Moving On -- the David Swindle Resolution

As I mentioned in a previous post, I was banned from commenting at David Horowitz's Newsreal site, not by Horowitz, but by one of his foot soldiers, one David Swindle, former liberal and Obama supporter.  Swindle was upset with me for my criticisms of him and one of his columnists, due to an unfair article impugning the integrity of Robert Stacy McCain.  We had a vigorous debate on Newsreal, and at the time I opined that neither Swindle nor his columnist (a "pagan conservative") were fit to represent Newsreal.  I still stand by that opinion.

Swindle disingenuously claims that he banned me for "being uncivil," this after his columnist insulted McCain, then his readers and me personally, likening us to the mindless followers of Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs.  Pagan stated that I was the "Kilgore Trout" of McCain, using insult rather than facts or logic to justify his hit piece on McCain.  Who was being uncivil to whom?

I sent a complaint to David Horowitz via a comment form at his major website, telling him that I was disappointed in David Swindle, with a short summary of the facts (including the sliming of R.S. McCain), and Swindle's vengeance by banning me.  The next morning I received an email from Swindle stating that I would be given "a second chance" at commenting, but if I were again uncivil (that is, by his subjective definition of the term), the ban would be reinstated.

I politely told David Swindle to shove it.  I will not be reading or commenting at Newsreal, as long as Swindle is involved with the site.  The reasons are these:

1.  Swindle is dishonest and in denial about his culpability in the dispute that he and his columnist created;
2.  I was not "uncivil" by any reasonable definition of the term, though I was probably not terribly polite after being called names by the columnist (e.g. "Kilgore Trout").
3.  Swindle banned me, not for "incivility," but for disagreeing with his position on the columnist's article and for opining that neither he nor the columnist should represent Newsreal, for the reason that they start ruinous blog wars with prominent pundits on the right, merely so they can posture as enlightened "liberal conservatives."
4.  My commenting at any of Horowitz's sites is more valuable to Horowitz than it is to me -- it is a way of supporting the site by offering informed commentary and opinion on the articles posted there.  By taking away my commenting rights, Swindle is merely removing a voice of support for David Horowitz.
5.  If commenting is a "privilege," then is my favorable reviews of Horowitz books at Amazon also a "privilege," or is it moral and strategic support of Horowitz and his operations?  And if it is the latter, who is hurt by taking it away, me or Horowitz?  The same analogy applies to my links and articles supporting Horowitz and my rebuttals of unfavorable book reviews and anti-Horowitz comments at various online forums.

Allowing people to comment is a necessary feature that proves people actually visit and read the site.  It is not the website that bestows favor on the commenters, but the opposite.  Comments are evidence of interest, visitors and support.  And that is why Swindle's myopic view is back asswards:  by arbitrarily suspending comments from Horowitz supporters who reasonably disagree on a particular article or position, he erodes the credibility of the site and destroys both reader loyalty and reader support.

In summary, my disagreement with David Swindle is not about commenting rights at Newsreal or any other site -- it is over Swindle's tactless immaturity and disrespect for other conservatives, his unwelcoming and inhospitable attitude at Newsreal, and his inability to admit his errors and to apologize for them.

Now I'm done.

The Palestinian Wall of Lies

Someone sent me the link to this website, which refutes popular propaganda on college campuses today, in support of the "Palestinians" against the Israelis.  The website was created by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and here I am once again supporting Horowitz while one of his employees insults me and bans me from his site.

The points made are reprinted below.

THE PALESTINIAN WALL OF LIES

LIE 1: JEWS HAVE LITTLE HISTORICAL CONNECTION TO ISRAEL

Jews have lived continuously in the land of Israel for over 3000 years; the Arabs arrived through multiple invasions, beginning in the 7th Century AD. In the year 70 AD, when the Jewish civilization was already over 1000 years old, the Romans forced most of the Jews of Judea and Samaria (now the West Bank) into exile. By the end of the 19th Century, the majority population of Jerusalem was Jewish.

LIE 2: THE KORAN DESCRIBES JERUSALEM AS HOLY TO ISLAM

The Koran does not mention Jerusalem because Mohammed never set foot in the city. Jerusalem was conquered by Muslim armies in 636 after the death of Mohammed. Muslim jihadists claim that the Koran mentions “The Furthest Mosque” — Al-Aqsa in Arabic – and that this is a Koranic reference to Jerusalem. This is a lie. The Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem had not been built when the Koran was written, so the reference is to some other (or any other) “furthest mosque.” In contrast, Jerusalem is and has always been a holy city to Jews. The daily prayers of the Jews are focused on Jerusalem. The Hebrew Bible mentions Zion and Jerusalem a total of 809 times.

LIE 3: THE TEMPLE OF SOLOMON IS NOT JEWISH

This lie is one of many designed to steal the history of the Jews in order to justify erasing them from the Middle East. When the Palestinian Authority was established in 1994, it immediately began a campaign to delegitimize Israel by rewriting history with the intention of denying Israel’s right to exist. Among its false claims is that the remains of the Temple of Solomon – the Western Wall – are in fact the remnants of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The Al-Aqsa Mosque was deliberately built on top of the Temple after the Muslim conquest to humiliate the conquered. This is the same imperialistic tradition that prompts jihadists today to build a mosque at Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 attack.

LIE 4: ISRAEL OCCUPIES ARAB PALESTINE

This is a genocidal claim made by the Muslim Students Association and other pro-Arab groups. It is genocidal because it obliterates the Jewish state. If Israel is actually “Occupied Palestine” then there is no legitimate Jewish state in the Middle East.

In fact, there never was an Arab state called “Palestine” and no one even claimed there was until well after the United Nations created Israel in 1948. The land on which Israel was created by the U.N. was also used by the colonial powers to create Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. It was land that had belonged to Turkey for 400 years. The Turks are not “Palestinians” and are not even Arabs.

There never was an Arab country called “Palestine” or inhabited by “Palestinians.” Before the creation of the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964, which was sixteen years after the birth of Israel, no Arab political entity was called by that name.

LIE 5: ISRAEL IS AN APARTHEID STATE

“Apartheid” refers to the system created by South Africans in which “non-white” residents of that nation were denied citizenship and basic civil rights, and were forced to live in separate residential areas with segregated and inferior educational and medical services. Those wishing to demonize and destroy Israel now falsely call it “an Apartheid state.” But the only true Apartheid states in the Middle East are Islamic states in which Jews are not allowed to live and where Christians, Baha’is and other religious minorities are objects of discrimination and persecution.

There are 1.4 million Arabs living in Israel with civil rights that are the envy of the Arab world. Israeli Arabs vote in Israel’s elections, have representatives in the Israeli Parliament, sit on Israeli courts and on the Israeli Supreme Court, and serve as tenured professors teaching in Israeli colleges and universities. The Arab citizens of Israel have more rights, and enjoy more freedom, education, and economic opportunity than the inhabitants of any Arab or Muslim state.

LIE 6: THE ARABS WANT PEACE AND A STATE ON THE WEST BANK

The Arabs rejected peace and a state on the West Bank first in 1948 when it was offered to them by the U.N. and then in 2000 when it was offered by Presidents Clinton and Barak. In 1949, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which the U.N. had designated as a homeland for the Arabs, were annexed respectively by Jordan and Egypt. When the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) was formed in 1964 its covenant made no mention of liberating the West Bank or Gaza from Jordan and Egypt. The PLO leadership stated that its goal was to “push the Jews into the sea.” Today the “liberation” of Palestine “from the river to the sea” is still the goal of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority (PA). The war in the Middle East is about the desire of the Arabs and Muslims to destroy Israel; it is not about the desire for a Palestinian state.

LIE 7: THE HOLOCAUST IS EUROPE’S PROBLEM; PALESTINIANS HAD NO ROLE IN IT

The Arabs generally and the “Palestinians” specifically were supporters of Hitler in the 1930s. The father of Palestinian nationalism, Haj Amin Al-Husseini, was a devoted Nazi who spent the war in Berlin and worked with members of the Third Reich to plan death camps for the Jews of the Middle East. Today he is revered by the Palestinians as the George Washington of their cause. The Muslim Brotherhood translated Mein Kampf into Arabic in the 1930s and called for the destruction of the Jewish state at its birth. Today Arab leaders call for the destruction of the Jewish state and routinely deny that the Holocaust with which their forbears collaborated actually took place.

LIE 8: ISRAEL’S SECURITY FENCE IS AN “APARTHEID WALL”

This is two lies in one. The West Bank fence is a fence, not a wall. About 97% of the fence is made of chain-link material. The remaining 3% is concrete, designed to repel sniper fire in particular areas. The fence was built in 2003 in response to thousands of suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli citizens by Palestinian terrorists, sponsored and armed by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas. The fence was built to keep out terrorists, not Arabs.

In the years since the construction of the fence, terrorist attacks have declined by more than 90%. The fence is Israel’s legitimate defense against a ruthless and amoral terrorist aggressor.

LIE 9: ISRAEL IS THE CAUSE OF THE REFUGEE PROBLEM

The Palestinians claim there are 5 million Palestinian refugees who fled Israel during the 1948 war. This is false. There were only 500,000 Arab refugees from the 1948 war – an unprovoked war that Egypt and four other Arab states had launched against the newly created state of Israel. In the aftermath of the war, 500,000 Jewish refugees were driven out of the Arab states in the Middle East. There are no Jewish refugees today, sixty years later, because Israel resettled them. Why are there still Arab refugees? The Arabs have been given billions of dollars by Israel and the United States to relocate their refugees. But the Arabs are still in refugee camps. While Israel resettled Jewish refugees, no Arab country would take in the “Palestinians” who were forced into camps and were kept there by the Arab regimes to stir up hatred against the Jews. The refugee “issue” has been created by the Arab regimes as a weapon in their war against the Jews. It should be resolved by resettling the inhabitants of the refugee camps in the West Bank and Gaza where almost all of them have lived all their lives.

LIE 10: ISRAEL COMMITS WAR CRIMES BY KILLING CIVILIANS

This is the Big Lie, coming as it does from Palestinians who have made terrorist attacks on civilians a weapon of choice, and who make martyrs and national heroes out of suicide bombers.

The Gaza strip was a base for 7,000 rocket attacks against schoolyards and townships in Israel before the Israelis responded in 2007. During Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza rocket sites there was one civilian death for every 30 terrorists. By contrast, a 2001 study by the International Committee of the Red Cross found that the civilian-to-military death ratio in wars fought since the middle of the 20th Century has been 10:1 – ten civilian deaths for every soldier death. In other words, the Israelis protect civilians at a rate 300 times greater than any other national army. As Harvard Law School Professor Alan Dershowitz observes, “No army in history has ever had a better ratio of combatants to civilians killed in a comparable setting.”

David Swindle (Associate Editor of David Horowitz's "Frontpage"), Obama Supporter, Censor and Fibber

David Swindle. Obama Supporter
and Arbiter of Who Can Comment
at Frontpagemag.com

David Swindle is an associate editor of David Horowitz's Frontpagemag.com.

Swindle and his socially liberal "pagan conservative" columnist/writer attacked prominent conservative blogger Robert Stacy McCain some months ago.  As I recall, Mr. Pagan took the side of some feminist in a disagreement with McCain.  Mr. Pagan totally misinterpreted McCain while stylishly posing as a socially liberal conservative.  Instead of apologizing for his error, Pagan launched a verbal counterattack, accusing me of being Stacy's "Kilgore Trout," a mindless minion of McCain.  When the heat got too much for Pagan to take, Swindle jumped in to rescue him.

I then engaged both the "pagan conservative" and David Swindle in debate at Frontpagemag.com.

I vigorously refuted both of them.  For making them look like the jackasses, Swindle banned me from commenting at Frontpagemag.com.  According to Swindle, pointing out the factual and logical errors in his screeds is the same as being "uncivil."  NOTE:  While refuting him at his own site, Swindle allowed all of my refutations and never complained that any of them were "uncivil" nor did he ever allege that I had broken any commenting rules.  He only banned me after the debate was concluded, without informing me or giving any reason for the ban.  The real reason for the ban is that David Swindle can't take the heat.  Disagree and be banned.  Sound familiar?

The really strange thing in all of this is why Horowitz hired Swindle, a recent liberal and Obama supporter, to be an editor of Frontpagemag.com -- and someone who would hire as columnist  a completely unknown "pagan" of little substance with nothing important to say.  Both of these individuals seemed to me to be fish out of water, illogically implanted in a conservative environment that neither seemed to fully support.  What was Horowitz thinking?

Conservatives who support David Horowitz and Frontpagemag.com should know that they will be censored by same for rebutting error at Frontpage.  Unfortunately, Horowitz has given too much power to a dubious "conservative" who is now behaving like Charles Johnson of "Little Green Footballs."

Note to David Horowitz:  Get your house in order or lose the support of many conservatives.

I still believe that David Horowitz is a hero, a great writer and thinker, a great man.  But I am deeply disappointed in his giving undue power to Swindle, who strikes me as immature, intellectually weak and suspect as to his true ideology.

I have sent my concerns about Swindle to David Horowitz through an intermediary.  It probably will do no good.  So be it.  There comes a time when people you thought were your friends and allies reveal themselves to be something else.  Perhaps some of my heroes have feet of clay after all.

"Ron Paul is a Vicious Anti-Semite" -- David Horowitz

I have never liked Ron Paul, due mainly to his anti-American rhetoric.  Like the far left, Paul blames America first, for every war and conflagration.  I thought Ron Paul was nuts before I ever heard the term "neo-con," a term used for every conservative who doesn't hate his own country.

Ron Paul blames the United States for the Muslim attack of 9/11 and states that he does not blame Islam for it. Paul believes America is an imperialist empire.  On foreign policy, Paul is probably closer to Code Pink than to Ronald Reagan.  This is unfortunate, because on economic matters Paul is generally spot-on, i.e., he believes in laissez-fair capitalism.  This is the strange dichotomy of the paleconservatives, who seem to be political schizophrenics:  far left on some issues, far right on others.

Now David Horowitz has an article about Ron Paul at News Real blog.  It appears that Ron Paul wants to end all aid to Israel.  Paulites are loudly arguing that this is not evidence of Paul's anti-semitism, but I just don't buy it.

Read it all here.