A couple of blog entries ago I noted a quote from Brigitte Gabriel published on the Christian Right website OneNewsNow. Gabriel claimed that the boat Dignity, which was intercepted by Israel’s navy on the way to Gaza just before New Year, had been flying the Hezbollah flag. There is no reference to this detail in any news reports or comment pieces that I have seen (including in hostile accounts), and despite looking at numerous pictures of the boat on YouTube, Flickr, and other sites, I have been unable to find any pictures of the Dignity with a such a flag. There are, however, plenty of pictures which show the boat with other flags, such as the Rainbow “Peace” flag and the Palestinian flag (but not the Hamas flag, I should add). It is also very unlikely that Gabriel’s knowledge of the boat extends beyond the general media reports.
I have now received a comment from someone involved with the Free Gaza Movement, who writes that:
Of course we were not flying the Hezbolla flag, or the Hamas flag or any other political flag…
Unless there is something I have missed, the weight of evidence suggests that Gabriel and OneNewsNow have spread a falsehood about a group of people they disagree with. Former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was on the boat, may be a person of questionable political judgement, and it is dispiriting to read that after the incident “Representatives from Hezbollah and Amal movement also welcomed the Dignity boat in Tyre”, but that hardly means that pulling a fairly significant fact out of thin air is any less damaging to the credibility of the person doing it.
Investigators: Gunman asked ‘ religion’ questions before fatal attack
– A gunman who broke into a staff meeting at a Colorado ski resort ranting about religion asked the manager what he believed and shot him twice when the victim responded he was Catholic, according to reports published today about the tragedy.
…Sheriff Joe Pelle said [Derik] Bonestroo was yelling something about religion to employees when resort General Manager Brian Mahon heard the commotion and came into the room. The Camera said witnesses reported the shooter asked Mahon which religion he believed, and when Mahon said he was Catholic, the shooter fired twice and killed him.
Naturally, the Freepers were all over the story; one commentator blames “Dawkins, Hitchins, [sic] etc”, while another points the finger at “Government schools and the mass media.”
However, the WND report (almost certainly rewritten from other sources) once again fails to give its readers all the facts. What was that “something about religion” that Bonestroo was yelling? The Rocky Mountain News reported on the same day:
The Derik Bonestroo who came to Eldora Mountain Resort on Tuesday morning packing a gun is as much a mystery to his old friends as are the demons propelling him to a violent end.
They couldn’t relate to the ski-lift operator who declared his intent to convert non-Christians then gunned down the resort’s popular general manager.
…Bonestroo, who wasn’t well-known in Nederland or at Eldora, where he had worked for a month, fired a bullet into the ceiling after saying something like: “I’m a Christian, and if you’re not a Christian I’m here to convert you.”
From the circumstances it’s obvious that Bonestroo was mentally ill and that whatever religious thoughts were going through his head were the symptoms of psychosis; this tragedy tells us little about the nature of religion or religious belief. But WND, which likes to promote the idea that Christians in the USA are being “persecuted” by non-Christians, has apparently given us a report skewed to re-enforce that impression. Maybe it simply didn’t have all the facts to hand; in which case, can we look forward to an update?
Christian Right news-site OneNewsNow carries a quote from Brigitte Gabriel (emphasis added):
An Arab-Christian woman and Middle East expert believes the Israeli navy was completely justified in stopping a boat en route to deliver medical supplies to terrorists in Gaza.
…The Christian activist points out that [Cynthia] McKinney’s ship was not displaying a Red Cross or Red Crescent flag to indicate it was a humanitarian vessel.
“All I saw was a Hezbollah flag, a Palestinian flag, and a Lebanese flag. And if you are Israel seeing this ship coming from the waters in Lebanon, do you think the Israelis are thinking, ‘Oh how wonderful, humanitarian aid, we should let it go’? You bet they wouldn’t let it go,” she notes. “I am surprised they only dinged it. If I was Israel, I would bomb the darn thing.”
This is curious; I’ve scanned various reports about McKinney and the Dignity on YouTube, and I can’t see any sign of the very distinctive gun-fetishizing yellow and green Hezbollah flag. Gabriel’s observation has also passed unnoticed by everyone else, including news-sites and blogs intensely hostile to McKinney – sites that one would imagine would be all over such a detail. Indeed, there’s not even a mention of it on Gabriel’s website.
Am I missing something – or is Gabriel perhaps making something up?
Gabriel was repudiated by the United Jewish Communities for her anti-Obama rhetoric back in February.
UPDATE: I’ve looked through much of the Free Gaza Movement‘s Flickr photo album, and I’ve tracked down other photos of the boat on Flickr, taken at various dates between October and December. The Dignity is shown festooned with a number of flags on different occasions (including the rainbow “Peace” flag), but I cannot see even a hint of the Hezbollah flag anywhere.
A local woman went to the Walmart on Robert Smalls Parkway to buy a doll for her daughters this Christmas.
What she ended up with was a Mattel Fisher-Price Toys baby doll that says “Islam is the light.”
Any chance of an “allegedly” in there?
…Some reports say the dolls also say, “Satan is king.”
Moms Ask Mattel for Accountability, an educational effort geared toward preventing children from being invited to join Islam unknowingly, launched a campaign to remove the dolls from store shelves, according to MAMA’s Web site.
“It’s like a subliminal message…It’s not really something you want to hear coming from a doll. I had to tell my kids they wouldn’t get a baby doll for Christmas because it said bad things.”
An account by “Moms Ask Mattel for Accountability” is also carried uncritically on the website Radical Islam; this site is run by the Clarion Fund, which received considerable attention a few months ago over the mass distribution of an anti-Islam DVD called Obsession:
Washington, DC: Wal-Mart managers are removing the Mattel doll that says “Islam is the Light” from store shelves, according to reports from parents and the media across the U.S. and Canada, as well as Wal-Mart employees. Many Wal-Mart managers have removed the controversial doll in the last two weeks, and others are removing it as soon as parents ask…MAMA has advised parents in the U.S. and Canada to ask retailers either to remove the doll from the shelves or to attach a label stating “NOTICE: This doll says “Islam is the light,” an invitation to your child to join Islam.” MAMA is concerned that an invitation to Islam is a material risk to young girls, because of the discriminatory Islamic law known as Shariah, and wants parents informed about the doll’s statement before they purchase the doll.
Snopes notes that this is not the first time a doll’s babbling has been given a sinister interpretation, and it quotes a newspaper report:
“The Gastonia Gazette bought one of the disputed dolls for $19.99 at the Gastonia Target. Four people were slected at random and asked to describe the noises it made, and while two distinctly heard the word “light” or “life,” no one picked out the supposed Muslim message.
Following on from my previous post, I note that Jeff Davis of Mosquewatch also has a YouTube channel, under the name “AmericanBNP” – a previous channel named “Mosquewatch” was removed for “terms of use” violation. The blog Mosquewatch also has postings by Davis on the subject:
I Stand With The BNP
I have no choice. No one else in the UK will take a stance against the Muslim hordes flowing into the United Kingdom. No one here in America will do the same as well. Our 2 party system is broken. All of our leaders, are nothing more than empty suits. If you are an American that loves the UK as I do, I suggest you back the BNP and support them. Time is not on our side. Wake up America, wake up Britain.
If some people tell me that I am a nazi for supporting some ideas of the BNP….. Are all Republicans for open borders because President Bush won’t close them , OR KICK THE BUMS OUT ? For my fellow “Conservatives” DO YOU AGREE WITH EVERYTHING PRESIDENT BUSH DOES ? I don’t, nor do I agree with everything the BNP stands for.
Actually, I’m happy to accept that some British National Party supporters are simply stupid and ill-informed rather than racist. But is it a racist party, and its leaders have been known to make private pro-Hitler and thuggish comments that have been captured by secret filming. Party leader Nick Griffin – author of a booklet decrying Jewish control of the media – turned from anti-Jewish hatemongering to anti-Muslim rhetoric simply for tactical reasons, as he explained at an American Renaissance conference:
The proper enemy to any political movement isn’t necessarily the most evil and the worst…The proper enemy is the one we can most easily defeat.
Mosquewatch has several other contributors – as well as the Swanksta there is Walid Shoebat’s son Theodore (or “Ted”) Shoebat, and a comic-book artist named Bosch Fawstin; Fawstin draws cartoons of a superhero named “Pigman”, who battles Islamic terrorism. Like Davis, Fawstin seems to think that going on obsessively and vacuously about how Islam must be defeated is some kind of actual contribution to fighting extremism.
Theodore Shoebat also has his own blog, Tedland Daily, where he cuts and pastes news stories about Islamic extremist atrocities and various right-wing opinion pieces (mixed in with attacks on evolutionary biology). This blog is directly linked from the Walid Shoebat Foundation website, so it would appear to have some official standing, or at least recommendation. But it should be noted Shoebat Jnr shares this blog with Jeff Davis, who posts under the name “”mississippimud2007”. Davis hasn’t mentioned his enthusiasm for the BNP on this site, and doubtless the Shoebats would be appalled – but isn’t it rather embarrassing?
Apparently one of the MosqueWatch guys is unhappy with my suggestion that Walid Shoebat and his son hate Muslims, and that I called Pastor J. Grant Swank “absurd”:
Dick, we don’t hate all Muslims, we despise terrorist Muslims. Do you ?
An open challenge for you Sir.Mr. Bartholomew ,
Are you a former PLO member ? Walid Shoebat and Kamal Saleem ? They have more knowledge about the Koran, the Hadiths and Islam than you will ever learn in your life. Both of these people are against Islamic terror. You seem too be picking a fight with people that want too save your neck from the knife of Islamic terror when if falls upon you. You are ignorant about Islam. That is not a personal attack, that is a fact. You speak of things, which you have no knowledge of. I suggest you read a few books.
Start with the Koran, then follow up with Sahih Bukhari, and the rest of the Hadiths. Pastor Swank is a good and decent man. I find it interesting that you would rather defame a Pastor, andnot defame the jihadist scum that would slit your throat while screaming “Allahu Ackbar”.
In ending , put your money where your mouth is. Stand up and show me your face. Make an account on youtube, or on clipser…get a video camera and make a video. It is an open challenge. Best of wishes for you and yours. Jeff Davis
A shorter version of the message also appears on the website of Walid Shoebat’s son, who is a Mosquewatch contributor. I have no idea whether “Jeff Davis” is a real name or a homage to the Confederate leader (or both), although I note that his short list of recommended blogs includes the pro-BNP English Rose. [UPDATE: I also now see he has a YouTube channel under the name “AmericanBNP“, although he objects to the suggestion this reflects poorly on him. His videos were originally posted at a channel called Mosquewatch, but this was closed down for “terms of use violation”. Also, he has some pro-BNP posts here.]
The “challenge” is rather weird – why do I need to “make a video” rather than respond in writing to any spectific criticisms? And what does my “face” have to do with it? I have no intention of making a video, but I’ll make a few points:
First, Walid Shoebat has the general knowledge that any ex-Muslim might be expected to have, particularly if he was brought up in a religious household, but he has shown no special expertise in the subject. His attempts to extrapolate from his own (alleged) experience to Muslim society in general are unconvincing – in particular, I noted his confident assertions on what Barack Obama must have learnt at school in 1960s Indonesia, despite the fact he knows nothing about Indonesia. When he adds that Obama’s pro-choice views are secretly motivated by support for Islam – based on no evidence whatsoever – it is clear that we are not dealing with someone who should be taken seriously. His forays into Biblical scholarship are simply preposterous, whether opining on the apocalyptic significance of the fact that some Muslims ride horses or giving a duff presentation on why “666” in the Book of Revelation is actually “In the Name of Allah” written in Arabic. The fact that Shoebat is “against Islamic terror” does not change these unfortunate facts.
Second, if I am such a “Dhimmi” (a silly misuse of the term, by the way), how come I wrote in support of Irshad Manji? How come I was perhaps the only blogger to follow the Islamist attacks on the polio vaccine in Nigeria in 2004? How come I wrote about Iranian support for Holocaust denial before the story was picked up by the mainstream media? How come I wrote favourably about a British documentary which uncovered extremism in some British mosques? There are other examples I could list.
Third, regarding Pastor Swank – readers can make up their own minds about whether a man who asserts (in “I said all Along B. Hussein = Muslim“, “B. Hussein” being his name for Barack Obama) that the White House is under a curse because there is a Koran on the premises is either “good and decent” or “absurd”.
Fourth, the existence of jihadists who “would slit your throat while screaming ‘Allahu Ackbar'” does not mean that the opportunistic and corrosive hate-mongerings of tub-thumping anti-Muslim right-wingers are therefore immune from critique, or that those who make such a critique are therefore guilty of supporting Islamic extremism. In fact, the likes of Mosquewatch are completely counter-productive as regards opposing Islamism and violent jihadism, just as the paranoid and self-promoting anti-Communist demagogues of the 1950s undermined efforts to educate people about the machinations of the Soviet Union. Religious extremism needs to be opposed by reason and careful analysis (although there’s also a place for satire). Just what sensible purpose does the video below – made by Shoebat’s son and available on Shoebat’s website – serve? (Note the inclusion of Charles Darwin as a Satanic influence alongside Muslims)
