Goldfarb: Liar, Liar Pants on Fire

With most reasonable political opponents you could explain your position, adducing sound evidence to support it and they might accept your position, however grudgingly after initially disagreeing with you. Not so, Michael Goldfarb. He lies in the morning and he lies in the evening. In fact, you can almost set your clock by his lies.

Despite the fact that I, as co-host of the lunch blogger session, have clearly and consistently proclaimed its independent status and that it does not reflect the views of J Street, Goldfarb persists in the lie that the panelists are “J Street speakers” or speakers on “J Street’s ‘independent’ blogger panel.” With the word independent in scare quotes meant to infer Goldfarb’s disbelief that our event is independent. Even a cursory exploration of my writing on J Street would show that I sometimes agree and sometimes disagree with its positions (though I agree much more than disagree). In other words, neither I nor anyone at this panel represents J Street’s views. They don’t endorse ours, we don’t endorse theirs.

What’s laughable too about Goldfarb’s attack on Helena Cobban is his claim that she shows “disdain for Israel.” This is a common and deliberate ploy of the neocon pro-Israel forces: when an enemy actually disdains Israeli POLICY, you omit the distinction and proclaim their disdain for Israel as a nation. Helena Cobban disagrees, vehemently so, with Israeli policy, particularly the Occupation. She does not hold “Israel” the nation in disdain. Goldfarb is not one for nuance so this one will go way over his head.

It took me about 30 minutes to understand Goldfarb’s thought processes in this sloppily written rebuttal to my defense of Helena’s views about Hamas and Israel. I wrote:

…Apparently where Goldfarb lives Israel’s killing of Hamas leaders is self-defense, while Hamas’ killing of Israelis is terrorism.

To which he replies:

Let’s see . . . simultaneously condoning the killing of “Hamas leaders” and condemning the killing of Israelis by Hamas. That would be like condoning the war on al Qaeda while condemning the 9/11 attacks. In Goldfarbland, aka the real world, this is self-evident.

In Goldfarbland, Israel is the U.S., engaged in a “war on terror” (remember that quaint Bushism?) while Hamas is Al Qaeda. Once again a blatantly false analogy from the mouth of neocon babes to whom history and accuracy are mere tools promoting a false political agenda.