Until now, I merely thought the Israeli far-right was violent, intolerant and racist. But now I know that it is also devious and practiced in the black arts of false flag operations that smack of Shabak (or at least a trained intelligence background). In the past few days, a purported radical leftist website has surfaced (and disappeared) which featured doctored images of Bibi Netanyahu in SS uniform. The author of the site claimed to be an opponent of the Netanyahu government who spurned the J14 movement because it isn’t radical enough for his taste. The rhetoric is so clever and diabolical it has to be read (and parsed) to be believed:
We are citizens of Israel who believe that the words in the document listing the demands of the enormous demonstrations which took place lately, are a disgrace.
You read correctly. We represent the heart of the Israeli protest against the capitalist-pig policies of Bibi Netanyahu. We believe that any effort by one camp or another [within the protest movement] to engage with the current government is nothing but absurd.
Try to imagine what you would feel if a drunk murdered your loved ones. And let’s assume he did this in a humiliating, exploitative manner. Yes, a death through torture. And the murderer did this for months, years, even decades! Would you try to find a way resolve your differences and could you live easily with this murderer?
Israeli governments have, for generations, and the current one specifically, have devised a policy of daily exploitation and deception against the citizens of Israel. And it realized this policy with a total absence of oppositions from the masses of Israelis.
We, the very heart of the immense, expanding citizen’s arrest [movement] of the State of Israel demand bringing Mr. Benyamin Netanyahu to justice, including all ministers of the current government and those who preceded them in other governments. We demand that they be brought to account within the framework of “field justice,” where they would be tried by a jury sworn to this duty, which would represent the citizens of this nation whose exploitation and degradation is ongoing.
This website has taken upon itself the overarching goal of civic unity and the recruitment of the proper and suitable legal authorities from among the Israeli public. We all hope that the raging public body will join in with our important goals.
While one has to admit that this fraud is quite clever, anyone with half a brain and any experience with the way those in the progressive movement talk and think would know that this is a fraud; or else something written by Lyndon LaRouche or Gus Hall back in the day. But the J14 movement? Not a chance. I’d say that not even Hadash would use such rhetoric.
In fact, anyone with an ounce of historic memory will know that these pictures and this rhetoric is a holdover from the days of incitement suffered by Yitzhak Rabin before a right-wing assassin murdered him. The SS uniform, the works. They did it to Rabin. That’s where the far-right learned this trick.
Use of the term “citizen’s arrest” is meant to echo the efforts by the international human rights community to arrest Israeli military officers who travel to foreign countries for alleged war crimes offenses. Since this is a controversial practice in Israel, the attempt is to link the J14 movement to a campaign that would be highly unpopular in many circles in Israel. Again, an effort that continues the duplicity of the overall effort involved in these hoax sites.
In fact, the term of “Citizen’s Arrest” was first used in another bizarre blog, which purports to have been founded by a hitherto unknown group, “Mizrahim against Israel.” This site in turn links to yet another, which urges Palestinians to return to the suicide bombing strategy of the Second Intifada–to “spill rivers of Zionist blood in the streets of occupied Palestine.” The site also wraps itself in the mantle of the Israeli Black Panthers, a group which hasn’t existed inside Israel for decades.
And what self-respecting leftist cares about “civic unity?” This again is a hallmark of far rightist thought which seeks to impose consensus and stamp out diversity of thought and action.
As for the notion of “field justice:” again, this presumes that the left wants blood and vengeance for its suffering. No, that’s the MO of the far-right. They’re the ones who want blood and retribution (which they got in the form of the Rabin assassination). The left wants peace, not blood.
So anyone in the media who accepted this at face value has been had. And of course, that doesn’t matter to these fraudsters because by the time the deception is uncovered their website has disappeared, the authors have sunk back into the mire from which they sprang, and the damage has been done. Naturally, these Drudge-like reports have been picked up by more mainstream outlets and published as fact. In fact, Haaretz published a story reporting that the Likud filed a complaint against the website featuring the Bibi SS images. But of course, the Likud thought at that time that the website was in fact one sponsored by the radical Israeli left. When they find out it was in fact devised by one of their own, I somehow doubt they’ll seek to file charges against a true-blue Likudnik (see below).
These photographs of course have nothing to do with the J14 movement. Instead, Israeli activists have exposed the real author of this dirty trick. He is the owner of the semi-official Likud website (designated thus by Haaretz): Philip Hubert. Hubert has also registered a number of domains and websites with equally provocative titles designed to smear the Israeli left: Anarchists Without Borders, Mizrahim Against Israel, and a number of other similar false fronts. These websites were created before the J14 movement sprang up. But it appears that Hubert saw an opportunity once the tent protest movement threatened to topple the Netanyahu government, to do some damage to it by mobilizing all his false front operations to smear J14.
It worked to an extent, since few media outlets have yet reported the hoax. But without the terrific research and reporting of Itamar Shealtiel and his comrades at Activismos, Hubert’s machinations might never have been exposed.
UPDATE and CORRECTION: Philip Hubert has released an entirely unconvincing and confusing statement to Calcalist in Israel claiming that while he is currently listed as the owner of the domains mentioned above, that he actually has no responsiblity for any of their content since he sold his company (which owns the sites) to another individual. Hubert’s claim is that this individual has allowed others to take over these sites and that the content is neither his nor that of the individual who currently owns his former company. Of course that doesn’t answer the question who is responsible for the sites. Apparently, if you can believe Hubert, the new owner would know that information. All the latter has said is that if there is a complaint registered about the sites he will examine it to determine whether or not it violates the company’s terms of service.
Activismos released a statement standing behind its original post. But after Hubert made a threat of legal action against the website, Activismos removed the blog post to protect itself. However, I will not remove this blog post as I believe in good faith that the information is accurate (to the best of my knowledge). If Hubert wishes to make any further claim or statement regarding this incident I will publish it here and am willing to entertain any further evidence to bolster his claim.
I made one error in my translation of the website and the correct term is “citizen’s arrest” and not “citizen’s treasury” as I originally wrote (one word contains the letter ayin and the other the letter alef and I mistook the letter and hence mistranslated). I should note that the reader who noted my error in an attempt to negate my overall claims about the site, also mistranslated the phrase claiming it meant “citizen’s curfew.” The word otzar may mean “curfew,” but in this context it does not.
Prime Minister Netanyahu is no fascist. He is doing a very good job as leader of the State of Israel. Glad that people have seen through this opportunistic photoshopping.
Richard,
Thank you for your post but was it really necessary to feature 3 of these doctored photos.
I understand your distaste & wish I didn’t feel the need to display all three. But since I thought the crime involved in the hoax was so outrageous I felt it was important to convey the full nastiness of it, which included those pictures.
Posting those pictures say more than anything someone can comment.
I don’t think I’m going to respond in this blog anymore.
@ Free man
It’s not that your comments have been very constructive, anyway.
Wonder if you’d had the same reaction if it were photos of Arafat in the same clothing.
So your entire post and allegations are based on the fact that someone used the term “Citizen’s Treasury” ?
however if you would bother checking the blog, which is available (still) using google cache, you will see that such a term isn’t even mentioned there.
It states: “אנו, לב ליבה של העוצר האזרחי העצום ההולך ומתפשט במדינת ישראל דורשים את הבאתו לדין של מר בנימין נתניהו,”
“we, the heart of Otzer Ezrachi… “(which is the name of the blog)
and that can’t be mistaken for “Citizen’s Treasury” Because in Hebrew it will be spelled: “אוצר אזרחי” and not “עוצר אזרחי”
עוצר= curfew, אוצר= Treasure / Treasury, the name of the blog and the passage you quote is Citizens Curfew and not Citizens Treasury.
This is not the first time you provide the wrong translation to Hebrew words, seems like you got lost in translation again.
@ Freeman, don’t be a wimp, Haaretz published the same pictures on their site. What do you want from Silverstein ?
Big deal. As I noted in my correction, you yrself mistranslated the word to mean “curfew,” when in context it means “arrest.” I’ve noted my original error & corrrected it. In fact, the phrase “citizen’s arrest” makes my overall pt about the fakery of the entire enterprise even better than the phrase as I had it mistranslated. So thanks for correcting my error. You should, however be a tad less pompous in doing so & make allowance for the fact that you don’t know English well enough to fully & properly translate the word (& I concede that when translating tens of thousands of words from Hebrew for this blog I will make an error or two which I will gladly correct when told).
The more you argue about Hebrew translations, the clearer it is that despite your claims, you do not speak Hebrew.
מאסר = arrest, עוצר = curfew
you are butchering the Hebrew language and banding it to fit your agenda.
As I wrote, you need to take it up w. the charlatan who wrote the original statement, which clearly translated should be “citizen’s arrest” as there is no such phrase as “citizen’s curfew” which has real meaning in either English or Hebrew. Unlike you, when I translate I attempt to glean what the author’s original meaning was so that I don’t make him look like a fool. Since you are a fool & insufferable one at that, you clearly don’t care about making the author you translate a fool along with you.
In Dimi Reider’s piece in 972mag, the phrase is translated as “civil curfew”
The whole phrase in his piece reads:
“‘the immense civil curfew spreading across Israel…”
as opposed to yours which reads:
“the immense, expanding citizen’s arrest [movement] of the State of Israel…”
I am not making any judgement about either translation, as I do not speak Hebrew. I just wanted to share the information.
You’ve merely quoted one phrase of the entire passage, which overall clearly is based on the idea that the citizens of Israel should arrest, try & judge Bibi & his government. That is why the meaning of the phrase is “citizen’s arrest” and not “curfew.” As I also wrote, it appears that the person who wrote this may either not be a native speaker or may have simply made an error. There is no other meaningful context for the translation “curfew” and the concept of a ‘civil curfew spreaking across Israel’ is meaningless.
The more you argue about Hebrew translations, the clearer it is that despite your claims, you do not speak Hebrew.
מאסר = arrest, עוצר = curfew
you are butchering the Hebrew language and banding it to fit your agenda.
the term can be translated to citizen halt, stop or curfew, it doesn’t mean arrest.
@Nudnik: Yes, Richard’s Hebrew is not perfect. Is this relevant to the content of the claims?
perhaps richard confused עוצר with מעצר.
I Think that he probably thinks of Citizen Arrest, but in any case his translation is wrong, and there is a huge leap between עוצר and מעצר
Since the phrase citizen treasury was what he was basing his allegations on, i don’t think he has any substance.
Displaying Bibi’s picture in SS uniforms, though done by calcalist haaretz and others, is really repulsive.
Nudnik has, I’m afraid, gone the way of so many others before him. She’s written to me repetitively accusing me of having no knowledge of Hebrew. After a warning that I didn’t take such a claim lightly & a warning she repeated it. As the comment rules make clear, anyone who attempts to disseminate lies here (that is, statements they have been told are false & repeat anyway) stands the chance of losing their comment privileges as she has.
And then after I told her she’d be banned she let loose a torrent of four ltr words & other abuse & closed by accusing me of lacking derech eretz (‘civility”). Nice.
I didn’t confuse anything. Clearly if you read the Hebrew they intended the meaning “arrest” & not “curfew.” “Citizen’s Curfew” is gobbledygook in English & Hebrew. Perhaps Hubert isn’t a native Hebrew speaker & he used the wrong word. Take it up with him or whichever one of his buddies was responsible for this monstrosity.
I realized above that I referenced Dimi Reider’s 972mag article on this topic without providing a link.
He seems to have latched on to the same odd usage of the phrase in question, but the translation of it in his article appears to be “civil curfew” rather than “citizen’s arrest”.
http://972mag.com/nazislur/
In any case, I hope that someone can get to the bottom of who was behind this ugliness with some conclusive proof so that those responsible can be exposed for their mendacity.
If someone were to write the Hebrew equivalent of “pink underwhere” & I translated that literally into English I’d be doing a disservice to the original author & any English reader who wanted to understand the original Hebrew. That’s why I translate a source in context rather than slavishly translating the precise (& wrong) words they might’ve used. The translation has to make sense in the secondary language (in this case, English). Now, I suppose I could say that the original author made a nonsensical choice of words in the original Hebrew. But it’s clear to any reasonable person what this hoaxster author meant to say & it was “arrest” not “curfew.” Let’s have this be the end of the conversation. Too many words have been wasted on it already.
Several comments:
This is not the first time itamar shealtiel publishes false stories. The same thing happened a couple of months ago with shealtiels claims regarding ronen shuval. Obviously shaltiel has a serious reliability problem. The fact that both haaretz and activimus pulled down the story means that it doesn’t hold water.
calcalist article
http://www.calcalist.co.il/internet/articles/0,7340,L-3527474,00.html
kabir article
http://kabirism.com/?p=311
No, you’re wrong. There was nothing wrong with his reporting on the business dealings of Shoval’s father & the fact that there was some dealing with Iran in violation of sanctions. The fact that like father, like son they each threaten libel whenever something unpalatable is written about them indicates they’ve cowed & intimidated publications which either don’t have the means to defend themselves or don’t choose to do so but do have the means (like Haaretz).
The Calcalist story merely stated that Hubert apparently isn’t the author of the sites. But the reporter gave no convincing proof of this other than Hubert’s denial, which doesn’t satisfy me in the least. So I would continue to stand by the claim that Hubert or the current owner of the company is the likely author unless/until they present convincing evidence of who else is.
The fact that Activismos pulled the article doens’t mean it’s wrong. It merely means they chose not to get into a libel case w. Hubert. But you may contact them & tell them the story lives here & will not be taken down unless they can prove who controls the websites & who specifically published the hoax (if it wasn’t them).
Why all the fuss about a few words. The site is clearly a fraud and Richard has read these tea leaves correctly. Some far right trickster thinks they can pass off this stuff. Most people intuitively sense the falseness of the statements, the irrelevance of the photos to the issues, etc. Keep up the good work.