Posts Tagged ‘antisemitism’

and Nasr makes three

Posted: July 7, 2010 by datechguy in internet/free speech, media, opinion/news
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For the third time in a month a member of the MSM has lost a job for saying what they actually think:

CNN on Wednesday removed its senior editor for Middle Eastern affairs, Octavia Nasr, from her job after she published a Twitter message saying that she respected the Shiite cleric the Grand Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah, who died on Sunday.

Ms. Nasr left her CNN office in Atlanta on Wednesday. Parisa Khosravi, the senior vice president for CNN International Newsgathering, said in an internal memorandum that she “had a conversation” with Ms. Nasr on Wednesday morning and that “we have decided that she will be leaving the company.”

Ms. Nasr, a 20-year veteran of CNN, wrote on Twitter after the cleric died on Sunday, “Sad to hear of the passing of Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah … One of Hezbollah’s giants I respect a lot.”

Ayatollah Fadlallah routinely denounced Israel and the United States, and supported suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. Ayatollah Fadlallah’s writings and preachings inspired the Dawa Party of Iraq and a generation of militants, including the founders of Hezbollah, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

It’s the lead on memeorandum at the moment, and the ‘sphere is reacting…

Hotair:

Nasr had a role that helped shape CNN’s overall news coverage of the Middle East. As a senior editor that apparently reported to a senior VP, Nasr presumably had a hand in story selection, assignment, and editing and shaping the final product from her reporters.

Neither Thomas nor Weigel had anywhere near that kind of influence over news reporting at their respective outlets, which makes the credibility issue much more serious than in the previous two scandals.

That CNN is worried about credibility is amazing.

Ed Driscoll wonders why this is a problem at CNN:

She’s merely toeing the party line at CNN, which, from Saddam Hussein to Yasir Arafat to Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, has never met a terrorist or dictator the network didn’t admire and wish to prop up.

I think it will be very interesting to see the reaction worldwide to this.
Tim Blair highlights some tweets on the subject:

Various instant reactions, one of them brilliant:

• Damn! 20 years in, but 140 characters and your fired!

• Shocking, Outrageous! Zionists succeed in getting @OctaviaNasrCNN fired for Fadlallah tweet

• 20 years and fired over a tweet??

• Is she joining NASA?

I’m going out on a limb to say that he likes the last one.
Don Surber gives Kudos:

Congratulations CNN for doing the right thing.

That one goes on the good side of his count.

Big Journalism gets to the heart of the matter:

As if further proof were needed that a sizable segment of the Fourth Estate is now effectively the Fifth Column, this one is right up there. Apparently it’s no longer enough that reporters and correspondents pretend to be neutral, even about the good guys — now, they’re not only not neutral, they publicly express their admiration for sheer, malevolent evil — a man who, according to the obits, was “known for his staunch anti-American stance.”

Good Lord, is this what American journalism has come to?

No this is where American journalism already was.

Pam Geller is brief:

Today the Nazi lover resigned. In a word, GOOD!

Well Pam wait till you see what the left says:

Crooks and liars plays the moral equivalence card

Evidently, if you’re CNN, it’s perfectly fine to hire commentators who refer to a US Supreme Court justice as a “goat f@$king child molester”, but God forbid an emotional, somewhat easily misinterpreted tweet should be granted similar mercy.

Apparently the difference between senior editor and a commentator is lost, but the most fun actually comes from two other sites:

Balloon Juice:

I have no idea whether Nasr was any good, but it’s pretty harsh to fire someone over one tweet without a second chance.

Talking Points Memo:

But a twenty year run down the tubes over 140 characters?

That just doesn’t seem right to me.

Oh so 140 characters aren’t enough to get someone fired? Ok lets try this…

“Barack Obama is actually a secret Muslim who was born in Kenya and supports terrorists”

That’s 76 characters. Now myself, if the senior white house editor at CNN expressed such an opinion I’d give them the boot, but according to Balloon Juice and TPM’s arguments they should not be fired.

The real problem for CNN is how significantly the loss of Octavia Nasr effects the Hotness Gap but to paraphrase Jon Sable:

I never did like the terrorist sympathizers, not even the pretty ones.

I’m sorry positive position on Honor Killings not withstanding if you back suicide bombing you are a terrorist and no amount of side stuff will change it.

Answer: Because Jews won’t cut off their head and kill them for it

Posted: July 6, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news
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Q: Why do the Methodists choose to boycott Jews and not anyone else in the world?
I think they are simply delusional cowardly fools more than actually evil but the end result is the same. Check out this exchange to understand:

“Don’t you realize that you’re joining a massive global campaign against Israel?” I asked.

“There isn’t a campaign against Israel,” she replied firmly. “It’s not as simple as that.”

“You don’t accept that you’ve just jumped on a fashionable bandwagon?” I asked in amazement.

“We are the first church… to do this… so we are not being fashionable,” she replied.

At which point, what can you really say? Overall, a church that behaves in the manner of the Methodists has buried its credibility under a gigantic dunghill of intransigence, pedantry, lies and distortions.

Can people actually be this stupid? Maybe Pan is right maybe this is evil, the evil of willful denial and ignorance. A denial that supports their fear. Parts of England can’t are no longer safe for non Muslims? La La La La can’t see anything. It’s the same denial that allowed Germans to live in towns near the camps and pretend they are not there.

History is what it is

Posted: June 20, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news
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and no amount of prejudice is going to rewrite what it is:

One may disagree on fences and rights of return. There have been handshakes, summits, accords, cease-fires, negotiations and boycotts. It’s all been on the table, under the table or sometimes tabled. But the connection between the Jew and Israel is valid, historical, ancient, modern, spiritual and eternal. The relationship is beyond the state of Israel. It is a unique relationship of a religion to a land. The Jews are “bnai yisroel,” the children of Israel. Even when they are away, they are connected. Even during exiles and diasporas, they are connected. Even during inquisitions, pogroms and a Holocaust, they are connected.

My grandmother used to kibitz, “Friends you choose; family you’re stuck with.” The Jew is stuck with Israel. There is no ungluing the connection. It is beyond the ambiguous term “chosen people”; they are “the people who have no choice.” It is more than a religious belief; it is a value and a moral barometer of the Earth. History, truth, integrity and the foundation of our world are not negotiable

If the people of Israel were anything other than what they are we would not be having this debate because the Arabs would have been exterminated more than half a century ago. Instead they have to ask the eternal question:

Tevye: I know, I know. We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can’t You choose someone else?

Considering that the Rabbi in question was a liberal Don Surber hits the nail on the head:

They say a conservative is a liberal whose been mugged.

Helen Thomas mugged every Jew in the world.

Bingo!

Will Israel decide to be taken for Wolves?

Posted: June 11, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news
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A few years ago I wrote this to Glenn concerning Haditha saying with the press and left’s cry of “atrocity” to all we ever do eventually those who support the war might decide to be taken for wolves rather than sheep.

Today Victor Davis Hanson says something similar about Israel:

Israelis should assume by now that whether they act tentatively or strongly, the negative reaction will be the same. Therefore why not project the image of a strong, unapologetic country to a world that has completely lost its moral bearings, and is more likely to respect Israel’s strength than its past concern for meeting an impossible global standard?

How odd that the more the activists, political leaders, and media figures issue moral strictures against Israel, the more they prove abjectly amoral. And the more they seek to pressure Israel, the more they are liberating it to do what it feels it must.

David Borg Expands on things:

The path toward terrorism begins with the erasure of moral lines. It starts with the equation of terrorists — who seek to kill civilians — with the armed forces who seek to stop the terrorists. It mistakes cartoons with corpses, collateral damage with intentional murder. It fails to distinguish between an errant missile and an intentional suicide bomb. It confuses the “extremists” with those who fight extremism.

As we Americans fight the war on terror, we must fight with our heads as well as our hearts. Americans must always demand the highest standards from their army and from those of allies such as Israel. But we should never validate the type of thinking that is the hallmark of the very enemies we pursue. Today Israel’s soldiers are in the dock. But tomorrow it will be our own.

Victor considers it a matter of ignorance:

Obama reminds me of my own twenties when I was both ignorant and arrogant in my self-absorption: Wondering why a particular ag supply company would not put all the bags on the pallet that I paid for, confused over why the guy I hired to level a field left his CAT meter on his idling carry-all while he visited his girlfriend and billed me for the “hours,” disheartened that workers would habitually write “320 tablas” on their first grape tray, when in fact I counted only 231 when I walked down their rows, and curious why a big ag corporation would spray “fix” on their table grapes that made them bigger and prettier than mine, even though the chemical was long banned. Unfortunately, appeals to reason were, to quote Mark Knopfler, “all for nothing.”

He thinks the president will eventually learn. I think that Victor and David are both thinking like an ignorant youths. The erasure of the moral lines isn’t a bug of the left’s thinking; it’s a feature.

And it looks like the events of the day suggest that “learning” will not be for a while yet:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD has learned that senior Obama administration officials have been telling foreign governments that the administration intends to support an effort next week at the United Nations to set up an independent commission, under UN auspices, to investigate Israel’s behavior in the Gaza flotilla incident. The White House has apparently shrugged off concerns from elsewhere in the U.S. government that a) this is an extraordinary singling out of Israel, since all kinds of much worse incidents happen around the world without spurring UN investigations; b) that the investigation will be one-sided, focusing entirely on Israeli behavior and not on Turkey or on Hamas; and c) that this sets a terrible precedent for outside investigations of incidents involving U.S. troops or intelligence operatives as we conduct our own war on terror.

Again a-c are features. After all administration actions have political costs, international actions can produce the condemnations they wish without the political risk and can be reluctantly be accepted.

Update: The Whitehouse is denying it. That could mean that they were not planning on doing this or that they were until it came out early and they want to avoid any political damage ahead of time, a lot easier to deal with a fait acompli that to deal with it ahead of time.

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