Honing Those Four Hasbara Steps

I've mentioned this Discredited Andrew chap before.  He lurks at Harry's Place and devastates them all with casual observations that usually amount to pointing out that the premises of a given post are basically wrong or without substance.  Readers might have noticed a lengthy and detailed article by Joseph Massad on al Jazeera recently.

A nasty campaign by Zionists against Massad has been going for years now so anything he says is going to attract the ire of HP but here's a taste of Massad's article headed, The Last of the Semites:

Jewish opponents of Zionism understood the movement since its early age as one that shared the precepts of anti-Semitism in its diagnosis of what gentile Europeans called the "Jewish Question". What galled anti-Zionist Jews the most, however, was that Zionism also shared the "solution" to the Jewish Question that anti-Semites had always advocated, namely the expulsion of Jews from Europe.

Well, if you ever read HP there's no need to quote their responses.  So far I've noticed two posts on the article, the first by Sarah Annes Brown and the second by a Paul M. You can gather what both are saying from Andrew's comments beneath the second one:

Discredited Andrew • 2 days ago

So Zionist responses to Massad's article take three forms:

1) Feign outrage at some of the excesses but ignore the meat of the argument. (The Sarah AB approach.)

2) Argue that although Massad appears to be saying X (because he is acutally saying X) he is "subtly" saying "essentially" Y and saying Y is a jolly bad thing indeed. (The Elder of Ziyon/Sarka approach)

3) Attempt to dismiss it as absurd and thus irrelevant while the Ziosphere produce article after article on it. (The Paul M approach.)

Given that it's pretty flawed article, just imagine the total panic if he'd cleaned it up a bit round the edges!

Actually I agree there were flaws to the article.  Massad is discussing/asserting the confluences and antagonisms between various ideologies influencing Jews in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and further discussing where they have led us to today.  He does not however discuss the material conditions or class interests that gave rise to these various ideologies.  But getting into what an HP target actually said is a serious digression from what HP and its followers say he said.

Here's Andrew again:

Discredited Andrew  Josh S • 2 days ago

And the fourth response!

4) It's Jew hatred!

Took a while though, must be the Fraser UCU case slowly sinking in.

Yay!! Did you see that?  Bonus points for rubbing their noses in the FUCU case.

Obviously, some of Andrew's comments are responses to other comments that you don't need to read to know what they said, like this:

Discredited Andrew [replying to] Petra Marquardt-Bigman •a day ago

From Stormfront:

"I would like to point out that if the U. Columbia prof behind this article is trying to make NS look bad for having a role in Zionism"

Indeed they're pretty dumb at Stormfront, but one of them's twigged that it's an anti-Nazi piece.

Wow. Andrew doesn't mind diving into the sewers so we don't have to.  First HP then Stormfront.

There was a comment by Andrew under the Sarah Annes Brown post that earns him even more bonus points:

SarahAB Mod  Discredited Andrew • 5 hours ago

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Although I think you flatten the facts here, it seems undeniable that many Palestinians were uprooted from the homes where their families had lived for generations. The fact they didn't have their own state either before hand doesn't change that. Of course lots of comparable things have happened which people forget about.

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  Discredited Andrew  SarahAB • 4 hours ago

  
  

  True enough... Everything sucks.

  http://jewssansfrontieres.blog...

Wonderful and definitely better than me. I would have wasted time challenging her on what she meant by "flattening".  Of course, the bonus points arise for linking to Jews sans frontieres.

If you want to see the whole threads you have to hurry.  It's a curious paradox about Israel advocates that their only sign of decency is their dishonesty.  It shows that they are ashamed of themselves and well they should be.  That being the case, HP deletes its comments after a week.  Probably just as well.