Aaron Klein Complains after being Criticised for Whitewashing Israeli Far-Right

A couple of weeks ago, Terry Krepel wrote a piece on WorldNetDaily‘s Aaron Klein for the Huffington Post, noting Klein’s skewed reporting on the far-right in Israel:

Klein has long been associated with far-right elements in Israel. One of his earliest acts as a WorldNetDaily reporter was to portray an AWOL Israeli soldier, Eden Natan-Zada, who had — unprovoked — shot and killed four Arabs on a bus in Gaza, as a victim because Palestinians who witnessed the cold-blooded shootings killed him before authorities could step in. Klein declared that the Natan-Zada was “murdered” by a “mob of Palestinians”; Klein never described the soldier’s victims has having been “murdered.”

…Another beneficiary of Klein’s whitewashing is Yekutel Ben Yaacov, whom Klein benignly described in a 2006 WND article only as a “northern Samaria resident.” In fact, he has another identity: Mike Guzovsky, a one-time leader of Kahane Chai. Klein even featured “Mike Guzofsky” (spelling is a bit fungible in Israel, apparently) in an August 2004 article that attempted to show that people like Guzofsky whom Israeli officials were portraying as “dangerous Jewish extremists” were just regular Joes and not prone to violence, and that “Jewish terrorism … is considered extremely rare.” Klein made no attempt to explain that Guzofsky and Ben Yaacov are one in the same.

…Another favorite extremist source for Klein is David Ha’ivri, whom he portrayed in a December 2008 article only as a West Bank settler. But again, he’s much more than Klein has reported to his readers: Ha’ivri is a Kahanist who has organized numerous protests at Jerusalem’s Temple Mount, the ancient site of a Jewish temple that is now the site of a mosque. Eden Natan-Zada — the AWOL soldier who slaughtered four people on a bus in Gaza — joined in one of those protests before committing his massacre…

The various links take you to Terry’s earlier ConWebWatch pieces on the subject, where you’ll see my name mentioned a couple of times – I brought some of these points to Terry’s attention (e.g. here, here, and here).

Klein has now responded to the article on his 77WABC radio show with some of the most shameless and blustering whataboutery I’ve ever come across. Why, he demands, is he being accused of being “associated” with Kahanists when Obama has links to Bill Ayers?

Do they have me, like say, launching my journalist career in the living room of a Kahane Chai leader, sort of like Barack Obama, who is associated with real extremists, launched his political career, remember, in the living room of Weatherman terrorist Bill Ayers, who of course sought the downfall of the U.S. government? … Do they have me being hired for my first job by a Kahane Chai leader, like Obama was actually hired for his first position, which would be at the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, an education reform organization. He was hired by the chairman of that group, the CAC, Bill Ayers. … Do they have me sitting on the board of a nonprofit organization as a paid director with Kahane Chai leaders like Obama served on the board as a paid director of the Woods Fund with Bill Ayers? …There better at least be a suggestion that Kahane Chai leaders ghost-wrote my previous books, like a lot of people have strongly suggested that Bill Ayers may have ghostwritten Obama’s book ‘Dreams of My Father.’

Klein goes on to complain that George Soros’s money is behind it all (hey, George, any chance I can have some of that?), and that he is being targeted for exposing Obama’s extremism. The only attempt at any engagement with the substantive points raised by Terry above is to complain that the New York Times and the Jerusalem Post have also both quoted David Ha’ivri without mentioning his Kahanist links, so it is unfair that he is being criticised for the same omission.

Klein goes on to attempt to clarify his own position:

Just for the record, I personally do agree with some of the sentiments of Rabbi Meir Kahane. I think he was right about certain things, wrong about other things, but I have absolutely nothing, no association whatsoever with Kahane Chai leaders. Further, I actually — I believe that some of these leaders of Kahane Chai in Israel are extremists, and more than that, they’re absolute embarrassments to the religious national community in israel. And I think that unfortunatly, the media is using the Kahane extremists to basically paint all the Jews in the West Bank as extremists. So, bottom line, I have absolutely nothing to do with these Kahane Chai extremists.

This begs two rather obvious questions: which of these “leaders of Kahane Chai in Israel” are the extremists, and which are the moderates? Which “sentiments” of Kahane does Klein embrace, and which does he reject?

12 Responses

  1. It is easier for people like him to do what he is doing since the whole media is no better than him in omitting the injustices of Israel. He chose the wrong whataboutery, but he could have given a much better example concentrating on main stream American media such as NYTimes.

  2. This tiny country of Israel ( the size of Wales) which all
    the Arab countries now want even though they are awash with oil and riches is blamed for everything .
    Are you trying to say there is no terrorism on the Arab side ??? What about the thousands of Hamas rockets – would you like one in YOUR backyard ?
    Israel was a swamp with the odd flock of sheep before 1918. There was always Jews in the land. Now it is prosperous the Arabs want to take over and get rid of the Jews.
    The Bible predicted this return from exile amongst the nations – amazing prophecy of the ” dry bones”.
    The Bible says the Jews will not be expelled from their land again – so we will see what God does to protect his chosen people – google commentaries on Ezekiel
    38 and 39.

  3. The real Jews will stay and live in the land just as they were before. But the invading classes who claimed Judaism like some British establishments deluded one day as the realest Jews will certainly be going back to the lowly villages between Poland, Ukraine and Russia which they were once known to have roamed free with their wild horses and goose hunting.

    You cannot claim to be innocent, when you are an occupying force provoking resistance from the indigenous peoples of the land.

    • THERE WAS ALWAYS JEWS ON THE LAND.
      It is the Eternal City of the Jews who were brought back
      as in the prophecy of the dry bones of Ezekiel – the spiritual hymn is good. The local arabs surrounding were getting better and better jobs from the Jewish
      ingenuity ( highest % of patents per capital )but the intifada put a stop to this.

      The land was retaken by the British from the iilegal Turkish occupation of the Turks so it then became theirs to do what they thought best – However they were so cruel to the Holocaust survivors that the UN granted the Jews a homeland and the Arabs a similar homeland but the Arabs refused and wanted to annihilate all Jews and all the land.
      About 800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands with the clothes they stood up in between 1918 and 1967 – so they could only go one place -Israel – even though they had lived in Arab lands for many generations.

      The whole Bible does not make sense unless the Jewish diaspora and return is recoginsed – the Bible is mainly a book of prophecy

      Any nation interfering with Jerusalem will be lifting a “cup of trembling” – the Jews return to the the land of Israel was a miracle of God even getting back the land King David purchased in Israel.

  4. […] various sites, having hyped Emerson, struggled to make the best of it: at WND the shameless Aaron Klein seized on Emerson’s gloss on Rauf’s one-state solution to the […]

  5. […] Meir Weinstein is also known under other names: he was born as Marvin Weinstein, and he has also used the names Meir Halevi and Meir HaLevi Weinstein; a 2002 posting on Kahane.org mentions “Meir HaLevy from the Kahane Movement in Toronto” as due to take part in an “Annual Kahane Memorial Dinner”. This website was run by Michael Guzovsky (numerous spelling variations), and was closed down in 2003 after Kahane Khai was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by US authorities; various court documents about this can been seen at Kahane Net. Guzovsky has featured on this blog previously: he later moved to the West Bank, and, as Yekutel Ben Yaacov, he enjoys friendly links with WorldNetDaily‘s “Jerusalem correspondent” Aaron Klein (Klein’s whitewashing of the Israeli far-right is notorious). […]

  6. […] Meir Weinstein is also known under other names: he was born as Marvin Weinstein, and he has also used the names Meir Halevi and Meir HaLevi Weinstein; a 2002 posting on Kahane.org mentions “Meir HaLevy from the Kahane Movement in Toronto” as due to take part in an “Annual Kahane Memorial Dinner”. This website was run by Michael Guzovsky (numerous spelling variations), and was closed down in 2003 after Kahane Khai was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by US authorities; various court documents about this can been seen at Kahane Net. Guzovsky has featured on this blog previously: he later moved to the West Bank, and, as Yekutel Ben Yaacov, he enjoys friendly links with WorldNetDaily‘s “Jerusalem correspondent” Aaron Klein (Klein’s whitewashing of the Israeli far-right is notorious). […]

  7. […] Tommy Waller has his own site here. ”Mr. Ha’Ivri” is David Ha’Ivri, who is regularly puffed by WorldNetDaily, and the NY Times notes his Kahanist background. The charity discussed in the […]

  8. […] in appearance at Joseph Farah’s 2011 WND Tea Party at Sea in August, alongside the likes of Aaron Klein and Molotov Mitchell. Keyes is a regular fixture on these jaunts; here he is in an advert for last […]

  9. […] I blogged here, Klein instead prefers to give “a platform” to the Israeli […]

  10. […] Samaria, Israel”. This organisation is run by David Ha’ivri, a militant settler who is regular source of quotes for Aaron Klein at […]

  11. […] more on this blog about Boykin, see here; for Beck, see here; and for Klein, see here. Klein’s 2011 article about Soros and Uganda is briefly discussed by Terry Krepel of […]

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