Max Blumenthal writes:

On April 25, over 1000 New York-area Jewish extremists gathered in midtown Manhattan to rally against the Barack Obama administration’s call for a freeze on construction in occupied East Jerusalem and to demand unlimited rights to colonize the West Bank

He video taped this hate-filled rally, and we’ll embed the YouTube clip below.  But before we do that, it’s worthwhile to comment on the issue of Israeli settlements.  It never ceases to amaze me how many Americans are so profoundly ignorant on this topic, and have no clue that “the consensus view of the international community is that the building of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law.”  Or as the BBC News puts it: “Settlement building in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal under international law.”  This is the view expressed by none other than the United Nations and its judicial arm, the International Court of Justice.  Numerous resolutions have been passed against the state of Israel, demanding that illegal settlement activity be ceased.

There’s a very good reason why these settlements are illegal.  According to international law, that land does not belong to Israel; it belong to the Palestinians, who have lived there for hundreds of years.  That’s why the region is called the “Israeli Occupied Territories”.  And that’s also why they’re called Israeli settlers, not unlike the white settlers who pushed the Native Americans off their land.  Yet, we have Zionist extremists claiming that the land belongs to Israel, because “God gave it to them”, as one crazed man claims in the video below.

Blumenthal continues (emphasis is ours):

…The Republican Jewish Coalition was afforded a prominent role at the demonstration beside far-right groups like the Zionist Organization of America, Z Street, Americans for a Safe Israel, Christians United for Israel, and Manhigut Yehudit, an anti-democratic group that calls for theocratic rule over Israel.

Supporters of Manhigut leader and Likud politician Moshe Feiglin distributed fliers promoting Feiglin’s upcoming campaign for prime minister of Israel. An open advocate of ethnic cleansing who has proposed depriving the Palestinians of drinking water, Feiglin recently called Vice President Biden “a diseased leper.”

While the pro-settler elements rallied in Manhattan, their counterparts from the radical Kahanist movement in the Hebron-based settlement of Tel Rumeida rampaged through Palestinian neighborhood in East Jerusalem, inciting violent confrontations while announcing their intention to rid the area of its historical Arab presence…[There were] many hints that the events in Manhattan and Jerusalem were closely coordinated.

The Manhattan rally took on a distinctively Tea Party-flavor. Besides issuing maximalist calls for the expulsion of the Palestinians, demonstrators assailed Obama as a secret Muslim with no legitimate right to serve as President of the United States. When I was identified by a particularly ornery rally participant as “the self-hating asshole Max Blumenthal,” I decided it was time to make my exit.

However, as I walked down 44th Street towards the subway, an elderly man grabbed me and attempted to snatch my camera (I had seen the gun-toting Marzel use similar tactics on anti-settlement activists documenting his exploits in the West Bank). “You’re not a Jew! Give me the film!” the man exclaimed. A mob of demonstrators suddenly formed and began advancing towards me. Luckily, two NYPD officers were nearby. They pried the man off me and gave me enough time to escape. I paced for two blocks until I reached Grand Central Station then disappeared into the crowd.

Conservative blogger Matt Lewis; facts mean nothing to this guy!

Such rhetoric is not limited to street level protests.  Following the Obama administration’s call for a freeze on settlement activity, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks debated conservative blogger Matt Lewis on MSNBC; here’s what Lewis had to say about the Israeli Occupied Territories:

This is their territory.  They won it in 1967.  And essentially what we’re asking them to do is to turn over…part of their territory.  I think we should stand with Israel on this…You don’t get peace by giving away territory…Israel has continued to give away territory…You want them to give territory, [and] that’s not supporting them.

Mr. Lewis has the facts exactly wrong: it’s not their territory…at least not according to the consensus of the international community and international law.  Land acquired through conquest is illegal, and must be returned.  One can hardly imagine Lewis making the claim that the United States was forcing Saddam Hussein to “give away territory” when the demand was placed on the Iraqi military to leave Kuwait.  Israel has never given away any of its own territory, ever.  The West Bank and East Jerusalem belongs to the Palestinians.  It’s amazing that neither Cenk Uygur nor the host Dylan Ratigan thought it worthwhile to mention this key fact in the debate, which just shows how biased the mainstream media in this country is when it comes to the question of Israel.

Collin McKenzie-Gude of Bethesda, Md

Muhammad Abdul Qasim, a 20-year-old man of Middle Eastern descent, was sentenced to life in prison for a plot to kill President Barack Obama. Qasim fashioned an attack plan inside his second-floor bedroom, where he stored chemicals for a bomb, along with three semiautomatic rifles, two shotguns, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds.  Police also found assault plans on a computer storage device in the bedroom.

Can you imagine if that had been the story of the day?  The media outlets would become frenetic, the Islamophobes would have a field day, and the right wing in general would be fear mongering about the looming Islamic threat.  The people would be panic stricken, the alert levels would be raised to florescent super red, and pregnant women would miscarry.  Muslims would react by saying “oh no, not another one…”  Fox “News” would begin debating the issue of racial profiling, and Robert Spencer would sign another book deal.

In case you are confused, the above story is fictitious.  The actual story is about a 20 year old non-Muslim man named Collin McKenzie-Gude who was sentenced to five years in prison for plotting to kill the president.  Why, we ask, is there no hullabaloo as there invariably would have been had it been a Muhammad, Ahmad, Abdul Qasim, or some other Arabic sounding name involved?  The sparse media coverage explains why it is that people erroneously think that 90% of terrorists are Muslims, when in fact only about 6% of terrorist attacks on U.S. soil are from Islamic extremists.

The Washington Post reports:

Bethesda man linked to Obama death plot sentenced to 5 years
By Dan Morse
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 20, 2010

A 20-year-old Bethesda man linked to a plot to try to kill Barack Obama was sentenced to 61 months in prison Tuesday by a federal judge who said he had gone well beyond innocent role-playing.

“Nobody was assassinated. Nobody was wounded. Nobody was injured. But you were on the cusp,” U.S. District Judge Peter J. Messitte told Collin McKenzie-Gude.

The judge technically sentenced McKenzie-Gude on his earlier guilty plea of storing bomb-making chemicals in his bedroom. But other factors came into play. Prosecutors convinced Messitte that McKenzie-Gude deserved additional prison time because he was plotting to kill Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign, that he had fashioned an attack plan against another student who was possibly going to sell him untraceable guns, and that he had not accepted responsibility for his actions…

The judge also criticized McKenzie-Gude’s parents for giving their only child too much leeway. Inside his second-floor bedroom, in a house just outside the Capital Beltway, McKenzie-Gude stored the chemicals, three semiautomatic rifles, two shotguns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds. Police also found assault plans on a computer storage device in the bedroom…

When a twenty year old Christian does something like this, then he’s just an immature child.  When a twenty year old Muslim does something like this, then he’s a diabolical terrorist scum bag.

(hat tip: Umer Sultan)

Russelll Wiseman, Republican mayor of Arlington

We all know how Pamela Geller and company claim(ed) that Barack Obama is/was a Muslim.  Russell Wiseman, the Republican mayor of Arlington, Tennessee, believes not only that President Obama is a Muslim, but that he waged a calculated stealth Jihad against the Charlie Brown Special.  It never ceases to amaze me how such high level Republicans can think such insane stuff.

I know that this is a bit old, but better late than never:

What a loon.

Douglas Farah

In a blog entry titled, “The MB Inroads Into the Obama Administration,” Douglas Farah, yet another so-called “investigative” consultant, sets out to link American Muslim organizations to planet Zorbex, that global superpower which is able to operate in perfect coordination yet secrecy toward “sneaking in” an evil empire in the United States — Zorbex is also known as the Muslim Brotherhood, or affectionately as MB.

Douglas Farah throws a few punches around at the usual American Muslim organizations, but hones his venom in this piece at Prof. John “the architect” Esposito, and Dalia “the insider” Mogahed.

Let’s start with Esposito:

Farah: “The architect is Dr. John Esposito, a long time defender of the MB and the head of the Saudi-financed Georgetown University Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the Walsh School of Foreign Service.”

Why is Douglas Farah threatened by the concept of Muslim-Christian Understanding?

Because it actually gets people talking to each other, rather than secluding from each other and retiring to wild speculation and demagoguery about one another. The latter is what the Douglas Farah’s, Daniel Pipes’, and Steven Emerson’s of the world desperately need in order to stay in business.

For most people, universities, especially well-established and credible top institutions like Georgetown University are a service to society. Not so to the conspiracy loons like Douglas Farah. He is willing to argue that Georgetown with all of its gargantuan bureaucracy and what that may include in checks and balances is but one sweeping front for the Muslim Brotherhood. In a similar vein, all of the national American Muslim organizations (Farah’s blog piece mentions CAIR, MPAC, and CSID by name) are but one sweeping secretive front for that same ominous superpower, that struggling Egyptian party, the Muslim Brotherhood.

But hey, Douglas Farah is no dummy. He is sure to provide proof for his arguments. You ready? Georgetown, presumably like those orgs, is….. “Saudi-financed!”

Who is he talking about? Well, Prince Al Waleed bin Talal. Who is Prince Al Waleed bin Talal, that prince of darkness and anti-Americanism? Well, we’ll get to that in the last of three points that explain the major problems with Douglas Farah’s argument:

1. The much larger picture. Has he ever heard of philanthropy? That thing that tends to be a long and strong legacy in the United States. How does he think most US private institutions receive a good chunk of their assets? There are hundreds of examples of wealthy financiers of US academic institutions both American and foreign. Does he pin an agenda on each depending on where they were born or the faith they espouse? For example, does he look at a Jewish Hungarian philanthropist who donates to an Ivy league school and scream “Zionist agenda?” Not only does he not do so, but if others did, he would be blogging about anti-Semitism. Good, but then why does he engage in the reverse?

 

2. The slightly larger picture. Georgetown is Saudi-financed? As in Georgetown exclusively? How about the United States is Saudi-financed? Try on the order of $860 billion in Saudi investments to the U.S. economy. Now one may legitimately have an issue with that. It’s a good debate to have. But Douglas Farah is being hypocritical when he cherry picks Georgetown for criticism on that point.

 

3. The full picture. Much has been made about Prince Al Waleed bin Talal’s donations to Georgetown and American Muslim organizations. The donations are made out to be some sort of dubious evil secretive Wahhabi endeavor. But again, anyone familiar with reality can see through the bull. The conspiracy theorists happen to neglect a few small facts that may give an entirely different picture. Georgetown and these American Muslim organizations are in the same league with AOL, Apple Inc., Worldcom, Motorola, News Corporation Ltd, the Four Seasons hotel chain and the Plaza Hotel in New York, London’s Savoy Hotel, Monaco’s Monte Carlo Grand Hotel, Euro Disney SCA, Fairmont Hotels – and yes, President George H. W. Bush. Al-Waleed who is a major investor in all of these companies donated $500,000 to the George Herbert Walker Bush Scholarship Fund, established by Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, to honor the former President.Or how about the epitome of Western intelligensia: Harvard University. Al-Waleed donated $20 million to Harvard, one of its 25 largest donations. Al-Waleed donated $10 million to Cornell University to study complex genomic and cellular systems as they relate to medicine and biology by using mathematical models, physics and high-speed computing. Al-Waleed donated $20 million to the Louvre Museum in Paris, the World’s top temple of art, its largest gift ever.Now if Al-Waleed is part of an undercover Wahhabi front to establish a caliphate in the West, he is one dumb bastard. I mean that would be one heck of an expensive route with way too much irreversible contradictions on the way. Here’s a whopping $30 million in financing for “Western” halmarks like liberalism, art, and genomes — oh but then here’s a tiny fraction of that amount given to the evil Muslim organizations that will trump all of that – and some – with their impending anti-Western Caliphate. It’s fool proof. Ingenious! Nihohaha.

Next is Dalia Mogahed:

There is no need to even get into Doug’s off-point hate there. Hussein Ibish hit it on the head in a comment on the same blog:

OK, so let’s review, then, the case against Dalia Mogahed:

1. Born in Egypt
2. Worked for Gallup
3. Wrote a book with a Georgetown professor
4. Had a co-worker who used to work for MPAC
5. Used to work for a mosque in which one person lost a security clearance and another person has immigration issues
6. Father is associated with a different mosque, whose website links to American Muslim organizations
7. That mosque was headed by a guy who now has a job with one of those groups.

Egypt, Gallup, Georgetown, a former coworker, some guy’s immigration problems, a mosque’s website, some other guy’s new job. Wow. Case closed. She is definitely an operative of the Muslim Brotherhood. Another brilliant piece of reporting, Doug!

— Hussein Ibish Apr 14, 03:27 #

As you seem to not know, the MB is a web of relationships, including and particularly Georgetown and Esposito. Sorry that was lost on you.

— Douglas Farah Apr 14, 09:07 #

oooh. Doug got you there Hussein! How can the web be lost on you? How can anyone with a name like Hussein be trusted to get it right anyway…

The serious question though is, why does Douglas Farah, an investigative consultant (whatever that means) fail to “investigate” and disclose the full facts to his readers? Why does he do the sloppy cut-and-paste thing, giving a tiny portion of the facts, and then filling in the rest with conspiracy theories?

Because that is the modus operandi of the Loons. And that’s why there’s a loonwatch.

Like Steven Emerson and Daniel Pipes, Farah is not interested in uncovering the real terrorist threat, he is committed to a different agenda: delegitimizing credible and mainstream Muslims, under the guise of fighting terror while taking advantage of everyone else’s genuine concerns about real terror.

While these “investigative” loons are busy with their politicization and keeping others busy with them, real terrorists will slip by as they have in the past.