The #FakeNews no one talks about
With all the talk about #FakeNews recently, there's one piece of #FakeNews that's been accepted as truth for the last 24 years, because the Israeli government was foolish enough to accept it. I saw this on Facebook:
Judith Bergman on "fake news"...
"In all the talk about 'fake news'
Israel is missing an opportunity by not calling out the fakest of the
fake news, namely the professed existence of a Palestinian Arab people.
Palestinian Arab officials themselves have admitted that the professed
Palestinian identity is fake, an invention for the political and
tactical purpose of defeating Israel.
In a 1977 interview with Dutch newspaper Trouw, PLO executive committee member Zahir Muhsein said:
“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian
state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of
Israel for our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference
between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for
political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a
Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit
the existence of a distinct ‘Palestinian people’ to oppose Zionism".
Hamas Minister of the Interior and of National Security Fathi Hammad
made it clear that nothing has changed since 1977. This is what Hammad
said when he was interviewed on Al-Hekma TV in March 2012: “Brothers,
half of the Palestinians are Egyptians and the other half are Saudis.
Who are the Palestinians? ... We are Egyptians…”
Why is the world -
and parts of the Israeli establishment - obsessed with establishing a
Palestinian Arab state, funnelling billions of taxpayer dollars into
that enterprise, if the Palestinian Arabs themselves readily admit that
their professed identity is fake? To begin with, the 'Palestine
industry' has become a flourishing business that would put many people
out of business if peace were to actually break out."
The reason the Israeli establishment accepted the existence of a 'Palestinian people' is that in 1993, Israel's Left saw the Messiah of 'Peace' and his name was 'Palestinian.' I've been railing about this stuff for
years.
But most of the Israeli establishment - including our Prime Minister - won't admit this. If they admitted it, they'd also have to admit that there's no 'two state solution' and admitting that would be admitting that everything they've done for the past 24 years has been misguided and wrong. So the #FakeNews continues to be treated as real.
Woe to those who cannot face the truth.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, fake news, Fathi Hamad, Palestinian people, Palestinian state, PLO, two-state solution, Zionism
Facebook's 'fact checkers': Biased and prevaricating, backed by guess who?
In an effort to eliminate 'fake news' from its site, Facebook has appointed '
fact checkers' to confirm or deny whether stories are true. But one of Facebook's 'fact checkers' has already been
caught in a lie while reporting on a story about the Obama administration trying to influence Israel's elections, while another has been accused of
falsifying news and embezzling money from its own website.
The first fact checker caught with its pants down is PolitiFact. The second - caught literally with its pants down - is Snopes.
Here's PolitiFact.
PolitiFact, which is part of a new group that will help Facebook flag “disputed” stories, last year rated as “Mostly False” a claim that the U.S. funded an election effort in Israel via the nonprofit One Voice aimed at defeating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
PolitiFact left out of its declaration on One Voice that Craig
Newmark, the founder of Craigslist who lists himself as an adviser and
donor to PolitiFact, documents on his personal website that he has been “helping out” One Voice, where he writes he also serves as an adviser.
Also missing from PolitiFact’s rating about the One Voice claim is that One Voice is partnered with Google, which also happens to be a donor to the Poynter Institute for Media Studies, which owns the Tampa Bay Times. PolitiFact is a project of the Tampa Bay Times.
A senate investigation in July concluded that the State Department
did not do anything illegal in funding One Voice to the tune of nearly
$350,000 in 2013, but that the infrastructure created by One Voice at
the time of the State Department financing could have been used last
year in the anti-Netanyahu campaign.
While PolitiFact noted that
its March 25, 2015 “Mostly False” designation “may change as more
evidence comes to light,” it did rely largely on One Voice’s word on the matter while failing to note the ties between PolitiFact and the partners of One Voice.
Snopes, which I have said before I would
not trust on anything political, has
bigger issues.
Now a DailyMail.com investigation reveals that Snopes.com's founders, former husband and wife David and Barbara Mikkelson, are embroiled in a lengthy and bitter legal dispute in the wake of their divorce.
He has since remarried, to a former escort and porn actress who is one of the site's staff members.
They are accusing each other of financial impropriety, with Barbara claiming her ex-husband is guilty of 'embezzlement' and suggesting he is attempting a 'boondoggle' to change tax arrangements, while David claims she took millions from their joint accounts and bought property in Las Vegas.
The Mikkelsons founded the site in 1995. The couple had met in the early 1990s on a folklore-themed online message board, and married before setting up the site.
War of the Roses, anyone?
Oh, and the PolitiFact article tells us that guess who is behind the 'fact checkers.'
Breitbart News last week reported
that a cursory search of the Poynter Institute website finds that
Poynter’s IFCN is openly funded by Soros’ Open Society Foundations as
well as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Google, the National
Endowment for Democracy and Newmark’s foundation.
Poynter’s IFCN is also funded by the Omidyar Network, which is the
nonprofit for liberal billionaire eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. The
Omidyar Network has partnered with Open Society on numerous projects and has given grants to third parties using the Soros-funded Tides Foundation. Tides is one of the largest donors to left-wing causes in the U.S.
Well color me shocked.
My coverage of
One Voice... and
V-2015. Among other places.
Labels: Facebook, fact checkers, fake news, George Soros, Snopes.com, V-2015
