This blog has seen all manner of subterfuge and odd behavior from pro-Israel rightists. There was the guy who was banned here, and then assumed the blog URL and name of a legitimate blogger to gain access to my comments section. Now, there’s a new wrinkle. Evelyn Gordon is a rightist Palestinian-hater whom the Jerusalem Post has given a home in their pages. She’s a garden variety propagandist as you’d expect from this shmatta (the same one that gives us the rightist-inspired Jewish Israeli Blog Awards which Little Green Footballs somehow always seem to win).
This same Evelyn Gordon just attempted to publish a long comment in this blog. I noticed several things about the comment. First, it had nothing to do with the post which was about David Grossman’s speech at the Rabin memorial rally. Second, the article was quite polished though of course full of spurious and unsubstantiated claims assaulting the PA, Hamas, Abbas and just about anyone else Palestinian she could get her hands on.
I wrote her and said I would only publish her comment if she provided substantiating links for every unsupported claim in her comment. Then, a light bulb went off and I realized that this type of hatchet job might’ve been published elsewhere on the net. In other words, I figured she’s a serial troll posting similar stuff at other progressive sites which offend her sense of ultra-Israelism. The first thing I discovered is that yes, this comment has been widely circulated in the internet. Second, Gordon’s comment was actually published as a Jerusalem Post article.
I just think it’s pathetic and desperate for an author, after she publishes something to distribute it unsolicited at sites she dislikes. Why would I want my site used as a venue to disseminate Jerusalem Post/Evelyn Gordon propaganda? If she wants her article read more widely there are multitudes of rightist sites for her to do so. She knows I would never publish it as an article. So she tries to sneak it in the backdoor as a comment.
If you want to read her diatribe, you can do so at the Post. You won’t find it here. Unless that is, she agrees to terms I laid out to her. First, she would have to provide substantiating links/evidence for every unsupported claim in her piece. Second, she’d have to guarantee that the Jerusalem Post would publish verbatim one of my posts as a Talkback comment on her article on the newspaper’s site. We’ll see what the answer is. I plan to write to the Jpost’s editors complaining about her behavior.
Those of you who may be journalists, I’d like to know what your publications would think of you publishing your articles at other sites uninvited and unwanted. I know it doesn’t rise to Lee Siegel’s shenanigans when he wrote for TNR, but I still find it offensive. And I find that any publication that would countenance such behavior has pretty slipshod standards.
UPDATE: I’m afraid a troll forces me to take back what I’ve written here. It appears that Evelyn Gordon did not attempt to publish her article here. But a troll assumed her name in order to try to publish an article here. He or she didn’t give a rip about Gordon’s reputation in doing so. I know this is troll-work because the same person assumed Sever Plocker’s name to publish one of his Ynetnews articles here as a comment. One piece of advice to my troll: don’t bother. Not only have these two fraudulent comments not been published. Your IP is now banned as well. Nice try. And apologies to Evelyn Gordon whose journalism I still despise. But at least she wasn’t responsible for this miserable prank.
