Cecilie Surasky of Muzzlewatch (Jewish Voice for Peace) tagged this report AIPAC. It is about the sweeping censorship about events in Israel-Palestine that has overtaken the so-called “progressive” left wing blogs in America like Daily Kos, Huffington Post, MyDD, and others (including Democratic Underground, and wavering blogs like My Left Wing).
Although Sarasky’s title is, DailyKos (and others) get free trip to Israel, but won’t touch Israel-Palestine, Richard Silverstein probably summed it up best in his article, Daily Kos AWOL on the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.
Here’s what Cecile Sarasky has to say,
Back in April, we were very upset to learn that the Israeli Foreign Ministry was organizing an all-expenses-paid trip to Israel for progressive American leaders and bloggers, led by the director of the National Jewish Democratic Council. (See the video above for folks you’ll recognize from outfits like HuffingtonPost, DailyKos, MyDD, and MoveOn. Let us know if you recognize any progressive Israeli leaders like folks from Rabbis for Human Rights, New Profile, ICAHD, or Tayush or… ).
Apparently, this was the first trip to Israel for the bloggers. Participants went to Sderot to see the devastation wrought by Qassam rockets, but needless to say, the group didn’t bother to head to the West Bank or Gaza beyond a meeting in Ramallah with the PA’s chief negotiator.
We wrote to some bloggers to urge that them to visit the Palestinian Occupied Territories, but got no response. At the time, most were keeping their names secret. (We think it was shame-how many of these folks actually wrote about the propaganda educational trip they were on? The few who did deserve kudos for their transparency. )
Israel, AIPAC and private philanthropists have long funded free trips to Israel as a way to shore up support for Israel’s so-called “war on terror”. What was so shocking was the ease with which left bloggers and leaders allowed themselves to be purchased with the promise of a free trip. (There’s no doubt about the objective of the trip.)
Now, Richard Silverstein at Tikun Olam points out, that the issue has been deliberately cleansed from one of the internet’s most influential liberal blogs.
Silverstein reports a recent interaction with a blogger who apparently has some sort of official capacity at DailyKos beyond a Diarist:
I introduced myself to the visiting blogger as a local political blogger who writes about U.S.-Israel relations and the presidential election. I asked her whether her blog (remember, I didn’t at the time know it was DK) ever covered the foreign policy implications of the Israeli-Arab conflict.
She shook her head sagely and said: “No.” I asked her why. “Because there’s just no upside in it for us. Too much dissension and disagreement.”
Several years ago, I heard pretty much the exact quote from the station manager of an NPR affiliate. The atmosphere is so bad that there’s no shame in saying it openly.
In fact, a cursory search in DailyKos indicates that debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is nearly invisible. Markos himself gives some indication of why they shy away from the issue:
When I get an email with the word “zionist” on it, how come it’s ALWAYS some crazy, anti-semitic conspiracy rant
While I sympathize with the reality that this issue brings out the extremists on all sides, there’s simply no excuse for excising the topic nearly altogether -especially when they’re accepting free trips to Israel. Trips, lets face it, which are no more likely to be even-handed than free trips offered by Fatah or Hamas.
DailyKos and the other bloggers should all be transparent about the trips, and their policies on covering the issue, but they’re not.
To state the obvious, this is not a sideshow issue here. We’re talking about everything from the presidential race and efforts to derail Obama, and possible war with Iran, to the meaning of Sarah Palin’s Christian right ascendancy and preventing a future 9/11. With everyone more than happy to just back down and avoid the issue altogether, and with left bloggers hiding in plain view, no wonder we’re in the mess we’re in.
The truth of the matter is that while Kos and other left wing blog owners now suck up to AIPAC influenced censoring, and even use the anti-Semitism charge to explain the absence of IP discussion on their sites, half of the critics of Israel’s ethnic cleansing, colonialism, and brutal behavior toward the Palestinians are themselves Jewish. Even Cecile Sarasky at one time cross-posted at Daily Kos. No more.
There is little doubt that AIPAC has had a hand in the censorship that now prevails on left wing blogs, which merely repeats the censorship seen in the mainstream media in the US. Keeping Americans including liberal Democrats ignorant and even deluded about what is going on in Israel-Palestine seems to be its purpose.
Cecile Sarasky is correct in her estimate that this is a right wing AIPAC/Likud effort and there is no doubt who these left wing blogs are now working for.
Bravo shergald.
“We can’t expect things to change if we close our eyes and seal our lips to evil. Evil is strengthened by silence.”
The Independent, UK and Counterpunch Mag online are among the few giving voice to Palestinian issues:
Interesting stuff, idredit. And thanks, but I’m still just a publisher.
would be one that starts from one side of the geography (say, farthest west point) and winds to the other corner of the map, utilizing googlemaps to tag where each photograph is taken. Let it show Palestinian suffering and Israeli suffering. ALL of it is too much suffering.
How sad, that we are generally only shown (in mainstream media) the Israeli suffering.
Interesting diary, shergald. A few quibbles from me (but you know to expect that):
– Silverstein mentions a blogger from dKos, but does not clarify who she is.
So I can’t tell whether she is a regular diarist (who may write frequent diaries about Burner and therefore be familiar to her) or whether she is a frontpager (and therefore qualified to speak on behalf of the site). In the comments, he does clarify that regular users (theoretically) can write on any topic they want and a few do write on I/P but that it is the Frontpagers who avoid I/P.
After the way Juan Cole’s Middle East panel from the ’07 convention was treated (the room was too small to accommodate the audience who wanted to attend, the questions were cut short before the end of the alloted time, a frontpager got the taping ended half-way through, and the videotape of the event was never put on youtube along with other panels), I’m not surprised that there was nothing in ’08.
– Silverstein has more familiarity with the way things work at Daily Kos than Surasky.
It may not be Surasky’s intent, but her post comes across as referring to a recent cleansing rather than just the latest in a long history of I/P “neglect” (to say the least) at Daily Kos.
You also write as though this treatment of I/P is some recent change in the major Progressive blogs. It may be the case that when Billmon was a front pager at dKos, there was some criticism of Israel on the front page. And Meteor Blades has written some criticism of Israel elsewhere at dKos, not in his front page posts. But since I began posting at Daily Kos in January of 2005, the only criticism of Israel I have seen on the frontpage has been in a rare diary that has made the rec list.
I don’t see that as proof of “who these left wing blogs are now working for.” I think it’s more of a case of enforcing the Democratic Party’s status quo on a few explosive issues while trying to tinker with a little change on the edges.
– As long as I’m bringing up how long I’ve been at dKos, the attitudes towards AIPAC among Kogs have shifted since 2005. In 2005, it was common for Defenders of Israel to speak highly of AIPAC and even attack anyone who criticized it as anti-Semitic. It was frequently mentioned that, since groups as diverse as ZOA and APN sit on AIPAC’s advisory board, AIPAC represents the views of the vast majority of American Jews. Only a few hardliners try to pull that anymore and when they do, they get no support. The shift has been slow, facilitated by events like the I/L conflict, Finkelstein’s tenure battle, the smearing of Jimmy Carter, the founding of JStreet and exposes of AIPAC like Mearsheimer and Walt’s Israel Lobby and Michael Massing’s the Storm over the Israel Lobby.
I/P diaries have been sparser at dKos in recent months, partly because of the focus on the upcoming election. So keep your socks on (and don’t go sewing little faces on them).
I appreciate your view Rusty, even though at this moment I must agree entirely with Richard Silverstein: there is a silence on DKos that has not been seen before and that silence erupted long before this culmination of the presidential election.
I wrote diaries about the purges engineered by Hunter and company (Kos, friend MBNYC, and others) and although some proPalestinians survived (Heathlander, litho, Jon the antiZionist Jew), others who came up were similarly bounced from the blog. As for the survivors, Heathlander occasionally posts, litho rarely, and Jon practically not at all. There is a silence on DKos as Silverstein contends, and it has nothing to do with the election. It predated it, in fact. You can argue that this slimming down was intentional but its effect is obvious:
CENSORSHIP.
In turn, I have seen diaries posted on Dkos which were nothing more than right wing propaganda intended to justify the ethnic cleansing and colonialism that continues in the Palestinian territories.
So let us agree to disagree on this point. There is no longer commentary about the Palestinian plight on DKos and that is unlikely to change after the elections.
For as long as I’ve been at dKos, there have been diaries “which were nothing more than right wing propaganda intended to justify the ethnic cleansing and colonialism that continues in the Palestinian territories.” I haven’t noticed more of them than usual. What I have noticed is users who are critics of Israel writing diaries and comments about the upcoming election more than talking about Palestine. Heathlander and a few other familiar users still write diaries critical of Israel, but as you have noted, much less frequently in recent months.
I believe that there is a double standard, but it hasn’t quashed criticism entirely. We’ll have to agree to disagree about the prospects after November.
On a different note, have you seen this recent article by Christopher Ketcham, Trojan Horse? Ketcham wrote an excellent article quite a while back about the Israeli Art Students and Cheering Movers and how coverage of the story was quashed.
I too have noticed “more of them,” along with a relative absence of objective critique. But it is unclear to me why the primaries would diminish IP productivity as opposed to say, the postprimary period. Nonetheless, I hope that you are correct.
I did not notice that article and will take a look. Thanks.
BTW, yesterday, Kagro X wrote his first diary with an Israel tag since returning from the free trip. It was about the little Israel flag in Palin’s office. If we get anything from the frontpagers remotely connected to Israel before the election, it’s likely to be along the “Obama/Biden are better for Israel than McCain/Palin” meme (certainly nothing about Palestinians). Kos frontpaged the Sarah Silverman ad a couple of days ago (which includes among its talking points for Jewish grandkids to use on their grandparents in Florida that Obama is better for Israel).
The Ketcham article that I was trying to remember about the Israeli Art Students was from last March in Counterpunch. It provides good background for his current article.
I saw the Silverman ad and it made the point, Obama is better for Israel, among other things. That is fine because I don’t believe that bringing the Palestinian question into the election at this time would likely be productive.
PS: The Ketchum article you cited was about 9/11. I’ll search for it.
PS: The representative from DKos who attended the invitation to visit Israel was named, but at this time I am unable to come up with it.
You may have noted that Jerome Armstrong, who collaborated with Kos on a book, was in attendance in Israel (video). He is of course the owner of MyDD. Of interest to me, Armstrong recently banned me from MyDD, allegedly (according to Todd Beeton, frontpager) for posting a diary on the “quiet ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem,” which was based on an article by Jonathan Cook, the British journalist who lives in Nazareth, Israel. Armstrong refused to reply to my emails concerning it.
Sorry to hear you were banned from MyDD, shergald. Jonathan Cook is an excellent source. Do you have a link to the diary? I have never participated at MyDD. What is your estimate of the site?
Well, I wasn’t able to see much through your page at MyDD (either because they erased everything from it or you have to be signed in to see user pages). I was able to find your old diaries cached through google. I believe this was your last diary. demwords seems to be using tactics and strategies on you that have been popular with moon/noom elsewhere:
Why do you think that the Cook diary from a month prior was your reason for getting banned there? I didn’t see anything unusual for your diaries or comments that would draw admins’ attention.
Sorry, I must have found the wrong Cook diary. I see you posted this one here in August; so you must have been referring to the MyDD version of it.
I am responding to all of your previous comments here.
My last diary was the Jonathan Cook article about the “quiet ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem.” However, I really don’t think it was used as anything more than an excuse. My feeling is that administration may have been bombarded with complaining emails, from the likes of people like Canadiangirl, who is a frequent diarist on the recommended list, but who never did more than complain of the diaries. For the most part, there was no much participation in them except from a few of the right wing, like the one you quoted above. In spite of these individuals, if my diaries never received much participation, they were often featured on the diary rescue.
No, I believe that there was just a change in policy, a reversal, that Armstrong dictated. Your speculation on his reasons is as good as mine. It likely haed nothing to do with Jonathan Cook’s article, even though that is what Tod Beeton said by email. Armstrong would not respond. He was a participant in the Israel conference for left wing blogs. That’s all I know.
I would assume that the translation for no upside includes the negative impact on advertising revenues that a front page I/P flamewar would potentially have.
I have never seen an IP diary on the front page that could have impacted the blog’s revenues. In fact, most of the IP diaries on MyDD were poorly attended to, several supporters and a few persistent diary hijackers who made all sorts of accusations, but who never responded to the content of the diary. They wanted censorship, and that is apparently what Armstrong gave them.
I am now wondering why so many prominent frontpagers left MyDD a year or so ago.
shergald, thank you for continuing to write about i/p issues here. The way you and other pro-palestinian diarists were/are treated at dkos is shameful and does amount to censorship.
but
Silverstein’s argument is a well-known and still pointless one. Plenty of people demand that dkos or the other “big boy blogs” pay more attention to their favorite issue, and they have always accomplished nothing. Markos will, and should, run his site the way he damn well pleases.
fwiw, the unidentified kossack is most likely front-pager “mcjoan”, who often blogs about the Darcy Burner campaign. I COMPLETELY agree with her on this point:
as we should all know by now, dkos is NOT a “progressive” or “left wing” blog, it’s a capital-D Democratic blog. When you’re trying to win an election, it doesn’t take a genius to see that you talk about the issues that Democrats agree about, and downplay the ones we don’t, and there is no issue that is more divisive than Israel/Palestine.
There are many issues that Democrats do not agree on but I have not seen members banned because of it. E.g., immigration debates got very heated when it was on the frontpage of newspapers. Issue diaries were frequent and did not necessarily have anything to do with electing Democrats. And DKos does see itself as supporting the alternative Democratic politic, the one that is not DLC, and that politic is defined by issues not candidates except indirectly.
By the same token, the banning of IP participants was one-sided and predominantly affected the proPalestinian crowd, in spite of the fact that there is widespread support for Palestinian freedom and self-determination on DKos, and that most of the flaming was intentionally induced by right wing Zionist supporters, mostly likely Megaphone responders, who frequently wrote the administration complaining. There were no IP stories ever on the frontpage, rarely did an IP diary make the recommended list, and the total number of these diaries constituted less than one percent of the total daily output of diaries on DKos.
Thus, DKos is presently engaging in (relative) censorship of the IP topic. Yes, and it is his blog and he can do what he likes with it, and one of the things he is doing is censoring IP.