Deceit and Threats by Zionist Extremists against BDS Activists

UPDATE 8th January, 2012

Israeli propaganda group HonestReporting denies encouraging employee to smear UK professor

The fact she was a MediaCentral employee is what I reported and focused on, mainly because the Jewish Chronicle failed to even mention this basic fact. The problem with Marcus Dysch’s story is that it failed to mention Bakovic works for what is essentially a PR agency that aims to improve Israel’s image in the world.

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This also calls into question the professionalism of Jewish Chronicle journalist Marcus Dysch. He’s entitled to promote a pro-Israel viewpoint, but that’s no excuse for dishonesty or (at best) poor journalism. The omission of such a salient point means he either didn’t do the five minutes of research it took to find out who Bakovic works for, or that he knew and covered it up.

Today, I asked Dysch on Twitter why he didn’t mention it, but he hasn’t replied (he’s unlikely to have seen this question, however, because he’s preemptively blocked me, despite the fact I’m pretty sure I’ve never Tweeted at him before).

If I had written an analogous story about a Palestinian student who was an employee of, say, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, without mentioning who he or she worked for, that would have been sloppy at best and dishonest at worst.

If Bakovic’s campaign against Professor Pratt has “no connection whatsoever” to her employer, as Plosker claims, why not simply say as much in the Jewish Chronicle article? Why did they wait till after Abraham Greenhouse and myself wrote about the case on Electronic Intifada to admit the fact?

Dysch’s reporting has also been called into question after he claimed in a second article that the agency which reviews the performance of universities in the UK “would conduct a preliminary investigation” into Pratt’s behavior. The Quality Assurance Agency soon denied this to the Times Higher Education magazine. They reported that: “no official complaint has yet been made and the QAA will require more details over the allegations before it could proceed with any investigation”.

This smear against Israeli human rights activists is all too familiar

UPDATE 5th January, 2012 Dysch publishes in the JC a story full of dire innuendo, sinisterly entitled “Performers deny ‘dark art’ funding”.

Dysch insinuates misdoing with the frightening news that ‘At least 34 artists (out of 150) who supported it [the cultural boycott campaign] have received funding to help pay for tours, running costs or fund individual projects’ and refers to Raymond Deane.

Composer Raymond Deane, a founding member of the IPSC, has received around £76,000 from the council during the past five years.

He said: “Neither I, nor the Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign, receives a penny from the Irish government for our activities in defence of Palestinian rights.”

Well, I hope that clears up Dysch’s confusion.

UPDATE 28th December: Raymond Deane is contacted by a journalist from the Jewish Chronicle, Marcus Dysch.

“Mr Deane – I’d like to speak to you about reports in the Israeli media which name you and others involved in the IPSC and claim you are receiving Irish government funding for your pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel activities. We are likely to run a story in our newspaper this week which includes Israeli officials suggesting you are knowingly using funds from the Arts Council for these activities. I’d like to speak to you about this and hear your reaction. Please let me know if we can speak in the next 24 hours.

Marcus Dysch
Reporter
Jewish Chronicle
Tel: 020 7415 1665

You can email them back at:

You can also tweet Marcus at @MarcusDysch

@MarcusDysch
Been in office 25 minutes and already had three emails accusing me of being an Israeli government agent. (I’m not, if you were wondering.) #

The Jewish Chronicle’s editor, Stephen Pollard regards the Jewish Chronicle as “Israel’s candid friend”. Previously the JC has had to apologise and pay damages to Tafazal Mohammad, Managing Director, Muslim Youth Skills for false allegations against him.

Ilan Pappe draws attention to the campaign of intimidation conducted by the zionist lobby in his article today in the Electronic Intifada, noting

“What you learn is that once you cower, you become prey to continued and relentless bashing until you sing the Israeli national anthem. If once you do not cave in, you discover that as time goes by, the ability of Zionist lobbies of intimidation around the world to affect you gradually diminishes.”

UPDATE 25th December: Recently, zionists made hacking threats against BDS activists. The Amnesty International UK site was compromised on or before December 16th. According to Paul Royal of Barracuda Labs,

So, if you have visited the website anytime between and has out-dated Java software, there’s a good chance that your computer is infected. In that case, run a complete system scan using your updated anti-virus. It is also a good idea to change the passwords of your online accounts.
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This exploit will not affect you if you had already installed the latest Java updates or if you don’t have Java installed.

Paul also says:

The working theory for this anomaly relates to Amnesty International as a human rights non-governmental organization. To explain, certain countries use zero day exploits and other techniques to gain electronic information about the activities of human rights activists. Of course, a subset of these activists are too smart to click on links in even well-worded spearphishing emails. But what if you compromised a website frequented by these activists (e.g., Amnesty International)? Then your targets come to you. The context-specific damage potential is significant.

Amnesty International is currently being asked to disassociate itself with Arch Enemy lead singer Angela Gossow’s claim that they will accompany the band in Israel. Amnesty International withdrew its support from a boycott breaking Leonard Cohen concert in 2009.

UPDATE 23rd December: On Ynet, world-renowned Irish composer Raymond Deane is “price-tagged” at the mammoth sum of $119 million (now amended to $119,000) over the past 5 years, which he has, according to the shameless libeller Itamar Eichner, received from the Irish government (are oil companies involved here as well?) to ‘subject to verbal attacks and letters of incitement’ ‘Irish elements interested in sustaining ties with Israel’, and ‘in a bid to free him from the need to work for a living so that he could devote his time and energy to the creation of music.’ For zionist propagandists, music isn’t considered a “real job”, at least if the targeted musician has private activities which include solidarity in campaigns for Palestinian human rights. And here’s the zionist veiled threats against a musician’s livelihood for daring to exercise conscience to support boycotts, divestment and sanctions from apartheid, colonial Israel:

The Foreign Ministry report also reveals that although the Irish foreign minister has voiced his objection to any type of boycott against Israeli culture, Deane is still receiving government funding.
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“The ongoing funding of a person who has been conducting a hostile, public and aggressive campaign against Israel from Irish taxpayers’ money raises very difficult questions,” says a source in the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem.

The propagandist ends on a softened tone which only serves to highlight the previous attempt at intimidation of an individual of conscience in a foreign country:

“Nonetheless, an artist’s breach of trust toward Ireland’s authorities is an internal Irish matter which we cannot and do not wish to intervene in, despite its harsh implications on us.”

In November, Palestinian Solidarity activists in Ireland protested the holding of an Israeli film event at Filmbase in Dublin which was sponsored and funded by the Israeli Embassy.

The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) also issued an “Open Letter to Filmbase“, expressing its surprise

“that a prominent Irish cultural institution would allow the Israeli embassy to carry out this audacious ‘Brand Israel’ activity on its premises hardly two weeks after Irish peace activists were illegally apprehended by the Israeli navy in international waters, humiliated, and imprisoned in Israel…”

These approaches were rejected by Filmbase, despite much dissension among its employees, not all of whom supported the decision to host the event. The opening of the festival, a wet and miserable evening, saw Filmbase “defended” by a force of at least two dozen Gardaí. Members of the IPSC, the Irish Anti-War Movement, Act for Palestine and others demonstrated noisily and peacefully, displaying Palestinian flags and placards with such slogans as “End the Siege of Gaza” and “Boycott Israel”. The arrivals of the Minister for Foreign Affairs and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, and the Minister for Defence and Justice Alan Shatter were greeted with particularly vociferous cries of ”shame! shame!”

These state marketing events are mooted by Israeli propagandists (hasbarists) as effective tools to whitewash Israeli crimes of apartheid, colonialism and Occupation and to counter what they cast as “delegitimization”, although through its ongoing crimes against humanity, Israel accomplishes singlehanded its own delegitimization. Attempting to address “the BDS delegitimization network”, the Reut Institute which develops propaganda strategy for Israel crows that ‘it takes a network to fight a network’. What a tawdry network the hasbarist network is! Some elements supportive of Israel of late have taken to using dirty tricks, as evidenced below from Filmbase to the present, fabricating threats supposedly made by BDS activists against venues and performers that are unsubstantiated, despite repeated challenge.

More recently, these deceits have been spotted on the Arch Enemy Facebook wall and elsewhere, with the band’s lead singer Angela Gossow, who has recorded with far right Israeli illegal settler band Amaseffer, making threats of her own against BDS (Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement) activists.

Now the tactic of falsely accusing BDS people of threats has resurfaced on the facebook wall of Joker, who announced his decision not to play Israel a few days ago, following information about racism the last time he played there. Joker has said several times since he is not going to play Israel, while Israel’s hasbarists have continued to claim that he is not cancelling, on twitter and facebook. The Israeli media has also published a misleading and unsubstantiated story about the cancellation claiming Joker and his girlfriend had received threats on their lives. An email was also circulated from CLUTCH – Electronic, claiming that ‘Joker was very frustrated from the situation and said to tell everyone that the decision was very hard for him and was directly because of death threats and his girlfriend lives.’ They accuse BDS supporters, then admit they made massive efforts to convince Joker to play, including direct conversation with Joker and all those around him – euphemisms for bothering his girlfriend and libellous attacks against people who supported Joker’s decision to cancel.

Along with the institutionalised apartheid it inflicts on Palestinians, Israel is a hotbed of racism against people of colour, evidenced by a disgraceful march in Tel Aviv held against African refugees on December 11, 2011.

In fact, it is Israel’s zionist propagandists who are making threats toward BDS activists and who are conducting a shoddy campaign of deceit and bullying which delegitimizes that which they claim to defend further. Ludicrously, one hasbarist even accuses a BDS activist of being funded by oil money! Other threats are made to attack BDS activists’ computers.

After Joker decided to cancel, Israeli founder of hasbara group ‘Act for Israel’ Noa Tishby was consulted by Ido Daniel on twitter asking her what to do. There’s no thought of Joker’s music and Noa is based in Los Angeles. Gidi Grinstein of the Reut Institute orated at Noa’s marriage, effusing on Israel.

‘Politically savvy and passionate, Noa Tishby is a Member of AIPAC (The American Israel Public Relations Committee) and has traveled to Washington DC to lobby on Capitol Hill. She is also a member of The Israeli Consulate Speakers Bureau, a member of “Summit Series” organization for young entrepreneurs, a member of the ILC (Israeli Leadership Council) and is a mentor for Women In Film.’

The Israeli Leadership Council of which Tishby is a member, is involved with the Reut Institute taskforce.

Israel Leadership Council (ILC) of Los Angeles partners with the taskforce – As part of its current strategic re-visioning effort, the ILC invited the taskforce to think about its potential leadership role. In this context, a report was written and presented to ILC board members in Israel. The report includes both a theoretical framework describing the fledgling phenomenon called the organized Israeli Diaspora, as well as guidelines for how the ILC can best fit into this emerging reality. The report aimed to address the following question: How can the ILC leverage the Israeli Diaspora in the US?

Act for Israel concocts lists of spurious ‘talking points’ for Israel’s hasbara borg hubs to proliferate, while spreading malicious interpretations of BDS activists’ tweets, misspelling Palestinian rights advocate Ali Abunimah’s name and labelling him an ‘antisemite’.

Below is the evidence of the malicious Israeli campaign against activists for Palestinian human rights which ironically attests to the effectiveness of the Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions movement, otherwise these reprobate zionists would be otherwise occupied.

UPDATE 22/6/13

WhatIsrael board member Ido Daniel announces his intention to pricetag BDS supporters. WhatIsreal ‘dialogue’ whilst price-tagging would appear to be mutually contradictory, and such is the nature of propaganda.

On twitter, Daniel reiterates, lies and then insults South African anti-apartheidists.

@Jinjirrie because they're like you: ignorant. No one with common sense will accuse Israel in "apartheid". It's only in your head.

— Ido Daniel ?? (@IdoDaniel) June 21, 2013