June 22, 2009

Feeling the hate airbrushed from youtube

I did a post on the video, titled Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem, where a group of American Israeli Jews denounce Barack Obama in the crudest possible racist terms. Well if you click the link then click the youtube video you will see that "This video has been removed due to a terms of use violation".

Oh well, that's a shame because it was very informative about the kind of racism doing the rounds among white American Israeli Jewish youth. Even David Toube of Harry's Place was moved to post on what the man himself called the "racist scum", though what was so racist about white people calling Obama the n-word was lost on some of his followers in the thread and even Toube seemed to think that the racism consisted of calling for Obama to be shot and not calling him and other non-whites by the n-word. It's true, check out the thread. Still at least he knew there was something racist about it even if he didn't know what it was. I suppose he thought that if he could pass off any criticism of or incitement against Obama as racist, he could get away with some of his false allegations of antisemitism on the same kind of flimsy grounds.

But typically, I digress. Luckily Max Blumenthal who made the video has now posted it to his own site. And here's the embed:

Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem -- The Censored Video from Max Blumenthal on Vimeo.

But why oh why is Blumenthal having such difficulty getting such a useful video hosted on youtube? Here's the man:
Youtube has removed my video, “Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem,” on the baseless grounds that it contains “inappropriate content.” They have offered me no further explanation and have stonewalled my inquiries and attempts to rectify the situation. Thus they have censored a video that contains far less inflammatory content than thousands of video they are already hosting. Why? I won’t ascribe motives to Youtube I am unable to confirm, but it is clear there is an active campaign by right-wing Jewish elements to suppress the video by filing a flood of complaints with Youtube. At the same time these elements have attempted to paint me as a self-hating Jew determined to foment anti-Semitism. I answered this last charge to Ha’aretz (read the barely coherent article here) last week: “I have received death threats from people, mainly ones calling me a self-hating Jew. I am self-hating, but my self-hatred has nothing to do with me being Jewish.”

Jewish Voices for Peace (the parent organization of the excellent website Muzzlewatch) is preparing an action for tomorrow to pressure Youtube into restoring the video. They are asking their members to email press@youtube.com to demand an explanation for the censorship. For now, I have reposted the video on Vimeo and urge everyone to distribute it widely.

I'm guessing it's to do with these people but what do I know?

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