Alf Green II - this time he's at Harry's Place...or rather he was

Long time readers of Jews sans frontieres will remember how I stumbled on the fact that Engage's and now BICOM's Dr David Hirsh was using Alf Green as a sock puppet to troll blogs, support his own and his wife's articles and sign the Euston Manifesto. Well now Alf Green is back and commenting on Harry's Place, though unlike the zionist troll, this Alf Green is me.

It all started when I saw this extremely dodgy post on Harry's Place.  I know it's redundant, dodgy post and Harry's Place.  I could simply have said post on Harry's Place or say dodgy post and have people guess it was on Harry's Place.  Have a look at the post while I gather my thoughts:

Tony Lerman Apologises

Lucy Lips, December 20th 2012, 10:46 pm

The far Left Pluto Press - home to such as Hezbollah lobbyist, Alistair Crooke and Atzmon supporter, Jonathan Crooke - has published anapology and retraction.

Additional Information

Apology and retraction:

A passage in Mr Lerman’s book The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist inaccurately states that Professor Daniel Hochhauser of UCH intentionally misrepresented Mr Lerman’s position or views with regard to the Iranian President to others. This is untrue: Professor Hochhauser was in fact correctly representing a published interview given by Mr Lerman. We will retract that passage of the book from future prints and both we and Mr Lerman have apologised to Professor Hochhauser for the error.

Those of us who have followed Lerman’s miserable trajectory will be not at all surprised to find out that he is a liar.

Most HP watchers are aware that Lucy Lips is the corporate lawyer, David Toube. I usually avoid Harry's sewer like the plague but I believe Antony Lerman to be a man of integrity so I left this comment early yesterday morning:

The apology doesn't say that Antony Lerman lied and no examples have been given to make a case that Lerman is a liar. David Toube's dishonesty, on the other hand, has caught up with him so many times he has to use the ludicrous moniker, Lucy Lips.

The comment on the site which revels in its propensity to tell people what they don't want to hear, didn't want to hear that comment and so, when I checked this afternoon, it had been deleted and the message said, "No one has commented yet".  Hmm. They could have said, "one [or more] comment/s deleted" especially given that the post was accusing a named individual of being a liar.  Anyway, I tried leaving my comment again using my usual screen name, Levi9909 and I got the message, "you do not have permission to post on this thread".  I tried posting on a thread which had some comments on it and got the same result, so the permission thing wasn't post specific. I am banned from Harry's Place.  Well levi9909 is banned but it is only a screen name. I decided to use the name Alf Green and guess what?  Yup, the comment got through.  Look:

alf.green • 31 minutes ago

• −

The apology doesn't say that Antony Lerman lied and no examples have been given to make a case that Lerman is a liar. David Toube's dishonesty, on the other hand, has caught up with him so many times he has to use the ludicrous moniker, Lucy Lips.

So Alf Green succeeded where levi9909 failed.  And let's try commenting with levi9909 again and see what happens:

You do not have permission to post on this thread

I just want to see if I can copy alf green's success in having a post accepted on the site that tells people what they don't want to hear.

• Attach

 No wonder they're such easy prey for these denial of service attacks.  I don't approve of DDOS but clearly Harry's Place isn't as fond of its Orwellian definition of liberty as it makes out.

Really, if they can't stand up an allegation that someone is a liar, they shouldn't make the allegation.  Then they won't have to make themselves look silly by banning comments from their site, especially when the comments expose their sheer dishonesty in accusing others of dishonesty.

UPDATE:  Poor old Alf Green fared no better than Levi9909. His comment has now been deleted.  I'll just have another little try with a random name and see what happens.

Amazing! Someone has copied the comment I have left and had deleted three times now and pasted it into place thus:

Tadhg Ó Muiris • 2 hours ago

• −

The apology doesn't say that Antony Lerman lied and no examples have been given to make a case that Lerman is a liar. David Toube's dishonesty, on the other hand, has caught up with him so many times he has to use the ludicrous moniker, Lucy Lips.

I must go thank the guy but which name to use? Well I just tried alf.green and the poor guy has now been banned. Levi9909 was already banned.  So let's think up another.

Ah, I know:

Mark Elf  Tadhg Ó Muiris • a few seconds ago

Thanks a million, Taidhg. My thoughts exactly. I just find it really difficult to commit my thoughts to an online comment.

So levi9909 was banned from the beginning. Alf Green got banned along the way. But Mark Elf seems to have slipped through the net for now. Well really, who would use such a ridiculous screen name as Elf?

UPDATE 2: It's a curious thing that whilst the mods at HP are so keen to disinfect the comments - a dirty job in a sewer like HP - the link in "apology and retraction" is broken.  What can it mean?  Only that they are more keen to sanitise the comments than the posts.

Timely exposé of bogus allegations of antisemitism

Here's a good long post from Antony Lerman titled Another faulty, pseudo-academic antisemitism initiative:

It was inevitable. Another Gaza offensive by Israel begins, ostensibly to stop Hamas from firing rockets into southern Israel, and within a couple of days accusations of antisemitism were flying around.

Two particularly caught my attention. The first was the claim that Steve Bell, in his Guardiancartoon of 15 November, was ‘get[ting] away with using antisemitic imagery and tropes‘ because it showed Tony Blair and William Hague as puppets of Bibi Netanyahu.

The second was in a tweet about a letter to the Guardian from emeritus professor Leslie Baruch Brent who condemned the ‘disporportionate response of the Israeli government to the Hamas rocket attacks’ and concluded ‘Has the world learned nothing since Guernica?’ The text of the tweet read: ‘Hard to take @guardian opposition to #antisemitism seriously when they publish letter comparing #Israel to Nazis.’

I was especially interested in these accusations because the first was by Mark Gardner, the communications director of the Community Security Trust (CST), the private charity that acts as the defence organization of the UK Jewish community, and the second by Dave Rich, his deputy.

One of the things that is most worrying about what I believe were these false imputations of antisemitism (and I will explain my reasoning for this conclusion in my next blogpost) is that they come not simply from individuals expressing their own views, but from officials of a very influential, major registered charity, writing in their capacity as officials of that organization. The view of the Community Security Trust is seen as, and is intended to be seen as, the view of the organized UK Jewish community. And yet that wider community has no means of calling the CST to account and therefore has to suffer the consequences of its officials’ doubtful and often damaging politically-motivated interventions in public debate.

The whole thing is worth a read and is particularly timely given that yesterday (29/11/2012) saw the publication of the Community Security Trust's "Antisemitic Discourse Report 2011".  I don't know why it took so long to produce a report relating to 2011 and I might not bother reading it yet but a flavour is given by Ha'aretz:

Explicit anti-Semitism is rare in British public life, Britain's Community Security Trust said in a report on anti-Semitic discourse in Britain in 2011.

The 35-page report issued Thursday also reported that anti-Semitic themes alleging Jewish conspiracy, power and hostility to others can resonate within mainstream discourse about Israel and about so-called "Zionists."

Explicit anti-Semitism tends to occur within circles that are also racist or hateful toward other groups, according to the report.

In addition, fears that economic troubles in 2011 would spark anti-Semitism in Britain proved largely unfounded, but the trend to blame "Zionism" for anti-Muslim hatred intensified. This manifested itself, for example, in allegations that Zionism inspired Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik.

The British daily newspaper The Guardian reinforced its reputation as being the most subjective and contentious mainstream newspaper on issues of anti-Semitism in the context of Israel and Zionism, according to the report, despite the paper also warning against anti-Semitism in editorials.

The report also found that fears and concerns about anti-Semitism expressed by mainstream Jewish communities and bodies are routinely ignored, or even maliciously misrepresented, within what are known as progressive circles, including some media, trade unions and churches. Few other minority representative groups, if any, are treated with such reflexive suspicion and ill will, according to the report.

Ah, I think I see why it took so long. It's hard to find genuine instances of antisemitism so a little added breadth to the definition is required and then you can accuse "new antisemitism" sceptics of antisemitism too. Very clever.

UPDATE: See Antony Lerman's note at the foot of his post as follows:

This post was amended on Friday at 13:51 to make it clear that the Tweet by Dave Rich of the CST referred to in the 5th paragraph was wrongly described as being sent expressing the official view of the CST. It was from Dave Rich’s private Twitter account, which makes clear that his tweets are his personal views only. Apologies to Dave for this error.

Zionism is sick so call a doctor

That's precisely what the Jewish Chronicle has done in the case of Antony Lerman's recent book titled, The Making and Un-making of a Zionist.  It took a little time but the Jewish Chronicle has finally got round to commissioning a review of the book by a medical oncologist, Daniel Hochhauser.

From the title of the book it is clear that Tony Lerman overcame his difficulty squaring a liberal conscience with supporting the zionist project/ideology.  His response was to eventually ditch zionism and suggest a few reforms which might lead to peace between Israel and its natives and neighbours and maybe even peace within and between diverse Jewish communities.

All too much for the zionist establishment as Hochhauser's insulting "review" demonstrates.

Tony Greenstein goes into far more detail here.

Antony Lerman says "Enough already!" in The Guardian and Mike Marqusee says "Enough already!" to The Guardian

Two very different issues only related by my own perception.

Antony Lerman is saying, "Enough already!" to the Jewish establishment in the UK and not for the first time.  He has an article today in  the Guardian's Comment is Free section on line titled,  The abuse of dissenting Jews is shameful.

The Jewish establishment in the UK – which includes the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre, the Zionist Federation and numerous private groupings of the great and the good – is highly experienced at this. I saw it happen in the 1980s when communal leaders sought to make life impossible for the small but highly active radical Jewish Socialists' Group. And I became a target for such treatment myself when I was appointed head of the influential Jewish Policy Research (JPR) thinktank for a second time in 2005, an experience I recall in my book The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist.

By then I had served the community professionally for 26 years. A Zionist for decades, I was one no longer. But I wished passionately that Israel would become a democratic state for all its citizens, end the occupation, recognise the Palestinians' right of return, and acknowledge that Israel's establishment in 1948 was a Nakba, a catastrophe, for the Palestinians. I had no intention of using JPR as a platform for advocating these views but rather made one of my principal aims creating space for Jewish critical thinking and debate about how Jews should relate to Israel, to its policies towards Palestinians and to the serious impact of its actions on European Jews. I believed that only through open and civil discussion of these issues could the necessary change in diaspora Jewish opinion occur.

I looked for the "article history" which used to be a feature of The Guardian's on line articles but they no longer have it so I don't know if the article appeared in print.  It made me think of a complaint Mike Marqusee made recently about how The Guardian exploits journalists by relegating their articles to Comment is free.  Here's Mike on MikeMarqusee.com:

I submitted the article (below), on the tension between the Olympic packaging and the reality of sports, to the Guardian Comment page, hoping that some of it at least would find its way into print. The editors liked the piece and asked me to cut it down to the appropriate length, which I was happy to do. Then, without consulting with me, they stuck it on the Cif website (not the print edition) under the crass and inapposite headline “Spare us the jingoistic Olympic hype.”

Inevitably readers responded to the headline rather than the article, and within hours there were hundreds of angry posts abusing me for being a killjoy and / or ‘anti-British’. The abuse is what you get for contributing anything contentious to Cif and it goes with the territory. But in this case it was made even more pointless than usual by the way the Guardian packaged the article.

Of course, this is only a minor irritation. Editors reserve the right to write headlines and I accept that, though I do think they have an obligation to write headlines that reflect accurately the content and tone of the articles.

There is however a more important issue involved, which is the Cif website and how it treats contributors in general.

Some time ago I resolved not to contribute articles to Cif (as opposed to the print edition) because the rate of pay was so insulting and so injurious to journalism. Many contributors are not paid at all and those who are, including me, receive £90 for 800-1200 words, a small fraction of the minimum NUJ rate, and not remotely a reflection of the labour, skill, research, and accumulated expertise involved in creating the article. I know that for many free-lance writers, including myself, £90 is not to be sneezed at, but the long term cost to our dignity and our craft is just too high. We all want our writings to be circulated as widely as possible, but the Guardian is exploiting that desire to secure virtually cost-free copy. This copy is then used to attract readers and generate revenues for the Guardian, none of which trickles back to the contributors.

If free-lancers enjoyed the slightest degree of industrial muscle, the Cif scam would have been busted long before now. All I can say to my NUJ comrades on the Guardian staff is that you shouldn’t be letting this happen.

There are, of course, other issues with Cif.

PS, In his article, Antony Lerman mentions but modestly doesn't link to his book, The Making and Unmaking of a Zionist.

Antony Lerman on the improvement in antisemitism research

Here is Antony Lerman's take on the axing of the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA). I must say I am jealous of his headline: Antisemitism Research Just Improved: Yale’s ‘Initiative’ for Studying Antisemitism is Axed.

For some years now I have argued that the academic study of contemporary antisemitism has been badly compromised by the growing politicisation of the subject. Back in September 2008, in an op-ed piece for Ha’aretz, I wrote:

Practically the entire business of studying and analyzing current anti-Semitism has been hijacked and debased by people lacking any serious expertise in the subject, whose principal aim is to excoriate Jewish critics of Israel and to promote the ‘anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism’ equation.

A number of institutions, supposedly tasked with undertaking serious research on antisemitism, have contributed to this situation. One of the foremost of these is the Yale Initiative for the Interdisciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism (YIISA), established in 2006, and I had it in my sights when I wrote my op-ed.

Lerman goes on to list some of the organisations and individuals that have "badly compromised" the study of contemporary antisemitism.

Unsurprisingly, organizations that have contributed to the debasement of serious antisemitism research are not happy. The Anti-Defamation League’s National Director, Abe Foxman, said:

Especially at a time when anti-Semitism continues to be virulent and anti-Israel parties treat any effort to address issues relating to anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism as illegitimate, Yale’s decision is particularly unfortunate and dismaying . . . it leaves the impression that the anti-Jewish forces in the world achieved a significant victory.

The American Jewish Committee said it was surprised and saddened by the decision. AJC’s Executive Director, David Harris, warned: ‘If Yale now leaves the field, it will create a very regrettable void’.

Yup, the ADL and AJC are big hitters in the field of "debasement of serious antisemitism research".

After a little detour to consider, by way of a hysterical howl of protest at YIISA's demise from the New York Post's, why YIISA has been ditched:

Foxman and Harris were relatively measured in comparison with the report in the New York Post headed ‘Yale’s gift to antisemitism’. The writer claimed that Yale ‘almost certainly [decided on closure] because YIISA refused to ignore the most virulent, genocidal and common form of Jew-hatred today: Muslim anti-Semitism.’ She also added: ‘Some suggest that Yale feels it can act with impunity because, earlier this spring, one of YIISA’s most powerful backers died; without his money and influence, the school can rid itself of a politically inconvenient nuisance.’

YIISA’s funders are not revealed by the institution so it’s possible that closure may have something to do with the withdrawal of funds, though the story may just be a rumour set running by those who suspect an anti-Israel agenda at work. But whatever the specific reason, it was obvious from YIISA’s inception that it would promote the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’, focus heavily on criticism of Israel and prioritise the issue of Muslim antisemitism.

And then back down to the debasement:

Among the first papers presented at YIISA seminars were those by Dr David Hirsh (2005), a sociologist at Goldsmiths, University of London and founder of Engage, a website dedicated to opposing the boycott of Israel, Professor Shalom Lappin (2007), professor of computational linguistics at Kings College, University of London, and Professor Irwin Cotler (2006), professor of law at McGill University and a former Minister of Justice and Attorney General of Canada. All three are well-known for their highly politicised approaches to current antisemitism.

Hirsh’s paper was essentially a continuation of his political battles with the anti-Zionist left over the issue of boycotting Israel, which he claimed was an expression of antisemitism. Lappin’s academic work is not in the field of antisemitism yet he was regarded by YIISA as a proper person to present a paper that linked modern anti-Israel sentiment in the UK with centuries-old English antisemitism and claimed that the political class in contemporary Britain had abandoned the Jews – and this was written at a time when, in Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government, Jews in Britain had never had a more pro-Jewish and pro-Israel national political leadership. Cotler has probably done more than anyone to popularize the notion of the ‘new antisemitism’ having been responsible for coining the phrase ‘Israel is the Jew among the nations’. His paper, effectively an exercise in sophisticated hasbara (propaganda for Israel), likened the current situation to the 1930s and developed a framework for identifying forms of criticism of Israel as antisemitic.

The director of YIISA, Dr Charles Small, an academic with little experience of antisemitism research, had clearly put down a marker that Israel was going to be the central concern of YIISA.....Not all who have given seminar papers or lectures at YIISA have been quite as blatantly partisan as my three first examples, though one or two have been worse. (A list of some of those exemplifying YIISA’s approach can be found at the foot of this post.*)

Here's the list:

Some of the individuals who spoke at YIISA and are representative of its politicised orientation: Anne Bayefsky, Barry Kosmin, Edward Kaplan, Michael Oren, Emanuele Ottolenghi, Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Dina Porat, Matthias Kuntzel, Gabriel Schoenfeld, Ruh Wisse, Gerald Steinberg, Alan Dershowitz, Hillel Neuer, Kenneth Levin, Richard Landes, Melanie Phillips, Shimon Samuels, Robert Wistrich.

So how good is the news of the demise of YIISA?

The wider issue raised by YIISA’s imminent closure is whether it’s a watershed moment representing a rolling back of the politicisation of academic antisemitism research. I doubt very much whether the UK Universities and College Union’s decision to distance itself from the EUMC ‘working definition’ of antisemitism can be linked to it, although the vote brought to public attention that the EUMC’s successor body, the Fundamental Rights Agency, has in effect dropped the definition – a potentially damaging blow to the lifespan of the ‘working definition’.

Hmm, end of YIISA and ditching of the EUMC working definition - good linkage!

More significant, although it’s not in the US, is the example set by the establishment of thePears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, University of London.  Its Director, Professor David Feldman, an eminent expert on Jewish history, is taking a rigorously objective academic approach to his task, while not in any way ignoring the complex interconnections between contemporary antisemitism, Israel, Islam, Islamophobia, racism in general and policy questions. Feldman has won plaudits across the academic world for his stance, which gives the lie to the arguments of Cohen and Glick that antisemitism cannot be studied dispassionately and value-free. And while the Pears Institute is not in the US, the international nature of the field of contemporary antisemitism research means that what Feldman does could have a very significant impact beyond the shores of the UK.  With YIISA out of the picture and Pears at Birkbeck looking very secure, some sanity may now return to the discipline.

I say ‘may’ because the combined forces of those institutions and groups which have a vested interest in maintaining the ‘new antisemitism’-based politicised approach to the subject are very strong. YIISA was important, but the ship sails on with the Israeli government and the entire political right-wing in Israel blowing a powerful wind into its sails. And it’s not impossible that American Jewish funders will try to persuade Yale to change its mind, or get the money together to transfer YIISA to another institution, or set it up as in independent body.

Finally Lerman gives the last word to Jerry Haber, the Magnes Zionist, who he finds in similar celebratory mood over the axing of YIISA:

I am by no means alone in having smelled a rat when YIISA came on the scene....The Magnes Zionist blog also knew the score. In a post on 9 JuneJerry Haber cuts to the quick:

The moral of this story? Take an important phenomenon which is worthy of study and have it hijacked by people with an ideological agenda, who organize conferences that revel in Islamaphobia and rightwing Zionism, mixing mediocre academics and non-academics with serious scholars, all of whom have axes to grind – in short, trivialize anti-Semitism in order to silence critics of Israel – and sooner or later, God willing, real academics will write it off as an embarrassment.

So, good news for now. Within a couple of weeks of each other, Yale and the UK's Universities and Colleges Union have dealt major blows to zionism's antisemitism industry.