The kind of censorship I am about to describe can only occur in America, sadly to say, in the freedom of speech capital of the world.
When Daily Kos, the largest left wing Democratic site on the internet, made a decision earlier this year to ban advocates of Palestinian freedom and self-determination, it did so at the behest of a cabal of right wing Zionists that monitor the site. Administration even worked with this cabal to eventually purge over twenty bloggers, including Palestinians and Palestinian-Americans, Israeli and Jewish American peace activists, and a host of advocates for Palestinian human rights (see Is Daily Kos a “Zionist Occupied Zone?”, Two Peace Activists Banned From Daily Kos, Daily Kos Bans Two Palestinian Peace Activists, and Jewish American peace activist banned from Daily Kos).
A portion of the 20 or more bloggers banned from Daily Kos were also featured in this British cartoon:
It was already the case that censorship of Israeli-Palestinian advocacy occurred on other “liberal” or left wing blogs like MyDD and Democratic Underground, where banning per se did not occur, but administrator restriction of writings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict produced censorship anyway. Fark, another large blog, uses essay editorship to exclude proPalestinian writings from its political pages in the same way.
The liberal blogosphere has definitely been invaded by right wing Zionists and Zionist propagandists who attempt to keep the American public ignorant of the harsh reality of life in the Palestinian territories, in particular, Israel’s daily killings of Palestinians (457 just in the past year alone; over 6,000 since 2000; over 10,000 political prisoners imprisoned) for the sole purpose of annexing most of these lands while nullifying any possibility for a sovereign Palestinian state.
Zionist inspired censorship on “liberal” blogs is now following an old pattern of verbal attack, charges of anti-Semitism and hate, and false accusations to instill silence about Israel’s deadly military occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands. As such, liberal blogs are now following the mainstream media in enforcing silence about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Many prominent left wing political blogs have essentially relinquished liberal Democratic values for the sake of expediency, or fear, of being attacked by right wing Zionist cabals, just as happened on Daily Kos.
The latest expression of the attempt at Zionist censorship was seen recently on Facebook, where some few right wing Zionists merely informed the site’s administrators, falsely, that Sabbah’s Blog, a leading proPalestinian human rights site, was anti-Semitic and Jew-hating. And here it is not just the case that some of Sabbah’s best friends are Jews, but rather that many Israeli and Jewish peace activists subscribe to his stance concerning Israel’s human rights violations in the Palestinian territories.
This information about Facebook is from Wikipedia:
Facebook calls itself a social networking website that allows people to communicate with their friends and exchange information. Launched on February 4, 2004, Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg, a former member of the Harvard class of 2006 and former Ardsley High School student. Initially the membership was restricted to students of Harvard College. It was subsequently expanded to other Boston area schools (Boston College, Boston University, Harvard, Northeastern University, Tufts University), Rochester, Stanford, NYU, Northwestern, and all Ivy League schools within two months. Many individual universities were added in rapid succession over the next year. Eventually, people with a university (e.g .edu, .ac.uk, etc.) email address from institutions across the globe were eligible to join. Networks were then initiated for high schools and some large companies. Since September 11, 2006, it has been made available to users with any email address[2], if they are within a certain age range. Users can select to join one or more participating networks, such as a high school, place of employment, or geographic region.
As of November 2007, the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 50 million active members worldwide and expects to pass 60 million users by the end of the year (also from non-collegiate networks). From September 2006 to September 2007, it increased its ranking from 60th to 7th most visited web site, and was the number one site for photos in the United States, ahead of public sites such as Flickr, with over 8.5 million photos uploaded daily.
The name of the site refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of the campus community that some U.S. colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.
It is on this site that we are seeing a further attempt to advance censorship of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on America’s college and university campuses and elsewhere. What is going on here?
Sabbah issued this report on his pending censorship a few days ago.
Desperate to Censorship Facebook!
“You know you are doing well when Zionists and their alike are desperately trying to silence you.”
This is exactly what is happening to me on Facebook for two consecutive days now.
As you know, beside Sabbah’s Blog, I also run the aggregator, Palestine Blogs – The Gazette.
Yesterday I received an email from Facebook Team complaining about Palestine Blogs application which I created there few days ago. Following is a copy of Facebook email to me, which is self explanatory:
From: Facebook [developers – help+mmymw2yr@facebookmail.com]
Date: Nov 13, 2007 12:19 PM
Subject: User TOS report against Palestine Blogs – The GazetteTo: haitham.sabbah@gmail.com
Hi,
A Facebook user reported that your application Palestine Blogs – The Gazette violates our Terms of Use. The user reporting it selected Attacks individual or group as the violation. This person also said:
“blatantly Anti-Semitic. Attacks Jews and Israelis as Nazis, war criminals, legitimate suicide bombing targets, etc.”Please investigate this issue.
Thanks,
The Facebook TeamI replied back to Facebook Team explaining to them that the above is not true and gave them a brief description of the aggregator – Palestine Blogs, but the email bounced back because the sender email (Facebook’s) is configured to bounce emails sent to it. I looked around Facebook site to find a way to contact the ‘Team’ but could not find a way to do that, so I gave up… At least I tried!
The story did not end there. Today I got a second email from Facebook again, and it was another complain, but this time regarding my blog application (Sabbah’s). The email below is self explanatory:
From: Facebook [developers – help+mmymw2yr@facebookmail.com]
Date: Nov 14, 2007 7:37 PM
Subject: User TOS report against Sabbah’sTo: haitham.sabbah@gmail.com
Hi,
A Facebook user reported that your application Sabbah’s violates our Terms of Use. The user reporting it selected Attacks individual or group as the violation. This person also said:
“Following my recent encounters with Sabbah on his blog, it is pure propaganda blog that silences everybody who disagree with the writer (I was silenced after posting very polite comments questioning a few posts). It is basically a one-man hosted hate group and i don’t think it has a place on platform such as Facebook. Thank you!”
Please investigate this issue.
Thanks,
The Facebook TeamPathetic! They did not leave anything for chance and grouped all the sins in this world together. A “one-man hosted hate group, anti-Semitic, anti-Jews, anti-Israelis as Nazis, citing war criminals and legitimate suicide bombing targets.”
It looks like a systematic-desperate force trying to influence/scare Facebook to censorship what is published there. Of course this is not new around the web (check Steve’s post about the resent attempt to silence Google), and I’m sure it will never stop as long as we have Zionists spitting poison every way they go.
Anyway, if I disappear from Facebook, you know why!
Any advice?
So will Facebook now become another avenue of censorship of news about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Wait until the college and university students who blog on this site find out about the demonization of Palestinians on the site. This is certainly deserving of a boycott if proceeds to banning, as the first amendment, which we hold dear, would be violated by Facebook on the basis of right wing Zionist operatives who seek to censor all criticism of Israel, using the old canard that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic and lies concerning advocates of Palestinian freedom and human rights.
Let’s wait and see if the college/university community responds.
In my case, it is like getting approval for someone else’s work.
Whatever the case, if you are for the First Amendment and freedom of speech, send a sign and it will be acknowledged.
You know…. I’m not terribly familiar with Facebook, but I have seen a few odd emails before that LOOK official, but in fact are not. I’m thinking there’s a possibility the emails he is getting from “the Facebook team” are not genuine. It makes no sense for them to report a complaint, but not provide a means to get back in touch with administrators.
I’d suggest he investigate it more — maybe even contact the Facebook admins via a link from the Facebook site itself, not that email — and inquire as to what their procedures would be (or check the rules and terms of service, etc., which are probably easily accessible on the site.)
It just sounds a bit …. vague and non-specific… and lack of any contact information is suspicious. Could be a hoax… I’m told it’s not that hard to fake an email address to make an email SEEM genuine when it’s not…
I’ll send Sabbah a copy of your post. And I thank you for the suggestion. Someone else on another site suggested that the emails are generated automatically. Also I do believe that Sabbah tried to contact the site unsuccessfully.
Nonetheless, thanks.
I’ve never visited Face Book,
But, I have been attacked and banned from the Daily Kos:
REPORT:WAWA BLOG: June 7, 2007
“It Sure Smells Like a Right Wing Zionist Cabal at The Daily Kos “
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=534&Itemid=167
And also by The Democratic Underground:
REPORT: WAWA BLOG October 24, 2007:
Censoring Gravitas, Blowing Out Doors and Tearing Down Walls
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=688&Itemid=179
I’ve also been slandered and unmercifully attacked for my articles published on Arabisto, OpedNews, Crossleft, Dissident Voice and Peoples Voice.
WHY?
Because I have visited OPT 5 times since June 2005 and have born witness to and reported on the Apartheid system of the Zionist state and the inhumanity of military occupiers.
The lame attacks have NEVER addressed what i have actually written and all they accomplish is filling me with even more drive to NEVER back down and persist in pursuing peace by telling the Truth and demanding JUSTICE!
Eileen Fleming, Reporter and Editor
Http:/www.wearewideawake.org
Author “Keep Hope Alive” and “Memoirs of a Nice Irish American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory”
Producer “30 Minutes With Vanunu.”
Thanks, Eileen.
When Sabaah sent out his first email to the comrades in the good struggle for human rights and justice for Palestine, I emailed him back to let it go.
I told him only when we are doing good will we be attacked and censored by the Zionist cabal that cannot bear the light of truth.
Thank you for doing so much more.
Only in Solidarity do “We have it in our power to begin the world again”-Tom Paine
Only wish to say, thank you again.
Kind of amusing. Little Green Footballs is showing amazing reading comprehension problems, asserting that you are seething mad at me. Meanwhile, Weasel Zippers seems to think you are a front-pager here.
Two right-wing morons, neither of whom can get a simple fact straight.
Did we make Little Green Footballs? Coming up in the world, is it, or have we decended into hell.
Of course I don’t mean we. Me. A late life success. What I have always said: take the publicity whereever you can get it. Another term for that is educate.
PS: Spent my first year of blogging on right wing sites as a liberal spoiler, and of course went to LGF from time to time, getting into arguments with Charlie. He is a virtual ass with one exception: he decided, after a failed career as a jazz musician, to get into political blogging by plugging the Zionist cause, and got funding galore, eventually a prize from an Israeli foundation for his antiArab, antiMuslim, and antiPalestinian posts. Don’t say Arafat; say Arafish, and a whole lot of other inanities. Don’t ever say that you can’t make it on the net by being a great big jerk. Charlie proves the point.
i think of them as basically on the moral level of klansmen.
i’ve never seen anything but hate from them.
But Eileen Fleming went to a conference organized by white supremacists.Note the heavy presence of the Willis Carto neo-Fascists.
http://www.google.com/search?q=EILEEN+FLEMING+DAVID+DUKE
http://www.davidduke.com/general/no-wars-for-israel-conference-oct-12-13-14-a-report-back_2922.html
“No More Wars For Israel” Conference, Oct. 12, 13 & 14- A Report Back In a church hall, the conference convened featuring an impressive line-up of speakers, including:
Eileen Fleming, author, videographer and human rights activist, who interviewed and videotaped Mordechai Vanunu, the famous Israeli whistle-blower who exposed the fact that Israel has many nuclear weapons of mass destruction, and Israel kidnapped him and put him in prison for 18 years for this courageous act of the highest order of morality. The conference was dedicated to Mr. Vanunu. Find out more about him and how to help with his legal fees at Fleming’s website: WeAreWideAwake.org.
Michael Collins Piper, noted author of many outstanding books and journalist for the American Free Press: AmericanFreePress.net
Mark Glenn, author, human rights activist and organizer of the conference on “No Wars for Israel”. His website is CrescentAndCross.com
Charles Carlson, director of Strait Gate Ministries, spoke about the dangers of Christian Zionism in particular. His website is WHTT.org
Dr. Kaukab Siddique, editor of NewTrendMag.org.
Dr. Hesham Tillawi of http://www.CurrentIssues.tv spoke about the abuse of the word “anti-Semitism” and the need to neutralize the stigma of the word and focus on the real issues of equal rights for all regardless of religion, ethnicity, race or gender.
Phil Tourney, a survivor of the 1967 attack on the USS Liberty by Israeli jets and torpedo boats, a treacherous act which was hushed up by the US government up until just a few years ago. He told the spellbound audience his personal experience in full, chilling detail of that horrendous day, and the ensuing forced cover-up by the US government which doubled the pain and anguish which he and the other survivors had to endure. Their website is: USSLiberty.com. Watch documentaries about it on YouTube.com.
Ellen Mariani, widow of a man who was killed on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on 911, who has sought a public trial rather than accept “hush money” from the government. She discussed the ways in which the government and lawyers conspired to thwart a trial to bring the Truth to the forefront. For more info on 911 Truth: 911blogger.com.
Wendy Campbell, of MarWen Media, spoke about “Something Is Rotten in the State of America: Israel”, discussing the need for the US to break all ties with the apartheid state of Israel and to stop fighting immoral wars on its behalf.
There were other speakers as well. In a few days a video clip of much of the conference will be available on various websites including CurrentIssues.tv. Currently there are some radio interviews with participants at the protest in front of the Marriott Hotel in Irvine at WhatReallyHappened.com. [Also at DavidDuke.com]
As far as I can tell, David Duke reported on the conference, but your take seems to be that he organized it and that it was organized by white supremicists. You are certainly wiser than that.
Because Eileen spoke at a proPalestinian conference, which is what it was for her, how can anyone agree with your guilt by association, if that is the notion you are proposing here.
As you supplied the agenda of that conference in your post, I would have to say you don’t appreciate the peace movement or even the source of criticism of Israel, namely, Israel’s colonial purpose for continuing its occupation of the Palestinians in the West Bank.
So have you come to praise Eileen for her human rights work or to slay her because a white supremist site reported on the conference? If you appreciate that David Duke is antiSemitic, then he would publish anything, true or otherwise, that reflects badly on Israel (in his mind, Jews).
He has yet to comment on ANYTHING I have written or said,
‘Michael’ ran the same old story above attempting to slander me on OpedNews where I am frequently published and then on Crossleft, the progressive Christian site where I blog.
Oh dear deluded ‘Michael’ you refuse to open your mind and READ and hear what i said at the conference, but I have hope the readers @ Booman will be interested in learning THE TRUTH and they can @
WAWA Blog October 13, 2007
The Plan: two free radicals delivering speeches today…
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=677&Itemid=179
WAWA Blog October 16, 2007
What happened on October 13, 2007 in California and “It’s NOT over ’till the fat lady sings”
http://www.wearewideawake.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=680&Itemid=179
Michael is probably assigned to you by some Israeli Zionist hasbara organization like GIYUS or The Israel Project. But his motivations seems to be so transparent, that I have to suggest that he is harmless. Take it as a complement that your work is getting this kind of attention.
Michael get thee back to LGF where Charlie Johnson will give you kudos for your deceptive and hateful response to Eileen Fleming. Matter of fact didn’t you just repeat your post here from the one one you posted on LGF? I think you did, boy, or girl, and that’s really naughty.
Did you think that liberal Democrats would not know the difference? By the way, is Charles still being stalked for being a racist as he claimed in the past and running around with bodyguards? You really have to believe that his brother is the brains behind this trap to get bucks out of the Zionist right wing. Pretty shrewd.
This particular case both amuses and disturbs me. I find it hypocritical that Haitham is complaining about potential censorship on FB when he is in fact actively practicing it. I had a rather weird interaction with him as a result of which i was censored and banned from commenting on his blog. You can see whole the story (part 1, part 2) documented on my blog and tell me what was my sin to deserve being censored.
I don’t know who reads Haitham or who reads this particular blog. Maybe you have a history of interaction with Haitham that leads to take every word he writes as necessarily correct, but, as i said, I find this both amusing and disturbing that a man who actively censors is complaining about potential censorship and manages to create waves of support.
Your Part I contain all that needs to be quoted, if I am not mistaken. You made a very rationale appeal to Sabbah concerning the fact that your posts were not approved.
Would you be so kind as to reveal what those posts contained? Sabbah has indicated that he will not post Zionist propaganda, and that is something I am very familiar with. So I may be able to judge. If it is just support of Israel, that would not in itself be an adequate reason to not post your responses. If it repeated well know Israeli propaganda, then it might be.
As someone who has been banned from Little Green Footballs (once, plus execution of several sockpuppets) and Daily Kos (twice plus the execution of too many socipuppets to name), I am very sensitive to the issue of speech.
If you will do that, I will write Sabbah and ask him, what’s up? if you were not really trying to get propaganda on his site.
Thank you Shergald!
The entire story, including the comments i posted are available on my blog which i linked above. Here, i am posting a link to that post again here and it also has links to original posts on Haitham’s blogs as well as to the images of my comments awaiting moderation. I am actually trying to be very open about this story because i find it very interesting.
I think what triggered the ban was the update i published on Nov. 13. You can also see there Haitham’s reply in the comments.
Thanks!
http://baconeatingatheistjew.blogspot.com/2007/10/fisking-white-supremacist-john-de.html
Michael, away with you. Any LGF proponent is necessarily a right wing troll around here. Not that it will get you banned, something I am totally in disagreement with, but at the minimum you are dishonest pain in the ass.
Off with you now. And say hello for me to Charles Johnson, who did ban me. For what reason? Telling the truth. I called him a bigoted racist. Imagine his reaction, as if he didn’t know it.
Thanks for your reply. I will have to get back to you, however, as it is already in the middle of the night in Bahrain and I know that Sabbah is working full time during the day, tomorrow, Monday.
Be patient. Sabbah has been banned from Daily Kos for his writings there, and I am certain that he is sensitive to the issue of censorship. What he means by Zionist propaganda will become clear, as I am highly tuned into this topic.
See Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land (on YouTube now in two parts) for starters, if you haven’t.
Following the different threads lead me to some more general thoughts about the dynamics of online discourse. If you are interested, you can find those here.
Here you are Dima, from Sabbah this morning:
I gather then that your claim of being banned is untrue.
A few other things you might like to know. Unlike the large political blogs, like Daily Kos, Booman, or MLW, where public discourse is open, Sabbah’s Blog is a more personal one, where debate about the IP conflict like that which used to go on at Daily Kos before everyone was banned on the Palestinian advocacy side, Sabbah is not interested is that sort of thing. He is rather keeps his members informed about happenings that are relevant to the Palestinian cause. It is not a place to drop comments that are nothing more than Zionist propaganda or to try to get into a debate with Sabbah. If you want to demonstrate a point of view about the IP conflict, you should go to Daily Kos, or Booman, or MLW. Liberal blogs like MyDD or the Democratic Underground censor and will ban for presenting a favorable or proPalestinian perspective on anything.
Again, as to what Zionist propaganda is, I already invited you to see Peace, Propaganda, & The Promised Land. I also invite you to look up the site GIYUS, which uses the Megaphone system to send proIsrael Zionist bloggers all over the internet to counteract negative press about Israel and its actions on the West Bank. It also supplies “talking points” to participants, which are mostly lies and conform to the notion of propaganda. You may also want to look up Frank Luntz’s propaganda manual written for The Israel Project, another site that spreads propaganda about the Palestinians or Arabs in general. As for examples of Zionist propaganda in addition to what these sources provide, Nakba (ethnic cleansing of 1948) denial, notions of the “generous offer” and so many other lies that have been propagated on the web are available for scrutiny.
By and large, I don’t believe that Sabbah’s Blog or any blog in which the writings are not open or member generated, like here, would be of interest in your survey of hostility, including Little Green Footballs, where hostility is the norm. You should know that Charles Johnson (LGF) does not permit “con” comments on his blog, and will ban anyone who engages in it. Not only was I banned there, so were several sockpuppets that I used to reenter the site, which Charles still doesn’t associate with me. Charles site is into pure antiArab, antiPalestinian, and antiMuslim propaganda, and the racism is so blatant that there were LGF Watch sites developed on his behalf. It was really sad that some Israeli foundation or organization gave Charlie an award for his racist work.
So good luck with your study. I really think you need to correct your interpretation concerning your interaction with Sabbah.
Thank Shergald,
First as to me being banned it’s a fact. If you go to Haitham’s blog, you won’t find my comments and i cannot post any other comment there. You can read him openly announcing that in the comments to my post. The fact that you and i can have a discussion on your blog is very different from what is happening at Sabbah.
It is a little bit annoying also that Haitham picks the facts serve his point only. I did acknowledge an email from him and immediately posted an update. The update that pissed him off was published two weeks later, after sending him 2 emails and getting no reply. A response to that update came in a matter of hours. It triggered the thoughts that you can find in my follow up post.
I don’t understand how come i am the one who is trying to explain in detail and the one who is offered to reconsider my interpretation, when i am here the one who is subject to violence here, even if just a symbolic one?
Now what that all has to do with Zionist propaganda, i still do not understand. My entire correspondence with Haitham is available on my blog. Tell me what did i do to fit the propagandist category? The comments are there. And what pissed him off are apparently no my comments, but my thoughts, when all i wanted is actually to have a short conversation with Haitham, and my thoughts were triggered by the dynamics of this interaction. If Haitham would spend a moment actually reading into what i wrote, he probably wouldn’t be that fast on the trigger of blocking people out.
As to the study, there are actually two different ideas. One, which i tried to ask Haitham about, is a survey of bloggers practices of commnent moderation as a tool for formation of a climate of opinions (Haitham’s blog or GLF – it doesn’t matter here). The other is actually about the linking strategies between the rival political blogs.
Anyway, thanks for listening, for checking, and for not banning me 🙂
First of all, this is not my blog. I am just a guest here.
Secondly, I think part of the problem is your misinterpretation of what Sabbah’s Blog is all about. Like myself, Sabbah is a publisher of news reports and articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As such, he runs RSS Feeds to various other blogs in order to publicize the plight of the Palestinians under Israeli occupation, which as you know is intended to colonize the West Bank. Many Palestinian are hurt and even killed in the process. According to B’Tselem, 457 Palestinians were killed just in the past year. When someone like Sabbah, a Palestinian exile, whose family was ethnically cleansed in 1948, reads that a Palestinian child sitting in a classroom is shot in the head and killed, it most certainly stimulates hostility. I’m sure you can appreciate such feelings.
So yes, there is hostility underlying the Palestinian facade concerning this ongoing attempt to take more Palestinian land and to completely disenfranchise them of their country, and even a small portion, 22% of the remaining land on which a state could emerge. But Israel is not really giving even that much, and their behavior on the West Bank attests to it.
So my advise is not to look to Sabbah’s Blog as a participant in your survey. Take my word for it, there is hostility on both sides. However, I would have to say, that moral-ethical advantage is with the Palestinians, as numerous, even Israeli and American Jewish, organizations have commented on.
My advise is to just withdraw from encountering Sabbah’s Blog as a likely participant in your survey. Sabbah will not debate you if that was your purpose. Encounter places like LGF, Booman perhaps, certainly Daily Kos, and others, places where you will confirm your hypotheses about hostility in the IP sphere of discussion. You will find it. But it would be intellectually prudent of you to interpret its sources.
In that matter, I could advise you from a personal as well as nonpersonal perspectives. Good luck. And stay away from Sabbah’s Blog. It is not really a good resource. All blogs are not the same.
Sorry, it seems to me that right now our conversation is going in a direction “when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” Thanks for you advice though.
Looks as if that was your mistake. You went to Sabbah’s Blog for a purpose it was ill suited to. You wanted to engage Sabbah, when in fact he doesn’t host a blog like Daily Kos or LGF, where members can interact and argue or debate. Mostly it is not usual, perhaps, rare, for blog hosts to get into discussions with members. Sabbah’s Blog is primarily a source of selected news about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Need more, go elsewhere. If your ulterior purpose was to confront Sabbah, it was a failure. Sabbah’s Blog is not Daily Kos or LGF or any of the smaller blogs, liberal or conservative. And I doubt if it would become something else just to satisfy your personal needs.
PS: By “personal needs,” I am referring to your survey research goals. Just in this regard, I really believe that you would need to consider variance between political blogs. They are often considerably different and would tend to elicit different kinds of responses. Charles Johnson, for example, reinforces highly angry and sarcastic responses from his members. On Daily Kos it varies because bloggers are of a different persuasion. Some permit member writings, others don’t. Smaller blogs like Sabbah’s tend to have a different purpose, as I said, news reporting and distribution, as through Palestinian Blogs RSS.
Good luck, in any case.
Thank you!
I am actually at the very preliminary stages of thinking about it. So, i this is very helpful! I think mapping out this discursive space is probably part of the task. But that is all for the future. Thanks!
As i said, i appreciate your feedback, but i don’t think the mistake is mine. I stumbled upon Haitham’s blog by accident while looking for something unrelated. I read a few posts and i felt like commenting. In the world i live in, people comment. They comment on websites of mainstream newspapers and more so they comment on blogs. An encouraging sign for that were the numerous comments already appearing on Haitham’s blog. So i commented.
The fact that there was an initial delay in publishing my comments and no response to my query about the issue i moved on and blogged about the thoughts it triggered. I probably wouldn’t have even noticed that if my comments were approved, but left without a reaction. This is a pretty common thing. What made me thinking about the whole issue was the fact that they were not approved at all. And even then, Haitham’s behavior was just a trigger not the focus of my post.
Haitham did not have to react. I didn’t ask for it in my post. But he did. He approved my comments and i thanked him for that both publicly and in a personal email. Then I asked him another question in an email. That question remained ignored for over two weeks (he claims he never received those, but that’s a different story). This triggered some other thoughts and i blogged about that too.
And again, Haitham did not have to react. I didn’t ask him to. He could ignore that just as he ignored my emails. But again, he reacted and in a rather violent and in my view unnecessarily extreme way. He banned me from commenting on his blog and deleted my earlier comments.
And now you are suggesting that it was all my mistake? Or more so i was there just for the mere enjoyment of confronting Haitham? As if i don’t have other things to do… seriously. I don’t think that i am to hold responsible for Haitham viewing every stranger who disagrees with him as a potential enemy.
Hi again Dima.
Believe me that when I said you may have made a mistake, it was only with regard to selecting out Sabbah’s Blog, because it may not have been the best one to study, and I gather that that is what you are trying to do. However, you seem to have made quite a fuss over your interactions with Sabbah on your blog.
This,
“Would the fact that I am Israeli make huge difference?”
Was this the last line of the private email you said that Haitham got pissed at? If not, then I haven’t read it. Also, when I went to Sabbah’s Blog, I did not know what report you had commented on. Could you tell me that?
As to question above, I think I can speak for Haitham in this knowlegable way from personal experience: if you are an Israeli peace activist like Steven Amsel (Desert Peace), Haitham may be your friend (and he is), or a peace activist like Uri Avnery (Gush Shalom), then your articles may appear on Sabbah’s Blog (and they have and do). So remove that idea from discourse.
Otherwise, to paraphrase you own blog writing, I am confused still as to what transpired. If your comments had some positive contribution to make to a report, I am certain it would have stood. If not, they may have been moderated out. Don’t feel slighted. It has happened to me as well. Sabbah’s Blog is as biased as others are in concern for their topic of interest. That is not really any different from the content of any political blog. However, a place like Facebook or MySpace, which are politically neutral and open to all lawful speech, should not be censoring or banning others because of political bias, just because some opponent wants to call that persuasion hateful and antiSemitic or whatever, and have you thrown off. If you are not aware of it, there are concerted efforts in the US to suppress criticism of Israel, which is already evident in the American press and is creeping into the blogosphere.
Fortunately, Haitham has not (yet) been censored or banned at FB. Otherwise he is not antiSemitic; he is just an advocate of the Palestinian cause, pure and simple. The posts he published from FB about himself were totally malicious and of the kind intended to suppress antiIsrael criticism and therefore intended to stop Haitham from operating there. Let me not express my knowledge of the extent of information suppression that goes on in the US and in the blogosphere.
So in sum, when I said you made a mistake, it was not my intention to fault you, but merely to suggest that Sabbah’s Blog was not the right place to pursue, what I thought was a project of some kind to assess hostility in the blogosphere concerning IP issues. You will find similar moderation of comments on Steve Amsel’s blog, and similar moderation (like deletion, and banning) on places like LGF. On the other hand, you might want to check out Right Wing News, run by John Hawkins, who has both right wingers and “moderate” liberals though not that many of the latter, on his blog. John will also ban and delete comments that are way out on the liberal side.
There is quite a difference otherwise between any of these political blogs including Sabbah’s Blog and Facebook or MySpace, and I do not believe they can be held to the same standards. Political blogs are biased; the other blogs profess a nonbiased agenda, merely providing a framework for people to meet. Your surprise is therefore a surprise given that you should appreciate this difference. Yes, so long as speech follows the rules set up, Haitham has a right to censor political statements on his blog, so does Booman, but FB and MySpace do not.
Otherwise I still remain confused as to what was said and the interaction between you and Haitham. Perhaps I just don’t have enough time to really get into it.
It is well within FaceBook and DailyKos’s rights to censor anything they please on their sites, it’s
their
property (intellectual and otherwise). They aren’t a government institution, and you don’t have to use their service if you don’t like it. So you can’t really cry “free speech” at a private corporation, they have no obligation to allow you to say anything at all.
Partly incorrect on the matter of who owns the content of a blog that is contributed by others. But you are theoretically correct, otherwise.
The different standards I refer to pertain to a blog’s stated purpose and goals. FB provides a framework for members to meet and presumably discuss what they please without censorship, not content, although it probably has the usual restrictions on comportment. Sabbah’s Blog, by contrast, is intended to provide content only.