Great Corrections Of Our Time: Associated Press

Last week, in an article on the controversial rainbow flag mural a Palestinian artist painted on Israel’s apartheid wall, the Associated Press made this claim: “A 1951 Jordanian law banning homosexual acts remains in effect in the West Bank, as does a ban in Gaza passed by British authorities in 1936.”

In fact, there is no law in the West Bank, or in Jordan, that bans sexual relations between consenting adults of the same sex.

Yesterday, several days after I contacted AP to inform them of this, they issued the following correction:

In a story June 30 about Palestinian protesters whitewashing a gay pride rainbow flag, The Associated Press reported erroneously that homosexual acts are banned by law in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. While homosexuality is largely taboo in Palestinian society, there are no laws specifically banning homosexual acts.

This may surprise people, since the notion that homosexual activity is criminal – and even punishable by death – is a staple of a form of anti-Palestinian propaganda called pinkwashing...

Electronic Intifada.

Myths about how homosexuality is oppressed in other Arab and Middle Eastern countries are very popular in the Western media - they are rarely corrected.

But that's Orientalism for you.

Arafat: Poisonous Rumours

Suspicions that the former Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was poisoned will be strengthened by the discovery by Swiss scientists of 18 times the normal level of radioactive polonium in his remains.
Mr Arafat, who had long symbolised the Palestinians fight for their own state, died on 11 November 2004 from an illness that was never fully diagnosed by his doctors.
Swiss scientists have been carrying out tests on tissue taken from Mr Arafat’s body and personal items with which he was brought into close contact.
They say they are confident up to an 83 per cent level that the Palestinian leader was poisoned and suspect that the cause may be polonium...
The report only examined what killed Mr Arafat not whether or not he was deliberately poisoned.
The death of Mr Arafat seriously weakened the Palestinian cause, of which he had been the enduring symbol for almost 40 years, and removed the one figure who could unite the diverse and quarrelsome Palestinian groups...

The new-look Independent have splashed this big across their front-page.

Though heading it The Smoking Gun?, under a story about the assassination of JFK, might suggest they think it's a conspiracy theory.
The Independent's usually reliable Middle East correspondent, Robert Fisk, has looked into its plausibility before here.

The news causes the Electronic Intifada to recall what happened last year when rumours of Arafat being poisoned first gained credence - Zionists began concocting their own conspiracy theory.

                                       ******************

While Israel markets itself as the most gay-friendly country in the world, its PR hacks are busy reviving homophobic rumors that Arafat was a gay “sexual deviant” who died of AIDS due to his promiscuity.

On Tuesday, Aljazeera broke a bombshell story that the clothes Arafat wore as he died of a sudden and mysterious illness in 2004, contained strong traces of the lethal radioactive element polonium, raising the possibility that he may have been poisoned...

Following the Aljazeera report, Lenny Ben-David, former Deputy Chief of Mission at the Israeli Embassy in Washington and current public relations consultant to the Israeli government, posted a lurid article at The Times of Israel reviving rumors that Arafat died of AIDS and blaming his “sexual proclivities”:

Yasser Arafat was a murderous, genocidal, diabolical, duplicitous sexual deviant who died at the age of 75. He was despised by Arab and Israeli alike.

Ben-David dismisses the possibility that Arafat was poisoned and asserts:

Less romantic and mythical, however, is the more likely cause of Arafat’s death – AIDS.
Arafat’s sexual proclivities have been an open secret for years. The former head of Rumanian intelligence, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, disclosed in his book “Red Horizons,” that one of his officers reported, “the ‘Fedayee’ [Arafat’s code name] is in his bedroom making love to his bodyguard. The one I knew was his latest lover. He’s playing tiger again. The officer monitoring his microphones connected me live with the bedroom, and the squawling almost broke my eardrums. Arafat was roaring like a tiger, and his lover yelping like a hyena.”

In addition to this “evidence,” Ben-David cites another piece of “proof” that has circulated widely on Zionist websites:

After Arafat’s death, his personal physician admitted in a TV interview that his patient died of AIDS.

Both of these pieces of “evidence” are junk...

                                    ***********************

Out magazine article by James Kirchick - filed appropriately under 'Entertainment'
Note comedy limp wrist.

The author, Ali Abunimah, proceeds to routinely and roundly demolish both of them.

Which didn't stop the right-wing Homocon, James Kirchick, pushing both these fictions in the American gay media.
James is the jerk who hijacked a TV debate about Chelsea Manning to tell lies about Russia, not uncoincidentally.
Rumours that Arafat was a pederast have long been popular with the Western right; it feeds into a domestic Orientalist myth of the Arab as sexually deviant, and is thought to discredit him amongst his own constituency in the Middle East.
One may have noticed something of a paradox in this propaganda; "Arabs are queer - Arabs hate queers!"
But anyway, the Electronic Intifada conclude...

Why should Arafat’s sexuality be of interest to propagandists loyal to an Israeli “state” that is going to great pains to present itself as a haven of gay rights amid an ocean of intolerance and to attract gay tourists and their money to Tel Aviv?

According to former Israeli diplomat and current Israeli PR hack Lenny Ben-David, all these gay tourists are nothing more than “sexual deviants.”

The lurid stories and lies about Arafat’s sexual relationships aim to provoke homphobic reactions and marshal this homophobia to produce hostility and revulsion at Arafat, and to delegitimize him in the eyes of an Arab audience that is presumed to always be disgusted by such behavior.

These Israeli reactions belie Israel’s “pink” marketing and expose the homphobia that exists at the heart of so much of its propaganda.

Noam Chomsky: First, Do No Harm

In the case of South Africa, for example, in which I was involved in the boycotts, they were highly selective and they were selected in a way which would lead to help for the victims, not to make us feel good, help for the victims. The same in the case of the Vietnam war, where I was involved, and I was imprisoned many times, I was involved in civil disobedience, organizing resistance and so on.
But we always had to ask ourselves, when we pick a certain tactic, what does it mean for the Vietnamese, not what does it mean for us? And sometimes there are things you should do and sometimes there are things you shouldn’t do, and in fact they were very helpful in that regard...

In the case of any tactic, you ask yourself, what are its consequences, ultimately for the victims, and indirectly for the audience you are trying to reach... That’s the question you ask when you carry out any tactic, whether it is disobedience, breaking bank windows, demonstrations, whatever it is. Those are the questions you ask if you care about the victims, if you don’t care about the victims, you won’t bother with these questions and you just do what makes you feel good...

Noam Chomsky interviewed by Electronic Intifada on an academic boycott of Israel.

What he says also rings true about much Western gay campaigning on issues in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
It's usually "We must do something!" solipsistic, patronising, Orientalist, feel-good a/politics, with no thought about the consequences - which are often negative - for the people they're supposedly trying to help.
See All Out, Kaleidoscope Trust, Saint Tatchell et al.

PS The phrase "First, do no harm", often quoted by Uncle Noam, comes from the Hippocratic oath. 

The Advocate: Telling Lies For A Living

"You can say anything you want because you support power, and nobody expects you to justify anything. For example, on the unimaginable circumstance that I was on, say, Nightline, and I was asked, say, "Do you think Kadhafi is a terrorist?" I could say, "Yeah, Kadhafi is a terrorist." I don't need any evidence. Suppose I said, "George Bush is a terrorist." Well, then I would be expected to provide evidence, "Why would you say that?""

Noam Chomsky, 2002 interview.

I won't dwell on this story, I'll just get even more fucked off with everything than I was earlier today.
I'll just document what happened, as it demonstrates the spectacular achievements of hegemony, even in a gay media one might expect to challenge it.

Yesterday the above story went up on The Advocate, probably America's, and therefore the world's, most-read gay news source.
The gist of it? Islamic suicide bombers have been exempted from a ban on sodomy as regular bummings will make it easier to fit explosives up their arse; (""Is it permissible for me to let one of the jihadi brothers sodomize me to widen my anus if the intention is good?")
The story is so ludicrous someone told me they thought it was from The Onion.
Of course, it's all bollocks.
Here it is roundly and thoroughly debunked as "pure nonsense" by the Electronic Intifada. 
It had been fed to The Advocate by the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a far-right Zionist US thinktank.
Did The Advocate try and check it?
No, why bother? They just ran it.
(It's worth noting that Michael Lucas, the Zionist, Islamophobic, racist Neo-con porn mogul is an Advocate columnist). 
The fiction soon got tweeted and blogged and published all over the world. 
I won't dwell on this, but most annoyingly by Peter Tatchell.
It's depressing that someone who prides himself on being sceptical and does so much good work and critical progressive analysis should fall for this Islamophobic Orientalist guff.
Not the first time, though.
Tatchell has since retweeted a link to the Electronic Intifada article, but as far as I'm aware has not personally retracted it or apologised.
At the time of typing the story is still on The Advocate's website.
It's all so fucking shameful, but sadly none of this sorry episode surprised me. 

 

 • 'What People In The US Know About Islam Is A Stupid Cliché' Edward W Said.

A Gay Girl In Damascus: It's A Boy!

Apology to readers

I never expected this level of attention. While the narrative voıce may have been fictional, the facts on thıs blog are true and not mısleading as to the situation on the ground. I do not believe that I have harmed anyone -- I feel that I have created an important voice for issues that I feel strongly about.

I only hope that people pay as much attention to the people of the Middle East and their struggles in thıs year of revolutions. The events there are beıng shaped by the people living them on a daily basis. I have only tried to illuminate them for a western audience.

This experience has sadly only confirmed my feelings regarding the often superficial coverage of the Middle East and the pervasiveness of new forms of liberal Orientalism.

However, I have been deeply touched by the reactions of readers.

Best,
Tom MacMaster,
Istanbul, Turkey *
July 12, 2011

This follows a virtual outing of Tom McMaster as "A Gay Girl In Damascus" by The Electronic Intifada earlier today.
Oops!
Much of the mainstream media is pretending to be scandalised - but as lies of our time go, this one was pretty small-fry and relatively benign.

Update: Gay Middle East runs two pieces Monday by Syrian gay bloggers saying McMaster put their lives in danger;
"I'm so outraged I can't even type well.
"Mr. Tom MacMaster, with due respect, has the audacity to say on the blog he created over the last two years that he did not harm anyone with his fictional writing; I beg to differ.
"Because of you, Mr. MacMaster, a lot of the real activists in the LGBT community became under the spotlight of the authorities in Syria. These activists, among them myself, had to change so much in their attitude and their lives to protect themselves from the positional harm your little stunt created. You have, sir, put a lot of lives, mine and some friends included, in harm's way so you can play your little game of fictional writing..."

* He's based in Edinburgh, but currently claims to be "on holiday".

Update: Good piece by Brian Whitaker 'Gay Girl In Damascus Was An Arrogant Fantasy'

Amina: The First Casualty?

"It's hard to escape the conclusion that the Amina Abdalla Arraf affair has been one big elaborate hoax, designed to further discredit the Syrian regime abroad. If that's the case, it wouldn't be the first time that gullible westerners have been taken in, hook, line and sinker, over alleged human rights abuses in far-away countries which are not in the West's good books...
"Of course, the regimes in Syria, Iran and Iraq have been responsible for human rights abuses. But the willingness of western journalists and bloggers to suspend their critical thinking when stories of alleged abuses from the 'Official Bad Guys' emerge, as they've apparently done in the case of Amina Abdalla Arraf, plays right into the hands of those who have an agenda to isolate or even use military action against the countries in question.
"As Alexander Cockburn highlighted on The First Post yesterday, whereas 'Libya' appears at least 14 times in the three major declarations issued at the recent G8 summit in Deauville, and 'Syria' 12 times, 'Bahrain', another state where anti-government protesters have been brutally repressed by the authorities, appears not at all.
"By obsessively focusing on human rights transgressions in certain countries at the expense of others, bloggers and journalists, many of whom no doubt consider themselves to be left-wing, are in fact furthering an agenda which is anything but progressive."

Neil Clark writing for The First Post. He blogs at NeilClark666.

Update: Another view from al-bab.com. "But let's consider another possibility: that the writer, who had originally only intended to give her thoughts on life as an Arab lesbian, decided that with all the media attention and worsening events in Syria, it was getting out of hand and the time had come to stop, and perhaps even go into hiding..."

Update 2: Sunday June 12th. 'New evidence about Amina, the "Gay Girl in Damascus" hoax' from The Electronic Intifada.
This seems to out the real blogger - Fagburn can not verify any of its assertions.