Thursday, October 18, 2012

Franklin Lamb, again

A reader from Sweden sent me this:  "regarding this blog post:


"According to the Central Bureau of Statistics (which is subordinate to the Prime Minister’s Office ), of the 12 million residents living under Israeli rule, the number of Jews is just under 5.9 million (as of April 25 ). Twelve million minus 5.9 million Jews equals 6.1 million non-Jews. In other words, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, there is a pretty Jewish state as far as its laws and customs, but the reality is not so democratic. Foreign sources report that Jews had already become a minority in the area of the greater Land of Israel several years ago. From now on, it is an official statistic."

I don't know if you saw that, but that the original Ha'aretz article (now only available via subscription or Google cache) also contained the following sarcastic paragraph:

"The term "apartheid" features prominently in an article in the on-line magazine Foreign Policy Journal on a new "confidential report" prepared by 16 American intelligence agencies. Franklin Lamb reported from Beirut to the Foreign Policy Journal on the "confidential report, which he claims compares Israel to the apartheid regime in South Africa. The document, he says, warns that the Arab Spring and the Muslim awakening will encourage 1.2 billion Muslims to fight against what they refer to as "the immoral European occupation of Palestine." Lamb argues that the report accuses Israel of intervening in internal American affairs via 60 organizations and some 7,500 administration officials. The report, Lamb says, advises the United States to leave Israel alone as its existence sabotages the American interest in moving closer to the Arab world and the Iranian people. A quick Google search reveals interesting details about Lamb; you can find him in friendly pose with the arch-terrorist Samir Kuntar. His profile states that he is a board member of the Sabra-Shatila Foundation, a volunteer with the Palestinian Civil Rights Campaign, a regular guest on talk shows of Hezbollah's Al-Manar station and a contributing writer to the Electronic Intifada site. It is hard to believe that Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen bothered to scrutinize the scoop maker. Otherwise even an ardent supporter of the Netanyahu government like her would not have waved Lamb's above-mentioned article in the meetings she is having with Florida Jewish communities as convincing proof that Hussein Obama is an enemy of Israel."
This is in reference to the Franklin Lamb report you mocked on your site the other day:
So we've now gone full circle: the only people who rely on the clumsy anti-Semitic propaganda of Franklin Lamb are the Islamist fanatics at al-Manar and the anti-Muslim far-right of the Republican party. They deserve each other.
lleana Ros-Lehtinen is an interesting figure, by the way. Not only is she among the most extreme anti-Palestinian voices in the Republican party, but she combines that with strong support for the Moroccan occupation of Western Sahara, and the Church of Scientology. Sound judgment all the way."