Silverstein mocked by another blog

[mord]

http://www.jewlicious.com/

Stop the presses!
Back in April, an article appeared in the Herald Tribune that discussed the lack of civility to be found on blogs. One of the people interviewed was Richard Silverstein, whose “Tikkun Olam” blog often promotes his far-left, anti-Zionist perspective on the Middle East and Israel. In the interview, Silverstein bemoaned the hatred thrown his way by his ideological opponents, especially as demonstrated by an anonymous blog called Little [censored]’s Diaper Droppings which criticizes Silverstein in a decidedly juvenile and angry manner. This week’s Forward offers a follow up on this saga and positions Silverstein as the leading victim of what they call “the below-the-belt discourse that has taken hold in the world of Jewish blogging. Scurrilous barbs and sharp-tongued insults are routinely tossed back and forth through cyberspace from one Jewish blogger to another…”

What the article fails to mention about Silverstein is that, well, he sure has no problem hurling invective while making unsubstantiated allegations. Here’s what the new poster boy for online decency says about yours truly:

June 4, 2007: “I find CK at Jewlicious to be one of the snarky, smug and more objectionable figures in the Jewish blog world.” Later, after making allegations about my involvement with the Little [censored] site, he added “I consider him to be an annoying, lying SOB.” and also “CK is an oaf…”

June 13, 2007: Here he called me “Jewlicious’ sleazy owner” and claimed that I stole an image from his site. The doctrine of fair use would disagree with that assessment - the fair use of copyrighted material is not theft. That’s the law. But when the law is not on his side, Silverstein simply invokes some kind of moral prerogative, the violation of which should cause me shame. But as he notes, “Abitbol knows no shame.” He also notes that because of my artistic assault against him, a fellow Jew, my Jewishness “is only skin deep.” The image in question, reproduced on the Little [censored] site and in TM’s post below, simply illustrated a post about a Little Green Footballs/Silverstein blog dust up. Oh my. Lock up your daughters and hide your silver away! At least he used the post to kinda, sorta grudgingly almost retract his claim that I was involved in some kind of Zionist Cabal to defame him along with the creator of the Little [censored] blog and all these other people I don’t know and have never interacted with. Mind you, that retraction should have been added to the original post accusing me of direct involvement, but whatever. Who am I to preach standards to Saint Silverstein who has never, ever posted onto his site copyright protected photos of fellow Jewish bloggers he disagrees with. Ever.

I never visit Silverstein’s non-entity of a blog anymore. I realized long ago that he is an attention whore and a drama Queen who revels in his self-made image as a victim of his ideological enemies. I had to address Silverstein’s hypocrisy because the Forward saw fit to feature him in an article, but otherwise I am content to allow him to continue to bask in his irrelevance and obscurity, fashioning conspiracy theories and hateful invective for himself and his little crew of special friends.

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The Good Jewish Bloggers and the Bad Jewish Bloggers
June 14th, 2007 by themiddle
The Forward has bought the Richard Silverstein tear-jerking saga, the one where he laments his poor treatment by other bloggers and particularly by some guy who created Little [censored]’s Diaper Droppings. Silverstein is apparently one of the good guys.

In the same article, Dan Sieradski, AKA Mobius from Jewschool, is also depicted as one of the good Jewish bloggers, the civil ones. In fact, he tells the world that it was debating some of us here at Jewlicious that made him put up the “Jewish Bloggers for Responsible Speech Online” tag which he then proceeded to violate on his own site.

Oops, that last part wasn’t in the article. Neither was mention of the time he changed the words of this poster, without cause, into insults related to bowel movements. Or the time he changed the words of this poster to read, “I am a contemptible person.” Or the time he came to our site and wrote, “TM sucks hard” because he gave a report about Shira Chadasha in Jerusalem with which several others disagreed. I can’t recall, was that just before or just after Mobi put up the Responsible Speech tag? There’s no mention in the Forward article, of course, of all of the insults he’s heaped on those who disagree with his views or his penchant for banning or sidelining those folks, including Jewschool’s own posters, with whose views he disagrees.

There was also no mention in the article about Silverstein’s heinous treatment of people who come to his site and don’t share his anti-Israel views. These are people who try to debate his views - not to insult him or the regulars who visit his site who spew all kinds of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist nonsense regularly - who present a differing viewpoint which he so strongly rejects, since it doesn’t vilify Israel and its history or actions as he would like.

It is hilarious to see two of the Jewish blogosphere’s biggest violators of the rules of decency and etiquette on the Internet pose as victims of the same infractions. Interestingly, Jewlicious comes across as one of the attacker blogs thanks to Mobius neglecting to mention that it were his own actions leading him to put up his meaningless tag for responsible speech. And we have our own ck explaining why he won’t put on the hypocritical tag, except that being ck, instead of taking a well-deserved potshot at his accuser, Mobius, he says, “There’s a lot of testosterone on the Internet, a lot of swagger,” [What makes] “the blogosphere interesting is the fact that it is dynamic and anything can happen.”

Well yeah, like the time Mobius was frustrated in a debate with me and threatened to kick me in the shins. Or when he got frustrated to the degree where he wrote me an email calling me names.

Or the time, last week, when Richard Silverstein threatened Jewlicious with a lawsuit because he claims this image to your right is a copyright violation. That’s correct, this image bothers him so much that he is threatening a lawsuit and seems to keep writing articles on his blog attacking ck or Jewlicious writers. I would check and link to these articles, but my IP was banned from his site without any cause. Yup, imagine a blogger threatening you with a lawsuit over a harmless, humorous image the way Silverstein has, and then ensuring that your IP is banned from his site so that you cannot even respond to his attacks.

So Rebecca Spence from The Forward, take a closer look at the archives of these two Good Jewish Bloggers and try to be more critical. You are also welcome to visit our archives, having been depicted as the Wild West of the Jewish blogosphere. I’m sure they will compare favorably, even with some of the harsh discussions we’ve had here.

Now seriously, the stuff above is fluff and not too important other than for its humor value. However, one issue brought up in the Forward’s article is serious. Dan Sieradski complains that he had been called a “Zionazi.” This is ironic. You see, Sieradski belongs to the stream of Left-wing, anti-Israel Jews who have made an unspoken (or sometimes spoken) pact with the anti-Israel Left and pro-Palestinians to attack Israel and its actions and its legitimacy. A couple of the key ways in which these attacks are made include comparing Israel to South Africa in the apartheid days and to Nazi Germany, including a comparison of the IDF to Nazi soldiers. That is where the term Zionazi originates, it’s a blatant parallel between Zionism and Nazism.

Now, ANYBODY who has actually seen one of these pro-Israel/anti-Israel debates knows that it’s virtually always the Israelis and their supporters, often Jewish, who are called Zionazis and racists and ethnic cleansers, etc. Almost always the attacks are made by the very people who share the same or a similar political outlook regarding Israel and the Arab-Israel conflict as Dan Sieradski. When I say almost always, I mean 99.87% of the time. If he has been called a Zionazi, it was an aberration, or perhaps somebody misread his luke-warm support of Israel and attacked him the way he attacks Israel very often. It’s ironic that a person who shares the very same views as so many who call us Zionazis actually claims to be a victim of the slur.