Monday, May 20, 2013

Glenn Greenwald Goes All Out in Defense of Professor Joseph Massad's Anti-Semitic Screed

I'm a firm believer in free speech, and if it was me I wouldn't have taken down Columbia Professor Joseph Massad's vile essay attacking World War II-era supporters of a Jewish homeland as "Zionist anti-Semites." But I wouldn't be going to bat for such vile people either. Not so for Glenn Greenwald, who's been on a Twitter jihad attacking Al Jazeera for removing Massad's hate-piece.


Here's the problem for Greenwald: Even the most ardent free speech advocate would still recoil from defending Massad --- because people like this are perverting the history of the Holocaust in promotion of a second Holocaust against the Jews. William Jacobson has the story, "Al-Jazeera runs then deletes anti-Semitic screed by Columbia Univ. Prof. Joseph Massad":
Even Mondoweiss, yes Mondoweiss, the harshest of websites when it comes to Israel, had trouble stomaching Massad’s arguments:
Well, with Massad we’ve come a long inverted way. He sees the Jewishness that most Jews celebrate as colonial and – criminal.

Massad stops short – I think – of a Euro-American Jewish Zionist conspiracy to dominate the world.

Understanding Jewishness at war with the world and with Jewishness itself. It’s a tough sell.
Now the Massad article is gone from Al-Jazeera (h/t @GlennGreenwald). Spreading anti-Semitic conspiracy theories was not too much for Al-Jazeera initially, but perhaps the attention called to the screed was too much. I’d be curious if the article ran in non-English versions of Al-Jazeera and if it has been removed there.
More at the link. And really, if Mondoweiss has second thoughts, then, boy, that's really gotta be some over-the-top screed.

In any case, check Greenwald's timeline for updates.

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