Soccer Dad: Huffing against israel

November 27, 2006

Huffing against israel

A couple of bloggers have recently pointed out the anti-Israel, if not antisemitic, bile that is on display at the Huffington Post.

Israel Matzav points to an essay by a Professor Mark LeVine that accuses Israel of being behind the Gemayal assassination. The essay appeared at the History News Network and at the Huffing and Puffing Post.

The comments at the latter are largely laudatory. Or were until one of the commenters noted that the learned professor had mixed up his Chinese philosophers. One commenter Jeffepops punctures some of the LeVine's conjectures with some nice reductio ad absurdum argumentation:

Just invent another Israeli (Jewish) conspiracy theory to explain it. I mean, what has the Mossad had to do lately, since undertaking the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers?

Israel is probably behind the Iraq insurgency, secretly pitting Shiite against Sunni. Really.

It's all there in "Protocols of the Elders of Zion". Just ask Mel Gibson.

Another commenter who blogs at the morbid sounding, The Autopsy, reduces LeVine's argument to easy to understand playground mentality.

Syria is in a strong position. Therefore they can afford to take a stronger stance in influencing Lebanese politics. It's typical thug mentality. In order to prevent me from acting like a thug, you have caved to my actions. So, since I am in a stronger position, I will do more to see just how much I can get away with.
It's also how a toddler behaves if you don't set strong limits.

These voices of sanity are comforting given the pure hatred that is evident in so many of these posts. But at the Huffing and Puffing Post, voices of reason are in the minority.

In Dersh under Attack, Pillage Idiot notes that Alan Dershowitz's rebuke of Jimmy Carter inspired quite a bit of hatred too.

Some choice ones that I noted off the top of the bat -

Another defender of Israeli agression and relentless killing. We keep seeing the remorseless killings everyday on our TV and people like Mr. Dershowitz have to keep defending this regime... As if the Israeli government spokesman's propaganda pieces are not enough.

and

Why can't you admit that Israel is one of the last bastions of overt aparthied in the world. In Israel, there are the jews, and everyone else is a second class citizen.

and

Yes, Jews have lived in those places for a long time, but they weren't displaced and massacred wholesale, as was the case in 1948. And gee, I wonder why Jews were expelled from Arab countries after 1948?

Reading this garbage inspires two thoughts:
1) There's an option to mark comments at the Huffing and Puffing Post as abusive; it appears that abusive is the norm. So is this meant as praise.
2) (along the lines of Pillage Idiot's thoughts) I suspect that the people making comments are not the denizens of a bar in Tuscon.

(Once final note: This Professor Mark LeVine has collaborated on a book called Twilight of Empire: Responses to Occupation with actor Viggo Mortensen! Fortunately Gimli joined the Fellowship of the Ring, else Aragorn may well have turned on poor Frodo for occupying Sauron's ring.)

UPDATE: More at Memeorandum.

Crossposted as Israpundit and Soccer Dad.

Technorati Tags: Huffington Post, Israel, anti-Israel.