February 11, 2005
An Open Letter to Daniel Pipes, Steven Plaut, and Jonathan Tobin
in response to their smear campaign against Israel Insider due to
our decision to occasionally publish the writings of Barry Chamish.
The correspondence from Pipes and his collaborators, mass-mailed
to right-wing pundits including many Israel Insider columnists,
are reprinted below, so readers can judge for themselves. The campaign
also inveigled a leading big-paper columnist, a long-time colleague,
who wrote to me and I responded candidly, as is reprinted below.
However, the campaign protagonists, without the columnist's permission,
then circulated this private communication. In the end that may
be for the best, as I stand behind my comments to the columnist
and regret not a word of my defense of the controversial
Barry Chamish to express his views and our right at Israel Insider
to publish them. We respect the ability of our readers the right
to decide for themselves regarding the merits of his arguments.
Following publication of the initial exchange, Pipes compounded
his attempts at suppression -- this, too, and our response, is reprinted
below.
The initial Israel Insider response to Daniel Pipes
Dear Dr. Pipes,
The trouble is that you, Jonathan Tobin and Steve Plaut apparently
see yourselves as judge and jury for deciding who has a right to
be published and who has a right to read what. If people disagree
with you, your colleagues then "whisper" to your email
lists about who is a "nasty loon" (to quote you about
Barry Chamish) or (to quote Plaut about me) a "moron and a
buffoon."
At least it makes an amusing rhyme.
Israel Insider has for four years, running daily, served as a forum
for more than 500 writers from diverse points of view, contributing
their perspective to show the diversity of views on and from Israel.
You and Dr. Plaut and Mr. Tobin, who seem to be spearheading this
smear campaign against Israel Insider for having the temerity to
publish Barry Chamish's Lamentation for Adir Zik and some other
pieces, are among them (each of you with more than 20 articles!).
http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/3873.htm (Pipes)
http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/4766.htm (Plaut)
http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/4880.htm (Tobin)
Obviously no one is challenging your right -- nor the right of
any of your colleagues -- to submit or not submit to our publication.
We provide an attractive and well-organized forum for your presentations
and for our readers to talkback, and we have occasionally, and selectively,
done the same for Mr. Chamish.
As an objective observer, I must say that your curious obsession
with Chamish is perplexing. I understand that there is bad blood
between you and a history of attacks and counter-attacks. But that
doesn't quite explain why that needs to extend to attacking publications
which publish his writings.
Surely you have enough outlets for your own opinions, without needing
to squelch those of another writer who lacks the funding and connections
that you enjoy! What is about Chamish's opinion that move you so
to try to go to such great lengths to censor him, and us? Isn't
it possible that he is right about some issues and wrong about others?
Can't readers be allowed to distinguish for themselves?
I respect my readers, and fellow writers, editors and publishers
enough to believe that they can read and form opinions and their
own, without being censored or scared away by name-calling and gratuitous
insults. Perhaps the "responsible right" -- to which you
clearly believe you deserve to belong -- should assume also the
responsibility to tolerate more dissent and differing opinions in
our own ranks.
And when you write that I have "wildly attacked" you,
you should either support that with at least one example of such
an attack, or risk being dismissed as, well, paranoid or -- to use
your own words -- a "nasty loon."
I have never written an insulting word against you personally,
nor do I intend to. Although I do think you have not sufficiently
explained your comment: "Should the [Israeli] government go
ahead with the forcible removal of Jewish residents of Gaza, intra-Israeli
violence appears to be a distinct possibility. Which in turn makes
me wonder why the Israeli authorities do not take quite a different
track and merely stop providing security for them." While I
see that you have gone to great lengths to rationalize these comments,
I am gratify to see that, in the end (http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/287),
you regret them and realize the error of your ways.
I hope this suffices to end this little campaign of you and your
buddies. All of you are welcome to keep contributing to Israel Insider,
as long as you stop trying to squelch the opinions of others. But
if you or your colleagues decide not to publish, I am sure we will
find a way to survive without you.
I am sure your correspondents can also form their own opinons about
whether they wish to give in to your censorship and boycott attempts,
and I welcome those who have not contributed to our publication
to see Israel Insider as a tolerant and diverse platform for news
and views about the future of Israel.
It is this we should be working on, not fighting among ourselves.
Shabbat shalom to all!
Reuven Koret
Publisher
Israel Insider
What preceded and prompted our response
-----Original Message-----
From: [Daniel Pipes] Meqmef@aol.com [mailto:Meqmef@aol.com]
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 2:32 AM
To: splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il; jtobin@jewishexponent.com
Cc: [list of 25 columnists]
Subject: Israel Insider and Chamish
In a message dated 10-Feb-05 2:31:34 A.M. Eastern Standard Time,
splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il writes [quoting Koret]:
We Jews and journalists especially careful about ad hominem attacks.
Read the pieces of Chamish and judge for yourself.
this is rich, coming from someone (Reuven Koret) defending Chamish
who has for years been attacking wildly all sorts of people, including
yours truly.
this is not a grudge match between Plaut and Chamish but an ugly
situation in which of the responsible right need to disassociate
ourselves from a nasty loon.
for anyone interested in more on this topic, see http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/189
Daniel Pipes
From: Steven Plaut [mailto:splaut@econ.haifa.ac.il]
To: Tobin, Jonathan
Cc: [list of 25 columnists]
Subject: I am ending all connections with Israel Insider and urge
you to consider doing the same
I will no longer be publishing anything with Israel Insider. I
suggest that you do the same. It is a disgrace to appear on the
same pages with Barry Chamish. The editor of Israel Insider is a
moron and a buffoon.
Steve Plaut
On Wed, 9 Feb 2005, Tobin, Jonathan wrote:
Steve:
I reached out to [the big-city columnist] and asked him to join
us in writing to Koret about Chamish. He agreed and wrote to him
today. Although I did not rate a reply from the great publisher,
[big-city columnist] got one right back. Here it is, along with
[big-city columnist]'s original e-mail.
All the best,
Jonathan
From: [big-city columnist]
Sent: Wednesday, February 9, 2005 2:12 PM
To: jstobinpa@aol.com
Subject: Re Chamish
Hi, Reuven,
I understand that Steve Plaut, Daniel Pipes, and Jonathan Tobin
have been urging you to stop promoting the conspiracy theories of
Barry Chamish on your web site. Please add my plea to theirs. I
don't know Chamish personally, but his writing has always struck
me as reckless and unsubstantiated. I wouldn't want people thinking
that my commentary is as unreliable and outlandish as his. Please
don't undermine the credibility of Israel Insider and your other
commentators by including Chamish's bizarre material on the site.
It only undercuts the effectiveness and seriousness of what you
are trying to achieve.
All the best,
[Tobin:] Here's what Reuven wrote in response.
Dear [big city columnist], I think you're a great writer but I am
sick of Plaut's whispering and poison-pen campaign. He and some
of his buddies are clearly afraid of what Chamish writes. His campaign
to ban Chamish lowers my respect for him, and raises my suspicions
that Chamish is getting uncomfortably warm.....
I accept nothing Chamish says at face value, and I publish only
a fraction of what he writes. I edit tough even when I do publish.
But even paranoids have people out to get them.
The man has guts, good instincts, and has a veracity batting average
at least as good as Plaut's.
Now he's not Ted Williams, but I think he is more or less onto
the truth about the Rabin assassination, and I have found that some,
not all, of his other "conspiracy theories" have at least
grains of truth.
We Jews and journalists especially careful about ad hominem attacks.
Read the pieces of Chamish and judge for yourself.
http://web.israelinsider.com/Views/4964.htm
Reuven
ADDENDUM: Dr. Pipes moves to suppress
Dear Mr. Koret:
In reference to your note to me, there is no "smear"
campaign -- no one has said a bad word about your website -- but
there was a quiet "pressure" campaign to get you to choose
between Barry Chamish and several of us writers. You decided to
go public with this, not us, a decision I wish you had not made.
I did not give you permission to quote my private letter, one not
even addressed to you, on the internet, and I request you take it
down immediately.
Yours sincerely,
Daniel Pipes
Insider Response: We are not so easily moved
Dr. Pipes,
A "private letter" sent around to twenty-five editors
and columnists, urging them to take action to boycott or pressure
a publication (whose name appears in the subject line) unless it
censors a writer you and your friends don't like is not "going
public"?
Your comment, and Plaut's, would qualify as belonging to the public
domain in any court in the land (any land!). My citation of it,
which refers to me personally in a depreciatory manner, is certainly
within my rights, both in terms of free speech and fair use.
Do you think the phrase "moron and buffoon" (Plaut's
words for the "Editor of Israel Insider," circulated in
the letter that the pundits above received) qualifies as a "smear,"
or do you disavow all association with Plaut as "several of
us writers?"
Indeed it is Tobin (who says he did it unintentionally) and Plaut
(who certainly did it intentionally) who circulated my private response
to Jacoby, much to [the big-city columnist's] chagrin and displeasure.
He who lives in a glass house shouldn't thrown stones.
If you really want to bring this issue to broader attention, or
to take legal action, I invite you to do so, as I think this whole
affair only casts you and your colleagues in a most unfavorable
light and brings even more attention to Mr. Chamish and his opinions,
and to Israel Insider as a publication with the guts to take on
those who would suppress unpopular opinions.
And I must further correct you when you say that I am defending
Chamish. I am defending his right to express his opinion and my
willingness at the publisher of Israel Insider to take on would-be
bullies, backed by powerful organizations and interests, who use
routinely use scare tactics and legal threats in an attempt to stifle
free speech and freedom of the press.
Shabbat shalom.
Reuven Koret
The murder of JFK Jr. and others
7-27-99
My work is a burden. I know too much. I'm paying a price now and
it can only get costlier. Three and a half years ago I wrote about
Israel from two perspectives: the very positive, glorifying my country's
achievements in various trade magazines read mostly by gentiles,
and the very negative: exposing Israeli political corruption in
my own publication Inside Israel, read mostly by Jews. The idea
was to clean up our political system so I would only have to write
about our achievements.
Then in November, 1995 Yitzhak Rabin death was a murder and I quickly
gathered proof that our government told not a word of truth about
the real circumstances of his demise. And for this I was vilified
in the Israeli media, and twice, ugly protests disrupted my lectures.
My family was forced to read front page newspaper accounts of my
fictional life: I was a Holocaust denier, a member of organized
crime, a follower of Rabbi Kahane (THE number one crime of the Israeli
media), and worse.
But I could almost count myself lucky. My partner in Inside Israel,
Joel Bainerman, flew to Washington in 1992 to research his book
on the Bush era, Crimes Of A President. Before anyone else, he reported
on the Clinton/Bush cocaine ring run through the airport at Mena,
Arkansas. He was the first to reveal the murder of Amiram Nir, a
senior advisor to Shimon Peres and a major player in Iran Contra.
He blew the lid off the involvement of Shimon Peres and Yitzhak
Rabin in all that was Iran Contra: arms for hostages, drugs for
money for guns for control.
While in Washington an "admirer" gave him a gift: a necktie. He
even fit it around his neck. That very night, Joel's neck swelled
so frighteningly that he called his wife to tell her something was
wrong. Four months later he had cancer in the glands of his neck
which spread throughout the lymphatic system.
Adir Zik is my compatriot in exposing the Yitzhak Rabin conspiracy.
Because of his newspaper column and radio show, he reaches far more
people than I do. He, more than anyone else, exposed the involvement
of Israel's Secret Service, the Shabak, in the murder. Two months
ago he called me to say throat cancer was discovered. He would have
to undergo immediate surgery. I only hope that he makes the same
kind of recovery Joel did.
There are dead victims of Yitzhak Rabin, and there are innocent
people wallowing in prison. Arnold and Marilyn Cytryn are two American
Israelis who resemble, as Joel noted, "My uncle and aunt." They
came to Israel to live free lives as proud Jews and Israelis. Then
in 1995 their son Shmuel was arrested and placed in solitary confinement
by the Shabak for over four months. To this day he doesn't know
the charges against him. We now understand why he went through the
torture. In September, two months before the Yitzhak Rabin assassination,
he publicly identified the provocateur Avishai Raviv as a Shabak
plant. This could not be tolerated, because in November, Raviv played
a central role in Yitzhak Rabin's murder, whether witting or not.
So two nice retired Jewish folks, had to undergo an agony few of
us can begin to fathom: wondering if their son would survive prison
isolation for no crime whatsoever. His "crime" was fingering a murderous
snitch.
But he was luckier than one David Newman, who made the fatal error
of befriending Raviv. Within a week of Yitzhak Rabin's murder he
was dead, a suicide they said. He was the only son of a widow, I'm
informed, totally broken by her loss and just too worn down to pursue
her suspicions of foul play.
As for me, here I am writing this in good health. I merely have
to suffer harassment. I was interviewed by three American radio
programs today. My line was cut off in the middle of all three.
If anyone tells me it was all a coincidence, I'll walk away. I've
had it hearing that statistical impossibility is explainable by
coincidence.
For five years my family and I lived in relative tranquility in
a place called Bet Shemesh. Then a pervert built a house behind
us where there shouldn't have been a house. Every morning at the
crack of dawn he would wake us all with the barking of his dogs.
No appeal to him would stop the noise. Then he devoted his life
to isolating us from our neighbors. Then we were victimized by vandalism,
theft, threats and soon police complaints. We are certain he was
planted to harass us and the tension did its job on my family in
ways that could have broken us up at any time.
So we moved and it turns out our new neighbors are listening at
our windows, photographing us, spreading rumors etc. etc. And we
just don't know why. I'm no saint, and am a product of America circa
late Sixties. The neighbors appear to be snooping to find a moment
when they can publicly humilate me and my family. My wife is at
a loss to explain why we have been putting up with exactly the same
neighborly mischief for four straight years.
And I'm not even mentioning the opened and lost mail, the passport
that couldn't be issued, the men with cellular phones standing in
the street outside our home at 3 AM, friends who keep their distance
because of perceived danger, the sudden difficulty in knowing who
to trust...And worst of all, the feeling that the stakes could be
raised at any time.
Because I have established a reputation, as Haaretz wrote on its
front page recently, as "the leading researcher of the Yitzhak Rabin
assassination conspiracy theory," people, at great risk to themselves
put powerful documentation in my hands. In the past two weeks I
have received the army records of Yitzhak Rabin's bodyguard Yoram
Rubin, his driver on the night of the murder, Menachem Damti and
of the State Pathologist who lied about Yitzhak Rabin's wounds,
Dr. Yehuda Hiss. And I received a copy of Dr. Hiss's banned report,
with all its lies and acciCheap Dental Insurance, shocking truth intact within.
When added to my hundreds of pages of police reports, hospital records,
court protocols, private testimonies, I have built an airtight case
that the convicted assassin did not do the deed.
The problem is I know who did. In February 1996, journalist Yehoshua
Meiri told me who did it and why. I arranged to have his claims
videotaped. So certain was he of his information, that he tracked
Joel down in England to let him know the facts. Meiri insisted that
Shimon Peres organized the murder with the connivance of the French
government and secret services. He said the Americans and British
were furious and unless Shimon Peres abandoned his French allies
"all Hell would break out here." Which is just what happened as
Israel was bled by suicide bombers within a week.
Yet, for a long while I followed the wrong trail, to America. The
evidence I had gathered proved Yitzhak Rabin was rebelling against
his American controllers during the last two months of his life
and that Ehud Barak had made sinister alliances with the same gang
at the Council For Foreign Relations that was becoming progressively
less satisfied with Yitzhak Rabin's independence. It looked like
a motive for murder, but I had to admit that new information pointed
to France.
A French journalist, Pierre Lurcat, reminded readers in his Jewish
student paper, that President Mitterand had once faked his own assassination
in a scandal that haunted him his whole career called the Observatoire
Affair. The sympathy which arose from the phoney murder attempt
vaulted Mitterand's career to the top. Lurcat claimed Shimon Peres
and Mitterand discussed how to do the same thing for Yitzhak Rabin
to save his failing peace process with the PLO. Pierre told me,
"I was only using my logic, I had no solid evidence. Then the authorities
came down so hard on me and the newspaper that I surmised I got
it right. I was a law student at the time, I'm an attorney now,
and the French media turned me into a lunatic."
Then I was reminded that Shimon Peres ally, the secretive French
media mogul, Jean Frydman financed the rally where Yitzhak Rabin
was murdered. And that Shabak chief Carmi Gillon spent the night
of the assassination in Paris. And then there was that bizarre incident
in early 1996 when Jacques Chirac went bananas in the Old City of
Jerusalem. Shimon Peres had sent Yoram Rubin, everybody's prime
suspect as Yitzhak Rabin's downfall, to guard Chirac. His French
bodyguards informed him who he was and Chirac ran to the nearest
reporters nearly crying that he did not need Israeli bodyguards.
That he'd feel safer with Arab guards protecting him.
People ask me, "Why are you still alive?" more than "How are you?"
Until now I've answered, "Because I know who did it and I'm not
saying." Well, now I'm saying it. I'm on the trail to France. If
I'm on a hit list, it won't make a difference anymore. It's murderama
time in this world.
As a result of my Yitzhak Rabin work gaining credibility in certain
informed circles, I am sent the lowdown on other political murders.
For four years now the world has slept while William Colby decided
to abandon his hot dinner and take a final canoe ride, while Vince
Foster chose to crawl on his back so his suit would fill up with
carpet fibers and then shoot himself in a park, while Sonny Bono
hit a tree and his body lay unnoticed on a busy ski trail for three
hours, while the only FBI agents to die in Waco were four former
Clinton bodyguards, while Ron Brown felt it would be a swell idea
to shoot himself in the head then land in Bosnia for dramatic effect,
while a surviving stewardess and air traffic controller decided
to follow him to the great beyond a few hours later, while French
police just couldn't locate that sneaky Fiat Uno which waited for
Diana's car in the tunnel, while a Clinton intern died in a Starbucks
holdup where no money was taken, while the President felt impelled
to rush back from a holiday to Washington on the night his pretty
adviser to the deaf met her demise, and on and and on. Clearly,
it is a rather fatal idea to get to know the President from too
close up.
When his bloodlust wasn't satisfied at home, he helped conjure up
some excuses abroad. The hapless bombing of a pharmaceutical factory
in Sudan just didn't do it for him, so a futile exercise against
Iraq settled him down for a few days. But the thirst to kill just
kept coming back to its master, so a phoney humanitarian war in
Kosovo helped calm the nerves. Next on his list is Israel, and my
leaders will do all they can to help him out.
There is murder in the air in Israel. Former Interior Minister Arieh
Deri suffered a loss a while back, when after his wife's adoptive
mother refused to sign an affadavit testifying that she gave him
all the money he was accused of stealing from the Israeli Treasury,
she was run over by an employee of one of his cronies. Yitzhak Rabin's
Deputy Defence Minister Motta Gur committed suicide because of his
cancer. Only his doctor told reporters his cancer was cured. Two
of Yitzhak Rabin's bodyguards also committed suicide. One of them
Yoav Kuriel, did so by shooting himself in the chest seven times.
A very persistent suicide.
And I found this out because friends of the person who prepared
his body for burial contacted me. To prove the story was accurate,
I was faxed Kuriel's death certificates. He died of nothing and
no one identified his body. Now did I really need to know this?
All I intended to do was investigate the murder of one human prime
minister and before I knew it, I was tracking down serial killers.
Jewish serial killers. In my country. One may be living next door
to me.
During the Yom Kippur War, I looked at photos of Israeli prisoners
of war in American news magazines and became a Zionist. I vowed
to do my part for my people. I moved to Israel, joined the army,
fought in a war and defended my country. And now I'm gathering indisputable,
unarguable proof that the leaders of the country I risked my life
for are tangled up in murder, either promulgating it, or covering
it up.
So what's an honest Israeli journalist supposed to do? Most Jews
would say, cover it up like everyone else. If you don't, you will
endanger Israel's security. That may be true in the very short term,
but over time we won't outlast the moral rot. The behaviour of my
leaders has nothing whatsoever to do with Judaism or Zionism as
the Israeli people understand it. They have to be exposed and purged.
Then the good Jews will set things right. That is precisely the
view of hundreds of thousands of my fellow Israelis and their support,
I receive dozens of letters of encouragement on a good day, is why
I have carried on this far.
So now what do we do about the information coming out on the explosion
of JFK Jr.'s plane? The day it happened I wrote that JFK Jr. was
doing more than any other American media figure to get to the bottom
of the Yitzhak Rabin assassination truth. I reminded readers that
his magazine George ran a 13 page expose of the Shabak's involvement
in the assassination. I suggested that this was a brave but risky
stand.
Then came the tidal wave of data. The FBI Preliminary Report confirming
the bomb on the plane and noting the type of explosive was used
by certain foreign intelligence services. This was followed by Catherine
Crier of Fox TV's The Crier Report, announcing that JFK Jr. was
about to meet high ranking Mossad officers to get the full story
on the Yitzhak Rabin assassination. Then Maariv ran an interview
with JFK's chaufeur, who happens to be Israeli. Then people started
noting that Barak was in Washington at the time of Kennedy's finale
in life.
So radio shows from America starting calling asking me to investigate
a possible Mossad hit. They observe that the chaufeur was in a position
to plant a bomb in JFK Jr.'s luggage... That Barak had an interest
in preventing Kennedy from finding out the truth of Yitzhak Rabin's
murder. And on and on and deeper and deeper. Will I pursue this
line? Is this beyond my intention of reforming my nation and finally
reaching the ugly point of wrecking it... Of feeding every anti-semite's
wildest fantasies... Of justifying every anti-Zionist diatribe ever
written... Of handing our Arab enemies the very weapon they've been
seeking to crush us into the sand???????
I've always believed that truth is good by its nature and a lie
is bad by its. I've suffered losses by pursuing one truth: what
really happened to Yitzhak Rabin on Nov.4/95. I cannot make the
same living from my conventional business writing because of Yitzhak
Rabin. My family life is much tenser than it would have been without
Yitzhak Rabin. A certain segment of Jewry despises me for what I
am doing to their view of Yitzhak Rabin's saintliness.
But the gains are real as well. I have the admiration of the most
dedicated Zionists. I enjoy status and respect from the Israelis
I most respect. And they always turn out when I lecture. And they
take, sometimes, scary risks to find vital documents for me. And
there are more and more people like them every day. I can't let
these people down.
And I think I will if I pursue the Kennedy line. If the Crier report
is right, and if the FBI Preliminary Report isn't fraudulent, then
suspicion is going to be raised against Israel. My nation will be
put in grave danger by our idiotic leaders and their intelligence
services. And this time, I don't want to know anything about it.
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