July 14, 2009

Liberal Tel Avivians?

Max Blumenthal interviewed some rather nasty young American-Israelis in Jerusalem a few weeks ago and posted the resulting video on Youtube where the zionist guardians of the permissible promptly removed it. He then posted it to his own site but it has disappeared from there too.

Well anyway the original "feeling the hate in Jerusalem" was criticised in some zionist circles as being contrived or at least not representative of mainstream Israeli opinion. See this from Mondoweiss:
Benjamin Hartman, a young correspondent for Ha’aretz who had moved to Israel from his hometown of Austin, Texas, wrote that my video was “circling the internet at a critical velocity on a mission to humiliate the Jewish people.” Hartman concluded that I was “speaking to the wrong crowd at the wrong time of night,” a meme that would comprise the key talking point for bloggers and organized Jewish groups (including the Israeli chapter of Democrats Abroad) seeking to discredit and ultimately suppress the video.

Hartman then offered me advice on where to find the right crowd, and at which time of night they might be on their best behavior:

“I hope Blumenthal films his next segment in Tel Aviv, though the results would probably be far less salacious. On a balcony in Florentin, he would ask the drum circle what they think of Obama and through the purple haze would hear only praise for the president, before being forced to listen to a 30-minute account of a recent trip to Nepal.”

Unbeknownst to Hartman, who only attempted to interview me days after publishing his review and then published a piece questioning whether I had been “fueling anti-Semitism,” I had already filmed my next segment in Tel Aviv. (And I had already spent an evening, sans camera, with an Israeli hippie on a balcony in Florentin, though he told me through the purple haze that the Palestinian people do not exist and should be immediately transferred to Jordan).

Now that I have released my footage from Tel Aviv, I wonder what Hartman and other, even more insecure critics of my first “Feeling the Hate” video will do to ensure that the sequel does not “humiliate the Jewish people.” Will they rely on the same old hasbara?

Which "same old hasbara"? lying? or banning?

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