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Robert Satloff is executive director of the Washington Institute. He took issue with the December 2 Washington Post story “Israel’s assault forced a nurse to leave babies behind. They were found decomposing.” Satloff deconstructed the Post story in the 5,000-word critique “Once Again, a ‘Palestinian Babies Story Merits a Washington Post Apology.”
Satloff’s critique elicited a response from Post executive editor Sally Buzbee. She stands by the Post’s story and demands that Satloff clean up his critique. Satloff publishes Buzbee’s response in his disappointed postscript “Sadly, WaPost Admits No Error in Story Filled with Them.”
This episode had me thinking back to my own examination of the Post’s reporting in this vein on Israel’s 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense. Mr. Satloff, I see your 5,000 words and raise you 5,000 words. I wrote several posts and well over 5,000 words on the story featuring the aptly named Jihad Masharawi. Forgive me for saying that those posts have stood the test of time! As the song goes, “same as it ever was.” I have retrieved this March 11, 2013 post from our archives.
* * * * *
I wrote about the photograph of BBC Arabic editor Jihad Masharawi holding the shrouded body of his 11-month-old son, Omar, in posts here, here, here and here. The photograph depicted Masharawi outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City early in Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense. The young Masharawi’s death was attributed to an Israeli airstrike.
The photograph went viral on the second day of the conflict between Hamas and Israel, being featured on the Web and in newspapers around the world. One such among many was the Washington Post, which ran it at the top of page one. The photo is below.
Washington Post ombdudsman Patrick Pexton devoted a column to complaints about the photograph. Paul Mirengoff explicated the manifest animus in Pexton’s column.
Everything Pexton asserted directly or indirectly as a matter of fact was wrong. When a major newspaper ombudsman is this utterly clueless, who ya gonna call? Not Ghostbusters. Power Line, I guess.
Paul Danahar is the BBC Middle East Bureau Chief and Masharawi’s colleague. He spent much of the day at Masharawi’s house on the day on the day Masharawi’s son was killed, tweeting a photo of the hole in the roof of Masharawi’s house. The house wasn’t bombed, Pexton to the contrary notwithstanding. Danahar described the munition that did the damage as a “shell.”
I tweeted Danahar to ask him on what basis he identified the munition as Israeli. I wrote at the time on Power Line that I doubted it was. I thought it was more likely to have been a Hamas rocket that failed to hit its intended target in Israel. (As I recall, something like 10 percent of the Hamas rockets landed in Gaza.) Danahar failed to respond to my tweet, although he relentlessly propagated the line that Israeli forces had killed Masharawi’s son.
Everything about the photograph looked phony to me. Was Masharawi sobbing? His face doesn’t even look like he has shed tears. Masharawi looks like he’s enacting grief. I understand that Masharawi in fact lost his son as a result of the munition that hit his house, but I found the photo odd (as I did the other photos in the series of Masharawi parading around for the cameras).
I thought that Masharawi was engaging in an opportunistic bit of Terrorist Theater, the kind I wrote about in the Weekly Standard article “He didn’t give at the office.” The article demonstrates how news service stringers in Gaza work as an arm of the terrorist authorities on whom they purport to report. By the way, the staged photos of Arafat that I wrote about in the Standard article were the work of an AP stringer. The photo of Masharawi that the Post ran was credited to the AP.
Terrorist Theater is a function of the sinister authority wielded by terrorist forces in the areas where they hold sway. Gaza is of course under the thumb of Hamas, one such terrorist power.
We held that the death of Masharawi’s son was a tragedy and offered our condolences to Masharawi on the loss of his son. We acknowledged that we didn’t know to a certainty what had happened or who is responsible for the death, and therefore asked readers to keep an open mind.
I hope you will forgive me for rehearsing what must seem like ancient history, but it really is necessary to put this report in context, as they say: “UN clears Israel of charge it killed baby in Gaza.” The Times of Israel has the story, based on this UN report:
United Nations report cleared Israel in the death of the infant son of a BBC employee during Operation Pillar of Defense in November, instead fingering a misfired Palestinian rocket for the tragedy.
The November 14 strike left 11-month-old Omar Jihad al-Mishrawi and Hiba Aadel Fadel al-Mishrawi, 19, dead. The death of Omar, the son of BBC Arabic journalist Jihad al-Mishrawi, garnered more than usual media attention and focused anger for the death on Israel, which was initially blamed for the death.
Rather, the report suggests, a 19-year-old woman and a baby were hit by shrapnel from a rocket fired by Palestinians that was aimed at Israel, but missed its mark.
Omar is dead, and Hamas killed him, but both Jihad and jihad live, and the BBC and the Washington Post among others are their willing tools.
When we started this site, exposing mainstream media bias was a big part of our mission. Using the then-new internet, we and many others held liberal outlets (i.e., virtually all of them) accountable in a way that hadn’t happened before. The effect of that effort was not that the liberal press became more accurate or more objective. Rather, they came out of the closet. For the most part, they no longer make any serious pretense of neutrality. Whether that is an improvement or not is debatable.
But, in any event, it no longer makes sense to criticize, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post for being biased. That would be like, if you were a soldier in World War II and a Panzer division was approaching, you were to say, “Those Germans are biased against us!” It isn’t a question of bias. They are just the enemy.
Donald Trump was perhaps the first major Republican politician to abandon the effort to curry favor with the press establishment. He famously denounced the fake news press (sometimes abbreviated to the press in general) as enemies of the people. The good news is, most Americans agree with him.
Rasmussen finds that Trump’s characterization is the majority view:
60% of Likely U.S. Voters agree that the media are “truly the enemy of the people,” as Trump said in 2019, including 30% who Strongly Agree. Thirty-six percent (36%) disagree, including 21% who Strongly Disagree.
That is an extraordinary finding. Respondents were asked this question:
Do you agree or disagree with this statement: The media are “truly the enemy of the people”?
And a clear majority said that they agree. The press has utterly squandered whatever respect it once enjoyed.
The Rasmussen survey also asked about the Democrats’ “bloodbath” hoax:
Former President Donald Trump recently said that it would be a “bloodbath” if he didn’t win in November. Which is more likely, that he was talking about auto workers losing jobs or that he was talking about widespread political violence by his supporters?
The result:
Forty-nine percent (49%) of voters believe Trump was talking about auto workers losing jobs when he warned of a “bloodbath,” while 40% think Trump was talking about widespread political violence by his supporters if he did not win the election. Eleven percent (11%) are not sure.
Basically, Democrats follow the Democratic Party press and swallow the Democrats’ talking points:
Among voters who Strongly Approve of Biden’s job performance as president, 78% believe Trump’s “bloodbath” comment was about widespread political violence by his supporters if he did not win the election. By contrast, among voters who Strongly Disapprove of Biden’s performance, 84% think Trump was referring to auto workers losing jobs.
But again, returning to good news, most voters believe that the media’s coverage is driven by the Biden administration’s talking points:
Among all Likely Voters, 63% believe it is likely that the major news media’s political coverage is dictated by talking points from the Biden campaign, including 42% who say it’s Very Likely. Twenty-nine percent (29%) don’t think it’s likely media coverage is dictated by the Biden campaign, including 11% who say it’s Not At All Likely.
Majorities of every political category – 78% of Republicans, 50% of Democrats and 61% of unaffiliated voters – believe it’s at least somewhat likely that the major news media’s political coverage is dictated by talking points from the Biden campaign.
So even half of Democrats admit that the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Associated Press are servants of the Democratic Party. The bottom line is that the liberal press serves certain functions on behalf of the Democratic Party: it reinforces Democrats’ talking points and keeps Democratic voters riled up. Those are valuable contributions, to be sure. But the days when the liberal media could actually drive public opinion are long gone.
New York Times “journalism” — emotional, fact-free propaganda.
Geller: New York Times Asks, ‘Can Islamic and European Civilizations Coexist?’ or ‘The West is Wrong to Resist’
By Pamela Geller, Breitbart News, April 1, 2018:
The New York Times published a piece Thursday, “Can Islamic and European Civilizations Coexist?” and it is incredible (as in beyond belief, hard to believe, far-fetched, implausible).
The headline leads you to believe that, finally, maybe there might be a discussion of this existential question with a (sadly) obvious answer, but that would be delusional. In reality, the Times is not asking the question. It mocks you into thinking the question is a legitimate one. The real title should be: “Muslim Grievances, Why We Are Right to Whine After Jihadis Attack.”
The piece is not written by a legitimate, reasoned, and brilliant scholar of Islam like, say, Ibn Waraq, Bat Ye’or, or Robert Spencer. No, this absurd propaganda is by one of the Times’ resident shills for Islam, Atossa Araxia Abrahmian, coming in form of a review of Journey Into Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Identity, the latest installment in Islamic studies professor Akbar Ahmed’s series on Muslims around the world.
The finger-pointing at the infidel for the violence and holy wars of devout Muslims is at its apex in this indictment of Western compassion and open borders. And Muslims, of course, are the real victims:
The bulk of Ahmed’s research comes from a listening tour he embarked on with a team of researchers between 2013 and 2017. They interviewed imams, community leaders, activists and ordinary people across the continent about the challenges European Muslims face today. Their findings are predictably grim. Across the board, interviewees reported feeling marginalized, stereotyped and prevented from professional advancement because of their background. Despite their multitude of experiences, they ended up lumped into the crude categories that conflate terrorists, Muslims and refugees; Arabs, Persians and Africans; recent immigrants with no facility in the local language and second-generation doctoral students fluent at the highest level.
“Many patterns of discrimination,” Ahmed notes, “are rooted in colonial legacies that vary by country[.]”
Ah, yes colonial legacies – nothing about Islamic imperialism and annihilationism. Nothing about the centuries of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilations, and enslavements. Robert Spencer’s much anticipated tome on Islamic history, The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, details this very thing and should be part of every school curriculum in the country.
This whole piece is an extraordinary lie, and the Left’s relentless promotion of the big lies have rendered us ill-prepared for what’s coming.
In this “book review,” Abrahamian tells us that the author was invited to speak at a mosque in Athens.
What he saw there took him aback. The facility was less a house of God than an underground parking lot “of a particularly sinister aspect[.]”
“These men had nothing to lose, and I could imagine the most desperate among them prepared to lash out in an unpredictable and even murderous manner,” Ahmed writes in Journey Into Europe. “This, I felt, was Europe’s ticking time bomb.”
Oh yes, because the mosque in Athens, Greece — a country whose suffering at the hands of Muslim invaders is incalculable and little spoken of (like the Armenians) — is not pretty, it only makes sense that the Muslims destroy Europe. Are we to believe that if the Greeks built shrines to their executioners, all would be well?
So the jihad in Europe is the Greeks’ fault, but Christians in Muslim countries who can’t pray and whose houses of worship are systematically destroyed have no recourse, no voice, no New York Times article that speaks the truth of their oppression and destruction. On the contrary, in the view of the New York Times, the Christians are the problem.
The complaining and the whining continues. Ahmed, in this book, says:
Pakistanis in Britain are better integrated than, say, French citizens of Algerian and Moroccan descent. But even absent empire, many of the Muslims he speaks to find it hard, if not impossible, to fit in. “In Denmark they strangle you slowly, slowly,” one interviewee proclaims.
Pakistanis in the UK are better integrated? Thousands of English girls are groomed by Muslim rape gangs which the police never pursued for fear of being perceived as “islamophobic.” Daily acts of jihad written off as some generic form of extremism. This passes for integration?
Ahmed “hopes Europeans can form new, hybrid identities that broaden the criteria for who belongs.” Where have Muslim societies ever allowed a hybrid of identity? What he is saying is, he hopes that Europeans will go quietly into the cold Islamic night.
Using Islamic historic lies, Abrahmian bolsters his argument:
Europe happens to have a homegrown example of this philosophy in medieval Andalusia, when people of multiple faiths in parts of modern-day Portugal and Spain enjoyed convivencia, a state of relative pluralism, peace and prosperity under Muslim rule. “The answer to the violence and tensions between religions in Europe today and the sense of alienation and confusion in Muslim youth is to revive and strengthen the Andalusian model as an alternative to that of a monolithic tribal society,” Ahmed writes.
Andalusia was hardly golden for the Christians and Jews living under Islamic rule:
Islamic Spain was far from being a paradise. Cordoba was no “ornament of the world.” Maimonides had to flee the city because of the persecution of the Almohads, but even before the Alhomads the treatment of non-Muslims was dismal. When the Jewish viziers Samuel ibn Naghrela and his son Joseph were both murdered, and then the entire Jewish community of Grenada was massacred as well – yes, in Grenada, home of the “Alhambra” of which Washington Irving sung — it was not something without deep Islamic roots. (more here)
Abrahmian closes with this pearl:
The fundamental message of “Journey Into Europe” is that throughout history, Islamic and European civilizations have often been not just compatible, but complementary. It’s crucial to acknowledge their shared past to reject today’s resurgent tribalism. The stakes, as Ahmed puts it, are “Andalusia or dystopia.”
Intellectually, his conclusion is hard to argue with. But since 9/11, popular perceptions of Islam in the West have been informed by emotion, not facts or reason.
That’s true. And this New York Times article is more of that emotional, fact-free propaganda.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America, and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
March 25, 2018
CNN Defames Geller to Embarrass John Bolton
By Pamela Geller, American ThinkerIs there no limit to how low CNN will sink? CNN’s Don Lemon hosted a panel Thursday night featuring leftist turncoat Peter Beinart and “conservative” commentator Ben Ferguson, to discuss incoming National Security Adviser John Bolton’s supposed “anti-Muslim ties.” Beinart was on the warpath, attempting to smear Bolton by association with me, because he wrote the foreword to my 2010 book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America, (written with Robert Spencer) and spoke at several of my rallies.
Beinart couldn’t tell the truth, which is that in The Post-American Presidency I accurately exposed Obama’s hatred for Israel, post-American internationalism, opposition to the freedom of speech, and much more — long before they became obvious to the world. So instead, Beinart, calling me “the most notorious anti-Muslim bigot,” lied repeatedly, claiming that in the book I said that Barack Obama was trying to impose Sharia law in the United States, and that Obama was a Muslim.
Neither of those claims is true. I wrote, accurately, that Obama was enabling the spread of Sharia in the U.S. by strong-arming communities into accepting mega-mosques in residential areas and using his Justice Department to fight for special privileges in workplaces and schools. He blamed the First Amendment for what he knew to be an al-Qaeda attack on our consulate in Benghazi, by falsely claiming it was a reaction to a YouTube video criticizing Muhammad. And his FBI had an undercover agent at the free speech event my organization organized in Garland, Texas in 2015, but no team there to stop the jihadis from attacking. (It was local police who stopped a potential massacre.)
Did anyone on that panel actually read my book? Almost certainly not. After Beinart lied brazenly about what the book said, the “conservative” panelist Ben Ferguson said that he would not have advised Bolton to write the foreword. Why not? Why is Ferguson sanctioning and validating the smear job of the kind that the left has carried out on every effective voice for freedom and individual rights this country? That book was prescient. I was right about everything I wrote — the book was an unheeded warning.
Ferguson should have done his homework and have been ready to tell Beinart and the CNN audience what my book actually said, and how leftist smear organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have for years been spreading the lies that Beinart repeated Thursday night. Ferguson could have mentioned how the SPLC is trying to destroy legitimate conservative organizations by lumping them in with the KKK and neo-Nazis as “hate groups,” and that it refuses to classify the violent leftists of Antifa as a “hate group.” But don’t expect a CNN house conservative to know how to fight back hard with the truth in the face of the endless barrage of lies.
The last panelist, Keith Boykin, was even worse, asking why we should highlight Muslim extremism, and why should we even talk about it, since “we have horrible relations with Muslim countries.”
The CNN segment bordered on the comical when Beinart, with his record of anti-Israel polemic, said, “I’m saying this as a Jew” — and of course this, too, went unchallenged.
Beinart called my rallies against the Ground Zero Mosque — a project which 70% of Americans opposed — an “anti-mosque rally,” and acted as if they were some egregious offense. Another lie from Beinart was that I posted vile videos of Muslims having sex with animals. I never posted any such videos. And he also claimed that I “repeatedly called Muslims savages.” This was another outright lie. Most likely this smear merchant was referring to an ad that my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, won free speech court battles several years ago to display in the New York subway system and on buses in New York City and elsewhere. The ad read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”
The savages referred to in the ad, as I explained repeatedly when the ad first appeared, are clearly the Palestinian jihadis who murder Israelis on buses and in restaurants, and while enjoying a Shabbat dinner in their homes — and the other Palestinians in Gaza who pass out candies to celebrate these slaughters. If someone thinks that I was referring to all Muslims, they must think that all Muslims support this savage behavior — in which case, it is they who are “Islamophobic,” not I.
Beinart likened me to KKK leader David Duke, saying I was the “equivalent of David Duke for Muslims.” Why is that? Why wouldn’t the equivalent of David Duke for Muslims be Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Why are those who shine a light on Islamic texts and teachings that incite Muslim to wage jihad the enemy? We work with Muslims who wish to live free — how is that like David Duke?
Of course, CNN would never have dreamed of actually having me on to defend myself against these charges.
I demand a retraction. Don Lemon allowed a libelist to defame me repeatedly on his show. Has CNN departed so completely from any sense of fairness and accuracy that they not only air these libels without any effective opposition, but will allow them to stand unchallenged? President Trump was absolutely right when he labeled CNN “fake news,” and their lying about me and the positions I have taken in order to smear John Bolton is just the latest example among many of CNN’s cavalier attitudes toward the truth and eagerness to disseminate the wildest falsehoods in pursuit of its leftist agenda.
At this point, CNN has about as much credibility as Weekly World News, the supermarket tabloid that claims, among other things, that numerous Congressmen and Senators are space aliens.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
New York Times “journalism” — emotional, fact-free propaganda.
Geller: New York Times Asks, ‘Can Islamic and European Civilizations Coexist?’ or ‘The West is Wrong to Resist’
By Pamela Geller, Breitbart News, April 1, 2018:
The New York Times published a piece Thursday, “Can Islamic and European Civilizations Coexist?” and it is incredible (as in beyond belief, hard to believe, far-fetched, implausible).
The headline leads you to believe that, finally, maybe there might be a discussion of this existential question with a (sadly) obvious answer, but that would be delusional. In reality, the Times is not asking the question. It mocks you into thinking the question is a legitimate one. The real title should be: “Muslim Grievances, Why We Are Right to Whine After Jihadis Attack.”
The piece is not written by a legitimate, reasoned, and brilliant scholar of Islam like, say, Ibn Waraq, Bat Ye’or, or Robert Spencer. No, this absurd propaganda is by one of the Times’ resident shills for Islam, Atossa Araxia Abrahmian, coming in form of a review of Journey Into Europe: Islam, Immigration, and Identity, the latest installment in Islamic studies professor Akbar Ahmed’s series on Muslims around the world.
The finger-pointing at the infidel for the violence and holy wars of devout Muslims is at its apex in this indictment of Western compassion and open borders. And Muslims, of course, are the real victims:
The bulk of Ahmed’s research comes from a listening tour he embarked on with a team of researchers between 2013 and 2017. They interviewed imams, community leaders, activists and ordinary people across the continent about the challenges European Muslims face today. Their findings are predictably grim. Across the board, interviewees reported feeling marginalized, stereotyped and prevented from professional advancement because of their background. Despite their multitude of experiences, they ended up lumped into the crude categories that conflate terrorists, Muslims and refugees; Arabs, Persians and Africans; recent immigrants with no facility in the local language and second-generation doctoral students fluent at the highest level.
“Many patterns of discrimination,” Ahmed notes, “are rooted in colonial legacies that vary by country[.]”
Ah, yes colonial legacies – nothing about Islamic imperialism and annihilationism. Nothing about the centuries of jihadi wars, land appropriations, cultural annihilations, and enslavements. Robert Spencer’s much anticipated tome on Islamic history, The History of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, details this very thing and should be part of every school curriculum in the country.
This whole piece is an extraordinary lie, and the Left’s relentless promotion of the big lies have rendered us ill-prepared for what’s coming.
In this “book review,” Abrahamian tells us that the author was invited to speak at a mosque in Athens.
What he saw there took him aback. The facility was less a house of God than an underground parking lot “of a particularly sinister aspect[.]”
“These men had nothing to lose, and I could imagine the most desperate among them prepared to lash out in an unpredictable and even murderous manner,” Ahmed writes in Journey Into Europe. “This, I felt, was Europe’s ticking time bomb.”
Oh yes, because the mosque in Athens, Greece — a country whose suffering at the hands of Muslim invaders is incalculable and little spoken of (like the Armenians) — is not pretty, it only makes sense that the Muslims destroy Europe. Are we to believe that if the Greeks built shrines to their executioners, all would be well?
So the jihad in Europe is the Greeks’ fault, but Christians in Muslim countries who can’t pray and whose houses of worship are systematically destroyed have no recourse, no voice, no New York Times article that speaks the truth of their oppression and destruction. On the contrary, in the view of the New York Times, the Christians are the problem.
The complaining and the whining continues. Ahmed, in this book, says:
Pakistanis in Britain are better integrated than, say, French citizens of Algerian and Moroccan descent. But even absent empire, many of the Muslims he speaks to find it hard, if not impossible, to fit in. “In Denmark they strangle you slowly, slowly,” one interviewee proclaims.
Pakistanis in the UK are better integrated? Thousands of English girls are groomed by Muslim rape gangs which the police never pursued for fear of being perceived as “islamophobic.” Daily acts of jihad written off as some generic form of extremism. This passes for integration?
Ahmed “hopes Europeans can form new, hybrid identities that broaden the criteria for who belongs.” Where have Muslim societies ever allowed a hybrid of identity? What he is saying is, he hopes that Europeans will go quietly into the cold Islamic night.
Using Islamic historic lies, Abrahmian bolsters his argument:
Europe happens to have a homegrown example of this philosophy in medieval Andalusia, when people of multiple faiths in parts of modern-day Portugal and Spain enjoyed convivencia, a state of relative pluralism, peace and prosperity under Muslim rule. “The answer to the violence and tensions between religions in Europe today and the sense of alienation and confusion in Muslim youth is to revive and strengthen the Andalusian model as an alternative to that of a monolithic tribal society,” Ahmed writes.
Andalusia was hardly golden for the Christians and Jews living under Islamic rule:
Islamic Spain was far from being a paradise. Cordoba was no “ornament of the world.” Maimonides had to flee the city because of the persecution of the Almohads, but even before the Alhomads the treatment of non-Muslims was dismal. When the Jewish viziers Samuel ibn Naghrela and his son Joseph were both murdered, and then the entire Jewish community of Grenada was massacred as well – yes, in Grenada, home of the “Alhambra” of which Washington Irving sung — it was not something without deep Islamic roots. (more here)
Abrahmian closes with this pearl:
The fundamental message of “Journey Into Europe” is that throughout history, Islamic and European civilizations have often been not just compatible, but complementary. It’s crucial to acknowledge their shared past to reject today’s resurgent tribalism. The stakes, as Ahmed puts it, are “Andalusia or dystopia.”
Intellectually, his conclusion is hard to argue with. But since 9/11, popular perceptions of Islam in the West have been informed by emotion, not facts or reason.
That’s true. And this New York Times article is more of that emotional, fact-free propaganda.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America, and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
March 25, 2018
CNN Defames Geller to Embarrass John Bolton
By Pamela Geller, American ThinkerIs there no limit to how low CNN will sink? CNN’s Don Lemon hosted a panel Thursday night featuring leftist turncoat Peter Beinart and “conservative” commentator Ben Ferguson, to discuss incoming National Security Adviser John Bolton’s supposed “anti-Muslim ties.” Beinart was on the warpath, attempting to smear Bolton by association with me, because he wrote the foreword to my 2010 book The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America, (written with Robert Spencer) and spoke at several of my rallies.
Beinart couldn’t tell the truth, which is that in The Post-American Presidency I accurately exposed Obama’s hatred for Israel, post-American internationalism, opposition to the freedom of speech, and much more — long before they became obvious to the world. So instead, Beinart, calling me “the most notorious anti-Muslim bigot,” lied repeatedly, claiming that in the book I said that Barack Obama was trying to impose Sharia law in the United States, and that Obama was a Muslim.
Neither of those claims is true. I wrote, accurately, that Obama was enabling the spread of Sharia in the U.S. by strong-arming communities into accepting mega-mosques in residential areas and using his Justice Department to fight for special privileges in workplaces and schools. He blamed the First Amendment for what he knew to be an al-Qaeda attack on our consulate in Benghazi, by falsely claiming it was a reaction to a YouTube video criticizing Muhammad. And his FBI had an undercover agent at the free speech event my organization organized in Garland, Texas in 2015, but no team there to stop the jihadis from attacking. (It was local police who stopped a potential massacre.)
Did anyone on that panel actually read my book? Almost certainly not. After Beinart lied brazenly about what the book said, the “conservative” panelist Ben Ferguson said that he would not have advised Bolton to write the foreword. Why not? Why is Ferguson sanctioning and validating the smear job of the kind that the left has carried out on every effective voice for freedom and individual rights this country? That book was prescient. I was right about everything I wrote — the book was an unheeded warning.
Ferguson should have done his homework and have been ready to tell Beinart and the CNN audience what my book actually said, and how leftist smear organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have for years been spreading the lies that Beinart repeated Thursday night. Ferguson could have mentioned how the SPLC is trying to destroy legitimate conservative organizations by lumping them in with the KKK and neo-Nazis as “hate groups,” and that it refuses to classify the violent leftists of Antifa as a “hate group.” But don’t expect a CNN house conservative to know how to fight back hard with the truth in the face of the endless barrage of lies.
The last panelist, Keith Boykin, was even worse, asking why we should highlight Muslim extremism, and why should we even talk about it, since “we have horrible relations with Muslim countries.”
The CNN segment bordered on the comical when Beinart, with his record of anti-Israel polemic, said, “I’m saying this as a Jew” — and of course this, too, went unchallenged.
Beinart called my rallies against the Ground Zero Mosque — a project which 70% of Americans opposed — an “anti-mosque rally,” and acted as if they were some egregious offense. Another lie from Beinart was that I posted vile videos of Muslims having sex with animals. I never posted any such videos. And he also claimed that I “repeatedly called Muslims savages.” This was another outright lie. Most likely this smear merchant was referring to an ad that my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative, won free speech court battles several years ago to display in the New York subway system and on buses in New York City and elsewhere. The ad read: “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man. Support Israel. Defeat jihad.”
The savages referred to in the ad, as I explained repeatedly when the ad first appeared, are clearly the Palestinian jihadis who murder Israelis on buses and in restaurants, and while enjoying a Shabbat dinner in their homes — and the other Palestinians in Gaza who pass out candies to celebrate these slaughters. If someone thinks that I was referring to all Muslims, they must think that all Muslims support this savage behavior — in which case, it is they who are “Islamophobic,” not I.
Beinart likened me to KKK leader David Duke, saying I was the “equivalent of David Duke for Muslims.” Why is that? Why wouldn’t the equivalent of David Duke for Muslims be Osama bin Laden or Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi? Why are those who shine a light on Islamic texts and teachings that incite Muslim to wage jihad the enemy? We work with Muslims who wish to live free — how is that like David Duke?
Of course, CNN would never have dreamed of actually having me on to defend myself against these charges.
I demand a retraction. Don Lemon allowed a libelist to defame me repeatedly on his show. Has CNN departed so completely from any sense of fairness and accuracy that they not only air these libels without any effective opposition, but will allow them to stand unchallenged? President Trump was absolutely right when he labeled CNN “fake news,” and their lying about me and the positions I have taken in order to smear John Bolton is just the latest example among many of CNN’s cavalier attitudes toward the truth and eagerness to disseminate the wildest falsehoods in pursuit of its leftist agenda.
At this point, CNN has about as much credibility as Weekly World News, the supermarket tabloid that claims, among other things, that numerous Congressmen and Senators are space aliens.
Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of The Geller Report and author of the bestselling book, FATWA: Hunted in America, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance. Follow her on Twitter or Facebook.
Vaunce News 