John-Paul Pagano of Tablet Mag writes about Amani Al-Khatahtbeh‘s history of antisemitism.
And it is actually a decent piece – but one line really stood out for me.
The rejection, of course, is well within Al-Khatahtbeh’s rights, but it’s also an invitation to examine precisely what MuslimGirl’s morals and values truly are. A good place to start may be a piece, published by MuslimGirl in 2016, entitled “Israel’s Organ Harvesting and the UK’s BDS Movement”.
Written by “Yelena,” a mysterious doula from San Francisco, the piece is mostly a rehash of professional anti-Semite Alison Weir’s riff on the blood-libel—a conspiracy theory in which Israel occupies Palestinian territory in order to murder the locals and loot their body parts. But like all knockoffs, the piece’s craftsmanship is poor, so Yelena’s version is helpful in that it sheds Weir’s usual scrupulosness and directly cites anti-Semites as sources. What sources does “Yelena” offer to document the ghoulish crimes of which she accuses the Jewish state? These include Iran’s PressTVand 9/11 Truther Michel Chussodovsky’s conspiracist web site, GlobalResearch. Both are classic “fake news” media, distributing anti-Jewishconspiracy theories by the shipping container throughout the Internet. Most troubling, however, is the article’s quotation of retired Cal State psychology professor Kevin MacDonald, a darling of far-Right anti-Semites, who couches standard white-supremacist teachings about Jewish “white genocide” in trappings of evolutionary psychology. Here’s what “Yelena” took from MacDonald: “Organized American Jewish lobbying groups and deeply committed Jews in the media are behind the pro-Israel U.S. foreign policy that is leading to war against virtually the entire Arab world.”
Of course, even the most scrupulous publications sometime publish regrettable pieces, although it’s hard to imagine how Al-Khatahtbeh, in her role as editor-in-chief, could let such blatant hate speech see the light of day.
I can’t help but wonder which publication he had in mind when he wrote that sentence.
For the record, Tablet’s antisemitic article is still online after all of these months, despite the constant imploring of some like me to remove it, allowing antisemites to continue to disseminate it. And Tablet’s own self-professed “troller of Nazis” Yair Rosenberg has continued to remain silent about it while he continues to post about antisemitism – the bad kind only, apparently.
I wonder if John-Paul Pagano also finds it hard to imagine how Alana Newhouse, in her role as editor-in-chief, could let such blatant hate speech see the light of day.
