Lobby Watch 15 March 2012
Extreme anti-Palestinian group NGO Monitor is disrespecting the late US Civil Rights Leader Martin Luther King Jr. and perpetrating a fraud by disseminating a fake quote in an attempt to smear people as anti-Semites.
NGO Monitor was incensed by a statement signed by more than 20 Palestinian writers and activists disavowing anti-Semitism and bigotry of any kind and so NGO Monitor tweeted:
(We have and will post copies of these tweets in case NGO Monitor deletes the originals that are embedded here)The second tweet links to a notorious hoax “Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend” purportedly written by King in which the civil rights leader states that any criticism of Zionism is by definition anti-Semitic.
There’s only one problem: the letter is a fake, as The Electronic Intifada reported as far back as 2004.
But don’t want to believe The Electronic Intifada? You don’t have to. Even rabidly anti-Palestinian “media watch” group CAMERA has debunked the fake King letter.
Recently Ben White exposed NGO Monitor’s use of a misleading translation in an attempt to smear Palestinian human rights defender Raji Sourani.
And in 2009, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency accused NGO Monitor of “Playing fast and loose with the facts.”
The use of fabricated quotes is just another example of NGO Monitor’s inattention to, indeed contempt for, facts, in its zeal to smear anyone it defines as an enemy.
Racist ties
Purporting to be a “transparency” watchdog, NGO Monitor is a shadowy organization that is secretive about its funding sources. However some of its prominent funders are known. NGO Monitor received $50,000 from the Helen Diller Family Foundation, which funds among other things Latma TV’s vile depictions of Africans as monkeys and videos of Israeli actors in blackface mocking African refugees, and a video disseminating a libel that Muslim men were responsible for a “rape epidemic” in Norway.
Despite repeated requests, NGO Monitor, which is quick to accuse others of “bigotry,” refuses to condemn its donor’s support for such racist propaganda.
Comments
use of term "anti-Semite"
Permalink david hersch replied on
Conventional use of this term should be challenged. If someone means "anti-Jewish", say it. The etymology of "Semite", means "of Middle East origin". No ethnic group should monopolize a term/concept for its political advantage.
Rationalization
Permalink laya replied on
"Rationalization of the necessity for a Jewish majority in Israel requires the Arabs to be pictured darkly, bent on annihilation of the Jews, and as culturally incapable of forming democratic pluralistic systems." Sharif S. Elmusa
Huffington Post does it too
Permalink Sonja replied on
November 2011:
"There is a tremendous effort to deny that Martin Luther King ever said these words: "When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You're talking anti-Semitism."
Unfortunately, he did. He said them at a dinner party in Cambridge (as quoted by Seymour Martin Lipset in Encounter magazine, December 1969, p. 24)"
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/d...
NGO Monitor, in the tweet
Permalink eGuard replied on
NGO Monitor, in the tweet reproduced here, linked to the "Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend", which is a fraud.
The fact that MLK Jr. said
Permalink Chuck Johnson replied on
The fact that MLK Jr. said this at a dinner party is different than re-publishing a letter that is a proven fake. Unfortunately, Dr. King isn't alive to quiz about his current feelings about the struggle for Palestinian rights. Citing this one statement as the basis by which all activists should tailor their speech is rather flimsy. I don't believe that Dr. King would approve of the apartheid government being practiced by Israel today, but - as previously noted - he's not here to ask.
Martin Luther King- Zionist. More clear evidence.
Permalink Larry Stillman replied on
There is no question that the King letter was fake and NGO Monitor are wrong to try to smear the signatories to the letter against Atzmon for being anti-Semites. Ali Abunimah speaks of NGO Monitor 'disrespecting.' MLK However, King clearly held a position on the issue--including the state of Israeli-- that you would not agree with, and that is a fact of life. A very clear example was this.
"The response of some of the so-called young militants does not represent the position of the vast majority of Negroes. There are some who are color-consumed and they see a kind of mystique in blackness or in being colored, and anything non-colored is condemned. We do not follow that course.... Peace for Israel means security, and we must stand with all our might to protect her right to exist, its territorial integrity and the right to use whatever sea lanes it needs. Israel is one of the great outposts of democracy in the world, and a marvelous example of what can be done, how desert land can be transformed into an oasis of brotherhood and democracy. Peace for Israel means security, and that security must be a reality.”l
This is quoting from an article of the house journal of Conservative Judaism and JTS--the Jewish Theological Seminary, in which there is an extensive interview with MLK. You can see the article @ http://www.rabbinicalassembly...., and the first link there to a PDF of the conversation with MLK in the Spring 1968 issue of the journal. The quote comes from p. 12. He was a great man, but a man of his time, with many flaws, and as such, he was no specialist or expert on the Palestine question. I don't think you can accuse a journal of 1968 of this type engaging in fakery.
You can't predict what he would have said a few years later, so he can't be used as an anti-Zionist hero.I don't agree with that position btw,. He was a man of his time, and low awareness of the tragedy for Palestinians was not just among white people.
A great shame
Permalink tayt replied on
some people are trying hard to "re-write history" . do you really want your grand children to read in books ( edited by zionists) that martin luther king was a violent anti-semitic ? NO ! NOT ME ! the israeli propaganda is POURING int the net as we speak, calling people antisemite, bashing great thinkers like mr martin king who was a pacifist, a hard working man . i just commented the blog of a rabbi wo said more or less that people praise MLK but what they don't know is that he had a short brutal life, was an insiduous jew hater . you'll see if we let them do, in 50 years our children will be spitting on MLK and others that gave their life, fought against this kind of injustice !