Max Blumenthal, a leftist putative “investigative journalist and documentary filmmaker”, has recently edited and published a hit-piece video entitled “Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem”.
Blumenthal apparently contradicts himself in his description of the purpose of the video: He first claims it was taken on the “eve” of President Obama’s Cairo speech, but then he goes on claim he’s filming their reaction to the speech. I’ve watched the video, and it’s seems clear to me that the former is true; i.e., the people interviewed made no reference whatsoever to the content of the Cairo speech.
The video has been taken down by The Huffington Post and YouTube as well as by a video site named “vimeo” that Blumenthal himself uploaded it to and linked to on his own site. Much of it can still be found at the moment I’m posting this here
A complete version may be available elsewhere, but I did not perform an extensive search for it, so I’m afraid I can’t direct you to a location where it can still be seen in its entirety. A discussion of whether such censorship-by-removals is justified or not may be worthwhile, but I do not wish to include that discussion regarding the censorship aspect in this thread please! I would be surprised to find much, if any, support for such censorship here at the Straight Dope, but in any case, please start your own thread if you wish to debate that issue. Thank you.
If by the time you read this even that fragment has been taken down, I will summarize the full-length video’s contents: Blumenthal and an associate named Joseph Dana took to the streets of Jerusalem with a small video crew over an unspecified number of nights and “interviewed” an unspecified number of mostly drunk young people with improbably Midwestern American accents for an Israeli city. Just as improbably, every one of them voiced considerable hatred toward President Obama and excoriated him with ignorant, hateful racist epithets.
To me, it’s quite evident that Blumenthal and Dana deliberately sought to attack and humiliate most or all Jews and especially Israelis as stupid, vicious, hate-fueled bigots in order to further the pair’s own political agenda. I’m a lefty (American) myself, and like many on my side of the political spectrum, I’m critical of certain Israeli policies such as squatting in and expanding the provocative settlements. But I hold that publishing pieces such as the grotesquely over-the-top “Feeling The Hate In Jerusalem” hit job are only going to provide justification for marginalizing and even mocking of genuinely thoughtful liberal criticisms of various overly aggressive policies of the Israeli Right.
I think it’s incredibly foolish and self-defeating to provide such low-hanging fruit to Right-wing critics on the left. What are your views?
