peacepalestine: Shraga, My Karma ran over your Dogma: spoiling your smear campaign with honesty

Thursday, March 20, 2008

Shraga, My Karma ran over your Dogma: spoiling your smear campaign with honesty

VERY INTERESTING DEVELOPMENTS! read through to the end for the whole story. More actually follow in comments, as it is a "developing story"

The smear campaigners have been at it non-stop. Several hundred people thought that by asking Tony Greenstein to get to work on doing something constructive and leaving others to do the same, he might actually do so. No. In the meantime, he's decided to take Gilad to court. He tried to close this blog, he's opened his own blog just to smear Gilad and me, he spams posts from there all over Socialist Unity and the Alef discussion list. It seems as if he has no control over this obsession. But, he isn't the only one.

Shraga Elam, a little known (but to himself, he is father of great intellectual ideas that bear the name of greater men such as Norman Finkelstein, Yeshayahu Liebowitz and even the olive growers of Palestine) activist in Zurich, has been Tony's sidekick in all of this, and he's really been working overtime to get the job done.

In the past, readers who are familiar with this blog will know about the Public Lapidation (round one) where Shraga uses Holocaust Revisionist sites to try to smear Gilad, and which were exposed as false. But this week, he's decided to help Tony to dismantle the petition perhaps afraid about when the comments that were not at all generous with Tony and with any kind of censorship and gatekeeping would appear and wanting to get it pulled before the ugly truth came out. Many valid individuals signed the petition, including scholars such as Oren Ben-Dor, bloggers and activists such as Haitham Sabbah, Uruknet, Dissident Voice, and many others. Many groups for Palestinian and Human rights signed as well. Many Palestinians signed as well as writers and journalists. Take a look at the list to get an idea. Well, of course, Tony decided to pick out the names he didn't want, (for the sake of Palestinians of course) and decided that there were two or three that were anathema. After a lot of pressure, I took one name off, to spare the other people the stress. But, that still leaves 278 names more or less.

how to whittle that down....

how to whittle that to nothing....

So, he went to his Buddy Shraga to do the work. "There's Gilad's and Uri Avnery's translator there, a Gush Shalom member... Oh! There's Hajo Meyer, the writer who also was a survivor of Auschwitz. THEY MUST BE REMOVED!"

So, Shraga decided to go to work. For days he circulated misleading emails suggesting I was a Judeophobe affiliated with Nazi sites! (Remember, he actually circulates from them, but for some reason he can't see that his pulpit is quite a few metres too low). Scaring his first two victims sufficiently, they were sure that they had not signed any Neo-Nazi or Anti-Semitic petition! In fact, they had not, they signed the petition that was in support of Gilad Atzmon and Mary Rizzo.

At that point, Shraga announces on Alef and to a list of people, some of whom I don't even know, "Two faked signatures on the pro Atzmon & Rizzo petition"
(Shraga Elam)

Of course, this is untrue, and I know it. I have been sent all the emails by the person collecting them for adding their name to the list. There is not a name on there that was not indicated by written request, and there are even some names who are NOT there because they told me or the two other guys who had something to do with it, "please add me to the list!" on a messenger, on the phone, in an SMS or in person and we have told them they have to do an email to the address indicated. Each name has an email evidence that it is authentic. And this is why I know that the names were not forged. When I said so, that there was no way that the signatures were forged and that he had to publicly announce this, Shraga spent all yesterday between pressuring people, insinutating that I was stubborn for not believing that he was right and that obviously someone had "taken over Hajo's email". He sent me a faked letter from Hajo's address to show stupid me how it could be done, and he knows just who did it too! That nasty band of Germans, the Broder Gang, who are looking for an excuse to ruin good activists, and with this, they had found it!!!

I insisted again that I knew that Hajo had signed it and not only that, he had stated on phone to another person that he had signed it and stood by that. I mentioned this, so Shraga started sending a series of ever more aggressive emails to an ever-growing list of persons, as if the gang bullying could somehow make lies turn into truth.

But lies remain lies if that is what they are.

Not only did the two people sign, but there were some interesting events arising from all of this. The woman from Gush Shalom signed (and I will now omit using her name) but asked to be removed with this letter:

Excuse me, I see that I've signed this petition, I received by a friend ,Guenter Schenk, whom I trusted.
But I have forgotten totally. I'm 80 - so it is normal that the memory in this age is not the best for things 5 weeks ago ....
But I see that there are persons, blocks, internetsides I don't know. Please delete my name from this petition, from all the blocks or internetsides - I don't want any trouble.
This is my last word in this issue - please no more emails. There will be no more an answer to it. I have to do more important things than this unpleasant disbute.
name

So, without any problem or delay, her name was promptly removed. I cannot vouch for it on the 20 or so sites it is on, but the two "official ones" this site and Tlaxcala, where I have some control over content, have accommodated the request with no questions asked. I can understand her stress and nervousness. I have to go through this with Tony and Shraga on a nearly daily basis, and it is enough to test even nerves of steel. I thanked her for her hard work and wished her well.

But, it didn't end there. Both Gilad and I received letters of support from this person. And, to make things more strange, Shraga (rather than apologise for the whole mess) simply blames this woman for "misleading him", as if SHE is starting the mess and is the journalist! He could not tolerate her deceiving him and he actually pretends an apology from her! He also continued to spam her email box with stuff on this. Not only that, when informed of the supportive letters, he demanded we publish them. Amazing what Chutzpah. But he also writes a long and strange letterto Alef. continuing to accuse me Alef has a lot of readers, so the information got out. And this is what started to circulate on German activist lists (I am only reprinting the English section):

Shraga Elam recruits the notorious Neocon and Islamophobic Henryk M. Broder to pressure an 80 year old activist....

If we want to know what pressure is really about and how the gatekeepers use the worst sort of scare tactics just read the following:

Once Shraga Elam found names of two people he knows and believes he can influence on a petition **in support of Gilad Atzmon and Mary Rizzo, he sent them a smear letter with the lovely title that Mary Rizzo is a Judeophobe, connecting her to sites she does not write for, circulate or have anything to do with and suggesting the petition they signed was in support of anti-Semitic sites. Then in order to achieve the necessary results, Elam pulls in Henryk M. Broder, the notorious ultra-Zionist neocon so NAME, an 80 year old activist translator who lives in Germany, surrenders to his demands. Here are Shraga Elam's words; "I told her (NAME) that such things might be very harmful if discovered by Broder and his fans, who are looking with a microscope for a pretext to attack peace activists. I mentioned the mean campaign led at the moment against the German journalist Ludwig Watzal by Broder and his gang, accusing him of being allegedly "Anti-Semite". She asked what she could do and I said that she can withdraw her signature."

For those who do not realise it yet, Elam the crypto-Zionist is acting as an ethnic campaigner and using tactics that are no different than those he is using, insinuation, misleading information and pressure to fear affiliation and claims that there will be something horrible to expect if she does not do as he thinks best (no pressure, he claims...) and actually does mount pressure on an elderly Palestinian solidarity activist. Elam is disgrace.

And... It doesn't end there. There is indeed a conclusion to this second round of Public Lapidation. The other signatory that he has so far targeted....

This is the letter Hajo Meyer wrote:

To all of you who are spectators in this circus of insanity,

the text below starting with ‘dear friends’ is fully mine. I wrote it and I send it to Adib S. Kawar of Palestinesomoud. I signed the petition which you find attached. It was sent to me by my friend Guenter Schenk. There is not one word in it which I regret. When you find my name under any other text, that can only be stolen or faked.
Hajo G. Meyer

Dear friends,
For me, as a survivor of 10 month of Auschwitz, one thing is clear, there is a fundamental flaw in Zionism. At least in the form in which it expresses itself in political reality. It has not accepted one of the fundamental truths of the Enlightenment: the essential and fundamental equivalence of all human beings.
Therefore, due to this fundamental flaw, political Zionism in its present form will eventually perish. Unfortunately, you the Palestinians will have to mobilise a lot of somoud. So far, you have been able to show that you can do it. Don’t despair, the enlightened world is with you.

Dr Hajo G. Meyer, Heiloo, the Netherlands

Will Tony or Shraga admit they spent two days engaged in defamation and spreading lies and false information? That their witch hunting and gatekeeping and pressure campaigns is striking out against them rather than making them any more popular or helping the cause they pretend they support?

Don't hold your breath!

Labels: activism, Atzmon, gatekeeping