#Max Blumenthal

[theculturedmarxist]

The Grayzone’s publication of an embarrassing phone call with a National Endowment for Democracy VP triggered an institution-wide meltdown at the US government’s regime change laboratory. Following the call, the group’s founding president privately admitted the “fiasco” exposed major “problems beneath the polished surface.”

Now, leaked emails obtained by The Grayzone reveal the organization has since descended into chaos, with two senior officials fired due to the fiasco, and remaining staff engaged in civil war between the neocon old guard and the “woke” new generation hired to replace them.

– Senior NED management is currently in complete disarray, with two high-ranking staffers fired due to their handling of The Grayzone’s phone call, and founding president Carl Gershman isolated and marginalized by those who took his place.

– What began as a bitter dispute over the decision to engage with The Grayzone ultimately devolved into a full-fledged culture war that pitted the group’s neoconservative founders against its more liberal recent hires, derided by the neocon old guard as “woke flakes” obsessed with “microaggressions” and compulsory DEI trainings.

– One of the fired NED staffers, neocon Michael Allen, accused his progressive boss of a “clear campaign of harassment, marginalization and victimization,” and fretted over her allowing NED staff to attend pro-Palestine rallies. He was so incensed by his dismissal that he threatened to reveal the details of his firing to the “many mailing lists of key decision-makers and opinion-formers that I have built and retained over the years” if he did not receive a substantial settlement.

[i-am-aprl]

American author Max Blumenthal explains why Zionists want you to believe it all started on October 7

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

BY: GILEAD INI

Before looking at specific examples of disinformation by the “critics,” as the Times and NPR calls them, we should address a few broader points.

Despite evidence of rape, those defending Hamas from charges of sexual violence point to a lack of forensic evidence — the kind that might be revealed at the denouement of a television crime show. Indeed, Israel’s frontier with Gaza on and after Oct 7 was less untouched crime scene and more battlefield and disaster zone.

But this is neither exonerating nor unusual. “There is very much what’s known as the CSI effect, where there is a perception that without forensic evidence or DNA, then you don’t have a case,” an expert on sexual violence in conflict zones told NPR. “And that’s just patently not true.”

In this case, the full CSI treatment was impracticable. “As is common in war, collection of physical evidence was hindered by ongoing combat and a large, chaotic crime scene,” NPR reported.

With limited resources and such a large-scale attack, compromises were necessary, journalist Carrie Keller-Lynn explained. “Instead of going through CSI, which would make it possible to produce evidence of crimes, the bodies are being processed through the disaster victim identification (DVI) track, as is common for mass casualty events,” she reported. Or as the UN mission put it, there was a “prioritization of rescue operations and the recovery, identification, and burial of the deceased in accordance with religious practices, over the collection of forensic evidence.” (The mission noted additional factors, too, that hindered the collection of forensic examination. See paragraph 46 of its report.)

The deniers had also pointed to lack of testimony by victims — a puzzling defense in the context of this story, where survivors describe women raped then murdered; where recovery workers noted naked and bound corpses; and where released hostages say those still in captivity had said they were sexually assaulted. Which category of those victims, exactly, would the deniers expect to have heard from? (When a hostage did eventually speak out about being sexually assaulted, the self-appointed investigators were not particularly interested, or worse, dismissed her account.)

None of this means every testimony is beyond reproach. Just as the record of 9/11 was contaminated by multiple false accounts and fake survivors, likewise after 10/7 false accounts were reported by pretenders, and some unfounded atrocity charges were shared, believed, and repeated. The “critics” did not miss the opportunity to capitalize on these inaccurate accounts in order to push the idea, through innuendo or explicit denial, that every witness of rape and every first responder account of sexually abused bodies are fake.

The Critics

NPR’s story about “critics” of a New York Times piece on sexual violence repeatedly cites The Intercept.

Once of many acknowledgements by The Intercept that its claims come from the further fringes.

And across The Intercept’s incessant efforts to discredit those shining a light on Palestinian sexual violence, its reporters cite Mondoweiss, Ali Abunimah of Electronic Intifada, and Max Blumenthal of Grayzone.

It is an echo chamber of Hamas apologia — invariably, one story links to identical accusations by the others, which link back to similar pieces by the rest. The common theme, other then denial, is the extremism of its participants.

Consider, most relevantly, their response to the Oct 7 massacre:

A writer for the Intercept, at least, grants that the attack was “horrifying” — though this was in a post whose argument was that we shouldn’t view it as horrifying.

Others are less subtle. Denier Ali Abunimah, for example, was self-evidently delighted by the slaughter of civilians in Israel. He not only defended the attack, calling it “just”; not only insisted we shouldn’t feel bad about it (this just minutes after he posted video of elderly female hostage paraded and taunted on video); but also viciously attacked those — including critics of Israel — who would dare share any sympathy for the victims of the mass slaughter of Jews.

Mondoweiss summarized the deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust with an announcement that “Gazans have broken out of their open air prison imposed by Israel and launched an elaborate surprise attack on their occupier,” while pooh-poohing the idea that Hamas had started a war. As the extent of the atrocities became apparent, Mondoweiss’s defenses of the assault grew more emphatic. On Oct. 8, its culture editor Muhammed El-Kurd insisted the attack was a cause for “celebration.” On Oct. 9, it published a piece insisting we “must shout our support for the resistance from our rooftops.”

Max Blumenthal minimized Hamas’s slaughter as ”guerrilla bands bursting out of a besieged ghetto with homemade weapons.” In response to a Twitter post noting that at its attack on a music festival Hamas “began shooting those in attendance,” Blumenthal mocked the victims and justified their slaughter.

The motivation for their leap to action at the first accusation of rape, then, is as simple as it seems: It is born of sympathy for Hamas.

[good-old-gossip]

Max Blumenthal on Mainstream Media and Industrial Scale Slaughter of Children in Gaza

[litafficionado]

Killing Gaza(2018) dir. Max Blumenthal, Dan Cohen

[hero-israel]

I’m a Black-American Jew (parents were converts :)) and I agree with the Afro-Indigenous anon A LOT bc the same things they do to Indigenous Americans they do to African Americans and Afro-Palestinians. No sense of allyship whatsoever and when you bring up the horrible treatment of Black Palestinians (who aren’t all just descendants of enslaved Africans kind you, despite what many non Black Palis say, but even if they were all descendants of enslaved Africans that doesn’t change the fact they’re still Palestinians) they go silent and never have anything to say but are constantly comparing themselves to Black people (and pretending we have some sort of privilege over them as if our issues are continuously ignored) and crying for our support. AntiBlackness exists in the Jewish/Israeli world too but like the other anon said, this isn’t THAG big of a problem for me to disconnect myself for it. Israel has done a lot for Black Jews throughout its existence and Black Jews have always existed in the community and have been mostly accepted throughout. It’s never been like Black Jews have been completely ostracized and excluded from Jewishness.

I really appreciate the insights, thank you. A few additional angles on this:

Rabbi Susan Talve got up on stage in front of the presidents of both the U.S. and Israel and supported Black Lives Matter - she would also be arrested for her support - and yet lefty activists tried to read her out of the movement as a "pro-apartheid Zio"

Renowned pro-Palestine activists Max Blumenthal, Rania Khalek, and Steven Salaita just can't stop derailing conversations about anti-blackness and police brutality because ACKSHYUALLY Palestine is so much worse - with Salaita even using some of his typically antisemitic conspiracy lingo to now try to silence African-American activists

[because--palestine]

Max Blumenthal & Miko Peled : Where is the War in Gaza Going?

I have said it before and I say it again: Those two guys. Are. Just. Outstanding.

It's the first time that I see them together in the same room, and they animated here such a thrillingly rich debate. When I listen to this kind of admirable people I can only think of Mahmoud Darwich's lines:

"On this earth there is

Something worth living for"

And there absolutely is. It's Humanity.

[theculturedmarxist]

[workersolidarity]

🇵🇸🇮🇱🇺🇸 THE GRAYZONE'S WEEKLY LIVESTREAM: COVERING ISRAEL'S SIEGE AND WAR CRIMES AGAINST PALESTINIANS LIVING IN GAZA

@TheGrayzone

@WorkerSolidarityNews

[cinemafromcinema]

The term “The End of History” is mostly associated with Francis Fukuyama. In 1992 he wrote a book and argued that with the ascendancy of Western liberal democracy—which occurred after the Cold War (1945–1991) and the dissolution of the Soviet Union (1991)—humanity has reached "not just ... the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: That is, the end-point of mankind's ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government." (Wikipedia) Liberal Democracy tried to take out God from the equation and right now, Palestinians are helping people all around the world to understand “If there is no God, all is permitted” (Fyodor Dostoevsky). And The Islamic Republic of Iran is showing the world the only solution and the true end of history: “Before this We wrote in the Psalms, after the Message (given to Moses): My servants the righteous, shall inherit the earth." (Quran, chapter The Prophets, translated by Yusufali). By God's power and strength, The Resistance will continue.

[bakrishna]

[thisisabernieblog]

[because--palestine]

October 7 : The Ultimate Mask Off Moment - Max Blumenthal at UMass

Max Blumenthal spoke on May 8, 2024 at UMass-Amherst hours after state police brutally repressed an encampment of students protesting the US-backed genocide in Gaza. There, he addressed the Palestine solidarity uprising on campuses across the country, and explains how the elite reaction triggered by October 7 has exposed Israeli influence over the major American institutions, from academia to Congress to local law enforcement agencies.

[immaculatasknight]

Speaking truth to power