Here is Jeremy's response to Sue Blackwell's use of quotation on her website:

Dear me, where to begin? When it comes to not publicizing antisemitic propaganda week after week, one should not have to “give a break” to someone who so piously claims to detest antisemitism. I’m willing to concede that Blackwell merits special treatment in such matters, of course, although I’m dubious that she’d have bothered doing anything about her fake Sharon quote if I hadn’t brought it up again. And, yes, her latest offerings of Israeli Prime Minister “quotes”—this time from PM’s Meir and Shamir are—surprise?—bogus as well. (I’ll deal with them in a moment.) Go figure. Regarding Naturei Karta, whom Blackwell mentions above and whose belief, she writes on her website, that “not only the Diaspora but even the Holocaust was God's will for the Jewish people” she finds “too much to stomach” although not too much to stop her from publicizing NK on her website (again, go figure): Blackwell’s weblink to this group in her aforementioned “Jewish anti-Zionists” section (she also links to them elsewhere on her website) is, uh, right above her link to a certain “Fat Old Jewish Guy” named Eugene Weixel who digs folks like Israel Shamir. Oddly enough, in her January 26th article in “The Rundown,” Blackwell knocks Weixel’s website (she groups him with Gilad Atzmon) for “happily” providing links to articles by people like Paul Eisen, yet on her own website Blackwell still happily links to Weixel’s blog. Ah, such principles! Such delightful folks and “quotes” and websites Blackwell sees fit to publicize!

Anyway, at the risk of paying too much attention to unworthy subjects…

I suppose it’s worth pointing out for the record that, after reading my post in which I helpfully informed her (—having figured she’d be reading Engage’s discussion of her Al-Ahram article) that she’d included on her webpage a fraudulent, Protocols-esque quote about the Jewish people controlling America, Blackwell’s response was hardly one of concern. Indeed, she seemed completely unfazed, and, three weeks after being tipped off about it, she still had the repugnant quote on her site. For those who missed it, it was the second Ariel Sharon quote on her page of “Quotations (sic) from Prominent Zionists.” Most of these quotations, as you would expect, are littered—devoid of context, with the exact same citations (or lack thereof), and the exact same editorial and parenthetical comments—throughout the vast anti-Zionist, antisemitic wastelands of the Internet. Either countless numbers of people, including myriad antisemites and other assorted bigots and fascists, have been copy-and-pasting from Blackwell’s quotes page over the years and not attributing her for the quotations, or Blackwell is a similarly enthusiastic copy-and-paster herself, with negligible interest in verifying, proofreading, or fact checking the often inflammatory material she appropriates onto her website. That it took her over three weeks to check and (finally) delete antisemitic material that had been pointed out to her is further evidence to the point. The Palestine Solidarity Committee of South Africa, the charming anti-Zionist organization that Blackwell linked to for this fraudulent Sharon quote, provides on its website “Important Links” to groups like Hamas, PFLP, and “Resistance Organization,” the latter of which features “The Protocols” and Holocaust denial, among other things. Elsewhere on her site Blackwell features the same PSC of SA website, itself replete with weblinks to terror organizations and such, as her featured website of the month. Fine choice for her website of the month, and fine bedfellows for Blackwell! Blackwell, of course, won’t link to hate mongering websites like those of Hamas and “Resistance Organization (on purpose, at least) but apparently she’s not especially vigilant (or concerned) in not publicizing folks like the PSC of SA who do. Is this not pathetic? (Gilad Atzmon is a similar case: Blackwell won’t link to this bigot—goodness, no!—yet she enthusiastically hypes Mazin Qumsiyeh’s recent Davos conference screed—removed from the conference’s magazine—in which Qumsiyeh endorses…yes, Gilad Atzmon. Blackwell, naturally, thinks Qumsiyeh’s article is keen (perhaps having read it) and congratulates Qumsiyeh on getting it published. Gilad Atzmon, like Blackwell, probably liked it, too. Eugene Weixel likewise.)

Blackwell’s website of the month (and her linked source for a fraudulent quotation that she only bothered to deal with three weeks after it had been pointed out to her) is a truly inspired choice on her part, as hyping the PSC of SA will no doubt offer further evidence that antisemitism in the Palestine Solidarity movement is truly negligible, give or take the occasional plugging of antisemites, terrorist websites, and so on. This is the sort of website in which Blackwell goes digging when she needs some juicy stuff about someone like Ariel Sharon (“he aint dead yet,” notes Blackwell—tee hee!), which speaks volumes about her academic credibility and seriousness in addressing such matters. So, really, why not highlight on her website a “news” item about the Prime Minister of Israel bragging, less than a month after the September 11th attacks, that the Jews control America? It’s from a cool anti-Zionist website, so… must be legit! Or not, as I pointed out to her three weeks ago, not that she was overly concerned about it. Odd, to say the least, that it didn’t occur to Blackwell to check this repugnant quote when she first posted it; odder still that she retained it on her website for weeks after I tipped her off about it. Granted, she was super-busy with her thesis and the Georgetown conference, but that’s a lame excuse considering that neither of those kept her from making other updates to her site. Odd priorities for one who so detests antisemitism, but apparently taking a moment to verify and delete antisemitic fraudulence on one’s own website can wait a week or two or three when you’re a progressive anti-Zionist.

One would think that, having been alerted to phony, antisemitic material on her website, someone as progressive and non-antisemitic—scholarly goes without saying—as Blackwell would be exceptionally keen to investigate and remedy such an unfortunate matter, if not as quickly as possible than at least with some degree of alacrity—for who wants fraudulent, antisemitic material sullying one’s webpage and reputation?—not least since Blackwell was already online anyway, reading and posting at Engage when she read my first comment about her fake quote.

Blackwell’s response, instead, was to snipe that “instead of bitching about them (sic) here why don't you just send me an e-mail pointing it out and I'll look into it.” (As a professional academic, shouldn’t she have checked such an inflammatory quotation before publicizing it?) For someone who has trumpeted her aversion to all things racist and antisemitic I’m struck that her publicly posted reaction at having included such matter on her webpage was so… sullenly apathetic, if not boorish and dismissive. For one who detests—detests!—antisemitism her response to its latest presence on her website was, at best, utterly slothful. Perhaps I’ve an over delicate sensibility to such matters, but if I’d accidentally included fraudulent, bigoted material on my personal website—even if my website wasn’t “famous,” like Blackwell’s (or so she claims: such modesty!)—I’d be embarrassed and eager to eliminate it as quickly as possible, and I’d probably do it before making snarky comments about it online, too. Not so Blackwell, for though she detests all forms of antisemitism, as she pointed out in a posting at Engage, two weeks (and more) after I informed her of this antisemitic content on her site, she still (!) hadn’t deleted it (although, busy as she was, she did find time to make other updates to her “famous pages on Palestine and Israel”). She detests all forms of antisemitism, to be sure, yet she didn’t seem particularly bothered about removing this piece of Protocols-esque garbage from her website and disassociating herself from such fraud. Oddly enough, she exhibited little urgency or concern about the matter, and her vigilance against such material (on her own website, no less) has been less than impressive. Perhaps, for Blackwell, pointing out antisemitic content on her website is merely so much “bitching.”

Obvious questions: Why did she continue to feature this inflammatory and fraudulent quote after it was pointed out to her, and why did she see fit to publicize it in the first place? Why, after being alerted to this garbage on February 5, had she STILL not done anything about it three weeks later? Being busy doesn’t quite suffice when all she had to do was type in a quick and simple Internet search, something she probably should have done before posting such inflammatory content in the first place. For someone who detests all forms of antisemitism, it’s beginning to seem that this lady doth detest too much.

So, one wonders: Upon stumbling across this execrable “quote,” did any warning indicators of skepticism or suspicion however faint trigger within Blackwell’s enlightened and progressive consciousness? If so, why did she not heed them and verify the authenticity of this sparkling “Jewish people” gem to see if it was too good (bad, really) to be true? A quick search of the Internet—since that’s where she probably found it, along with most of her other “quotes” in the same section—would have enlightened her not only that this nasty quote she was about to introduce on her website was fake but that it had already been posted on a plethora of antisemitic websites, including David Duke’s and David Irving’s. But… if it didn’t occur to Blackwell that a “quote” from the Prime Minister of Israel affirming that, yes, indeed the Jews really DO control America (and the Americans know it!) might, just possibly, be bogus, one has to wonder why for goodness sake it did NOT occur to her, what this says about her personal train of thought (or lack thereof) regarding such matters, and why she’s so susceptible to this sort of material (—consider the other disreputable sources and material and bigots she’s linked to). Such queries, I think, complement the questions Hirsh poses in his piece about Blackwell’s Al-Ahram essay, especially his question “How does she [blackwell] explain the fact that antisemites assume that she is one of them?”

Blackwell’s assertion that “I'm glad you agree that all the others on the page are genuine” is similarly slothful and inane, not least since there’s no reason for such agreement. Were Blackwell to make any serious (and overdue!) effort at fact checking her quotations she would know that her compendium is less than accurate. An obvious example is the Golda Meir “quote” that Blackwell offers above, which is just further evidence of the same silliness and sloppiness: This chestnut “quote” compacts into one sentence two disparate sentences from a five-sentence quote. Needless to say, the context and accuracy of Blackwell’s quote are distorted, although this is hardly unexpected when dealing with the anti-Zionist school of linguistics and faked quotations. Et Tutu, Ms. Meir? Regarding Blackwell’s “Yitzak Shamir” quote about “the Palestinians” being crushed like grasshoppers, Shamir was clearly referring to Palestinian rioters, not Palestinians in general (see here.)

In this case, Blackwell’s copy-and-pasted “quote” fraudulently merges (and alters) two sentences that are separated by several paragraphs!

The New York Times article (from April 1, 1988) Blackwell cites for this fraudulent quote begins thus: “As Israel prepared to lift a three-day blockade of the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir warned today that rioters would be crushed ‘like grasshoppers.’” Yet a few paragraphs and sentences later, we read “But Mr. Shamir, standing atop an ancient West Bank castle, told reporters: ‘Anybody who wants to damage this fortress and other fortresses we are establishing will have his head smashed against the boulders and walls.’” And so from these disparate elements is forged Blackwell’s latest offering, which doesn’t even come close to the original. Blackwell’s quasi-citation even gets the audience wrong: Shamir was addressing reporters, not settlers. Goodness! The article itself dates from April Fool’s Day, and so perhaps it’s not surprising that anti-Zionists like Blackwell have exploited it for anti-intellectual trickery.

As I noted above, whenever Solidarity people and their ilk retch up such a “quotation,” it's best to check it against the original because invariably the “original” quote, assuming it’s even a real quote, offers a very different context if not composition. Like the Palestine Solidarity Movement’s forged Tutu quote, these fake Sharon, Meir, and Shamir quotes have become mainstays of anti-Zionist propaganda—they’re all over the Internet, for example—and they are perfect examples of how these folks do business. Mona Baker, for example, includes similar sorts of “quotes” on her website, including a slightly different version of the Meir quote and—yipes!—yet another (!) bogus Sharon quote (from an “interview” with Amos Oz, even though Oz has never interviewed Sharon).

And these anti-Zionists academics, armed with their bogus quotes, advocate, of all things, an academic boycott! It would be laughable if it weren’t so disgusting.

One begins to wonder if Blackwell has any interest in verifying the “information” she copies-and-pastes or otherwise inserts onto her website. I suspect many if not most (maybe all) of the quotes in her Zionist quotations section are similarly inaccurate (“[The Palestinians are] beasts walking on two legs” being a case in point, as are her Herzl diary quotes). Her editorial control over her own website is obviously less than academically or intellectually rigorous, and it does not appear to go much beyond relying on other people—strangers especially—to email her about the veracity and appropriateness of material she’s included on her website (as she did in response to my heads-up about her fake Sharon quote), and then, if she’s not too busy with other things, she’ll check on the information at some point.

In addition to the bogus Sharon quote (and now the bogus Meir and Shamir “quotes”), another error I spotted during a perusal of Blackwell’s Zionist “quotes” page is her inclusion of one “Vladimir Jabostinsky.” Although charming, this is stinsking—er, stinking—incorrect. That’s the sort of smelly error people often overlook when copying-and-pasting lots and lots of really good stuff, and Blackwell makes it at least twice. I found these items during a few perusals of Blackwell’s website, and I suspect if we scratched around a bit more that more pseudo-intellectual seepage would ooze forth. Not that this would be surprising at this point. By the way, if you or your local progressive anti-Israel group are ever running short of PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) paraphernalia, just click on Blackwell’s link to Sambar: they’ve got plenty, and—as Blackwell points out—they now take credit cards. Neat! This nifty website also features lots of gun and Palestine (that is, Palestine without Israel) imagery, as well as a cute DFLP (Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine) pin, which progressive anti-Zionists can wear whilst commemorating that brave resistance group’s valiant 1974 assault on sleeping children at Ma’alot.

Another item, assuming Blackwell will be less disinterested this time, that probably shouldn’t be on a website as progressive and intellectually healthy as hers, is anything written by that delusional nutter Mark Glenn—unless, of course, you think including a piece by a melodramatic, scribbling bigot who claims Monica Lewinsky was an Israeli intelligence agent (seriously) sent to entangle Bill Clinton somehow lends credibility to you, your website, and your arguments. (I know, I know, his little ditties are so touching, sniff). Sigh… She might also consider that linking to articles by Michael “Let’s Have Fun With Antisemitism” Neumann and Eugene “Israel Shamir is WICKED” Weixel hardly help people to take seriously her own views on antisemitism, no matter how much she detests it, or says she does. The company you keep, and all that.

But apparently Blackwell was in fine form at Georgetown, even if the movement seems not to have gained much traction in recent years. Fake quotes and the like will only get you so far, no matter how many Jewish supporters you rope in to “inoculate yourself from the charges of being an anti-Semite” (snort).

http://www.jewishexponent.com/ViewArticle.asp?ArtID=2562

“Speaker Sue Blackwell, who led the boycott by British academics of Israeli institutions last year, stated as a goal ‘ending the special status that Israel currently enjoys with the United States and the European Union, and letting the world know Israel is a pariah, apartheid state who should be treated exactly the same way as apartheid South Africa.’”

Oho, now that’s a QUOTE for you, snap!