Ibrahim "Abe" Mashal, Marine veteran and Muslim placed on No Fly list and recruited to inform on fellow Muslims

Today’s To the Point show reported on an ACLU class-action lawsuit by 14 U.S. Muslims against the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security for the arbitrary and capricious manner in which it maintains the No Fly lists of those who may not fly within the U.S.  The program told the story of Abe Mashal, an Illinois resident who maintains a dog-training business.  Mashal served seven years in the Marines, where he was in the K-9 unit.  After leaving the service, he began his business and flew regularly around the country to train dogs for clients.

Suddenly, one day while checking in for a flight from Chicago to Spokane, he was told he could not board because he was on the No Fly list.  After months of meetings with FBI agents and a failed appeal to the federal government to be removed from the list, he was told he was likely on it because he’d supposedly written to an imam the FBI was monitoring with questions how to raise children in a mixed faith marriage (his wife is Christian).  No reason was specified for being on the list or why the government refused to remove him from it.  During this entire period he could not fly nor could he pursue any business prospects that required him to fly.

Mashal’s only recourse at that point would be to hire an expensive lawyer and appeal to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.  At no point would he or his attorney have access to whatever information, charges or claims landed him on the No Fly list.  Instead, he appealed to the ACLU, which added him to this class action suit which is being brought in the Ninth Circuit, where I live.  This is the latest legal development in the case.

Mashal believes, and I find this entirely credible, that the FBI may’ve added him to the No Fly list because it wanted to pressure him into becoming an informant.  The last voluntary contact he had with the agency was when they invited him to a private hotel room, where over coffee and doughnuts they propositioned him, asking him to become an undercover informant to ferret out Islamic extremists at local mosques.

We’ve seen ample examples of such Muslim snitches recruiting losers and malcontents into grand schemes to blow up U.S. monuments and landmarks.  Usually, the end result is a major press conference with Attorney General Holder boasting that the Status of Liberty could live to stand another decade due to the diligence of his brave men and women.  When the public finally sees the dangerous conspirators who were about the strike a blow against America, they turn out to be alcoholics, druggies, and no-accounts who had to be dragged into the plot thanks to the wheedling of the snitch.

It’s a wonder Mashal turned down the chance to live such a glamorous life of intrigue under the tutelage of the FBI.  Thankfully, he did.  He’s written a book, No Spy, No Fly.

The reason I find it completely credible that the FBI put him on the list in order to recruit him as an informant is that this is precisely how the Shin Bet recruits its Palestinian stoolies.  It targets Palestinians with life-threatening illnesses, then allows them to enter Israel for medical treatment.  But before it completes the permit process it demands that they become spies in order to receive treatment in Israel.  Another method is to target Palestinian gays and threaten them with exposure if they don’t become collaborators with the Occupation.  It stinks to high heaven, which makes it an entirely appropriate tactic for the Shin Bet, which specializes in such behavior.

Is the Shin Bet sharing tips with the FBI?  Is there any doubt that the two agencies collaborate in some fashion?  Unfortunately, U.S. counter-terror policies begin to resemble Israel’s more and more in the aftermath of 9/11.  So the question is: would the FBI come up with such a lame-assed approach on its own or does it need the Shin Bet to teach it such “tricks?”  Hard question to answer.

It’s one thing for Israel to engage in such practices, we know this is a democracy-challenged country.  But the U.S.?  Yes, I know that under Bush-Obama civil liberties have gone out the window in the name of counter-terrorism.  I also realize that we’ve become much more like Israel since 9/11 and that this process has continued under Barack Obama.  But I think it stinks even more than it does in Israel.

We’d like to believe that we’re a country of laws and that the Bill of Rights prohibition against illegal search and seizure and guarantees of the right of due process would prohibit No Fly lists that are maintained in such an opaque manner.  Every person on this list has the right to see the evidence against him and to appeal against it if it’s wrong.  No threat of terrorism justifies the wholesale violation of the rights of U.S. citizens.

Are their threats against the U.S.?  Ones that deserve the vigilance of our security agencies?  Of course.  Does render the shredding of the U.S. Constitution defensible?  No.

The federal government’s argument that secrecy is required in order to prevent terrorists from learning how the No Fly lists are compiled and maintained is nonsense.  If the federal government wants to take away someone’s right to travel it must prove why it’s done this.  If it can’t or won’t, then it must remove the prior restraint against such a citizen.  We are not (yet) a police-state.  We may become one, but we aren’t there yet.  That’s why Abe Mashal deserves our support.

Today’s news brings two new lunacies from our friends in the Only Democracy in the Middle East™ .  In the first instance, the Israeli tax authorities impounded a shipment of copies of the Arabic language edition of Yehuda HaLevy’s seminal work of medieval Jewish philosophy, The Kuzari.  They did so because the books had been printed in Lebanon, one of the few places in the Middle East that prints Arabic books.  The Israeli authorities claimed that allowing the books into Israel would constitute “trading with the enemy.”

The book, originally written in Judeo-Arabic, a medieval version of Arabic written using Hebrew characters (similar in concept to Yiddish), was translated as a seven-year, uncompensated labor of love by an Israeli-Palestinian PhD student at Ben Gurion University.  He explained to Akiva Eldar that Israel often looks the other way when Arabic books are imported from nations in the region with whom Israel has strained relations, including Lebanon.  In this case, they decided to make an example of poor Yehuda HaLevy.  Why?  Who knows.  It may be precisely because it was a labor of love by an Israeli Palestinian and the police wish to make an example of him.  It may be because they don’t like books in general.  History is full of regimes which liked to make examples of books.

Or maybe it was this particular book.  After all, it tells the famous tale of the Khazar king who was persuaded by a Jewish scholar to convert to Judaism.  There are those among anti-Zionists who like to argue that contemporary Jews don’t trace a direct lineage back to ancient Israel, but rather to the Khazars.  This is part of the ongoing battle between Zionists who feel the need to prove such a connection in order to justify the Jewish claim on Israel; and between those who feel that severing that historical connection of the Jews to the land of Israel will weaken their historical claims.

It’s entirely possible that some Shin Bet agent has studied a little too much medieval philosophy (not enough to understand the true power of the work, but too much to ignore it), and decided that the Kuzari is part of the Palestinian project of delegitimization of Israel.  As a result, Israel appears to be engaging in a cultural boycott not only of Arabic language books, but of one of the great Jewish medieval poets and philosophers.

Another terrible irony of this entire mess is that the original book and author represented the pinnacle of medieval Jewish learning and intellectual achievement.  This achievement happened in good part because of the environment in which Ha-Levi lived, which allowed Jews and Arabs to co-exist peacefully, even fruitfully.  Could this be yet another unconscious reason Israel feels the need to suppress an Arabic-language edition?  It needs to stamp out the historical example of a Jewish book written within an Arab society and in a language that combined both Arabic and Hebrew.  That much peaceful co-existence and cultural interchange could be scary to Israeli officials who prefer their state to be Arab-rein.

If this weren’t so insane it would actually be mordantly funny.

Keeping out the immigrant hordes (AP)

The Jerusalem Post reports that the Ministry of the Environment has taken the pro-active step of commissioning scientists to examine the effect that climate change will have on Israel and the Middle East.  So far so good.  Until you recognize that the minister is Gilad Erdan, the very same Likud henchman who tried to skewer Meir Dagan in New York by calling him a political hack for questioning Bibi’s threats of war against Iran. Knowing that Erdan is such a lap dog will explain the mockery that his ministry has made of the science of climate change.

In this country, red-neck anti-science Republicans have similarly made a political football out of climate change.  But at least they’ve made a pretense of arguing scientific principles.  The Israeli report dispenses with science altogether and views climate change through the prism of the national security and the Israeli-Arab conflict:

In order to combat increased waves of illegal migration that will likely accompany climate change, Israel must secure its borders through impassable barriers, including “sea fences” along the Mediterranean and Red Sea, experts have concluded.

“The lack of water, warming and sea level rise, even if it will occur on a different schedule, will bring migration movements from all impoverished regions to every place where it is possible to escape this,” wrote a team of academics, led by Prof. Arnon Soffer and Dr. Anton Berkovsky of the University of Haifa’s Geography Department…

Among its suggestions for how to handle the geo-strategic implications of climate change, the team…called for a complete enclosure of Israel from all directions, including establishing sea fences along the Mediterranean and Red seas. In addition, the experts said that additional law enforcement will be required to deal with the ramifications of securing the Egyptian and Jordanian borders, as economic crisis might ensue for Negev Beduins who trade across these turfs. While securing Israel from all sides, however, the authorities must ensure for the safe passage of animals and plants.

…Soffer explained that the most troublesome spot in terms of migration to Israel is the Nile basin area, where a mixture of drastic climate changes and demographic explosions are pushing people to move northward. Meanwhile, they recognize that “Europe is completely under siege by the navvies,” so they cannot move in that direction.

…“I am one that fights for building fences all around Israeli borders,” he said. “We are an island – we don’t belong to this region, and we have to defend Israel from waves of migration from Egypt from Jordan and maybe from Syria. If we want to keep Israel a Jewish State, we will have to defend ourselves from what I call ‘climate refugees,’ exactly as Europe is doing now.”

After reading a passage like this you begin to wonder whether Soffer is a Stephen Colbert pseudo-scientist parody:

While the fences around Israel are necessary, according to Soffer, so too are corridors to allow the free passage of animals. Such passages, he said could be guarded by groups of soldiers for days at a time to allow the animals, such as snakes, to cross both ways.

So Israel will seal itself off from human aliens, but bestow mercy on the animals (non-human ones, that is).

Think of the psychological profile of a supposed learned scholar who thinks in such deeply paranoid ways of those surround Israel.  Think of the delusional thinking that allows him to believe that the solution to an epidemic is to turn Israel into a battleship that can fight off those who threaten it.  This, in effect is a transference of Israeli security policy into the realm of climate science.  Just as security policy is bankrupt so is this approach to a coming major catastrophe.

Note that Soffer doesn’t propose that Israel contribute scientifically so solving the problems of climate change.  He doesn’t suggest decreasing Israel’s carbon footprint or devising ways of lessening the world’s carbon emissions, all of which would help avert the crisis.  Instead, he merely suggests who to weather the human storm it will cause.  Soffer gives his nation, his discipline and science in general a bad name.  How can such racism infect someone who’s earned a position at a major Israeli university?

Among the more bizarre elements of this political season is the Republican race for U.S. senate, which features Rabbi Nachum Shifren, an Orthodox rabbi running with the support of the Tea Party. Here is a snippet of a stump speech he delivered to the San Mateo GOP (a banner in the background says “Tea Party Patriots”):

“I am an Islamophobe, and everything we need to know about Islam, we learned on 9-11…We’re getting sucker-punched because we as white — yes I said it! — as white, Christian Americans are being taught that somehow we are to blame for all the problems.”

Rabbi Nahum Shifren addressing English Defense League audience

I’ve heard Jews make common cause with some pretty nasty American political/religious specimens including John Hagee. But frankly, I ‘ve never seen any Jew, let alone a rabbi subsume himself under the phrase “white Christian America.” So as far as I’m concerned, if Shifren can say “we” when he uses that phrase he’s a white Christian rabbi. In fact, I’d go so far as to liken him to the Koran-burning Florida pastor, Terry Jones. Every religion has examples of the hateful and intolerant. Rabbi Shifren is the Jewish answer to the Taliban and John Hagee.

But just as we refuse to judge a religion by it’s most extreme adherents, we won’t make the error of saying that Shifren speaks for all Judaism or the 9/11 hijackers for all Islam. There are unfortunately many anti-jihadis who make precisely this mistake.

Shifren likes to call himself the “Surfer Rabbi.” He has trained at Kfar Chabad in Israel and presumably has views hospitable to the Chabad movement. He’s lived in Kfar Tapuach, the Kahanist settlement where Jewish terrorist Natan Eden Zada took refuge before he killed four Israeli Palestinians in a terror attack. That makes him a Kahanist settler rabbi to boot.

Shifren’s website features an image of him haranguing an English audience replete with signs (“the true English will never abandon Israel”) championing the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, pro-Israel, neo-Nazi English Defense League. Here is a portion of what he told them:

“[H]istory will be recorded that on this day, read by our children for eternity, one group lit the spark to liberate us from the oppressors of our two governments and the leftist, fifth column, Quisling press, and that it was the EDL which started the liberation of England from evil.

He’s also called Muslims “dogs.” There’s also a photo of him on his website arm in arm with Israeli-born Birther Orly Taitz. God help us, his Wikipedia entry claims there’s a movie being made about him. Not sure what the audience for it would be or how you would market it. Perhaps Mel Gibson’s producing?

Shifren is an unbuttoned version of David Yerushalmi, another ultra-right wing anti-jihadi who makes common cause with the Tea Party-Republican Know Nothings.

The winner of the primary will face Democratic senate veteran Dianne Feinstein. Not much chance for Republicans regarding this seat. But the notion that a Jewish rabbi would run on such a platform speaks volumes about the rising tide of hate and intolerance that infects elements of the Orthodox and pro-Israel community in the U.S.

Related articles

• Nachum Shifren: Racist Rabbi Still Trying to Run For Senate Seat (loonwatch.com)

Palestinians celebrate end of hunger strike (Mahmud Hams/AFP/GettyImages)

1,500 Palestinian hunger strikers ended their protest against prison conditions after the signing of an intensely negotiated agreement between the Israeli Prison Services and the prisoners themselves, with the mediation of Fatah, Egyptian intelligence sources and Jordanians.

As is normal in these situations, the proof will be in the execution.  Such agreements have a long history of being disregarded, especially by Israel, when the moment suits.  Here is how the Guardian describes the deal:

Under the agreement, which was signed following mediation by Egypt and Jordan, Israel will end solitary confinement for all prisoners and allow around 400 prisoners from Gaza to receive family visits. It agreed to discuss improvements to prison conditions, such as access to televisions and telephone calls.

Prisoners on administrative detention orders – Israel’s term for imprisonment without charge or trial, the key issue behind the hunger strike – will not have their terms renewed without fresh information or evidence being brought before a military judge.

The first two items are clear victories for the non-violent strikers.  Israel had removed family visits during Gilad Shalit’s capture as a form of collective punishment/retribution.  At least one Palestinian detainee had been in solitary confinement for ten years.

But administrative detention is a thornier issue.  I can’t see that Israel has given up much, if anything on that score.  The issue isn’t so much what evidence is used.  Israel always claims it has evidence to justify administrative detention.  The problem is that there is no real judicial process of review which allows the defendant to challenge or even see the evidence.  This agreement seems not to have changed the worst aspects of this system.

That means that I predict that the next administrative detainee whose sentence is renewed without proper review will start another hunger strike.  If Israel is smart (which it invariably isn’t) it will use this procedure sparingly, if at all in the future.  We’ll have to see whether it’s learned any lesson from this.  It’s doubtful, but wonders never cease.

As for what the prisoners have given up, I don’t see much if anything:

Palestinian prisoners’ leaders have “signed a commitment to completely halt terrorist activity inside Israeli prisons”, including recruitment, practical support, funding and co-ordination of operations, according to a statement released by the Israeli security agency, Shin Bet.

These prisoners have to be among the most closely and intrusively monitored prisoners in the world.  I don’t see how any prisoner could engage in any of the activities listed without it being exposed and frustrated by prison authorities.  Which means, this is a face-saving gesture from the Shin Bet which needs to appear to have wrung a meaningful concession from prisoners.

I don’t see any of the liberal Zionists who bitched and moaned “if only the Palestinians embraced non-violent resistance” clamoring in support of the hunger strikers.  As I wrote yesterday, not a word that I’ve heard from Peter Beinart or Gershom Gorenberg on this issue.  Where’s the Palestinian Gandhi, Gershom?  He was on death’s door yesterday after 77 days of fasting in which you could’ve made a statement of support.  Where were you?

Palestinian children protesting on behalf of hunger strikers (Reuters/Suhaib Salem)

Almost half the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails have joined the mass hunger strike protesting against the widespread use of administrative detention.  Two of the strikers have reached Day 77 of their strike and Israel’s Physicians for Human Rights NGO says no previous individual has fasted for more than 75 days.  Meaning the Palestinians have achieved a grim record.  There are reports in Haaretz that Egyptian and Palestinian negotiators are near striking a deal that would allow family visits, which Israel withheld during Gilad Shalit’s confinement but never restored after he was freed.  Part of the deal would also restrict the arbitrary use of solitary confinement though it unclear what the specifics are.  One Palestinian prisoner has been in such confinement for ten years.  Though Haaretz mentions administrative detention as being part of the deal it does so in a vague way that offers no details.  The right-wing Times of Israel says Israel has agreed to “soften” the terms under which such detentions are used, which means…I don’t know, what does it mean?

Such deals are notoriously fickle and evanescent, though Israel does have a gun to its head in the form of potential corpses piling up just before Nakba Day (Tuesday).  Recently it arrived at deals preventing the deaths of two previous hunger strikers who won their release.  So one hopes that the prospect of mass deaths will focus Israel’s mind.

I’m struck by the Israeli media coverage of the hunger strikes which loudly proclaims the position of the security establishment.  Though the rest of the world sees the strikers as non-violent heroes, the IDF sees them as terrorists whose death is meant to provoke anti-Israel violence.  An anonymous security official (all such officials are anonymous in the Israeli media–God forbid they should have to attach a name and identity to their distortions and lies) even calls them “ticking bombs” (Hebrew), the same terminology used by Israel to describe suicide bombers on their way to carry out an attack.

This is the very sort of non-violent resistance liberal Zionists like Peter Beinart and Gershom “Where’s-the-Palestinian-Gandhi” Gorenberg have demanded of the Palestinian people, yet when they embrace the tactic neither the liberal Zionists or the security apparatus credits it as such.  Instead, the victims are seen as terrorists by other means (than weapons).

The Walla article to which I linked also notes the satisfaction of the security establishment with the fact that the PA security services are expected to stamp out any angry Palestinian protests should any prisoners die.  In this sense, the PA is playing a role not unlike that of Jewish police collaborators in the Warsaw ghetto and elsewhere who helped the Nazis manage the captive Jewish population.

Related articles

• 2,000 Palestinians are on Hunger Strike – Tell Hilary to Break Her Silence! (rabbibrant.com)
• State Dep’t has nothing to say about hunger strikers ‘one way or another’ (mondoweiss.net)

One of Israel's wealthiest oligarch families, the Ofer Brothers

A Gallup poll ranked Israel 18th most corrupt nation in the world (Haaretz coverage here) in the eyes of its own citizens.  85% of Israelis believed that business in their country was corrupt.  Only 9% believed it was not widespread.  This ranks them on a par with Sierra Leone and Greece, and the most corruptly perceived nation in the Middle East.  In contrast 62% and 40% respectively of the citizens of the U.S. and Canada ranked their countries corrupt.  More Israelis considered their country corrupt than the citizens of Congo, Zimbabwe and Kyrgyzstan.

To be clear, the results are not an objective indication of the level of corruption, but rather of the citizens’ perception of corruption.  Of course, there may be countries that are objectively more corrupt, but whose citizens aren’t as aware of the corruption as in Israel.

For anyone surprised at the outpouring of enthusiasm and support for last summer’s J14 social justice movement, they should look no farther than this survey to understand the reasons.  The overwhelming majority of Israelis understand that their economic system is run by a select elite group of oligarchical families.  They control vast swaths of wealth in the country and do so with the connivance of the country’s political leadership.  This crony capitalism is also indirectly linked to the moral corruption represented by Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians through its nearly 50-year Occupation.

In defense, a government official had this to say:

The source said the issue remains a problem primarily in the real estate sector, in the defense industry and among firms that do business with the government.

So there isn’t a problem except in three of the largest economic sectors of Israeli society.

Israel is no longer a true democracy (if it ever was) and it is no longer a society whose economic system is fair and reasonable.  Though a select few live high off the hog and there is a class who benefits handsomely from the technology boom and related commercial development, poverty is rampant.  The gap between haves and have nots is among the highest in the world.  The gap between Jews and Palestinians (citizens) and between secular and religious in terms of economic development is huge.  The economic injustice reflected in this poll goes hand in hand with the moral injustice of Occupation.

It remains to be seen whether the J14 movement will revive this summer and find recurring echoes among Israel’s citizens.  This is its latest incarnation.

Related articles

• Poll shows most Israelis have little faith in captains of industry (haaretz.com)

An Israeli UAV operator

Among the worst of Israeli journalism there’s a sort of gung-ho, testosterone-infused reporting style about military and security stories that makes my blood curdle.  It’s super-credulous about virtually anything and everything offered by security sources.  Examples of this sort of journalism can be found in the reporting of Eli Lake, Ami Issacharoff, and now Amir Mizroch.  He’s the editor of Yisrael HaYom’s (Bibiton) English edition, who does some freelancing for Wired.

He’s pumped out a piece of breathless boilerplate boosterism about an IDF exercise to envision the air force of the future, IAF 2030.    It includes nano-drones the size of butterflies,robot-piloted helicopters, flight simulation and training using a helmet in your office–the sky’s the limit.  Most of this is blue-sky hasbara: the joys of drone warfare and all the rest.  The primary theme is how to create the air force of the future to better protect our boys in uniform from taking unnecessary risks, but still being able to get the bad guys.

However, the following passage really caught my attention.  It deals with the IAF’s supposed mission to decrease harm it causes to civilians.  Laudable stuff, right?  Maybe not:

[Maj. Nimrod] Segev did open about one of the more controversial ideas that came up…the notion of “mathematical formulas that solve even the difficult ethical dilemmas in place of human pilots.” The air force has been developing technologies for quite some time now that can divert missiles in midair if all of a sudden a civilian pops up near the target, but often this kind of thing happens too quickly even for the most skilled operators. It’s part of an uneven, decade-long IAF effort to try to bring down collateral damage — a necessity, since the air force fights asymmetric enemies in densely populated areas. But this is something the IAF is keen to develop even more.

The concept of a computer taking over almost all the functions of this kind of thing is very tricky, though; you can’t very well say at a war crimes tribunal that you’re not responsible for unintended deaths, or tell the judge it was all the algorithm’s fault.

Now I’ve heard everything.  As it is, Israel causes a massive amount of harm to civilians through its attacks.  Now they plan to “assist” pilots to make “more humane” decisions by allowing ethical algorithms to determine when and whether to fire on targets.  This sounds like a sure-fire recipe not for superior ethical decisions, but for an even greater toll in human suffering.  The notion that a major portion, or any portion of the IDF’s mission engages with issues of ethics or the value of human life (of the enemy, that is) is patently false and an element of Israel’s ongoing hasbara war for hearts and minds of the international community.

Of course, everything is in the execution.  If a computer can sense after a rocket is fired that a civilian has come into the impact zone and abort the missile’s mission, then that would serve a humane purpose.  But how and why would we presume, given the IDF’s poor record of protecting civilians, that a computer coded by those who are so willing to risk the lives of civilians, would indeed offer more protection to them than is now afforded?

Mizroch’s article also offers up the Tom Terrific notion that the IAF is going to recruit teenagers to write code for it.  The idea seems to be to take kids who would otherwise turn into hacker/slacker types and turn them into heroes of the nation.  Instead of breaking into e-commerce sites, they’ll develop code for the next big thing in electronic warfare:

Another off-the-wall idea: farming out complex coding and other technical tasks to a network of six technical high schools run by the IAF across the country. These technical schools already exist. But by 2030 — when today’s infants will be enrolled — these teenagers could be at the core of a revamped Israel Air Force.

I did a double-take when I heard that the IAF has its own farm team in the form of high schools (here’s another promotional website, both in Hebrew) where it can get kids at an early age and turn them into stick jockeys.  If the U.S. armed forces tried anything like this there would be an uproar.  But not, apparently in Israel.  The idea of the technical high school is nothing unusual.  But the idea of beginning to train children at the age of 13 , 14, or 15 how to become the best air warriors Israeli shekels can buy seems troubling at best.  There are twelve such schools in Jerusalem, the Golan, Nahariya, Haifa, Eilat, the Carmel and other locations.

The IAF website makes clear that it has created special programs to recruit Druze students, who serve with distinction in other branches of the service.   Presumably their knowledge of Arabic would make them especially valuable in the war against Israel’s Arab “enemies.”  One has to wonder though, what will Israeli society offer these same Druze when their military service is done.  Will it offer them the same opportunities available to Jewish personnel once they leave the service?  Or will it send them back to the same impoverished communities offering little in the way of opportunity or upward mobility?  It’s particularly cruel that the IDF exploits its Arab minorities on behalf of the nation’s security, but when it’s done with them it offers little or nothing in return.

Danger Room, which published Mizroch’s article, also features some decent reporters like Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman, who just broke the story of the Navy War College instructor who taught a course advocating all-out war against Islam.  But why would Wired bother publishing self-promoting hasbara like this?  Not to mention this bit of piffle Mizroch published in Wired touting the IAF latest rocketeer-ace who owns the record for most downed Palestinian rockets: eight.  His claim to fame?  He learned everything he knew from playing Warcraft.  Some serious bit of hasbara flackery!

Thanks to Audrey Jacobs of StandWithUs, I’ve managed to confirm that the far-right Israel advocacy group is indeed sponsoring Rescuing Human Rights, and that the program will feature four controversial figures in the national anti-jihadi movement. This event is part of Israel Awareness Week on campus. This in turn is directly connected to Israel Apartheid Week held at the same time. One of SWU’s key missions is to take the pro-Israel message directly to those it considers enemies on campus. Getting in the face of campus Muslim or Palestinian groups is SWU’s stock-in-trade.

SWU has done us the favor of uploading three of the speaker agreements between Tritons for Israel and SWU indicating they’re paying Zuhdi Jasser $4,250 plus hotel and travel, and Brooke Goldstein $3,500 plus expenses. She, by the way,founded the Lawfare Project and is an attorney for the Dutch Muslim-hater, Geert Wilders. The Wall Street Journal’s Brett Stephens is being paid $8,500 plus expenses. Avi Bell, who teaches law at the Catholic institution, the University of San Diego may be speaking gratis. That’s well north of $20,000 if you include speaker expenses and rental of Price Theater, where the event will be held. A good part of this comes from student fees, meaning that all students, including those who are Muslim, are supporting this hate fest.

The SWU promotional material notes the “inspiration” for the title and substance of the event supposedly comes from a Wall Street Journal column Stephens wrote, The Decline of Human Rights. One of the key “bright ideas” in the piece is that there are “too many” human rights. By allowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to claim their rights have been abused, we’ve cheapened the principle. It’s something akin to the argument that there are too many sex discrimination or rape claims made in courts because every woman has come to see them as her meal ticket. Yup, pretty damn offensive.

Also, don’t expect the WSJ columnist to note among the egregious examples of the abuse of human rights some offered by the pro-Israel community. Civil rights complaints brought by pro-Israel students against Columbia University and UC Berkeley have been dismissed. This entire new approach is championed by former Bush administration “civil rights” official, Kenneth Marcus, whose hopes to plough new ground by making criticism of Israel into a human rights violation have so far been frustrated. Marcus wants to turn “anti-Israelism” into a synonym for anti-Semitism with so far almost no one outside pro-Israel apologists buying it.

Another cheapening of the concept of human rights comes from those like another conference participant, Brooke Goldstein, who popularize the faux concept of lawfare. The premise of her organization seems to be, roughly that Muslims are so evil that they’re not entitled to human rights; or that by it’s very nature, Islam makes a mockery of human rights.

After reviewing Stephens’ piece, it seems to me that he filched some of his ideas from, and that the title for the UCSD event comes from the Henry Jackson Society essay, Rescuing Human Rights, which I referred to in yesterday night’s post.

In order to bolster Zuhdi Jasser’s Muslim bona-fides, SWU calls him a “devout” Muslim. In fact, Jasser’s own promotional material make this claim. I wouldn’t trust his claims as far as I could throw ‘em unless they were independently verified.

SWU and like-minded anti-jihadi pro-Israel groups are quick to point out the supposed international Muslim conspiracy to topple western civilization and replace it with a caliphate or Sharia law (depending on which anti-Muslim extremist you talk to). What few people are noticing is that there is a similar coordinated international pro-Israel campaign financed and directed in large part by the Israeli government. Though the pro-Israel cabal at times maintains its own initiative, funding and agenda.

This is far more than lobbying. It’s much more akin to the surreptitious surveillance and flacking for war against Iran which I described in my posting about the work on which Shamai Leibowitz and I collaborated. In the current case, we can call this an all-out campaign to legitimize Israel and in the process delegitimize anything or one that stands in the way.

The May 15th conference is a perfect example. Human rights are a terrific thorn in the side of Israel. If SWU and HJS can redefine and defang the contemporary concept of human rights then Israel will once more be able to stand tall in the international community. In fact, this program doesn’t “rescue human rights.” It destroys human rights as a robust principle for reining in the worst excesses of authoritarian regimes. If conferences like this “rescue” anything it’s state-sponsored torture (see last night’s post) and murder (see my critique of John Brennan’s apologia for targeted killing and dronicide).

The premise of the pro-Israel anti-jihadis is that western civilization is at war with Islam (they claim only “radical Islam,” but make little or no distinction between the two). In such a war, there must be a no-holds barred approach to terror, since the Islamists know the weaknesses in our system and exploit it to their advantage. That’s why we need to emulate Israel and kill and torture more bad guys. There’s only one way to stop them. By being tougher and meaner than they are. That’s why human rights as currently defined are not only expendable, but inimical to the SWU anti-jihadi world view. So bring on torture, bring on targeted killings as long as they get the bad guys–except when they miss and get a few of the innocents. But can any Muslim truly be innocent?

Returning to pro-Israel flackery, some of my pro-Israel readers are fond of pointing out that lobbying is as American as apple pie. Indeed it is. But Israel’s activities and that of its “Amen choir” is more than lobbying. It’s no holds barred pull out all the stops advocacy. It skirts the bounds of propriety and even legality at times. It’s opaque, often mendacious, always slick and slimy.