Friday, April 22, 2005
Little Green Footballs Has Reason For Concern
Little Green Footballs is a website run by a Californian named Charles Johnson. It is a double winner for the Washington Post's 2004 Best Blogs Contest, receiving a first for Best International Blog and an honorable mention for Most Original Blog. It also is also the recipient of IsraellyCool's Best Israel Advocacy Blog and Best Mega Blog. It receives on average 82,882 hits daily, which is down from 150,000 daily hits. There is also a Little Green Footballs Watch site, but to its detriment trolls proliferate its comments section.
Evidently, a person who calls him/herself LAChica visited the Al-Awda Third Annual International Convention held on the UCLA campus April 15-17. Charles Johnson prefaces the web page he assembled for LaChica's report: "A Convergence of mornonic Marxists and idiotic Islamists." Well, I am a contributer to Al-Awda Media and I am Syrian Orthodox; Zahi Damuni, president of Al-Awda, San Diego, is Christian, as is Elias Rashmawi. Mazin Qumsiyeh, one of the leaders of the grassroots organization is also Christian, as is Dr. George Bisharat, professor at University of California Hastings Law School, who was one of the speakers. If one goes to the Al-Awda homepage, one will not find any references to Marxists or any links to Marxist groups.
LAChica reports that there were only "85 attendees at the main session in the morning." She does not specify which morning session. Al-Awda reports that "hundreds" attended the three day event. The opening session for the convention occurred in the evening.
She also reports that "the rhetoric of the speakers was noticeably subdued," and that "the event was an exercise in euphemisms, calling for the destruction of Israel but not saying it in exactly those words." I wonder how LAChica determined that the speakers' rhetoric was subdued. What is her basis of comparison? Is she privy to personal discourse with Dr. Bisharat? Has she bothered to read Dr. Bisharat's moving story about Villa Harun ar-Rahid, the Jerusalem house confiscated from his family? Was she expecting the highly educated participants to engage in the racial slurs that compose most of the content of the site for which she was spying? Five hundred and sixty-seven comments (last count) are appended to the LGF story, although after the first one hundred, the line of thought turns to unintelligible meandering. Some of the more egregious comments: "What a bunch of effin psychos." "[expletive] You splodeydopes." "I support the Palestinian Right of Return . . . to Jordan and Eygpt [sic], and that includes their rabble rousers living abroad.
"It is [sic] me or does it is [sic] true that whenever you dig into a lib gathering or organization you find at the heart communists and or [sic] anti-Semetites." [sic]
"The Arabs in these pictures should be deported. They're terrorists or supporters of terrorism. The Americans in these pictures are fools. The [sic] should be neutered so as not to reproduce."
"The Paleos have ZERO to offer. They only have demands. There is absolutely no reason to sit down with them in a final meeting at all."
"The Left, in its utter intellectual bankruptcy and revolutionary fantasy, has now latched onto militant Islam."
"Given their proclivity to violence, I think the only sane way to deal with them is to crush them and break them down so far the only demand they want to make anymore is 'Please stop.'"
"What they're fighting for is the elimination of Israel and simply because they've invented a theology where killing Jews (and genocide) is holy sacrement [sic]. That's been explicit for a while now and ethnic cleansing does not equal liberation even when it has a religious basis."
" . . . we promise to keep killing Jews because it's our national sport . . . ."
You get the idea. The racists at Little Green Footballs are upset because the people at Al-Awda are asserting their inalienable Right to Return which has a "solid legal basis. The United Nations adopted Resolution 194 on December 11, 1948. Paragraph 11 states: ' . . . the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date . . . compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return. Resolution 194 was affirmed practically every year since with a universal consensus, except for Israel and the U.S. The resolution was further clarified by UN General Assembly resolution 3236 which reaffirms in Subsection 2, 'the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return.'
"The Right to Return does not derive its validity merely from UN Resolutions. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 13 reaffirms the right of every individual to leave and return to his country . . . international law demands that neither occupation nor sovereignty diminish the rights of private ownership. When the Ottomans surrendered in 1920, Palestinian ownership of the land was maintained. The land and property of 'the refugees' remains their own and they are entitled to return to it."
The racist minions who frequent Little Green Footballs and a host of other reactionary websites have every reason for concern. Al-Awda has affiliates worldwide. Al-Awda News has over one thousand members. Al-Awda is active on major college and university campuses and our letters and editorials continue to be written and published despite smear after Zionist smear. And if you don't get it, I'll reiterate: the Right of Return is "sacred." The Right of Return is codified in law. It makes not one bit of difference if each and every craven politician sides with injustice for there is not one of them who has it in his or her power to bargain away a right that is "inalienable."
Evidently, a person who calls him/herself LAChica visited the Al-Awda Third Annual International Convention held on the UCLA campus April 15-17. Charles Johnson prefaces the web page he assembled for LaChica's report: "A Convergence of mornonic Marxists and idiotic Islamists." Well, I am a contributer to Al-Awda Media and I am Syrian Orthodox; Zahi Damuni, president of Al-Awda, San Diego, is Christian, as is Elias Rashmawi. Mazin Qumsiyeh, one of the leaders of the grassroots organization is also Christian, as is Dr. George Bisharat, professor at University of California Hastings Law School, who was one of the speakers. If one goes to the Al-Awda homepage, one will not find any references to Marxists or any links to Marxist groups.
LAChica reports that there were only "85 attendees at the main session in the morning." She does not specify which morning session. Al-Awda reports that "hundreds" attended the three day event. The opening session for the convention occurred in the evening.
She also reports that "the rhetoric of the speakers was noticeably subdued," and that "the event was an exercise in euphemisms, calling for the destruction of Israel but not saying it in exactly those words." I wonder how LAChica determined that the speakers' rhetoric was subdued. What is her basis of comparison? Is she privy to personal discourse with Dr. Bisharat? Has she bothered to read Dr. Bisharat's moving story about Villa Harun ar-Rahid, the Jerusalem house confiscated from his family? Was she expecting the highly educated participants to engage in the racial slurs that compose most of the content of the site for which she was spying? Five hundred and sixty-seven comments (last count) are appended to the LGF story, although after the first one hundred, the line of thought turns to unintelligible meandering. Some of the more egregious comments: "What a bunch of effin psychos." "[expletive] You splodeydopes." "I support the Palestinian Right of Return . . . to Jordan and Eygpt [sic], and that includes their rabble rousers living abroad.
"It is [sic] me or does it is [sic] true that whenever you dig into a lib gathering or organization you find at the heart communists and or [sic] anti-Semetites." [sic]
"The Arabs in these pictures should be deported. They're terrorists or supporters of terrorism. The Americans in these pictures are fools. The [sic] should be neutered so as not to reproduce."
"The Paleos have ZERO to offer. They only have demands. There is absolutely no reason to sit down with them in a final meeting at all."
"The Left, in its utter intellectual bankruptcy and revolutionary fantasy, has now latched onto militant Islam."
"Given their proclivity to violence, I think the only sane way to deal with them is to crush them and break them down so far the only demand they want to make anymore is 'Please stop.'"
"What they're fighting for is the elimination of Israel and simply because they've invented a theology where killing Jews (and genocide) is holy sacrement [sic]. That's been explicit for a while now and ethnic cleansing does not equal liberation even when it has a religious basis."
" . . . we promise to keep killing Jews because it's our national sport . . . ."
You get the idea. The racists at Little Green Footballs are upset because the people at Al-Awda are asserting their inalienable Right to Return which has a "solid legal basis. The United Nations adopted Resolution 194 on December 11, 1948. Paragraph 11 states: ' . . . the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date . . . compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return. Resolution 194 was affirmed practically every year since with a universal consensus, except for Israel and the U.S. The resolution was further clarified by UN General Assembly resolution 3236 which reaffirms in Subsection 2, 'the inalienable right of the Palestinians to return to their homes and property from which they have been displaced and uprooted, and calls for their return.'
"The Right to Return does not derive its validity merely from UN Resolutions. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights article 13 reaffirms the right of every individual to leave and return to his country . . . international law demands that neither occupation nor sovereignty diminish the rights of private ownership. When the Ottomans surrendered in 1920, Palestinian ownership of the land was maintained. The land and property of 'the refugees' remains their own and they are entitled to return to it."
The racist minions who frequent Little Green Footballs and a host of other reactionary websites have every reason for concern. Al-Awda has affiliates worldwide. Al-Awda News has over one thousand members. Al-Awda is active on major college and university campuses and our letters and editorials continue to be written and published despite smear after Zionist smear. And if you don't get it, I'll reiterate: the Right of Return is "sacred." The Right of Return is codified in law. It makes not one bit of difference if each and every craven politician sides with injustice for there is not one of them who has it in his or her power to bargain away a right that is "inalienable."
