Not again. Listen, Robert, I understand that you're into making excuses for jihadists and that you've gone so far as to celebrate atrocities. I understand that it raises your hackles when people criticize others of like mind. But this is getting tiring. You've spent a lot of time on this, and we're all very proud of you, but this trick that you keep pulling of pretending not to understand what's being said so that you can pretend that something else has been said and then complain that the link doesn't say what you pretend we said it said – that trick's getting a little old. So for instance, this whole "the particular link you gave doesn't repeat the historical condition that you've contextualized it in" is technically true, but it misses the point - the asserted context provides the significance for that link (when I explain that to my undergrads, I say that it answers the "who cares?" question - if you want, I can talk to the registrar and ask that you be allowed to sit in on one of my lower-level argument courses if you want. I'd do that for you). So in other words, you can't complain when certain historical trends are referenced but left "not documented in this particular post" - if you think those trends don't exist, say so and provide evidence to the point. Don't complain that a trend which presumptively exists and seems confirmed by a new news link doesn't exist because the new confirmation isn't enough on its own to establish the trend. That's churlish and it's not the point of presenting new evidence that helps to confirm a past trend which a community believes exists. The Cole on its own wasn't enough to confirm an Islamist campaign against US interests - but the Cole in the context of the rest of the 90s should have been. Sure, there could have been other reasons the Cole was attacked (Yemeni agents trying to establish regional hegemony), but those reasons are only plausible if you take the Cole out of context. Similarly, you complain below that there's no evidence that an Afghani girls' teacher was killed on account of Islamist hatred of girls' schools - there "could have been" other reasons. Sure, but none of those reasons are plausible when you take into account consistent Islamist attempts to physical intimidate and murder those who seek to operate girls schools in that village.

To demand absolute certainty about other human being's motives is impossible - it's a recipe for inaction. Some people want inaction - that's why they say things like "we don't know whether Hamas won't moderate - let's wait and see" or "we don’t know that Iran won't stop its nuclear program - let's wait and see". In human affairs, mathematical certainty is an impossible burden of proof. In the case of HateWatch, we see examples of Jihadist hatred and politically correct idiotarianism as confirmations of broader trends. If you think there's evidence that the sympathies we impute to people are not sympathies that they hold, provide evidence on that point - don't waste our time saying that, because we have failed to catalog every single past instance where people have also held those sympathies, we have failed to convince you.

On the other hand, you have a certain advantage as a troll. We want people to take these briefings seriously, and to consider what they document severe enough to warrant concern and action. So I've answered your "but I don't get it" complaints point by point, if only so that new people coming who don't know the motives that drive your complaints won't be misled. But seriously - can't you go and bother someone else?

Islamist terrorists committed mass murder in Indonesia, Thailand (A 1), and Israel (A 2). (A 1) No mass murder, several cases of small-scale murder. (A 2) No murder at all, unless you count suicide bombing as self-murder

What can we say - you're absolutely right about this one. We had forgotten that the suicide bombing in Israel failed (as opposed to the murders in Indonesia and Thailand). That sentence should have read "Islamist terrorists committed mass murder and attempted mass murder in Indonesia, Thailand, and Israel." Your point stands, and we apologize to anyone in our audience for the implication that Islamist mass murder is always successful.

An anti-Semitic video (B 1) is very popular in Mexico. (B 2). (B 1) Not anti-Semitic, anti-Mexican. (B 2) Not popular in Mexico, publicized by a California-based Hispanic organization

Oh come on. Showing an evil Jew abusing Mexican-Americans is anti-Semitic, not anti-Mexican. If you don't think that's true, you're beyond hopeless. And La Voz de Aztlan has roots in the Southwest US and Mexico. Your complaint is that the blurb should have read "An anti-Semitic video is very popular in Mexico and in the American Southwest"? That's really your complaint?

Britain -- where the capital is run by a lunatic anti-Semite (C 1) . . . seems to have a bit of a problem with anti-Semitism. . . . Foreign Office officials were so concerned about Margaret Thatcher's pro-Israeli sympathies when she became Tory leader they wanted her to break off links with local Jewish groups . . . diplomats feared she would be seen by Arab countries as a "prisoner of the Zionists." (C 2) (C 1) Because, if you liken someone to a Nazi war criminal, that means you're an anti-Semitic, if you keep doing it after he's told you he's Jewish. [A rational analysis would conclude that Livingstone is (1) anti-fascist (since that's his choice of derogatory comparisons) and (2) anti-Evening Standard (since that was the ground of his hostility); but rationality's for Euro-weenies.] (C 2) Because concern for good relations with Arab countries just means race-based hatred of Jews. Well, anyhow, it looks a bit like it, if you describe joint Jewish-Gentile pro-Israel lobby groups (the Anglo-Israel Friendship League of Finchley, Conservative Friends of Israel) as "local Jewish groups".

No, when you repeatedly minimize the Holocaust, lash out at those who point that out, and then invite rabidly anti-Semitic Muslim clerics for speaking tours, they you're a lunatic anti-Semite. Listen, Robert, given your petulant little discussion of motives at that top of your comment, I can see that rhetoric and psychoanalysis are clearly areas in which you have deep and nuanced experience. So I'm a little embarrassed to have to remind you that in communities of discourse, it's taken as a given that some references and enthymemes will be understood without further explication (in fact, there are sound arguments that this is the foundation of political communities). And so when I reference something that's been references hundreds of times before (Livingstone's anti-Semitic past) but don't bother to link to reams of old information, it's not because that information doesn't exist - it's because this is a blog post and not an article. In other words, do try to keep up and cease pretending that when you can't it's somebody else's fault. And yes, frankly, if you say "we have to throw the Jews overboard or the Arabs will stop giving us oil" then that's anti-Semitism. If you cover it up with inoffensive euphemisms niceties (and frankly, I don't think they did that, but let's pretend) then it's just well-covered up anti-Semitism.

Islamists in Egypt destroyed a building . . . (A 3) No, "the Muslims set fire to building materials".

Seriously? That's the horrible misinterpretation I made that proves that Islamists are actually not in favor of preventing Christians from having Churches?

... if you think that your God is ordering you to gruesomely behead teachers because He doesn't like it when girls read books ... (D 1) (D 1) Or because He doesn't like mixed-sex education, or because you're running "a campaign against educated community leaders"? Who knows? Not the author of the article, she just presents some local speculation as speculation. Omri Ceren knows, that's who!

See, here you go again with the myopic hypocrisy. It's OK for you to intentionally pretend that you don't know reams and reams of examples relating to Ken Livingstone's anti-Semitism (which I know you know, because you're stupid but you're not stupid, know what I'm saying?) so that you can nauseatingly psychoanalyze intent at length, but for us to suggest that someone committed to preventing girls' education, who's known to be part of groups committed to preventing girls' education, just happened to kill a girls' teacher for reasons having nothing to do with girls' education. As a matter of probability, Robert, do you really think that's likely? Do you go through your life saying "well, the nice nurse who feeds me came in yesterday an the day before and the day before, but maybe today I'll wake up on a small moon of Jupiter where there are no nurses". Your obsession with extracting philosophy from children's books aside, skepticism was boring even when it was philosophically in fashion. Don't try to teach your children's literature to girls in Afghanistan though - someone who is "running a campaign against educated community leaders" might behead you.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is making a concentrated effort to move from our "Seethings" to "Religious Hate" category, but as long as the political and academic Left keeps irrationally venerating him (e.g. here),(C 3) we figure this category is as good as any. On Christmas Eve, Chavez decided to enlighten his population as to who really controls the world. Turns out, it's the Jews. Who just happen to be the same people who killed Christ:(E 1) [T]he descendants of those who crucified Christ... have taken ownership of the riches of the world, a minority has taken ownership of the gold of the world, the silver, the minerals, water, the good lands, petrol, well, the riches, and they have concentrated the riches in a small number of hands. (C 3) Two members of "the political and academic Left" are quoted. One "criticizes Chavez's confrontational style", the other is "a staunch supporter of the Chavez administration". If you don't understand that "staunch support" means "veneration", you're using the wrong dictiomri. (E 1) What do you do when some punk doctors a quote to turn it from leftist capitalist bashing into an allegation of Jewish descent? You pass it on! [undoctored quote follows:] ... some minorities, the descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ, the descendants of the same ones who threw out Bolivar from here and also crucified him in a way in Santa Marta, over there in Colombia -- a minority took possession of all the planet's gold, of the silver, the minerals, the waters, the good land, the oil, the riches, and they have concentrated the riches in a few hands. What do you do when the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela, the AJCommittee and the American Jewish Congress point this out, in the premier U.S. Jewish newspaper no less? Ignore them! They're not with the program!

Some members of the political left were disappointed with him, because he's such a popular figure (especially on the fringe academic left) - a kind of openly anti-Semitic Che without all the messy village burnings. But the point of the post (which, and I get tired of pointing this out, you understood) is that even though members of the Left feel uncomfortable with his anti-Semitism, they're still willing to venerate him because of his actions against the Bush administration. What's that you said about hypocrisy? I don't understand why your second quote is less anti-Semitic than the first. "Jews killed Christ and are running the world with the help of some of their puppets" is somehow not anti-Semitic?

Hostages who love their hostage takers made quite an impression last month. In Iraq, a German idiotarian still thinks that her hostage takers are upstanding freedom fighters,(B 3) a kind of silly proposition when you think about the whole "she didn't do anything so why would freedom fighters target her in the first place" thing. And among the oh so oppressed Palestinian people, hostages just fell in love with their terrorist kidnappers.(B 4, 5) From an Italian who remained committed to defending Palestinian violence (C 4) to a British girl who was baffled that her parents were so pissed off at being kidnapped (C 5) - nothing can shake the commitment of liberal Western activists to Palestinian terrorists. (B 3) In the story cited, Obsthoff doesn't say anything about what her captors were. She does say that they weren't criminals. (B 4) Bernardini isn't quoted as saying anything about his captors. (B 5) Kate Burton "feels sorry for these guys" but "can't forgive what they did to [her]." Neither is reported as falling in love -- by the MSM -- but that's why you read Hatewatch! (C 4) About the only thing Bernardini is quoted as saying is "I will never change my idea about the occupation". This means the same thing in English as "I remain committed to defending Palestinian violence" -- because Omri Ceren says so! (C 5) Can you get from I feel really, really guilty . . . I've given them their worst Christmas and their worst holiday ever. to ... baffled that her parents were so pissed off ... in four sleazy moves or less? No? That's why you're not writing Hatewatch!

Again with the tired pedantry. You're like a very oblivious pocket calculator, unable to understand references, or, frankly, communication. Obsthoff did say plenty about her captors, both in "the story cited" and in other stories, and your protestations that if Bernadini had nothing to say about violence is idiotic - if he supported violence against "the occupation" before he was captured and after he was released he refused to "change [his] idea about the occupation", then he still supports violence. You're like the people who are saying that Hamas might be moderating because they say that they "remain committed to their program of liberating Palestinian lands" but they don't define what they mean by Palestinian lands in every public statement" - because everybody already catches that reference, and understands that for Hamas "Palestinian lands" means "the river to the sea". Just like in the case where Hamas speaks to its followers, you have to understand, Roberts, that certain things are understood within communities of discourse. Again, if you're going to participate in a community, you have to accept that some things will be left enthymematic - pretending toward ignorance is fun, but it's also cheating - if you don't get something, very often it's your own responsibility to catch up. Entire histories of relevant issues that have been under discussion for years can't be rehashed in every post just so you can be satisfied that a particularly dumb computer jumping into the conversation just now could catch all the references.

College liberals love convincing themselves that they're lonely and desperate dissidents fighting for truth and freedom against the dark night of fascism into which the government has thrown the country. Part and parcel of that fantasy is a love for a certain kind of fashionable, romantic violence - ergo the popularity of sweatshop-produced Che Guevara t-shirts. But actively recruiting suicide bombers on college campuses is a new one even for this group (B 6) Click Ceren's links and learn how to turn "hosting a speaker who once wrote an article decrying 'occupation, oppression, apartheid, and suicide bombings'" into "actively recruiting suicide bombers"!

This is getting silly. The speaker "calls for Christians to become 'martyrs' for the Palestinian cause." Now its true he doesn't define martyr, so maybe he means a martyr for the kind of "inner jihad" that I keep hearing about (hey, that could be what he means... I certainly didn't provide any references to the contrary), but come now Robert, that's not what he likely means is it? Any more than, sure, a local girls' teacher murdered by a man committed to keeping girls uneducated could have been murdered for other reasons, but that's not why he was likely murdered was it? International obtuseness stops being cute when a child turns 3.

British gay rights groups are so committed to suffocating political correctness that they won't countenance any suggestion that radical Islamists - who drop houses on people they think are insufficiently heterosexual - might actually be hostile to gay people.(E 2) (E 2) The Executive Committee of the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association thought that this: ... many of these Third World and Eastern European newcomers are criminals of the worst kind ... and this: [Islam] continues to grow like a canker, both through immigration and through the unrestrained and irresponsible breeding we have become used to seeing among practicing Catholics were "racially prejudiced and inflammatory". Omri Ceren, with help from Jeff at Beautiful Atrocities, turned this into denial that radical Islam might be hostile to gay people.

Speaking of wasting time, this is the second time I've had to essentially mash up the food and feed you baby gruel because you pretend to be oblivious. Again, to believe that you're anything but a troll, someone would have to believe not only that you really don't think that Afghani Muslims specifically target girls' schools, but that you are totally unable to remember and make connections about things people said previously and things they say now ("before he was for resistance through violence, but now he just says he's for resistance in the same way he was before... but that doesn't mean he's for violence!" For you, Robert, the world must be a total mystery - people just move around, without intention and without purpose. You need it carefully broken down - no arguments are allowed to be settled and built on - everything must always start from square one ("this particular link doesn't repeat all of the stuff he's said before...) and no complex arguments about social trends are allowed ("making light of Nazis and the Holocaust never has anything to do with outright Holocaust denial..."). It's a drab and not very smart world you live in, and I'd appreciate it if you'd stop trying to drag the rest of us into it. Troll.

testing . . .

I know Phelps got written up last month, but this month he and his "church" are celebrating the death of 12 miners at the Sago Mine. They announced plans to picket memorial services with signs like: "Thank God for Dead Miners," "God Hates Your Tears," and "Cursed Not Blessed." I can't tell whether they actually attended those services or if they were no-shows. In a press release (entitled "Brokeback Mountaineers"), they are planning to protest the Sago baptist church in April.

Also, several Midwestern states (Kansas, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Illinois, Indiana and Missouri) are in the process of passing laws to stop their protests of military funerals. The Phelps klan has promised to sue any state that passes such laws for violating their constitutional right to protest in public:

"These aren't private funerals; these are patriotic pep rallies. Our goal is to call America an abomination, to help the nation connect the dots. You turn this nation over to the [gays] and our soldiers come home in body bags."

That I haven't replied to Omri Ceren's comment #2, is because my posts have been knocked back by the WoC filter as "questionable content". I'm going to try posting some fragments of reply and see if any get through.

Our filters have been bouncing your comments back as questionable? And the skeptics say that artificial intelligence is impossible...

Response to comment #2, part 1

I don't mean to spend much time on Ceren's ad hominems. The charges of trolling, hypocrisy, and so forth needn't be addressed directly; they should dispel of themeselves in the course of debate on the main topic. But there is one point I do have to notice:

. . . Robert, I understand that you're into making excuses for jihadists and that you've gone so far as to celebrate atrocities.

The bit about making excuses for jihadists doesn't bother me, it's just dumb. There's nothing intrinsically reprehensible about making excuses for jihadis: "I'm sorry, Mr Bearden, but Ahmed will be late; he had to take a detour around a Russian convoy." It's just that I've never had to do it, as far as I recall; certainly not on an habitual basis.

[Of course, Ceren's intention here is to run a smear, that anyone who calls him or his "community" on their bullshit is a fellow traveller with Islamic terrorism; but in this instance, he's had the moral good fortune to screw up on his smearing.]

The part I have to notice is this: "you've gone so far as to celebrate atrocities". This statement is false, slanderous, and contemptible. Presentint it without even a pretence of proof was a despicable act; Failure either to substantiate it (which can't be done) or to withdraw it will mark Ceren as a despicable human being.

Response to comment #2, part 2

Rather remarkably, even in someone with a wretchedly weak case, in all his lengthy reply Ceren makes not one point of merit. It consist partly of futile attempts to defend indefensible positions on particular points, partly of turgid rationalisations of his own worst methodological vices as merits, and partly of misdirections and irrelevancies.

He does however make a few concessions. He agrees that on points A1, A2, A3, B7 his head post was inaccurate as charged.

On points A1-3 he professes bewilderment as to why anyone should care. A better response would have been to update the head post to correct the statements he'd admitted to be false.

To help Ceren out, here are a few clues.

• There's a virtue in the world called accuracy. It's supposed to be mastered by the humblest clerks, let alone (what Ceren claims to be, tertiary educators. One isolated instance ("buildings" instead of "building materials", say) may not be important, but a pattern of incidents rightly undermines trust.
• There's another virtue in the world called truthfulness (part of a larger virtue called honesty). It involves not making or maintaining statements you know to be false. And it isn't applied grudgingly, after a case has been made that untruthfulness might do some particular harm in some particular instance; it applies by default, everywhere.
• Finally, there's a virtue called seriousness, recognizing the weighty things in life and treating them as such. What does it matter, Ceren insinuates, whether a suicide bomber committed murder or only attempted murder? He's still just as guilty either way. He fails to recognize that death not the murder is the centre of gravity here. Everything else derives from that; if that weren't serious, the wickedness of the perpetrators wouldn't be serious either. No normal responsible human being would write "Earthquakes inflicted massive loss of lives in Indonesia, Thailand, and Israel" if he knew there had no loss of life in Israel; no more would he write the same about terrorist attacks.

On many individual points, Ceren is just wrong. On point (B6), the case of Nadeem Muaddi, he's not just wrong but vile.

To recap, Nadeem Muaddi once wrote a "call for Christian martyrdom" in Palestine. Later, he spoke at a conference at Georgetown University. From this, Ceren concludes that at Georgetown he "actively recruited suicide bombers".

The speaker "calls for Christians to become 'martyrs' for the Palestinian cause." Now its true he doesn't define martyr . . .

Not true.

. . . to become a true martyr, one must contribute equally to "witnessing in word, witnessing in deed, and exposing oneself to danger, whatever the cost". If this "cost" so happens to be death, then one will have become a martyr.

. . . so maybe he means a martyr for the kind of "inner jihad" that I keep hearing about . . . but . . . that's not what he likely means is it?

No, since "inner jihad" is an specifically Islamic concept, and he's a Christian inspired by a Christian author (Bishop Munib Yunan). Equally, suicide bombing isn't what he means, since he disparages both suicide bombing specifically and suicide generally:

. . . occupation, oppression, apartheid, and suicide bombings have become the unfortunate norm . . .

. . . to simply kill one's self in a desperate act of hopelessness does not constitute martyria, but murder -- a sin against God in all three Abrahamic faiths . . .

. . . the Son of God himself provided an exemplary lifestyle for followers to emulate. . . He did not kill himself, nor did he want to die, but because he refused to deviate from a righteous path, he was killed.

Originally Ceren may not have read Muaddi's article, but only the Israpundit article that cited it. Already from Israpundit he should have known that his post was untruthful in two points; in claiming to have found recruitment taking place on campus, and that the recruitment was necessarily to suicide bombing (Israpundit envisaged "standing in front of an armored bulldozer" as an alternative. Later, from Muaddi's post, he should know by now that his post was slanderous; that Muaddi's article, far from recruiting suicide bombers, explicitly condemned suicide bombing and indeed all forms of suicide.

At that point, Ceren's only decent course of action was to withdraw his original assertions. Instead he writes:

. . . he doesn't define martyr, so maybe he means a martyr for the kind of "inner jihad" that I keep hearing about (hey, that could be what he means... I certainly didn't provide any references to the contrary), but come now Robert, that's not what he likely means is it?

What we're to understand, implies Ceren, is that when a Palestinian says "martyr" he means "suicide bomber". We may take this as an example of the methodology Ceren proclaims:

Entire histories of relevant issues that have been under discussion for years can't be rehashed in every post . . .

hen I reference something that's been references hundreds of times before . . . but don't bother to link to reams of old information, it's not because that information doesn't exist - it's because this is a blog post and not an article. In other words, do try to keep up and cease pretending that when you can't it's somebody else's fault.

you can't complain when certain historical trends are referenced but left "not documented in this particular post" - if you think those trends don't exist, say so and provide evidence to the point. Don't complain that a trend which presumptively exists and seems confirmed by a new news link doesn't exist because the new confirmation isn't enough on its own to establish the trend.

everybody . . . understands that for Hamas "Palestinian lands" means "the river to the sea" . . . certain things are understood within communities of discourse

Now there are two problems with this. The first is that this "trend" or "thing that's been referenced hundred of times before" or "entire history", happens to be bogus. Ceren and his "community" may have referenced "hundreds of times before" that, in Palestinian usage, "martyr" means "suicide bomber", but -- it isn't true. The Palestinians count as martyrs all those who die on their side of the conflict, whether in suicide bombing, throwing rocks, or sitting quietly at home. So, for example, the "List of Palestinian Martyrs" counts Occupation-related deaths of all kinds; and reports on martyrdoms include Hedar Al Khateeb going to work and Alian Bshiti, aged 18 months, killed by an Israeli army bullet in his house in Khan Younis as well as those engaged in "resistance operations". Those are just a few of "reams and reams" of examples; it's impossible to follow the I/P conflict long (as opposed to pro-Israel talking points about the conflict) without picking up on this.

The second point is that in matters of evidence, the specific trumps the general. Even if the pattern of usage supported Ceren's claim (which it doesn't), it could not outweigh the specific evidence of the contents of Muaddi's own article.

What Ceren's "trends" and "communities" methodology comes down to here, is overruling the specific evidence to hand, with an assiduously repeated partisan falsehood. Unsurprisingly, the methodology worked not to reveal truth but to create slander.