Bartholomew's Notes

Conwebwatch’s Terry Krepel reviews the latest dispatches by WorldNetDaily‘s Jerusalem correspondent Aaron Klein. There are basically two aspects to Klein’s work: on the one hand, he interviews Palestinian militants and Islamists and “exposes” their views to the world; while on the other he visits honest Jews trying to get by in “Judea and Samaria”, while for some reason overlooking their equally sanguinary political connections:

An Aug. 3 article by Klein…features quotes taken from an Aug. 1 Jerusalem Post article about Shlomit Bar-Kochba, who moved back into the [Hebron] market with her husband and eight children.

…But Klein leaves out one important detail that the Post reported: Shlomit Bar-Kochba is the daughter of Moshe Zar, who purchased large amounts of land in the West Bank to develop Jewish settlements. Neither the Post nor Klein, however, tell the story of Moshe Zar’s terrorist past.

In the 1980s, Zar was a part of a “Jewish underground” group that targeted violence against Arabs in the West Bank and plotted to destroy the Dome of the Rock mosque in Jerusalem. Zar served a short prison term for his role in the bombings of the cars of three Arab West Bank mayors. Nablus Mayor Bassam Shaka lost both legs in the bombing. A July 22, 1985, Washington Post article noted that Zar and 14 others put on trial over the bombings were “vigorously supported by leaders of the Jewish settlement movement in the West Bank and by many Israeli members of parliament from the Likud bloc and other right-wing parties.”

And so on. Krepel also notes that Klein joined the chorus against the recent documentary God’s Warriors, which was supposedly biased for having mentioned the above incident, and for recalling the massacre perpetrated by Baruch Goldstein in 1994. This was unnecessary, according to Klein, because:

Goldstein’s actions were widely condemned by Israelis and worldwide Jewry. The organization he was a part of was outlawed in Israel.

And which organisation would that be? Klein doesn’t burden us with that information, but it was none other than the far-right Kach movement, which was made illegal along with an off-shoot, Kahane Chai. The funny thing is, though, that a number of Klein’s Israeli contacts are linked to these groups – but he rarely, if ever, feels the need to mention these affiliations, let alone note their illegality. In fact, their illegality slips his mind again just today, in a piece where he mentions a Palestinian who undertook a

shooting attack in northern Samaria in December 2000 that killed Benyamin Kahane, leader of the nationalist Kahane Chai organization.

Meanwhile, Klein’s interviews with Islamists provide fodder for his debut book, Schmoozing With Terrorists: From Hollywood to the Holy Land, Jihadists Reveal Their Global Plans–to a Jew! Blog Sadly No! has some details.

My own forays into Klein’s writing can be seen here, here, here, and here.

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