state is supposed to be. One thing it isn’t to be is a Palestinian Arab state. If anyone has engaged in premeditated ethnic cleansing, it it the Arabs. Tel Hai in 1920, Jaffa in 1921, Petah Tikvah in 1924, 1929 in Hevron, Beer Tuviah & Hulda and in 1947-48, Gush Etzion, Bet Haaravah, Neveh Yaakov and Atarot and Jerusalem’s Old City were ethnically cleansed of Jews by Arabs. I consider a Jew and Zionist who bandies about that term in order to malign a Jew who has returned to his homeland not only stupid and incorrect factually but a gross adoption of the enemy’s propaganda line. Despite your JBS quotation below, you have attacked a person because, I am pretty sure, you don’t know me and if you had reviewed my site (as you suggested I had done with Wonkette), you would not assign me such views in your off-handed, conveniently- justifying-your-own-views manner.
Have a nice rest of Tisha B’Av.
Oh, and did you blog about the ethnic cleansing of Nahr el-Bared?
The Chicago Tribune didn’t find it so funny (some paragraphs have been deleted for brevity’s sake):
Harry Potter and Gawker’s Jewish problem
The piece is about how “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows†comes out at 2:01 a.m. Saturday in Israel, but Israeli law prohibits stores from being open on the Sabbath, or as Gawker puts it: “Head Heebs in the Holy Land are trying to keep bookstores closed at the appointed hour of the novel’s release.â€
“Some stores are planning to open anyway — these are Jews, let’s remember, and a buck’s a buck — which has resulted in predictable outrage from the Adonai-adoring elements of Israeli society.â€
They didn’t just go there, did they? What, is it Fun with Ages-Old Slanderous Stereotypes Week?
The piece then quotes someone from the United Torah Judaism Party (by way of an Associated Press story) slamming the Potter books’ “defective messages†and their subculture before the Gawker writer fires back: “[I]sn’t this exactly how some of us feel about, you know, the Bible and its subculture of weird, tallis-wearing followers?â€
Hee hee — Orthodox Jews and other Bible readers sure are a bunch of weirdos!
I find it offensive that on Erev Tisha B’Av of all days, you post such venomous attacks on Jews, complete with the sentence, “Guys like Medad usually have other areas of expertise, like say, halakhic proofs legitimizing ethnic cleansing.”
Seeing your Chofetz Chaim green boxed message to my right as I type this, “Jewish Bloggers for Responsible Speech online” — I can only assume you put it there as a cynical joke.
Your quote from the Rav beneath below is diametrically and utterly opposed to the language of your post.
Oh right…everything’s a joke to you, Mobius.
A fabulous Tisha B’av to you as well.
awww, what’s the matter jameel? did i show you a part of yourself you don’t like?
you know you could give me 1001 torah proofs for justifying transferring the arabs out of the territories. don’t even front.
that i would identify it as an area of expertise for religious settlers isn’t “a venomous attack.” it a matter of fact.
what, you think i’ve never slept in a caravan? what, you don’t think i have family out in those hills? i know your kind, bro… and tisha b’av of all days is davka when i should stuff it back down your throat.
Gee, this is a rereading of Kamtza-BarKamtza circa 2007. For the benefit of those reading this post, I, Yisrael Medad, resident of Shiloh since 1981 (I’ll leave out all my other bio info) do not advocate ethnic cleansing, do not advocate dumping all Arabs in the sea/river/gulf or whatever (although I do bring up the subject in arguments to offset demands for ethnic cleansing of Yesha of its Jews) and do believe, in the legacy of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, that this country can have multiple communities. I argued with Rav Kahane on the subject when I was Geula Cohen’s aide and he was an MK. So, please, let’s not get irresponsible, Mobius, and let’s stick to the facts. And I do apologize for not being the stereotype fanatic, right-wing extremist you would prefer as your opponent.
And the righties play “miss the point” and “change the subject” once more. But Mo, you know that snide comment was their perfect excuse.
The REAL point of the article being, when an anti-Semitic canard is adopted by alleged philo-Semites on the Right… complete silence. But if a liberal were to co-opt its usage to make fun of it… Oh, where have I heard that definition before? Oh that’s right – SATIRE.
Reality just can’t compete.
Yisrael: Give me a break. You eat Arab babies for breakfast, just as Mobius thinks you do.
“Guys like Medad usually have other areas of expertise, like say, halakhic proofs legitimizing ethnic cleansing.”
What an awful thing to say. I don’t understand how we can expect large groups of people with divergent religious, political and social beliefs to humanize one another if we can’t be respectful of one another on the freaking internet.
Ira: Its not an awful thing for Mobius to say; he’s lived in a caravan before.
oh jameel, is this how you’re going to spend your day? don’t you have some olive trees to uproot, or some school children to throw rocks at, or maybe some posts to write pontificating on the utter evils of palestinian society?
maybe you’d care to explain to me which posek overturns “not by force of arms but by My hand alone…”
and i didn’t live in a caravan… i’ve just slept in a few.
speaking of which, has anyone ever told you how utterly offensive and vile the illustration on your blog’s header is?
and how ’bout you yisrael? don’t you have another post to write about the jewish volunteers of machsom watch being “nasty ladies” because they oppose the idf’s travel restrictions on palestinian civilians? there’s a tisha b’av lesson learned…
religious settlers are the poster children for cognitive dissonance. they condemn everyone who doesn’t see the world their way (which is practically everyone except themselves), and then cry foul and “torah violations” when other jews point out the fact that they believe, say and do abhorrent things that desecrate the name of g-d and jeopardize the security of jewish people throughout the world.
identifying this cognitive dissonance is not an act of baseless hatred — it’s an act of love. love for g-d, love for eretz yisrael, love for am yisrael, and an expression of excruciating pain at the sight of my fellow yidn conducting themselves in a way that harms all of us.
hey mobius– having met you, I do believe that your critique comes from a place of love.
however, I don’t think that spirit is coming across in this comment thread.
and that’s when people shut down and stop listening and start trying to win the debate instead of to learn.
It’s the afternoon of tisha b’av– ahavat chinam and all that. let’s make it constructive.
i hear you rebecca, but really, which is worse: making yisrael medad look like a putz, or letting yisrael medad make all jewish people look like putzes?
here – let me try to reframe this:
right now, there’s a strong sentiment on both the right and left that the charge of antisemitism is a baseless accusation used to silence criticism of israeli policy and the israel lobby. the walt & mearshimer paper is just one example evidencing this sentiment’s entry into mainstream american thinking.
it’s obvious to anyone who reads wonkette that they were making fun of right-wing antisemites by calling giuliani “jew-liani.” yet not only did medad irresponsibly and unfoundedly charge wonkette with being antisemitic, but he invited the entire right-wing blogosphere to uphold his misrepresentation as proof positive of the left-wing’s moral bankruptcy.
in other words, medad stood reality on its head and willingly fabricated a false charge of antisemitism in order to delegitimize others whose political opinions he disagrees with (not that wonkette pays anything more than superficial attention to israel anyway).
he has thus engaged in a propaganda strategy that has earned him a lot of web traffic from the neocon right, but which effectively reinforces the belief that the charge of antisemitism is baseless and employed only to smear critics of israeli policy and/or the israel lobby.
in other words, he ran a play from abe foxman’s handbook, contributing directly to a “boy who cried wolf” impression of antisemitism that makes it all the more difficult to identify and combat real expressions of antisemitism that do truly pose a danger to the jewish community.
thus, through his actions, medad has contributed to the deterioration of jewish security as a whole.
so i told him he was a putz. nu?
Mobius, I don’t think your insight into the Wonkette psyche is any better than mine or the Chicago Tribune’s, and we both thought (along with many others) that the Wonkette anti semite shout out was not satire but represented actual anti semitism in action. And the “Jewliani” nonsense has been all over the leftwing arena, not the right wing. I’m eager to fight against antisemitism on the right (e.g. Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak), why do you find it so difficult to admit anti semitism on the left?
i find it difficult to admit antisemitism on the left? what are you freaking talking about? i’ve not only covered the subject ad infinitum, but i’ve collaborated on several projects to make more productive inroads into addressing the issue than simply crying that the left are a bunch of nazis. in fact, within the next week or so, we should be publishing a whole expose on and challenge to antisemitism at the world social forum.
and as per my insight into the wonkette psyche, tell me — how often do you read wonkette? it doesn’t much seem the kind of site you’d be terribly interested in. but then again, you seem to enjoy trolling websites you hate reading so…
are you even aware of the fact that gawker media is owned by a hungarian jew?
Mobius, to answer your question, I use to read Wonkette fairly often when she first started, but she ultimately grew boring and I stopped. Meanwhile I went to your site regarding you objecting to anti semitism of the left and I saw a reference to a conference. I’ll repeat the question, who are the leftist anti semites you would publicly call out (and I don’t mean fringe crazies) – you call me the troll but I’m willing to identify “mainstream” rightists as antisemites because I’m willing to apply my standards consistently whether with reference to rightists or leftists. I challenge you to do the same – are you covering for anti semitic leftists, or are you willing to name them?
Good morning to all.
There’s a lot to respond to but as I don’t want Mobius to choke on the froth coming out of his mouth, I’ll be gentle.
I know that Mobius doesn’t know me but as I serve for him as a symbol of the target of his hatred, what can I do? He needs me. He needs me to be who I am not because that justifies his outlook and anger and uncotrollable urges (no, I am not accusing you of being a wife-beater).
So, let’s make some comments:
1) him
and how ’bout you yisrael? don’t you have another post to write about the jewish volunteers of machsom watch being “nasty ladies†because they oppose the idf’s travel restrictions on palestinian civilians? there’s a tisha b’av lesson learned…
1) me
No, not until they continue acting nasty by being completely one-sided and endangering my security (and yours) by interfering with the work that needs to be done in preventing 16 year old suicide bombers from getting through. And if they have complaints, let them report it not browbeat the teenage soldiers.
2) him
religious settlers are the poster children for cognitive dissonance. they condemn everyone who doesn’t see the world their way (which is practically everyone except themselves), and then cry foul and “torah violations†when other jews point out the fact that they believe, say and do abhorrent things that desecrate the name of g-d and jeopardize the security of jewish people throughout the world.
2) me
But, dear Mobius, don’t you realize that that is exactly what you are doing? And I’ll add that yes, there are, among almost 300,00 Jews living in J&S with another 200,000 in eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods who I consider wrong, fanatical and harmful to me, my ideology and themselves but that the overwhelming populace is just fine – not the stereotype you would wish. I think, given the venomous tone (oh, I did mention froth, didn’t I?) that you are engaged in ‘projection’ but don’t worry, it is only a psychological disorder and there is a cure.
3) him
i hear you rebecca, but really, which is worse: making yisrael medad look like a putz, or letting yisrael medad make all jewish people look like putzes?
3) me
Oh, come on, you don’t really look like a putz, or do you?
4) him
not only did medad irresponsibly and unfoundedly charge wonkette with being antisemitic, but he invited the entire right-wing blogosphere to uphold his misrepresentation as proof positive of the left-wing’s moral bankruptcy. in other words, medad stood reality on its head and willingly fabricated a false charge of antisemitism in order to delegitimize others whose political opinions he disagrees with (not that wonkette pays anything more than superficial attention to israel anyway).
4) me
No, I didn’t. I did not willigly fabricate. It’s there, Mob, (pronounced with a long O, as in load), you just refuse to see it because you are “Left” as in left-out, way out. Open your eyes and thou shall see.
5) him
…which effectively reinforces the belief that the charge of antisemitism is baseless and employed only to smear critics of israeli policy and/or the israel lobby.
5) me
really? no, it is bery well-based (and take a look at Gawker, too).
6) him
in other words, he ran a play from abe foxman’s handbook, contributing directly to a “boy who cried wolf†impression of antisemitism that makes it all the more difficult to identify and combat real expressions of antisemitism that do truly pose a danger to the jewish community.
6) me
fox = wolf. that’s good. And when was the last time you really fought antisemitism, Mob? When I was a bit younger than you, my friends and I in Betar in 1964-65 were combatting James Madole’s National Renaissance Party in NY and preventing George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party from speaking at Columbia University and that’s just for starters. Nu, when? where? what?
7) him
so i told him he was a putz. nu?
7) me
Nu? So you think me a putz. So feel better. I wouldn’t call you a putz, Mob. You’re not long enough.
speaking of which, has anyone ever told you how utterly offensive and vile the illustration on your blog’s header is?
Actually, you happen to be the first! Please, PLEASE elucidate…
as it will give me something to contemplate while I uproot (Arab) olive trees to get firewood for me to use to bake matza, using the blood of Palestinian children.
maybe you’d care to explain to me which posek overturns “not by force of arms but by My hand alone…†Can you please expand on this? Which of the 613 mitzvot is this?
i know your kind, bro… and tisha b’av of all days is davka when i should stuff it back down your throat.
Share the love, brother. What bracha should I make first?
No, not until they continue acting nasty by being completely one-sided and endangering my security (and yours) by interfering with the work that needs to be done in preventing 16 year old suicide bombers from getting through. And if they have complaints, let them report it not browbeat the teenage soldiers.
you’ve never been to a checkpoint like qalqilya have you? and you’ve never, with your own eyes, seen a machsom watch volunteer working either, have you?
yes, there are, among almost 300,00 Jews living in J&S with another 200,000 in eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods who I consider wrong, fanatical and harmful to me, my ideology and themselves but that the overwhelming populace is just fine – not the stereotype you would wish.
here’s what you and your half-a-million friends don’t seem to get: your residency in those territories necessitates and facilitates the oppression of millions of people. your callousness in not only ignoring their plight, but reaching for excuses to justify it, and beyond that, your active propagandizing against your non-jewish neighbors and those who do acknowledge their suffering, is anything but “just fine.”
everyone in the world understands this except those who, like yourself, ideologically choose to settle those territories because they think they’re committing a revolutionary act for the sake of jewish survival. through your actions — simply where you choose to lay your head at night — you jeopardize the security of the state of israel and the security of jewish people everywhere.
you can disagree with me all you like, but the plain fact of the matter is that right now, the arab village up the road from where you live is under military curfew and you personally are providing both a pretext and material support to that injustice.
Oh, come on, you don’t really look like a putz, or do you?
when you trivialize antisemitism and use it as a weapon to attack your ideological opponents, you make the jewish community look trivial and slimy.
No, I didn’t. I did not willigly fabricate. It’s there, Mob, (pronounced with a long O, as in load), you just refuse to see it because you are “Left†as in left-out, way out. Open your eyes and thou shall see.
are you incapable of understanding satire? you accuse me of blindness, yet it still hasn’t registered with you that that video was mocking right-wingers, and wonkette’s invocation of the term “jew-liani” was a nod to the video and a pot-shot at the right.
really? no, it is bery well-based (and take a look at Gawker, too).
gawker’s publisher and editors ARE JEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
if you’re really that daft, then yes, i take it back, you did not willingly fabricate a charge of antisemitism. you are just so thick that you are incapable of understanding the situation in any other way.
fox = wolf. that’s good. And when was the last time you really fought antisemitism, Mob? When I was a bit younger than you, my friends and I in Betar in 1964-65 were combatting James Madole’s National Renaissance Party in NY and preventing George Lincoln Rockwell of the American Nazi Party from speaking at Columbia University and that’s just for starters. Nu, when? where? what?
well, there’s the googlebomb for starters. and then there’s the work i and my friends have been doing on countering antisemitism on the left from within the left. there was also that time i sued my high school for creating an environment conducive to antisemitism — a case i won, in fact.
if i were you, i also wouldn’t be terribly proud of using force to suppress free speech. the answer to speech is more speech, not thuggery.
Nu? So you think me a putz. So feel better. I wouldn’t call you a putz, Mob. You’re not long enough.
well i’m glad you can at least retain your sense of humor about all this, calling me out for sinat chinam from one side of your mouth while spreading it about with the other…
Whoa. I am having trouble believing the lack of civility you are exercising, Mobius. You are entitled to your opinion, the same way Medad is entitled to his, the same way Wonkette is entitled to theirs. But if you want to talk about who’s missing the high road in this sad sorry little affair, I wouldn’t throw stones if I were you.
And frankly, I found myself blinking at several jokes on both Gawker and Wonkette that I felt went over the line in recent weeks. It’s all well and good that the Gawker empire is owned, as you point out, by a Hungarian Jew. But maybe that should be reiterated every time a tasteless Jew joke is made. Like “We are owned by a Hungarian Jew, and Jew-liani said in the Jew York Times”. Or, you know, “As our Hungarian Jewish owner likes to tell us, these are Jews, let’s remember, and a buck’s a buck”. Maybe that side dish would make the main dish of offensive stereotyped slurs a little more palatable. I didn’t blink enough to post about it myself – the bloggers were obviously fancying their comments to show their sardonic, ironic nature. But I do not take issue with those who did find the comments offensive, and went ahead expressed that feeling.
And Lord knows I’ve never uprooted any olive trees or slept in any caravans. So throwing those insults at me just isn’t going to work.
if i were you, i also wouldn’t be terribly proud of using force to suppress free speech. the answer to speech is more speech, not thuggery.
Erm, I didn’t see any thuggery in Medad’s original post. You obviously seem to think he’s a thug for some reason – but that has nothing to do with how he handled this little tiff. He stated his opinion – exercising the selfsame right to free speech you are concerned about. I saw Medad answer speech with more speech. You seem to be the one trying to shut him up. And Wonkette mayb be all those great things you said about them – but they are the ones that threw out a threat of lawyering up. Thuggery? You decide.
Actually, you happen to be the first! Please, PLEASE elucidate…
aww, look at the happy smiley illegal hilltop settlers, violating both international law and the laws of the state of israel itself in the advancement of their ideological conquest of the west bank… they’re so cute!
as it will give me something to contemplate while I uproot (Arab) olive trees to get firewood for me to use to bake matza, using the blood of Palestinian children.
i have watched with my own eyes as settlers physically attacked israeli jews and international volunteers helping arab farmers picking olives in the west bank. i have also listened to no less than a dozen of my friends in the west bank justify uprooting olive trees as a necessary act to prevent so-called arab expansion onto jewish land. that you would relegate this phenomenon to the same level of myth as blood libel exemplifies how far you’re willing to go to deny reality in order to legitimize your lifestyle.
Which of the 613 mitzvot is this?
right, sorry, i forgot, Torah True Jews® don’t read neviim.
Share the love, brother. What bracha should I make first?
how about ôå÷ç òåøé�
Mobius, you say you are a man of principle – wouldn’t that mean you’re not a leftist apoligist, but in fact apply fair principles accross the board, applying them to leftists and rightists? Yet once again when I followed your citations from your posting above, the only attack on leftist anti semitism is to long (long!) polemics trying to define what leftist antisemitism is – no mention of names! You have no trouble accusing specific individual of the right of being anti semitic, anti Jewish values, etc. etc. but you have yet to name names of Leftist anti semites – is that because you don’t think there are any, or have your leftist views so permeated your soul that you can’t bring yourself to actually criticize any person of the left for that evilness. So if you are a man on principle, and not just some ideologue without a sense of morality, name some of the leftists who are anti semitic (and not just fringe cases). I’m still waiting.
Palestinian stabs peace activist for appearing to be Jewish
No Room for Antisemitism in Palestinian Solidarity Movement
Anti-Semitism & Adbusters, a letter to the editor
antisemitism on the airwaves
these are just a few instances i can recall off hand in addressing specific instances of antisemitism on the left (though i no longer agree with some of the positions i took in those older entries).
however what you fail to recognize is that there are dozens upon dozens of right-wing websites drawing attention to left-wing antisemitism, while there are relatively few at all identifying right-wing antisemitism. my goal on jewschool has not been to provide yet another echo chamber for the right, but to offer a resource center for the jewish left, and to address issues pertinent to the jewish left. part of that has involved focusing on antisemitism on the left with the eyes of the left, rather than with the eyes of the ADL or LGF. through that practice, i have learned to differentiate between what is simply unjust criticism of israel, vs. what is a bad joke, vs. what is real antisemitism. i find much of what the right deems to be “real antisemitism” is no more than unjust criticism of israel that stems from an uninformed perspective on the issue. if pressed in a way that is non-confrontational, you can usually get a concession if not a full retraction out of the offender. however, this “boy who cried wolf” scenario makes it much more difficult to call out real antisemities, because they now have the cover of purportedly being silenced for their criticism of israel.
if pressed in a way that is non-confrontational, you can usually get a concession if not a full retraction out of the offender. however, this “boy who cried wolf†scenario makes it much more difficult to call out real antisemities, because they now have the cover of purportedly being silenced for their criticism of israel.
But that’s not what we are talking about here. This wasn’t about Wonkette’s criticism of Israel. This was about their using a joke that played on stereotypes that many people find offensive – one that had nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the old canard that Jews control the media.
So your anti-settler diatribe, while an opinion you are entitled to maintain, was off-topic and ad hominem.
My last comment on this thread – reading Mobius above exactly pinpoints the leftist/intellectual divide from the world of reality represented by those of us coming from a centrist position: if I see an anti semite, I don’t care that a nuanced analysis might indicate that they are not all bad, or that I might agree with other of their views, or that I need to resist criticising them because doing so might give aid to my ideolical opponents. Robert Novak is a fucking anti semite – and once he is so revealed, I don’t care what else he says, correct or not, I pay no further attention to him. Because if I don’t draw a firm line, I am telling others that he is still a person to consider for some reasonable viewpoints, and therefor give him intellectual cover for his bile. Mobius, by not going after the anti semites that inhabit your portion of the ideological spectrum, you are alowing their filth to gain legitimacy. And that’s going to lead to more misery for the Jewish people.
I found myself blinking at several jokes on both Gawker and Wonkette that I felt went over the line in recent weeks. It’s all well and good that the Gawker empire is owned, as you point out, by a Hungarian Jew. But maybe that should be reiterated every time a tasteless Jew joke is made. […] But I do not take issue with those who did find the comments offensive, and went ahead expressed that feeling.
orthomom–i agree with you that the jokes were problematic, particularly for people who are unfamiliar with gawker and wonkette as regular reads. hence why i said that it was “mildly disconcerting.” this is also why i said that ken layne responded in bad form, because he obviously realizes the potential for these jokes to be misunderstood, but rather than being apologetic, he got really cocky about it.
but yisrael did not stop at merely expressing his feeling that the comments were offensive, he petitioned the right-wing blogosphere to launch a smear attack against wonkette, branding the site a bastion of left-wing antisemitism and “yet another example” of the left’s moral bankruptcy.
he used his misunderstanding of this joke, that was not truly antisemitic in nature, to slander an entire political movement.
at first, when i received yisrael’s email on the subject, i had intended to weigh in and get his back. but when i saw that he was encouraging the likes of LGF, atlas shrugged, and debbie schlussel to pile on “the evil jew-hating leftists” at wonkette, i decided that he deserves a bigger zets then wonkette itself.
Erm, I didn’t see any thuggery in Medad’s original post. You obviously seem to think he’s a thug for some reason – but that has nothing to do with how he handled this little tiff.
i wasn’t referring to his handling of this thread, i was referring to the comment in which he bragged about being a beitarist who shut down a neo-nazi’s speech at columbia university.
when left-wingers attempted to do the same to shut down a speech by the founder of the minutemen (a movement dominated by white separatists) at columbia last year, it was upheld as evidence of the left’s inability to deal properly with views with which they disagreed. in fact, they were called fascists by pajamas media bloggers.
so what does that make yisrael medad?
And Wonkette mayb be all those great things you said about them – but they are the ones that threw out a threat of lawyering up. Thuggery? You decide.
again, bad form on their part, like i said from the get-go.
orthomom — i realize that you’re taken aback by what you see as my hostility towards yisrael and jameel. but i am all too familiar with their litany of smears against palestinians, the left, and jewish left-wingers in particular. they are hypocrites, who are the first to paint their fellow jews with a demonizing brush. that they should accuse me of “venom” and “hatred” and so forth is only par for the course, and exemplary of the blindness in which they lumber about. someone has to tell them to shove it.
This wasn’t about Wonkette’s criticism of Israel. This was about their using a joke that played on stereotypes that many people find offensive – one that had nothing to do with Israel and everything to do with the old canard that Jews control the media.
again, wonkette was making fun of right-wing antisemitism by using the terminology of right-wing antisemites to point out how ludicrous they are. the only stereotype they were playing on was that of the right-wing bigot.
and this has plenty to do with israel, because the reason the right-wing blogosphere took up medad’s case, was because it was an opportunity to tar highly visible opponents of the bush administration (israel’s alleged “best friend”) with the slander of being antisemitic.
So your anti-settler diatribe, while an opinion you are entitled to maintain, was off-topic and ad hominem.
i had a one-line riff — a pot-shot — about yisrael medad’s areas of expertise, that i found hilarious. yisrael medad, being a right-wing religious settler, didn’t find it funny, probably because it hits so close to home. that he chose to make that riff the major area of focus proves yet again the man’s utter lack of a sense of humor.
Mobius, by not going after the anti semites that inhabit your portion of the ideological spectrum, you are alowing their filth to gain legitimacy.
whoa whoa whoa — who are we talking about here? is juan cole an antisemite? is noam chomsky an antisemite? is amy goodman an antisemite? is michael lerner an antisemite? are all the people on the SHIT list antisemites? what left-wing antisemites are you talking about? the ones that are actually antisemitic? or the ones that are critical of israeli policy and therefore branded antisemites? i am more than willing to call a spade a spade. hell, i kicked a writer off the jewschool blog team for praising george galloway, who i consider a raging jew-hater. but i won’t call someone an antisemite just because daniel pipes insists they are. point me at a leftist antisemite and prove to me that their position is based in the hatred and distrust of jews, rather than in a distaste for israeli policy, and i will string them up by their petards.
Mobius, let’s try to look at this logically.
You threw out that Yisrael Medad advocates ethnic cleansing. Since you do not know him (or me for that matter), your comment was a sterotypical smear against Jews to further your own political view that the West Bank be Judenrein. That’s plain and clear personal attack, not based on fact but on your own worldview which is in direct oppostion to the quote from the Rav on your website, “I may attack a certain point of view which I consider false, but I will never attack a person who preaches it.”
Neither Medad or myself attacked you personally, just your rabid attacks on Jews living in Yehuda vShomron.
Your supporters here and others are (for some reason) try to throw you a lifeline for you to try and express yourself civilly, yet all you can retort with is “shoving it down our throats.”
The saddest thing is that you don’t really have a clue about me or Medad beyond your stereotyped nearsightedness.
i don’t believe that the west bank should be judenrein at all. i believe that jews have every right to be in the west bank, just as they have every right to live in any country on earth, be it germany or saudi arabia. i do not believe, however, that jews have the right to excerise their rights at the expense of others’ rights. by living in the west bank, you and yisrael both clearly believe that it is acceptable to deprive others of their rights for the sake of your own.
in the last year, yisrael has had numerous entries on his blog attacking jewish left-wingers as self-haters and as enemies of israel. for this rhetoric, i placed him in the same category with those whom he shares his rhetoric — individuals with whom i’ve argued on countless occasions the halakhot concerning the governance of the land of israel, and the apologia of that community for the practice of dispossessing palestinians.
if medad is truly not the sort who offers such apologia, i do indeed apologize for mislabeling him and mocking him unjustly. however, considering who he shares notes and keeps company with, you’ll have to forgive me for assuming the worst of his character.
Let’s start from the end:
Mob -“i placed him [Medad/me] in the same category with those whom he shares his rhetoric, individuals with whom i’ve argued on countless occasions the halakhot concerning the governance of the land of israel, and the apologia of that community for the practice of dispossessing palestinians.”
Me – As I do not know the ‘whom’ who supposedly share my rhetoric of the practice of dispossessing Pals., Mob has me over a barrel. Well, let me try to unroll. I do not support unilaterally or indiscriminately dispossessing Arabs because they are Arabs either from a Halachic view or any other. I believe Arabs who are indigenous to this land should live here at peace with everyone, and that includes Hamas vs. Fatah and vice versa. I do believe in the Jabotinsky outlook as expressed in his last book, “The War and the Jew”. I do not believe in expulsion en masse. If you want further clarifications, just ask.
And now, over to you: “if medad is truly not the sort who offers such apologia, i do indeed apologize for mislabeling him and mocking him unjustly.”
Second,
Mob – “i had a one-line riff, a pot-shot, about yisrael medad’s areas of expertise, that i found hilarious. yisrael medad, being a right-wing religious settler, didn’t find it funny, probably because it hits so close to home.”
No, it missed, by a wide margin. I’ve got a great sense of humor but I think I know snivelling hate when I read it at Wonkette and I think they knew it too and dropped me quickly, lawyers and all.
Mob – “when i saw that he was encouraging the likes of LGF, atlas shrugged, and debbie schlussel”
Me – no, not really. I may be wrong but your time line is out of whack. For sure Debbie blogged way after your remarks. Her and LGF I never contacted. Someone else did. I don’t know how to check times registered onblogs but if you have nothing else to do in Chicago, check it out. I think you reacted in all viciousness before they appeared.
Mob – “he petitioned the right-wing blogosphere to launch a smear attack against wonkette”
Me – a) I am not allowed to petition? Even the US constitution allows “petitioning”. b) what smear? I’ve checked the comments including many centerists and lefties, not to mention the non-Jews, and many are uncomfortable with “Jew York Times” and the Gawker lambasting and the unnecessity of repeating the “Jew-liani” line or at the least, putting it in bold. If you can’t see the latent antisemitism that drives such humor, even my pity for you is insufficient.
Mob – “i wasn’t referring to his handling of this thread, i was referring to the comment in which he bragged about being a beitarist who shut down a neo-nazi’s speech at columbia university.”
Me – here we have a difference of opinion. People who call themselves Nazis and rant and rage about putting Jews in ovens, and that was the reality 40 years ago, are outside the realm of debate and rational argumentation. Madole and Rockwell were guttersnipes and they deserved to be physically confronted. I make no apologies for my actions then. That Rockwell was killed by one of his own men was a missed opportunity for someone else.
Mob – “you and yisrael both clearly believe that it is acceptable to deprive others of their rights for the sake of your own.”
Me – and what rights are we depriving here exactly? In 1922, the Jews were granted all of Israel and Jordan. In 1923 Transjordan was removed. Arab riots in 1936-39 (I am skipping over 1929 but that year you know well) caused Britain to annouce the White Paper policy that, in the end, acted as a collaboration with Nazi Germany’s extermination plan (and as Bernard Wasserstein proves, was not that unintentional among some Foreign Office officials who were, dare I say it, antisemites and made sure Jews couldn’t get out of Europe and, in fact, not all the 75,000 certificates were used up when 1944 rolled around). This not to mention that grand Pal. nationalist leader, Haj Amin, who ran off to Hitler to help him kill Jews. In 1947, again Jews yielded on territory and sought a compromise. Nada. Nisht. In 1964, the PLO was established to liberate Palestine…oops, sorry, Israel. To end this hsitory foray, the Pals. don’t have any “right” after all this to anything but to live in coexistence and peace and a Menachem Begin-style autonomy. They certainly don’t have a ‘right’ to establish 2 or 3 states out of the former Jewish National Home Mandate with us getting but one and in ridiculous borders (those that Eban said recalled to him Auschwitz and whihc enticed those Arabs to try another round. On Independence Day eve, May 15, 1967, a house was bombed by demolition in Amatzia in Lachish region. I was in a house 200 meters away. So I know a bit about Arab terror.
Mob – ” yisrael has had numerous entries on his blog attacking jewish left-wingers as self-haters and as enemies of israel.”
Me – so what? what’s wrong with that? do you ever reread your attacks on anyone not far-out left/progressive/radical?
Mob – “gawker’s publisher and editors ARE JEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Me – so what? what has that got to do with anything?
Anyway, I have reason to be optimistic.
“…the jokes were problematic, particularly for people who are unfamiliar with gawker and wonkette as regular reads. hence why i said that it was “mildly disconcerting.â€
You’ve an almost English sense of understatement, Mobius…
Some Holocaust limericks pulled from Gawker
BY FRACTUREDACETABULUM AT 07/20/07 03:28 PM
(ahem)
Adolf Hitler murdered some Jews
At the time, it didn’t make news
Ever since then people been bitchin’
From subways to soup kitchens
About those god damned Jews
BY MINDBLING AT 07/20/07 03:35 PM
There once was a really bad man
who wanted his nation Aryian
so he fired up the stove
and whoosh, in the Jews go
never to be heard from again.
BY HEYTHEREKILLER AT 07/20/07 03:50 PM
The Germans all say it was not in,
their country. Now who would’ve thought’n,
They’d skin all the Jews,
And make them into shoes,
Wir müssen die Juden ausrotten!
BY PROCRASTINATOR, ESQ. AT 07/20/07 04:24 PM
A Dutch Jewess was kept in an attic,
To hide her from neighbors fanatic.
But the Nazis, it seems,
Grew wise to her schemes,
But Anne, must you be so dramatic?
That’s from one thread, alone…furious
Mobius– my earlier point wasn’t regarding your right to criticize/disagree with YM and whoever else; it was with how it got said.
(Odds are I can say the same to them; at the moment, I do not have the energy to reread this whole thread. )
for a religious/ethnic/cultural group that has produced countless comedic entertainers in the last 100 years alone, i am utterly shocked at the humorlessness of the greater jewish community.
Mob – for a religious/ethnic/cultural group that has produced countless comedic entertainers in the last 100 years alone, i am utterly shocked at the humorlessness of the greater jewish community.
Me – so, that’s it. that’s all you’ve got to say? Not even ‘whew, i’m tired of all this’? No apologies, no attempts at ‘well, perhaps i did sterotype you’, no nothing? All you have to say is that the Jews are guilty because a few of us don’t have the same sense of humor as you do and worse, you claim that the “humor” we see as latent, under-the-surface, cute Judeophobia is really not antisemitic in any form and that even if it is, I/we can’t organize to combat it, and if we do, we’re causing more antisemtism while only you of the Left know how to combat real antisemtism.
That sentence is too long but someone around here is too short on understanding.
yisrael–i’m not done with you. i have this thing called a life that keeps me from sitting behind the keyboard 24/7. i can’t devote all my time to fighting with bigots and militant zionists… gotta pay the rent and have some healthy emotional time as well.
Dear Mob – you’re right, er, correct. Go on with your life (but believe me, you do way more blogging than I do). Of course, not being able to deal with my life existence, my outlook on life, and, in all humbleness, the reality that your outlook and approach is mostly wrong (and dangerous to Zionism and Jews, maybe even more so than the Judeophobes you can’t see), you simply malign, demonize, and diss me rather than applying your make-belive rules of liberalism, Chofetz Chaim, etc. And you know that The Möbius strip is a surface with only one side and only one boundary component. It has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. Oh, how so applicable to your one-dimensional denounciations of me.