Tony Greenstein
Greta Berlin - What Really Happened
This is ALL that happened regarding a video I wanted to park in a small group and watch later1. I grabbed the video out of a group of 1000 people, a group that is private
2. I meant to park it into a group of 30+ people that is secret (to watch it later), but I never checked the settings before I hit SHARE, because I was in a hurry.
3. I did not watch the video. Why would I have watched the video? I was in a hell of a hurry and was traveling like crazy those four days. I would have watched it in the small group. Would we have had a discussion on it? Probably. We discuss all kinds of things as you can see from the attached conversation
4. I did not know my personal Facebook page was connected to the Free Gaza TWITTER page. There are 3300 TWEETS on the Free Gaza page, and you all attacked me for this mistake without even giving me a chance to clarify or figure out what had happened.
5. Free Gaza apologized on the front page of the website, using the language that Ali Abunimah gave us.
6. I apologized on the front page of Free Gaza after I figured out what had happened. That should have been the end of it.
I never said a word about the video. I never hit LIKE. In fact, I have been demonized, not for the mistake I made, but for the assumption that surely I MUST have said something to merit all of this hatred. I assure you, I did not.
This witchhunt is not about my stupid mistake. It's because I endorsed Gilad Atzmon's book, The Wandering Who," a book I personally liked. If everyone is going after me for my endorsement, then they need to go after the famous endorsers of Gilad's journey, including Richard Falk, John Mearsheimer, Karl Sabbagh, William Gates and Dr. Samir Abed-Rabbo.
OK Tony. You said you would publish my explanation. Please do that for me. You and I are never going to agree about Gilad, and why should we? I honor your distaste for his book. You should honor my endorsement or go after everyone who has endorsed
I agree to carry this response because I think Greta is entitled to give her own explanation for what has happened. Regardless the attacks on her come, primarily from the usual Zionist hypocrites for whom ethnic cleansing, Judaification (the opposite of Nazi deJewification), crop-burning, child shackling and all the other evils of Zionism are taken for granted.
ReplyDeleteA few of these creatures have posted on this blog and have been show up in all their inarticulate hypocritical Zionist glory.
However I do not agree with Greta that this is all about her endorsement of Gilad Atzon's puerile book. My own compilation of his sayings 'A Guide to the Sayings of Gilad Atzmon, the anti-Semitic jazzman' should make it clear that he is anti-Semitic. http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/guide-to-sayings-of-gilad-atzmon-anti.html
Likewise my review of his book 'The Wandering Fool' http://azvsas.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/review-wandering-who.html simply reaffirms the anti-Semitism of Atzmon and the fact that Greta doesn't see this is in itself a pointer to an underlying problem.
I and others have criticised Mearsheimer, the light-weight Karl Sabbagh, William Gates (who?) and the right-wing Gulf and Saudi businessman, Samir Abed-Rabbo. But the blindness of others is no excuse for one's own refusal to see what is in front of one's nose.
Atzmon does question the holocaust. Of that there is no doubt. He also keeps company with people like Paul Eisen and Israel Shamir who openly doubt the holocaust, so the idea that he has anything useful to contribute about Jewish identity is absurd.
Atzmon himself makes his own view crystal clear in 'Truth, History, and Integrity':
‘If, for instance, the Nazis wanted the Jews out of their Reich (Judenrein - free of Jews), or even dead, as the Zionist narrative insists, how come they marched hundreds of thousands of them back into the Reich at the end of the war?’
‘If the Nazis ran a death factory in Auschwitz-Birkenau, why would the Jewish prisoners join them at the end of the war? We should ask for some conclusive historical evidence and arguments rather than follow a religious narrative...’
‘Why were the Jews hated? Why did European people stand up against their next-door neighbours? Why are the Jews hated in the Middle East.’
The links are so clear and obvious, the Jews of Europe were hated for the same reason as the Jews of Israel, they both shared the same identity of oppression of others, that comment is supreflous.
Greta has undoubtedly done fine work with the Gaza Freedom Movement and it is a tragedy that once again someone has fallen into Gilad Atzmon's trap that Israel is a product of something inherently Jewish rather than a product of settler colonialism. Was South Africa peculiar to being white or Afrikaaner or indeed English? What about the Tamils? Were the Sinhalese cut from a different racial cloth?
You can take a horse to the water but you can't make it drink!
You are the biggest Hypocrite, you don't have the balls to say anything regarding the New Board of freegaza that supports Greta all the way......
ReplyDeleteyou are terrified, who cares about this stupid Greta, the issue is the organization that supports her stupidity, and you want say a word about freegaza board .
You are doomed as all the lefty's.
You are making people sick...........
I think it is the Zionists who are the most sick. I know nothing of the new board of the Gaza Freedom Movement but the issue of breaking the siege is of far more importance than what Greta is alleged to have done.
ReplyDeleteI've made my position clear but Greta assures me she had never made an anti-Semitic comment in her life and I'm happy to believe her.
I suggest 'Joe' takes his concerns to his rabid and racist friends amongst the Zionists w ho regularly make anti-Palestinian remarks and deny their existence or does only 'anti-semitism' count?
I differentiate between those who fall for Atzmon and those who are his ideologues.
Greta’s excuse was she didn’t actually watch the video? Why would you “share” a video with your friends without knowing/watching it? Hey, I just happened to press send on the David Duke video because I was in a hurry and didn’t check it out.
ReplyDeletemaybe she thinks you are an Idiot..... and buy this stupidity
Manfred I don't buy into it but I also want to sort the wheat from the chaff. I've had very specific disagreements over Atzmon and the question you raise is equally pertinent. It does raise the question why distribute a video you've never seen but let us assume that this is true.
ReplyDeleteClearly a part of the FGM, Ken O'Keefe and co. have moved over to an anti-Semitic position. But I also don't want to see it destroyed since the evil it is fighting - Israel's siege - is far greater. It is a great political mistake that has been made by Greta Berlin but I am happy to let others judge her explanation and for her, if she wishes, to respond.
greta, i believe you. Carry on with your work for Gaza's freedom.With best wishes from hilda.
ReplyDeleteGreta Berlin's explanation of how she sent that video immediately reminded me of "the dog ate my homework" excuse that failed to pass muster in the fourth grade. If she is that inept at using the new electronic media, perhaps she ought to just go back to pen and pad. No doubt it would help her avoid "mechanical" and "inadvertent errors.
ReplyDeleteI don't buy that for a moment, and frankly thinking that the attacks on her have to do with her endorsement of the meiskeit, Gilad Atzmon is just about as lame an excuse as the above.
The endorsement of Atzmon by Meirsheimer, et.al, had been roundly and severely criticized in a number of circles, other than your own astute remarks, and as I recall it resulted in Meirsheimers credibility among his own peers suffering as a result.
I really object to this excessively cautious language. Why calling it just a 'witch hunt'? This is already concession to Zionism imho. I think the proper description of finding fault with Berlin's explanation should be that she was "put in a gas chamber" or at least "genocided."
ReplyDeleteThe bottom line is the next time we need to confront Israeli hasbara about FGM, we'd have to deal with the fact that the spokesperson, who has publicly expressed appreciation of antisemites, is engaged in discussing antisemitic material in a secret groups that includes antisemites.
Now if I could defend that with a straight face, I could apply for a job as the White House press secretary.
Well I've finally had a look at Eustace Mullin's video about how the Zionists ran the concentration camps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-apbkQzhUo I suggest you do too.
ReplyDeleteApparently they did it in order to be rid of the anti-Zionist Jews. Reform Judaism made an appearance with Moses Hess in 1928 (actually he died in 1875!).
Mullins is a fruitcake. He takes a few well known facts, such as the fact that the Zionists did collaborate with the Nazis and inverts the relationship so that it was the Zionists who carried out the holocaust at the Nazis' behest.
What Greta needs to explain is how such a pathetic video as this, which drips with conspiracy, its anti-Semitic to be sure but that isn't its main fault, it is a ludicrous example of the conspiratorial mind at work.
He mentions George Steiner, certainly a tour de force intellectually, for having apparently said that they should erect a statue to Hitler in Tel Aviv, on the grounds that Hitler did more than most to establish the Israeli state (there is a certain truth in this, the Nazi genocide certainly did aid Zionism and more to the point the Zionists knew this, hence why they kept silent for so long and did so little about the holocaust when it was actually happening) in order to suggest there was a conspiracy at play.
In fact people like Gilbert Achcar argue that but for the holocaust there would have been no Israeli state. I think they are wrong, but it certainly gave them an impetus.
But its once thing to say the Zionists collaborated with the Nazis, which is an established fact, to then saying they ran the holocaust.
It's not so much that Mullins is anti-semitic as he is as mad as a hatter.
You are still afraid to say anything about the New Board of greegaza.
ReplyDeleteYou think people are stupid, as they all know your hypocrisy.....
keep on will your silence..... it means you accept this organization that accepts and praise a racist Antisemite.
I knew you will not publish this comment, as you are afraid of the truth.
As you can see you are wrong Joe. I am not afraid to say anything about the new board of FGM however I know little or nothing about them.
ReplyDeleteMy concern is that the good work of trying to lift the blockade of Gaza has been compromised by the stupidity of distributing a link to an absurd video which isn't so much anti-Semitic as a conspiratorial rant by a nut case.
I would accept what you say about not tolerating anti-Semites but it depends where you come from. Anti-semitism isn't a problem today. Hatred, including genocidal hatred of Arabs and Palestinians is.
Perhaps you would care Joe to criticise the rabbis in Israel, paid for by the state, who distributed Torat HsMelech, which justified the murder even of Arab infants and children? Or the edict issued by the Chief Rabbi of Safed, Shmuel Eliyahu, that flats should not be rented to Arabs and the consequent harassment of an 80+ year old holocaust survivor who defied this nazi-style edict?
Because if you don't condemn it then you are the hypocrite as you only see 'anti-semitism' the pale reflection of anti-Arab racism, not the real source of the problem.
"I am not afraid to say anything about the new board of FGM however I know little or nothing about them."
ReplyDeleteWho are you trying to fool..... get to their website and see how one by one the new board praises racist Antisemite Great Berlin and you don't say a word.
I am against any racism or hate..... but as you have a blog and not me and you scream all the time about Racism, you should be the first one to scream about the Organization FREEGAZA that accepts and praises a racist Antisemite Greta Berlin.
The Issue that you cover yourself again with Dialectic excuses, shows your wickness.
You don't have the balls to criticize freegaza.
You're obviously deliberately blind Joe as the latest post is about the link-up between Ken O'Keefe and David Duke
ReplyDeleteMore to the point you don't have the balls to condemn Zionist racism, of which Greta's follies are but a reflection.
But point me to specifically anti-Semitic things that she has said. I've criticised her views of Atzmon and of course I am the prime critic of Atzmon.
It would seem you're a closet Zionist looking for racism everywhere but under your own nose
I was in two minds over the issue but I think this clinches it;
ReplyDeletehttp://mondoweiss.net/2012/10/if-only-it-was-just-one-tweet-one-activists-experience-in-the-our-land-facebook-group.html
Stephen,
ReplyDeleteI agree. The article is pretty compelling and I intend to crosspost it.
"You're obviously deliberately blind Joe as the latest post is about the link-up between Ken O'Keefe and David Duke"
ReplyDeleteAgain who are you trying to fool, Ken O'keefe, is not in the board of FREEGAZA.
Your personal issues with this scum is your problem.
You don't have the balls to criticize FREEGAZA
Well Joe you obviously no more about the Board than me! Why are u so concerned anyway? You're clearly a Zionist. Have you dissociated yourself from the Nazi-style Zionist edicts of the Safed Rabbi, Yitzhak Shapira, Dov Lior of a Jewish fingernail being worth more than a thousand Palestinian lives.
ReplyDeleteIf I don't concern myself with the new GFM Board it's because I have better things to do. I've made m y position clear on Greta Berlin who is presumably the main person behind it, so let's hear it from you re Lieberman and co. Otherwise you are just another Zionist eunuch, to use your analogy, when it comes to Zionist Nazi racism.
Or is anti-semitism wrong but Jewish racism right? Perhaps we should be told.
I dissociated condemn Safed Rabbi, Yitzhak Shapira, Dov Lior, they are scum, I wish them hell....
ReplyDeleteDo you condemn the FreeGaza Board...
No you have no balls for that
Well it took some time didn't it before your gonads enabled you to come forth with a condemnation of the said rabbis.
ReplyDeleteDifference is of course, they hold power. Greta Berlin & co. hold no power. For better or worse they are trying to break the Nazi style blockade of Gaza.
But do I criticise the new Board of the GFM for allowing anti-Semitism to take hold in their fora? Yes of course I do. What a silly question.