Correspondence between Nir Rosen and Bashar al-Assad’s advisers emerged after the Syrian president’s personal email account was broken into by opposition groups and his messages handed to media organisations including the Daily Telegraph.
In the emails Mr Rosen tries to land an interview with Mr Assad, arguing that the international media was already reporting from inside of restricted zones in Syria, and highlighted favourable coverage of the regime he had secured on al-Jazeera.
In one message from November, Mr Rosen forwarded a BBC story from Homs by the journalist Paul Wood as evidence that Western media groups were evading the regime’s attempts to keep them out of the war zone. His email was eventually forwarded to Mr Assad himself, with one adviser writing “Paul wood was smuggled to Homs!!!”, an indication that they were unaware of his presence until Mr Rosen drew attention to it.
In a second message, one of Mr Assad’s aides reports that Mr Rosen had “personally informed” him that Western reporters were entering Syria from the Lebanese border and other prohibited routes.
In an earlier exchange arguing that he should be allowed to interview the Syrian president, Mr Rosen writes: “I have succeeded in getting al-Jazeera International to show the pro-government demonstrations in Syria and in showing that Bashar and his government have a lot of support and also in showing that there are definitely armed groups attacking the Syrian security forces.”
...
A spokesman for the Revolutionary Council in Homs, who asked not to be named for his safety, accused Mr Rosen of “trading information about us and journalists in Homs with the regime in exchange for privileges from Bashar Assad's regime.”
In an interview with the Telegraph, Mr Rosen said the only information he shared were links to stories already available on the internet and said that more senior Syrian security officials would have already known about the presence of Western journalists.
What a lowlife. If you thought nothing of him before, you can think him a quisling now.
JINO (Jew in name only) Nir Rosen has resigned an unpaid fellowship at the London School of Economics just days after arriving there. Maybe he thought he was worth more than they were paying him?
But today an LSE spokesman said: "Nir Rosen today resigned his temporary visiting fellowship at LSE - which was an unpaid position. LSE had already made clear it condemned the offensive comments he made about Lara Logan and others."
New York-born Mr Rosen, who spent two years reporting from Iraq and now lives in Lebanon, has called for the dismantling of Israel. In a 2008 Guardian column he wrote: "You cannot be prime minister of Israel without enough Arab blood on your hands."
In an earlier article for Counterpunch in 2002, he wrote: "I find myself in the unique and painful position of calling for international sanctions against Israel and wondering if a punitive bombing of Tel Aviv, the city I love, until it complies with international law, might be a good (albeit quixotic) idea." He has also repeatedly claimed Hizbollah are not terrorists.
But it was comments in February about CBS reporter Lara Logan, after she was sexually assaulted in Egypt, which led to his resignation from NYU. He compared her to CNN reporter Anderson Cooper, who was attacked covering the protests. Mr Rosen wrote: "Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson." Later he tweeted: "Jesus Christ, at a moment when she is going to become a martyr and glorified we should at least remember her role as a major war monger."
Maybe An-Najah University in Nablus (Shchem) will hire this scumbag. They're perfect for each other.
In an earlier post, I reported that Nir Rosen had been forced to resign from New York University over his despicable Twitters regarding the sexual assault perpetrated against CBS News reporter Lara Logan. What's amazing is that Rosen wasn't forced out earlier.
Rosen made his name shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq as a journalist willing to take big risks to get a story. If his editors never wondered how he was able to endear himself to, say, the Sunni insurgency in Fallujah, or the Taliban, or Hezbollah, that’s because they had more important concerns—like waging a media campaign against the Bush administration. Therefore, it didn’t matter to any of the prestigious press outlets that published Rosen (like the New Yorker, Harper’s, the NewYorkTimesMagazine, or the Atlantic, which also publishes Goldberg) that he was openly rooting for the other side.
“Hizballah is not a terrorist organization,” Rosen said of the Lebanese outfit that is responsible for killing American soldiers, diplomats, and civilians, as well as Israelis, Arabs, and other Lebanese. “It is a widely popular and legitimate political and resistance movement. It has protected Lebanon’s sovereignty and resisted American and Israeli plans for a New Middle East. It’s also among the most democratic of Lebanon’s political movements and one of the few groups with a message of social justice and anti imperialism.”
Rosen never hid his convictions or sympathies, and no one ever called him to account for it. Instead he was rewarded, made a fellow at the New America Foundation and then NYU, and invited to share his expertise in broadcast media, like the PBS’s “Newshour” and CNN’s “GPS with Fareed Zakaria.” Most remarkably, he was invited to testify on Iraq before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2008, which includes this telling exchange with then Senator Joseph Biden. “As a journalist,” said Rosen, “I'm uncomfortable advising an imperialist power about how to be a more efficient imperialist power.”
As Jeffrey Goldberg reports at the Atlantic, Rosen has been making disturbing and violent comments on Twitter for quite awhile. Of course, the difference was that these remarks took aim at politically correct targets — America and Israel — while his Tweet mocking Logan’s sexual assault was decidedly un-PC.
Indeed. Read the whole thing. You'll find out that NYU probably would have rather kept him despite the tweets. Think about that the next time NYU asks you for money (I went to law and business school there).
In case you're wondering, yes, he's Jewish (with that name it would be surprising if he were not), and yes, he's Israeli. And the morons at Mondoweiss are in mourning for him.
Sexual assault of CBS reporter in Egypt: Horrifying but not surprising
I am sure that by now you have all heard the story of Lara Logan, the CBS News reporter who was sexually assaulted while covering the celebrations in Tahrir Square last Friday night. On Wednesday, we received the additional detail that while Logan was being assaulted, her assailants were screaming "Jew, Jew" (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
While Logan's assault is horrifying, it's not surprising. The Arabs in general - and the Egyptians in particular - are known for this sort of thing. This is from a 2006 post by the Sandmonkey - one of the first things I ever read on his blog.
The story is as follows for the those of you who didn't hear about it: It was the first day of Eid, and a new film was opening downtown. Mobs of males gatherd trying to get in, but when the show was sold out, they decided they will destroy the box office. After accomplishing that, they went on what can only be described as a sexual frenxy: They ran around grabbing any and every girl in sight, whether a niqabi, a Hijabi or uncoverd. Whether egyptian or foreigner. Even pregnant ones. They grabbed them, molested them, tried to rip their cloths off and rape them, all in front of the police, who didn't do shit. The good people of downtown tried their best to protect the girls. Shop owners would let the girls in and lock the doors, while the mobs tried to break in. Taxi drivers put the girls in the cars while the mobs were trying to break the glass and grab the girls out. It was a disgusting pandamonium of sexual assaults that lasted for 5 houres from 7:30 PM to 12:30 am, and it truns my stomach just to think about it.
I called my father when I heard of that happening, and he informed me that he didn't hear of it at all. They watched Al Jazeerah, CNN, flipped through opposition newspapers, and nothing. Nada. Nobody mentioned it. As if it didn't happen.
But it did.
...
Now, the egyptian blogsphere has been abuzz in debate over the incident. Some are writing posts on why it happend, possible causes, what it means, the social and political factors that could possibly lead to this behavior, and quite honestly, I can't be botherd. I don't care why it happend. Rape is not up for debate. I just care that it happend. What we should discuss right now isn't what caused it, but what kind of horrible punishment that should be enacted on any egyptian male who thinks that it is well into his right to sexually harass a female on the street. That's it. Pure and simple.
I am often told that I am too westernized or too liberal by people I know, and they are not wrong or inaccurate. My values are for the most part western values. However, there are two middle-eastern traits in me that I can never give up: The first is my stupid insistince on always paying for the bill when I am with a girl I am dating, and the second is my protectiveness of women. I have no tolerance for those who assault women sexually in any way, and that almost got me kicked out of my school in Boston when I broke the leg of one of my roommates who raped a friend of mine. The incident only resulted in him getting a broken leg because people stoped me before I killed him. And I had the full intention of killing him. Rapists do not deserve to live. And that's how I feel towards every single one of those pieces of shit that attacked women on the streets of cairo the other day.
People can debate solutions based on dialogue, education, or whatever and that's their right. My solution is far simpler: Any egyptian man whose mother raised him right should beat the living crap of any man he sees on the street that assaults or harasses a female. Think of them as your sisters, and act accordingly. The Police isn't interested in protecting the women, and that's fine, but that means that we should take this job as our own. Those who insist on acting like animals will be treated as such, and deserve no sympathy or mercy from us. I assure you, if we did this, if we undertook this as part of our national duty, there will no longer be a problem on our streets.
That is all!
Let's go to the videotape. This one is from 2008.
The second reason I wasn't surprised by the assault was when I saw the picture of Logan at the top of this post. Several years ago, the wife of a friend confided in me that she had been raped before they were married. She was assaulted by an Arab man right here in Jerusalem, and she told me that she attributed the assault that she was blond and that she was wearing her hair loose. She said that blonds have to be particularly careful around Arab men, and she advised wearing their hair tight and in a bun. Look at Logan's picture. See what I mean?
But let’s just remember one thing going forward: Nir Rosen believed this was the right moment to let the world know that he “ran out of sympathy for her” and that we should “remember her role as a major war monger” and that we “have to find humor in the small things.”
I hope Rosen never finds employment again. Those remarks are inexcusable.
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
Nir Rosen was fired by New York University and the London School of Economics, after he tweeted that he had 'run out of sympathy' for CBS reporters Lara Logan, after she was sexually assaulted in Egypt. Now, he stands accused of reporting on the movements of his fellow reporters to the Assad regime in Syria (Hat Tip: Memeorandum). 
