Tikun Olam-תקון עולם: Make the World a Better Place

Several readers have asked to read this original, expanded version of the article Haaretz published yesterday under the title, In Praise of the Jewish Blogosphere:

I began my blog, Tikun Olam, in February, 2003 precisely one month before the Iraq war began. But even more than my budding opposition to the upcoming war, what motivated me to begin blogging was my passion to speak out on behalf of Israeli-Palestinian peace. I spent all my adult life dedicated to this cause, but until blogging developed I had no regular, public means of expressing my views. As someone who has always loved writing but not been a professional writer, it was important to have a public means of expression since I didn’t have a regular journalistic outlet. For years, I’d written letters to the editor (i.e. Haaretz, the Irish Times or Los Angeles Times). But having something published once in a blue moon was far too frustrating. And because I was neither a professional journalist nor an academic specializing in this subject, my ability to get articles published was minimal.

So when I began reading about weblogs, as they were called then, and the technology behind them, I decided to throw myself into it with as much passion as I devoted to learning Microsoft Word in 1986, shortly after it was first developed.

It was lonely at first. The world of blogs was much smaller then. The world of Jewish blogging even smaller and the world of progressive Jewish blogging even smaller still. At times, I wondered for whom I was writing. But I kept telling myself that even if I was only writing for myself that would be dayenu. First and foremost, a blog is a personal expression of angst, passion, anger, identity—whatever are your deepest emotions. Of course, everyone wants an audience. But if you don’t have something deeply felt to say, then there’s no reason to have one.

In the beginning, I reached out with mixed success to other bloggers with like-minded views. In 2005, I created a progressive discussion forum, Israel-Palestine Forum. I thought creating a Jewish blogging community was a worthwhile goal in itself; but that this also would amplify our message in the greater blog world. Bloggers though are fiercely independent creatures. They don’t want to be organized. They don’t necessarily want to be part of a community. And they surely don’t want to do what you think they should do. So I’ve had to adjust my ambitions and set humbler goals.

After five years of blogging, 2,000 posts, and 6,000 comments, I have a modest, but substantial readership with 200 subscribers and 200,000 unique visitors annually. The Guardian’s Comment is Free and American Conservative Magazine have published my work. I have guest blogged at the “alt-Jewish” website, Jewcy. Reporters have interviewed me for stories in the New York Times, Jewish Forward, Jewish Week and Seattle Post Intelligencer.

But my impact both on the blog world and the broader debate over the I-P conflict is still less than I would like. The mainstream media doesn’t beat a path to your door and even progressive sites like Huffington Post, Salon, Slate, and The Nation already have journalists covering this issue and aren’t looking for new voices. Al achat kama v’kama, the mainstream media, who are even less interested. Bloggers, except for the best known, are generally seen as second class citizens. Their writing is viewed as less trustworthy than “real” journalism. Bloggers are seen by “serious” journalists as shouters, dilettantes and dabblers rather than serious participants in the media discourse. This of course causes bloggers like me endless heartburn. I know that many of my posts deserve wider distribution, but since I’m not a major political blogger like Juan Cole, Markos Moulitsas or Eric Alterman, I have no traction.

Despite the difficulties I outlined above, blogs have played a critical role in the American Jewish community and their importance will only continue to grow. In the age before blogs, Jewish leaders were like political bosses. They ruled their roosts. Once installed, they were rock-like presences and stayed in their positions seemingly forever. Their word was halacha l’moshe mi’sinai. Anyone who doubted it was easily frozen out of communal discourse. The leaders’ politics were conservative and generally supportive of the Israeli right. The Jewish media was a corporate entity that largely expressed the views of such leaders.

Certainly, there were dissenters regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict like Rabbi Arthur Hertzberg and others. There were also progressive Jewish peace groups over the years like Breira and New Jewish Agenda. But with few financial resources, small memberships, and young, inexperienced staff, these groups formed barely a ripple in the communal pond. Their voice was heard mostly by those who already subscribed to their ideas. They were easily sidelined.

Blogs have changed that. Now, Jewish “bosses” like Abe Foxman (ADL) or Jack Rosen (AJCongress) can be held up to immediate public scrutiny. When Foxman refused to acknowledge the Armenian genocide, the Jewish press and bloggers took him to task and he backed down. When JTA published a false ZOA claim that Desmond Tutu equated Israel with Hitler, Jewish Voice for Peace’s Muzzlewatch brought the fraud to the Jewish community’s attention forcing JTA to correct the record. When a Minneapolis Jewish community staff member advised a local college that Tutu was anti-Israel and the college rescinded a speaking invitation, Muzzlewatch was again able to lead the debate causing the college to back down. None of this would have happened before blogs.

Even more importantly, when Israeli policy goes off the rails as it did during the Lebanon war, peace bloggers published almost minute by minute coverage documenting the carnage and folly of the military-political decisions that informed conflict. Perhaps for the first time in human history bloggers on both sides of a war could not only read the words of those on the other side, they could communicate with the “enemy” almost in real time. I think this had a tremendous impact on blog readers because reading the unfiltered suffering of your enemy had the effect of breaking down the will to fight on both sides.

Within Israel and the American Jewish community, there was a consensus in favor of the war while it raged. Not so in the blogosphere where there was a furious debate pro and con. But what was most important to me was that progressive bloggers had a place to speak truth to power during those dark days. We could rail against the blindness, callousness and lies emanating from the IDF spokespeople and politicians. No one could pull the plug on us. And while it is true that we may not have been feared or even noticed by the Halutzes and Olmerts of this world, we could have our say and people listened.

I am not the first to note that blogs have democratized communication and political debate. But this is especially true in the formerly top-down structure of the Jewish communal hierarchy. Malcolm Hoenlein doesn’t give me marching orders. Neither does AIPAC. I march to my own drummer. And that is the beauty of the blog.

Not that all’s always well in the Jewish blog world. Along with this democratization of the means of communication has come a maelstrom of conflicting opinions. The breaking down of communal consensus has caused a breakdown of civility and an accompanying barrage of hate, invective, and verbal assault. Just look at the Haaretz, Jerusalem Post or Ynet talkbacks if you want to see evidence of such chaos. And the talkbacks are moderated! Imagine if they weren’t.

There has also been a steep rise in partisanship. More radical, violent and racist ideas get attention than ever did in the past. Reasoned debate has almost become a thing of the past. Instead, people go for the jugular. I have been unsuccessfully sued for libel for calling militant pro-Israel activist Rachel Neuwirth a “Kahanist.” The owner of another far-right site, Masada2000, started a mock blog in my name which included pornographic references and a stolen image of my son and me baking cookies to which a caption was added claiming we were making Palestinian suicide bombs. Masada2000’s owner also threatened me with genital mutilation. Members of the Kahanist Jewish Task Force website wished that I would get cancer of the rectum.

It would be wrong to see these merely as aberrant Jewish expressions or the actions of lone troubled individuals (though they might be that). For the internet has given wingnuts a huge megaphone with which to amplify such hate and bring it into the mainstream.

Over the past few months, an anonymous right-wing hoax e mail campaign flooded the inboxes of American Jews. It sought to portray Barack Obama as a stealth Muslim presidential candidate who would bring the views of Al Qaeda into the White House. In a close Democratic primary and general election, these types of smears don’t have to have much credibility nor do they have to. All they have to do is instill fear and doubt into the minds of a relatively small group of voters in order to have a critical effect on the elections. While Goebbels championed the “big lie” these slandermeisters work by planting small seeds of doubt in the minds of many.

Blogs can represent the highest values and ideals of Jewish tradition. And they can also represent the basest emotions lurking in the Jewish breast. Often they are somewhere in between. But there is no going back to the days of yesteryear.

I work to improve the Jewish blogosphere by encouraging more liberal voices to join the debate. We need more prominent communal figures and even journalists to understand the power of blogs and begin writing their own. Some like Leonard Fein, Bernard Avishai and Daniel Levy have already done so. But there is room for much more. And I’m hoping that the mainstream media both in Israel and America will expand their interest in blogs and incorporate what we have to say into their reporting.

tags in-praise-of-the-jewish-blogosphere, jewish-blogs, kahanist, masada2000, obama-muslim-smear, rachel-neuwirth

Seattle’s Jewish paper has written a long story about my legal battle with Rachel Neuwirth. The nice thing about the article is that it gives Neuwirth’s attorney all the rope he wants to hang himself and his client. I don’t know about you but I’m not used to hearing lawyers use four letter words in defending their clients:

“She never threw any mud at him, she was never responsible for things that he wanted to blame on her, and she so testified and he couldn’t prove to the contrary,” said Charles L. Fonarow, Neuwirth’s attorney. “The only thing she ever did was try and talk to the guy, and for that he just let loose all his shit.”

Not quite sure what he’s referring to here. Neuwirth did call the house one Sunday morning at 7:30 AM waking my wife and asking for me. I didn’t speak to her and wrote in my blog that I never wanted to hear from her again and haven’t. She used to post insulting comments at this blog using pseudonyms but doesn’t do that anymore either. So not sure what he means by “trying to talk to the guy” unless hurling insults is considering trying to talk to me.

In further remarks, Fonarow really exposes the weakness of Neuwirth’s case:

“Even though Rabbi Seidler-Feller, as a result of the settlement, admitted full responsibility and that she didn’t provoke the attack at all, Silverstein nevertheless calls her a liar and says that he doesn’t believe what Seidler-Feller has admitted,” Fonarow said. Silverstein’s original comments “may be a tad short of defaming her, but not much, and then he goes on to start committing the acts, which were clearly defamatory, for which we sued.

“A Kahanist is a terrorist, and however you slice it, it’s a defamatory remark.”

First, it should be noted that I never called Neuwirth a liar in this context. I merely said that given the facts as Seidler Feller and other witnesses stated them just after the incident; and her version of the event, I chose not to believe her version and to believe another. The problem with Fonarow and with so many right-wing ideologues is that they create huge ellipses in the arguments of their opponents in which they leap from a fact to an interpretation of the fact which has no relation to the original fact. So because I choose not to believe her I’ve called her a liar. Precision has never been a hallmark of partisan ideologues anywhere.

But the money quote here is the last line. Of course a Kahanist is not necessarily a terrorist. There are Kahanists like Baruch Goldberg, Irv Rubin and Meir Kahane himself who were terrorists. There are Kahanists who are not terrorists. Calling someone a Kahanist may mean calling them a racist, but it doesn’t mean calling them someone who personally commits acts of violence, which is what a terrorist is. This is where Neuwirth’s case collapses.

Fonarow repeats the Neuwirth-Campus Watch claim that Joel Beinin lied when claimed she made a death threat against him:

Fonarow said any allegation that Neuwirth’s message was a death threat was a lie.

“She leaves him a message that in effect, said, in the same tone, you can’t be saying [anti-Israel statements] because the Jews have to be vigilant at all times,” Fonarow said. “Look what they did to David [sic] Pearl, and look what Hitler did, and he takes that as a death threat, which is preposterous.”

Somebody oughta tell Mr. Fonarow that he was referring to Daniel Pearl, not David. But hey, what’s a little inaccuracy among friends?

About that death threat, here’s what I’ve written earlier on this:

Neuwirth DID call him a kapo and other vulgar demeaning terms. She likened him to Daniel Pearl and said that Beinin might meet the same fate as a traitor to his people. She noted that Hitler took care of those who were traitors first (not sure what this means exactly). Beinin felt so disturbed by the content of her calls that he called the police. The report quotes verbatim from her calls and documents the threat.

Again, I’ll let my readers be the judge: death threat or not? I wish I could post the police report here and quote from it verbatim. But I’ve been asked not to do so and I won’t.

Fonarow based his entire case on the claim that because Rachel Neuwirth is a private party and not a public figure, he didn’t have to show actual malice on my part to prove libel. Since the judge threw out the “private party” claim, then Fonarow would’ve actually had to prove in his filing that I DID show malice. But he didn’t even make such a claim. And in an appeal he can’t change his argument, since the appeals court only judges the evidence and arguments of the original case—though he tries to in the following passage:

Fonarow took issue with Judge Reid’s assertations and suggested that a “trier of fact” would find actual malice in Silverstein’s postings.

“She’s a private person,” he said. “She makes her money selling real estate even though she likes to write a lot of articles because she’s so pro-Jewish…. The only area you can say [falls] under the statute is that she was trying to try to talk to [Silverstein] about a matter that I guess could be considered by the courts to be a subject of public debate.

“As far as I’m concerned there was actual malice,” he added. “If you look at all the other things that he said, in blog after blog after blog, there’s evidence of actual malice even though the trial judge dismissed it as falling short.”

Astonishingly, Neuwirth chose not to talk to Joel Magalnick. That’s gotta be a first. I suppose she thought it possible that my local paper might write less than flatteringly about her. She probably made the right decision, though I would’ve enjoyed hearing more from her.

Magalnick also interviewed the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s senior attorney, who wrote approvingly of Judge Reid’s decision to toss the case:

But Fred von Lohman, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which champions free speech in the digital arena, said this case was precisely why California adopted the SLAPP statute.

“By publishing this on a blog, [Silverstein] was engaging in precisely the kind of protected speech the California SLAPP statute was written to protect,” von Lohman said. “This is really the tip of a much larger iceberg, because as more and more political speech and commentary goes online, it’s inevitable that there will be more need to clarify that the First Amendment protection applies to bloggers just like they apply to traditional pamphleteers.”

On appeal, added von Lohman, if Neuwirth’s case fails again, it will set precedent in California that other courts will need to pay attention to…

“There are lots of things about this case that are pretty standard about First Amendment law,” he said. “The thing that is different is that we don’t have the standard applied to blogs.”

We have high hopes that EFF will join in our appeal (that is, if Neuwirth is foolish enough to file which we have every reason to believe she will).

tags blogging-free-speech, charles-fonarow, first-amendment, internet-speech, jew-ish, joel-magalnick, jtnews, kahanist, neuwirth-v.-silverstein, political-blogs, rachel-neuwirth

Tom Tugend wrote a good story in today’s Jewish Journal about my court victory in Neuwirth v. Silverstein. It lays out a little bit of the history of my case and the one involving Chaim Seidler Feller that preceded it.

There are two highly amusing allegations leveled by her attorney, the estimable Chuck “We’ll Take It to the Supreme Court” Fonarow. First, he alleges that Joel Beinin and I showed “actual malice” in defaming Neuwirth. What’s so odd about this claim is that he didn’t even make it in his case against us. In order to prove libel against a public figure a defendant has to show “malice.” Yet he never alleged this because he believed it would be patently obvious to the court that Neuwirth was a private figure. What Fonarow apparently forgot was that Neuwirth brags all over the web that she’s an internationally respected journalist. The judge took note of this even if Fonarow didn’t.

Further, Fonarow alleges that I called Neuwirth “Jewish trash.” I didn’t. But why let the facts get in his way. The real facts are that a commenter here calling themselves “JEWISH TRASH: RICHARD SEILVERSTEIN” [sic] (and the name was intended to disparage ME, not Neuwirth) published a comment noting “A SICK MIND SUCH AS RICHARD SILVERSTEIN POSSES.– TRULY ROTTEN.” I replied that the sentiments in the comment reminded me of Neuwirth. In fact, a review of the comment indicates that both the IP and e-mail addresses very likely are Neuwirth’s herself. So it appears SHE may’ve called me “Jewish trash,” not the other way around.

Also ironic is the fact that Fonarow charges Beinin and I with “malice.” Keep in mind this is a woman who has called numerous Jews she hates “Kapos,” among other epithets. That’s about the most malicious insult you can hurl at a Jew. So I ask you–who’s guilty of malice?

It’s unfortunate Fonarow can’t try his case solely in the media. He might have more success than he’s had in court so far.

Stay tuned for Neuwirth’s possible appeal to the State Court of Appeals.

tags charles-fonarow, Court-nixes-Neuwirth-suit, jewish-journal, joel-beinin, rachel-neuwirth

Tonight is not a good night for Rachel Neuwirth. Like Casey at the bat, she took a mighty swing & like Casey she struck out.

She sued me for libel in Los Angeles Superior Court because I called her a “Kahanist swine.” Her claim was that this was the same as claiming she was a Jewish terrorist since Kahane Chai, Meir Kahane’s Israeli political party, is designated by the U.S. Treasury Department as a terrorist organization.

Her attorney, Charles Fonarow, told my attorneys that her case was a “slam dunk.” Seems Los Angeles Superior Court Judge John Reid had a different idea. It’s also important to note that Judge Reid is no activist liberal judge. He teaches law at Pepperdine University law school where Kenneth Starr is the dean. He’s a law and order conservative and he understood the principles of free blog speech that were involved in this case. He understood that calling someone a Kahanist swine, while not perhaps the most refined turn of phrase in the world, is permitted in the context of public discourse on an issue of great civic importance.

We won the case with an anti-SLAPP (Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation) motion under which the defendant must prove that his speech was made in a public arena and furthered a public good and that the plaintiff was a public figure. Rachel’s key argument was that she is a private figure (she argued that she was merely a real estate agent) and the my blog was a private forum (because I “controlled” it), all of which are patently false since she herself calls herself an “internationally respected journalist” in her online bio. That my blog is a public forum is also patently obvious as 250,000 unique visitors each year indicate. And I no more ‘control’ the 6,000 comments published on my blog than I control the entire web.

One of the beauties of the SLAPP motion is that the losing plaintiff must pay defendant’s reasonable court costs. This system was purposely designed to inhibit well-heeled individuals from bringing frivolous lawsuits against whistle blowers and other do-gooders. As the judge’s ruling states:

These lawsuits are generally brought to chill the valid exercise of constitutional rights. A SLAPP suit lacks merit and will achieve its objective if it depletes the defendant’s resources or energy because the aim is not to win but to detract the defendant from his or her objective. [An anti-SLAPP motion] is a procedural remedy to dispose of such suits expeditiously and thereby protect defendants’ free exercise of First Amendment rights on matters of public interest

So Rachel will have to dip into her savings to pay for our legal bills. I say “ours” since Rachel figured she’d kill two “kapo” birds with one stone by also including Joel Beinin in her suit. No doubt Joel is a figure who particularly irks her since he holds a distinguished academic position at Stanford University. Unfortunately, she struck out as her suit against Beinin failed as well.

The judge understood the important of protecting speech on an issue as critical and controversial as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and agreed that Neuwirth was merely trying to stifle speech she disagreed with–rather than bringing a serious charge of libel.

He also raised an importance point which even I hadn’t considered in preparing my defense. Since truth is a defense in libel suits why didn’t she argue that the portion of my statement in which I called her a “Kahanist” was false? I think we could’ve made a good case against her if she’d raised this defense since her views, like Kahane’s, are so virulently anti-Arab. But she never even made the claim.

Another good point that he raised was that just as no reasonable reader would believe I was calling her a literal “swine,” so no reasonable reader would believe I was calling her a literal Kahanist “terrorist.”

Neuwirth’s claim against Joel Beinin involved a statement he made in the Alef discussion group informing members that she had made a death threat against him. She, along with Campus Watch, have claimed that this is a lie. Well, now I have the police report in front of me from the Stanford University Department of Public Safety reported (case IR 03 265 0181) on September 22, 2003. Beinin is so weary of this matter that he expressly asked me not to publish the report details here. But suffice it to say that Neuwirth DID call him a kapo and other vulgar demeaning terms. She likened him to Daniel Pearl and said that Beinin might meet the same fate as a traitor to his people. She noted that Hitler took care of those who were traitors first (not sure what this means exactly). Beinin felt so disturbed by the content of her calls that he called the police. The report quotes verbatim from her calls and documents the threat.

Now, I want to address the hazirfleisch with the unlikely name of “Cinnamon Stillwell” at Campus Watch who called Beinin a liar. During the lawsuit I could not speak of this matter on advice of counsel. But now the world can see who lied and who told the truth.

My attorney tells me that Neuwirth appeared quite upset at the end of the hearing. Her attorney told Judge Reid that he planned to appeal his decision to the State Court of Appeals. They were apparently both upset that the ’slam’ didn’t ‘dunk.’ But the fact that the judge wrote a ten-page, intensively-researched opinion shows that the judge attached considerable importance both to the case and to his decision. It’s hard to believe that a higher court would rule against Judge Reid in this matter unless he made a serious error. And the very fact of the length of the brief and the amount of effort he lavished on it argues against that possibility.

Though I do not wish for an appeal, I would welcome one for one reason only. The higher this case goes, if affirmed, the more important a precedent it becomes in California jurisprudence. Protecting the rights of those who debate the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a matter worth fighting for and worthy of judicial affirmation.

Finally, I’d like to thank my pro bono legal team from Dewey & LeBoeuf. They are heroes to me. They took this on out of a commitment to protect First Amendment rights and with little prospect of financial remuneration. They believed in my right to speak out forcefully about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Unfortunately, others have threatened me with similar lawsuits in the past and perhaps some will do so in future. I think we have taken a stand that such intimidation will be met with a firm defense of my First Amendment rights and those of all bloggers.

tags death-threat-against-Joel-beinin, kahanist, libel-lawsuit, rachel-neuwirth, slapp-motion

Now, we add Aussie Dave of Israellycool as a new honorary member of the right-wing pro-Israeli cyber-bully fraternity attempting to intimidate Tikun Olam with threats of lawsuits. Yesterday, Dave weighed in on my comment thread about an old incident that still rankles him. One thing led to another and before the night was out Aussie Dave had really worked himself into a lather. Looks like the guy really, really wants to sue me.

It goes back to a series of posts I wrote here attacking his administration of the Jewish and Israeli Blog Awards (JIB) nearly two years ago. I claimed then that the competition was structured either intentionally or unintentionally to guarantee that right-wing blogs like Little Green Footballs, Treppenwitz and several others would win in many categories (and guess what–they did!). I think I used the term “nepotism,” by which I meant that the Awards seemed like they were “all in the family” so that blogs reflecting Dave’s ideological viewpoint would be almost guaranteed to win. I complained there were few left of center blogs nominated. I complained that the Awards seems designed for pro-Israel boosterism. In my specific critique of the nominated right-wing blogs I included Israellycool and what I thought was a particularly condescending post Dave wrote defining what a “good Arab” is.

Dave, who is very thin-skinned and self-absorbed, accused me of calling him “corrupt” and a “racist.” We had a long, knock down drag out argument in which I explained that I never wrote the word “corrupt” and didn’t intend to claim that he had accepted money or conducted the Awards immorally as that word tends to connote. This didn’t satisfy Dave, of course. He has this habit of taking things you say and upping the rhetorical ante as lawyers tend to do. I accuse him of “nepotism.” To Dave, that becomes a charge of “corruption” despite my explicit denial that this is what I intended.

As for the “racist” claim, Dave doesn’t like most Arabs or Palestinians. Especially not ones resisting the Occupation. Dave doesn’t even oppose the killing of innocent civilians during targeted assassinations (”…this does not mean that I oppose all targeted killings where innocent people are inadvertently killed”). There are a few good Arabs for Dave. They’re the ones like Nona Darwish, Walid Shoebat and Tawfiq Hamad who attack their religion (or former religion) as corrupt and embrace Israel as a light unto the Middle East (”Yunis Owaidah [is] a PLO Arab who is proud of the fact that he “collaborates” with Israel”). You can call such an attitude toward Arabs whatever you like–extreme condescension, cultural arrogance, etc. But I’d call Dave an Islamophobe at the least. Some people might use a stronger word. And if you look at what I wrote in context, the owner of Jewlicious accused me in the comment thread of claiming Dave was a “raving genocidal racist.” I denied the first two words of that phrase, but not the last.

In writing this JIB series, I found a picture of Dave at the PJM site, where he was then affiliated as a resident blogger (he is no longer affiliated and claims that he resigned rather than was dismissed by PJM). As I periodically do with a relatively small minority of my posts, I displayed his image with one of my JIB posts. Dave told me in no uncertain terms that he didn’t like the caption. But he NEVER told me he owned copyright; NEVER told me to take it down; NEVER filed a DMCA or Cease and Desist order which provides legal notice that you wish someone to remove something that violates copyright. I assumed that PJM owned copyright to the image since I found it there. To be fair, Dave claims that he said at his site that he wanted the image taken down (though I’ve never seen the link). Why he would assume I would read it there is beyond me since I make it a point of never visiting his site unless I really have to do so. Besides, this would not constitute a fair notice of copyright infringment.

A month ago or so I challenged Dave and Jewlicious to disassociate themselves from Steven Plaut, who’d quoted their previous attacks on me at the fake blog Plaut created in my name. Dave, of course, dismissed my anger over Plaut’s defamation as trivial. Instead, Dave complained once again about the image (over 15 months AFTER the image went up at my site). I replied, if the picture bugs you so much why didn’t you ever ask me to take it down. He said, now that you mention it it does bug me and take it down or I’ll sue. I did take it down for a time. But his braying attitude annoyed me so, that I decided to obliterate his image and display a black space where his face had been, saying in the caption that the image didn’t refer to anyone mentioned in that post. This was lame and I shouldn’t have done that. I should’ve removed the image and left it at that as Dave demanded.

Now, there is no image at all displaying at that post. But again, until a few weeks ago Dave has never made any specific claim of copyright infringement either legally or otherwise. Now, he’s itching to sue me. And he reminds me how formidable an opponent he’s likely to be. Here are some of his promises/threats. They start at shouting level and get progressively shriller:

You said I was booted from PJM and this is a LIE!

What kind of person throws an allegation to the public, and then tells the subject “Prove otherwise.” And if that wasn’t bad enough (from moral, ethical, and halachic perspectives), you ban the subject so they can’t even prove otherwise (and I have email exchanges to prove otherwise which I will likely post on my blog to show what a liar you are).

By the way, I AM a lawyer and I am compiling some of your defamatory statements about me (incl. accusing me of being corrupt wrt the JIBs and making an agreement with LGF, accusing me of racism) which I will be reviewing. And don’t bother trying to change the offending entries…I have a nice catalogue of screenshots and archived posts.

I am seriously considering making an example out of you.

To which I replied:

I’ll post anything at my site that would prove what you said is true. I just won’t publish yr comments calling me a liar.

I can’t believe you’d do something as foolish as trying to take me to court. But it’s yr call. I have both a Seattle and Los Angeles law firm already representing me. A lawsuit would provide me with a great megaphone to both defend myself and let the larger world know about my blog.

His response:

Did you hear what I said? I AM a lawyer. I am glad you have a law firm representing you, since when sued, it is your right to have one. Just know that I am a very good lawyer, and will take you to court if I believe I have a good case, and will achieve my objectives.

To which I replied:

So you’re a lawyer. So you’re a very good lawyer (if you do say so yourself). You want me to shiver in fear? Forget about it. If you have a good case, then you go right ahead. I’ll be waiting. You can say anything you want in an e mail. A judge will hopefully hold you to a higher standard.

His final ‘bloodcurdling’ reply:

Don’t worry, I will.

As best I can see these would be his grounds, I displayed an image of him that he knew all along was on my blog; and it took him well over a year to request that I take it down, which it now is. I’m a lying hypocrite. I accused him of being “corrupt” (which I didn’t). And I called him a “racist.”

Some might see this as an attempt to punish me because I’ve written things about Aussie Dave he really, really doesn’t like. Some might see this as Dave’s attempt to squelch someone whose political views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are anathema to him. With three websites displaying infringing images of me and two threats of lawsuits, some might see this as a budding alliance of pro-Israel right-wingers like Rachel Neuwirth, Steven Plaut, Jewish Task Force, Masada2000 and Jewlicious out to “get” someone whose blog has needled them for far too long (in their minds). I’m the uppity Jewish nigger (remember that slightly chilling phrase: “I’m seriously considering making an example out of you?”). I’m the nail that sticks up from the board that needs to get a good hammering back into its proper place. Or as Jewlicious’ owner wrote so charmingly at his blog, I’m that “whiny bitch.”

A chilly wind is blowing in the Jewish blogosphere.

UPDATE: Since originally writing this post, I have learned that an anonymous party claims ownership of the fake blog referred to above, furthermore stating that Steven Plaut has not participated in its creation. A reporter tells me Plaut has denied his involvement. So while I have no idea whether the anonymous party is being truthful, it is possible that Plaut is either not involved in the blog, is partially involved, or that the blog claimant is lying and Plaut is fully responsible. I don’t yet know for sure which is the case. My impression of Plaut’s authorship was based on the firm conviction of another victim of a very similar fake blog that Plaut was responsible.

tags aussie-dave-israellycool, jewish-and-israeli-blog-awards, jewish-cyber-bullying, jewlicious, jib, masada2000, rachel-neuwirth, steven-plaut

I don't know why Jewish wingnuts like Steven Plaut or Rachel Neuwirth taunt me. They only end up making me stronger and their cause weaker. When they bragged about my S.H.I.T. listing at Masada2000, the site was down within 24 hours. When they created a fake blog to defame me within two weeks I had told the world about their harassment in a front page article in the New York Times, a column in the Seattle Post Intelligencer and a KOMO radio news story. Just after April 26th, a story about their sleazy tactics will come out in Computerworld. But into the breach has come yet ...