Richard Silverstein unhinged
Richard Silverstein is a fairly successful Jewish blogger who authors "Tikun Olam-תקון עולם". The motto of the site is "make the world a better place", but unfortunately, his image of a "better place" is more in line with Norman Finkelstein's vision rather than Anne Frank's.
I got this email from him today. Here it is verbatim:
From: richards1052 @ comcast .netI would be glad to point out to him that it's far easier to simply block an email address, rather than writing and threatening someone, but I never email someone if they make it clear they don't want to hear from me. So I can't tell him that.
If you ever again attempt to publish a comment on my blog or even write me an e mail I will do my best to identify who you are & register a complaint with your commanding officer. I find it outrageous that if you are a U.S. military intelligence agent as you claim that you should be allowed to spew such hate, insult and intolerance at a fellow U.S. citizen, all under color of your uniform. Not to mention that you spew opinions that contradict U.S. foreign and military policy.
If you violate this request you better hope you've disguised yr identity so well that neither I nor yr commanding officer can figure it out.
No non-Jew gets the right to can me a self-hating Jew.
So what prompted this angry email? For those who like to read correspondence, I'll explain the history here a little.
The first time I visited his site, he tried to blame Israel for a 20 year-old Palestinian suicide attacker named Mohammed Salem Al-Harbawi, who killed himself and an Israeli woman early last month. Comments between myself and several other people were heated, but not excessively so. However, Silverstein did something I have never seen a web-owner do before. In order to "win" the debate, he misrepresented what I said, and then claimed victory by declaring his own comment section closed so I couldn't respond to it. To me, that seemed extremely rude, but I figured, it's his blog after all, and sometimes comments can go on too long. However, I didn't really understand why he didn't just use the site controls to shut down comments for everyone instead. But I found out later the real reason he declared it "closed" was because he didn't like to be challenged on his own site (see below).
In a later comment thread, he did the same thing. This time I decided to write a response anyway, but I added the caveat that he could simply delete the comment if he wanted. He responded to me by email this time:
From: RICHARD SILVERSTEIN (richards1052 @ comcast .net)Here was my answer to that:
It always disappoints me when I ask a commenter to close theirparticipation in a thread & they feel they have to get the last word in. Infact, it's rude, unresponsive & downright uncivil. It's like someone whoknocks on your door & invites themselves in. After you've offered themtheir 4th cookie & after you've asked them to stop they decide to take justone more. The reason I do this is that I, unlike most bloggers, actually spend a hugeamt. of time in my comment threads replying to my readers. And for peoplelike you who attempt to argue with me I spend even more time. The reason Iask some to stop participating is because this has happened at least 40other times before in the past five yrs. & if I didn't I'd be like a chessgrandmaster with 14 comment threads going at once & some commenters wouldhave 40-50 comments in a single thread. I give commenters a few good whacks(which you've had). Then when I judge they're starting to repeat themselvesor that they're making a pt. 15 other commenters have made in this blogbefore (& which I've responded to 14 previous times) I bring it to and end.I never tell someone they can't participate in general. I ask them to moveon to a diff. thread. And btw, I DO get the last word if I want it. It's my blog. You get thelast word in yours. Go to town. That's the way it works.
From: John Rohan [mailto:johnrohan @ hotmail .com]Until now, I strongly disagreed with him, but at least I thought he was sincere in his beliefs, and I had a certain amount of respect for him. Unfortunately, his next answer showed me his true nature, and shattered my view of the man:
1) Most blog software will let you close comments whenever you want. If you can't do that, maybe it's time to get better software. As it is, your comments don't allow people to preview them, which is a big negative. And as I said, you could simply delete my comment.
2) I responded because you made an outright false statement. Palestinians might say they are against killing innocent civilians, but it's likely they don't consider any Israeli to be an "innocent". You might want to check out this piece by Dr. Maria Alvanou. I don't see anything like this outside of Palestine (and 1940s Japan):
http://rieas.gr/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=256&Itemid=43
[Quoted article followed]
JR
From: richards1052 @ comcast .net(In other words, he can't stand someone to actually challenge his view of Israel as an evil empire) My response:
I didn't want to close the comments for that thread. I wanted YOU to stop posting to the thread.
From: John Rohan [mailto:johnrohan @hotmail .com]His answer:
Because you were afraid of being exposed? Don't worry, I won't comment on your blog again.
JR
From: RICHARD SILVERSTEIN (richards1052 @ comcast .net)
YOU expose ME? Hardly.
Then, a few weeks later, I found an article that directly refuted his claim that the majority of Palestinians reject terror attacks. This is the letter that led to the response at the very top of this post:
From: John Rohan (johnrohan @ hotmail .com)I called him a fraud because he regularly writes disinformation attacking Israel and minimizes Palestinian terror. In the above exchange, I gave him proof how one of the "facts" he likes to cite is simply not correct (notice how he avoided responding to that). I said he was "probably" a self-hating Jew - I used "probably" because I can't read his mind and don't know what motivates him.
You once said this in your comments: "The majority of Palestinians are opposed to suicide attacks & killing Israeli civilians. This is a flat out fact."
http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2008/03/07/terror-stalks-the-yeshiva/
Well read this and weep. If it was ever a "fact" (which is doubtful), it certainly isn't one any more:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/18/mideast/mideast.php
RAMALLAH, West Bank: A new poll shows that an overwhelming majority of Palestinians support the attack this month on a Jewish seminary in Jerusalem that killed eight young men, most of them teenagers, an indication of the alarming level of Israeli-Palestinian tension in recent weeks.
The survey also shows unprecedented support for the firing of rockets on Israeli towns from the Gaza Strip and for the end of the peace negotiations between Palestinian and Israeli leaders.
All I can say is you are a fraud, and probably a self-hating Jew. Hopefully someday you will be out of denial, but by that time Israel might already have been "wiped off the map" (with a little help from you).
Have a nice day.
JR
Incidentally "self-hating Jew" is not a racial attack, nor is it hate speech (in fact, the point is to convince someone to stop hating!). It is a phrase that was coined by Jews themselves. Of course, it's not confined to Jews; in fact, there are countless types of ethnic/religious/national self-hatred; "self-hating Jew" is just one commonly used phrase in that same vein. I suppose it's far more politically correct to criticize a member of an ethnic/religious group when you are also a member of that group, but I am not politically correct. I will also never hesitate to call someone out for openly advocating the destruction of their own people. It's particularly galling when such people play the "minority status" card as a shield against such criticism.
If anyone has any doubts about my feelings for Jews or my support of Israel, I invite them to look up any one of my postings on Israel, compare it to any one of Silverstein's attacks against the country, and see how they stack up.
Interestingly, he tries to threaten me. It's a good thing I don't roll over that easily. I do/say nothing illegal on my weblog, and the opinions here are entirely my own. Moreover, I haven't been anonymous to anyone who contacts me privately. If Mr. Silverstein would like to give me the contact information for his supervisor, I would be happy to return the favor with mine.
Note: In the past, I have referred to him as "Professor Silverstein" because I believed he had a PhD. But reading carefully, his own bio claims he "studied toward a PhD at UC Berkeley", not "earned a PhD". If he hasn't earned one, then the wording here is a deliberate effort to mislead. Additionally, nowhere that I can find does he claim the title of "professor", so I will no longer use it.
Additionally, anyone who thinks that publishing these emails is a breach of privacy, look at Silverstein's own policy:
E mail sent to me may be quoted in posts unless the e-mail author specifically requests that a message be considered private.
Incidentally, on my own web site I freely allow any views that contradict my own. The only censoring I do is spam and other blatant attempts at commercial advertising.
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16 comments:
I'm not sure if I would call his site "fairly successful". He's got a small following of nuts who think that if Israel just gave up, peace would break out everywhere.
I had a hard time following that exchange, btw.
"self hating jew" is kind of the same thing as using the "n word", in that only blacks can use it freely. Everyone else gets slammed for it, right or not. I agree with you tho on everything else.
Silverstein is a known entity in the Jewish blogosphere as being dishonest, thin-skinned and playing the sorts of tricks he just demonstrated with you.
See, for example, this article from two years ago.
My one run in with him was similar (see the comments.)
The word "self-hating Jew" is a misnomer, since many self-hating Jews are in fact malignant narcissists who are passionately in love with themselves, and think that the main impediment for others to share their grandiose opinion of themselves.
Substitute "American" or "Westerner" for "Jew" in the above: same story,
Oops, Blogger ate some words. This is what I meant to write:
The word "self-hating Jew" is a misnomer, since many self-hating Jews are in fact malignant narcissists who are passionately in love with themselves, and think that their Jewishness is the main impediment for others to share their grandiose opinion of themselves. So therefore they "foul their own nest" at every opportunity to show that they're "better" than these other Jews.
Substitute "American" or "Westerner" for "Jew" in the above: same story.
"Some things, the more you understand them, the more you loathe them." (Robert A. Heinlein)
Hi John!
Great email exchange! I have had similar exchanges with people in the past. Keep up the good fight!
Cheers,
Red Tulips
Has an old Brit I believe in civility
and manners , to threaten a serving Officer in the U.S. forces is beyond the pale . I was given to understand that the First Amendment gave one the right to freedom of speech , so what is Silversteins' complaint .
I like what the doctor wrote. Nothing like a good flame war in the morning!
*Put em' Up! Put em' Uuuuup!*
BW you are right and Richard is a disingenous asshat for saying that a goy cannot identify a self hating jew.
Stay classy, Richard!
Forgot to sign the above for authenticity.
Manwhore.
I was smeared by Silverstein a couple of years ago. He pretty much cut someone else's smear of me and pasted onto his own blog. Not only was he unfair, he was also lazy.
Still that won't stop him from going to publications like the NY Times or the Forward or Ha'aretz and complain about the lack of civility in the blogosphere. Those lefty publication eat it up and take him at his word. (I wrote e-mails to the first two to set the record straight, but neither were published.) And he gets his publicity. He's better off being ignored.
Wow! I thought I was the only one ticked off by this guy. Thanks for the links as well, I just checked them out, and I always love discovering new web sites.
Just FYI, if you want to link to someone like Silverstein from your blog, but want to minimize any benefit to their site, you can use the "no follow" html command. It won't prevent links to their site, but it will prevent any benefit to their rank in Google or MSN searches.
Don't waste another minute of your time or energy on that pathetic creep. He's a terrorist sympathizer who has a major hate going for Jews and Israel. All he's really good at is whining when he doesn't win blog awards. Oh, does he whine. The fact that I know all this despite having visited his despicable blog all of 3 times should tell you something about his reputation.
He's very much like the Palestinians he so adores: he whines and seethes when attacked over his inflammatory (and usually false) statements and expects everyone to feel sorry for him.
Hi there John. This is a great post, and I really like your blog. Would you care to exchange links? I run a blog called The Urban Grind http://www.theurbangrind.net and also Jews Against Obama -- jewagainstobama.wordpress.com
Keep up your great work.
Ahhhhh! Jewsagainstobama. Who will study this peculiar phobia in the near future? I'd be pleased to read a psycho-social study about these peculiar kind of hysteria.
But: Admittedly I have been wondering about Richard's problems in with a certain readers of his blog.
It's a pity. The most interesting blogs draw the most politically diverse people I think. This blog locates itself securely in a socio-political-network that definitely is not mine.
But so what?
Little Dickie Kapostein, the real name for Richard Silverstein, is a fanatic anti-Semite and Neo-Nazi who seeks Israel's annihilation and a new Holocaust. The semi-literate Silverstein would like to be the next Jewish Neo-Nazi after Norman Finkelstein crashed and burned. There has never been an act of Arab savagery against Jews he does not justify, nor an act of Jewish self-defense that he supports. His blog is little more than his exercise in political masturbation, trying to draw attention to himself. He has been unemployed for years.
The Little Dickie Silverstein Marching Song
I am a little kapo,
It makes my mommy mad,
Cause when I am a kapo,
Those Zionists get sad!
I celebrate the jihad,
and terror all the while,
I fill my blog and web page,
With loud salutes of Sieg Heil!
I want to see them Zraelis,
All dumped out in the sea,
My swastika a waving,
Cause everything's bout me.
(from the Kapostein blog)
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