"What's a Kos?": Write about Palestine & get libeled & banned
(Photos are of some of the highly-recommended protective measures you might consider taking if you are planning to write on the Kos regarding injustice in Palestine.)
Last night I had been complaining bitterly to a friend because I had written a diary entry on the Daily Kos regarding injustice in Palestine and had gotten brutally libeled and then banned as a result.
"How come it's completely acceptable to write diaries on the Kos regarding injustice in America and everywhere else in the world -- but if you write about injustices happening in Palestine, you get libeled and banned."
My friend just looked at me in confusion. "What's a Kos?" he replied.
Well that certainly put things into perspective.
"The Daily Kos is a liberal internet website with over a million readers. It's famous."
"Never heard of it," said my friend. Whew.
PS: Here's a link to that diary entry that got me banned: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/10/26/913726/-Palestinethe-Daily-Kos:-Dog-whistles-Or-Google-Alerts. Scroll down and read some of the libelous comments attached to it if you want an instructive lesson on why requesting justice in Palestine may be very detrimental to your health. I get called crazy, nutty, silly, a conspiracy theorist, antisemitic, a piece of [dookie], hateful, whacked-out, loony, unhinged, etc. And someone even accused me of having twigs in my hair. Twigs in my hair? What kind of intellectual rebuttal is that?
These are the kind of almost-scary sleazy comments about me that I get all the time from various sleazy right-wing bloggers. But I certainly didn't expect anything like this kind of nastiness to be dumped over my head by the readers of the Daily Kos, purported to be a liberal blog with excellent progressive creds.
The Kos even has a weekly column that relates some of the libelous wingnut comments that have been sent to its editor. Perhaps the Kos might consider putting some of its own readers' libelous comments about me in that column.
And why didn't the Kos ban some of its more offensive commenters -- instead of just banning ME?
PPS: Here's a quote from an article from the New York Times entitled "Smothered by Settlements," regarding injustice in Palestine. How come the Times gets to write about injustice in Palestine without getting libeled or banned -- but I don't!
"....The only way to save the two-state solution is for the Palestinians to declare the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied by Israel in 1967, including East Jerusalem, and to demand that the world community recognize it and its borders — as it did in the case of Kosovo.
"That would also mean supporting the right of Palestinians to struggle nonviolently to end the occupation of their state. Any future negotiations, therefore, would not be about the right of the Palestinians to have their own sovereign independent state, but rather about how to apply and implement that right.
This would be the true test of the state-building strategy of the United States and the donor community. It would be the real instrument to finally demarcate the difference between support for free Palestinian institutions in a sovereign and viable state, or footing the bill of occupation and using E.U. and U.S. tax dollars to maintain under various guises what will never amount to anything but an apartheid system denying Palestinians their human and national rights.
"If the world community turns its back on such a declaration of independence by using the well-worn and insulting argument that every step should first be verified with the Israeli government, then the message will be clear: Peace based on two states is no longer an option."http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/15/opinion/15iht-edbarghouti.html?_r=1&ref=global
PPPS: Here's what Reuters reports regarding injustice in Palestine. Now we need to ban Reuters too?
"A senior U.N. official condemned attacks by Jewish 'settler extremists' on Palestinians' olive trees in the occupied West Bank and called on Israel to 'combat violence and terror by Israelis.' Robert Serry, U.N. special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, also said he was alarmed that work had started on hundreds of new homes for settlers in the occupied territory since the end of Israel's settlement freeze last month.
"Serry was speaking to journalists on Tuesday while olive-picking with Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad in the village of Tormos Ayya north of Ramallah. He said settlers had destroyed hundreds of trees in the village in recent weeks. Palestinians began harvesting olives across the West Bank this month. 'I am appalled at acts of destruction of olive trees and farmlands, desecration of mosques and violence against civilians,' Serry said. http://alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/LDE69P1NK.htm
PPPPS: And just like Google-Alert zombies have apparently taken over the Daily Kos, property developers seem to have taken over my beloved Berkeley. One of the few progressive members left on our city council, Kriss Worthington, is currently fighting for his political life. So iIf you have any money left over from trying to stop all those Shakespearean witches (Whitman, Fiorina, Palin, Bachmann and O'Donnell) from predicting a corporatist future for America, please donate it to Kriss! http://www.krissworthington.com/home/contribute/
