1. Steven Q. said:

Out of curiosity, can you please provide us with sources for any of your claims that don't reside on pro-Israel or anti-ISM/PSM websites? Honestly, how can you expect any of us to take your claims seriously when no neutral third party is providing such a source??

2. DR. MICHAEL said:

I.S.M. IS WELL FUNDED- ANY SPOUSE PARENT OR SIBLING OR INJURED PARTY WHO WAS INJURED OR SUFFERED DAMAGE DUE TO I.S.M. PLACING THEM IN HARMS WAY THRU MISREPRESENTATION CAN BRING A CIVIL LAWSUIT AGAINST I.S.M. AND THEIR DIRECTORS ,OFFICERS, BOARD MEMBERS INDIVIDUALY- FOR DAMAGES AND LOSSES SUSTAINED --LOOK UP THE AMERICAN CENTER FOR CIVIL JUSTICE IF YOU NEED GUIDANCE YOU MAY BE AWARDED SUBSANTIAL COMPENSATION AND I.S.M. MAY BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE IN A SERIOUS WAY

3. Lee Kaplan said:

Steven Q. :

Check the Web. There's plenty on the ISM. But I suppose if it's anything you disagree with
then the website is "pro-Israel" or anti-ISM? The simple facts are these: The ISM claims Israel is an apartheid state. They claim the Palestinians are indigenous and the Jews are not. They use doublespeak for terrorism. In order to be posted as a professional writer I must source my material and in most cases I have recordings, notes, and photos. The ISM
trains its activists to lie. I know because I've been inside their training sessions. The comcast link by the Jewish Action Task Force is an excellent resource put together by Diana Applebaum, a professional and distinguished historian and researcher. For other references try this: www.discoverthenetworks.org .

Dr.Michael:

The ISM has no centralized directors, officers, etc.to sue. It is a comglomeration of smaller groups to create a hydra's head on a nebulous body of "revolutionary"cells who are in solidarity with the goal of dismantling the state of Israel. In some ways it is modeled like the old communist ComIntern.

4. Bill Levinson said:

Lee, excellent commentary as always. I didn't realize that it was Kates' big mouth that got them banned from Rutgers. I think that buffoon Nadeem Muaddi, who hasn't dared stick his nose in here ever since he got caught red-handed at Internet abuse, will do them in with Georgetown's administration. He actually reinforced PSM's record by telling the Hoya that it's not the PSM's place to tell the Palestinians how to resist (i.e. he won't condemn terrorism).

Dr. Michael, I have in fact sent an information package to Caterpillar's legal department for use in the Rachel Corrie case and I am thinking of sending the same to Rachel Corrie's parents. Maybe they should sue ISM/PSM.

Steven Q., keep whistling past the graveyard of political-issue organizations. You'll be happier that way.

5. Steven Q. said:

1) According to the Israel on Campus Coalition's (ICC) 2005 yearbook, "At Duke University, some well-meaning activists cited the “precedent” of Rutgers University when they urged students to act decisively to “force” the administration to “ban” the PSM conference. However, Rutgers did not host the conference because the organizers failed to complete the university’s requisite paperwork." (Page 26) Source: http://israeloncampuscoalition.org/NR/rdonlyres/00CFFC87-159F-4825-A04C-5B1BF700EE8F/0/icc_yearbook2005.pdf

Wow Lee, there goes your argument about the Rutgers conference being "cancelled" due to Kates.

2) RE: Kaplan's statement, "The ISM claims Israel is an apartheid state. They claim the Palestinians are indigenous and the Jews are not."

South Africans leaders are on record stating that Israel's method of occupation resembles Apartheid South Africa.

Please provide a non-bias source to your claim that "Jews are not" native to the Holy Land - specifically from the PSM. I haven't come across this.

3) Levinson, the last posting I read from Muaddi stated that he wouldn't post until you wrote and published an accurate history/acount of the PSM. Actually, I very much enjoyed reading the exchange between the both of you. Perhaps you should take him up on the offer.

4) I understand that the PSM has never come out and condemned suicide bombings. However, they have condemned violence in general. I'm not quite sure why it is that this would not suffice.

5) Lee, please don't get angry with your words. I was merely noting the fact that none of the sources came from neutral 3rd parties. As a journalist, you understand how one would be skeptical of this.

6. Lee Kaplan said:

Steven Q:
See my remarks tht follow your comments:
U say:
1) According to the Israel on Campus Coalition's (ICC) 2005 yearbook, "At Duke University, some well-meaning activists cited the “precedent” of Rutgers University when they urged students to act decisively to “force” the administration to “ban” the PSM conference. However, Rutgers did not host the conference because the organizers failed to complete the university’s requisite paperwork." (Page 26) Source: http://israeloncampuscoalition.org/NR/rdonlyres/00CFFC87-159F-4825-A04C-5B1BF700EE8F/0/icc_yearbook2005.pdf
Wow Lee, there goes your argument about the Rutgers conference being "cancelled" due to Kates.

Hardly.I interviewed the administration at Rutgers including the campus police chief. The fact is, the University would never say they canceled an event because of an individual student. Hence, the “paperwork” excuse. Incidentally, the ICC does not go undercover and attend ISM training. They are primarily students who are susceptible to the ISM leadership by thinking they are sincere in wanting “peace” when the ISM really wants the dismantling of Israel as part of the PLO’s ultimate goal. The ISM holds seminars on how to infiltrate groups like the ICC and Hillel to advance Ism goals from within. So using the ICC as a definitive source is rather naïve. ISM defrauds Birthright regularly nd teaches its people to do so at seminars at these conferences. Sadly, mainstream Jewish organizations will buy excuses such as “paperwork” because they do not go on the inside and bserve and hear the truth.If you want to believe Rutgers canceled because of “paperwork,” then do some more research as you will find even the PSM leadership itself ran to Oio State to make sure they separated themselves from New Jersey Solidarity and Charlotte’s big mouth. In fact, Charlotte is the best help Israel could have. She’s even too stupid for the majority of useful idiots and wannabe revolutionaries in the ISM because she can’t lie as effectively as they can while advancing the same agenda.

U say:
2) RE: Kaplan's statement, "The ISM claims Israel is an apartheid state. They claim the Palestinians are indigenous and the Jews are not."South Africans leaders are on record stating that Israel's method of occupation resembles Apartheid South Africa.

You mean Desmond Tutu? Nelson Mandela? First of all, they both have praised a murderous dictator, Mohammar Gaddaffi. And even boasted for years of their friendship with Arafat and what a gret guy he was too. There are several reasons why they do. First off, money and political support from the Arab world. Tutu, despite his turned around collar, enjoys some opulent benefits from his support of the PLO. And we can’t leave out the man is most likely an anti-Semite. There are Christians in the PLO who will lie and say Christians are persecuted by Israel when they know the Palestinians persecute them for real. So verbal support for a cause by errant individuals hardly makes the accusations of apartheid true. Mandela was a communist until recently when released from prison where he found his fortunes (and funding) rested with good relations with the USA. He then became in favor of democracy.It is the worst calumny to say Israel is an apartheid state. By law all ethnic minorities are equal to Jews in Israel. Israel had fifteen recognized religions. Arab citizens have affirmative action programs. Arab-Isrelis have the right to vote and are not excluded from land purchases as the ISM lies and says they are. Israel has Arabs in its Knesset, some who advocate even destroying the state. Even DeGioia, the President at Georgetown has acknowledged Israel is not an apartheid state like South Africa.Where is your objections to the apartheid practived by the Palestinian Authority that has on the books a law that it is a death sentence to sell land to a Jew? Why couldn’t 8,000 measlely Jews live among one million Arabs in Gaza in Palestine? The hypocrisy is the Arab world is the greatest apartheid state in the world and uses the buzz word “apartheid” about the only pluralistic democracy in the region—Israel.
Get some facts.

U say:
Please provide a non-bias source to your claim that "Jews are not" native to the Holy Land - specifically from the PSM. I haven't come across this.

There are many. Mitchell Plitnick of Jewish Voice for Peace used to have this on his website. He still claims the First Temple is a myth as is the Exodus and that Israel’s Jews are really from Kazaria in Russia . The standard pap put out by the ISM is to call Jews in Israel “colonialists” as you know, implying they all came from Europe. I suggest you go to www.pierrerehov.com and get some of Pierre’s excellent films that feature Arab TV where Arab “experts,” even Phds, some who speak for the ISM or at ISm sponsored events, some who have spoken at PSM conferences, deny that Jews are indigenous to Israel. Heidi Arraf admits ISM works with Hamas that also says this.

U say:
2)Levinson, the last posting I read from Muaddi stated that he wouldn't post until you wrote and published an accurate history/acount of the PSM. Actually, I very much enjoyed reading the exchange between the both of you. Perhaps you should take him up on the offer.

If you want an accurate history of the PSM, just go to www.frontpagemag.com, click on columnists and read all my articles there. My history comes straight from the horse’s mouth,Adam Shapiro. If you are a supporter of the PSM/ISM, I suggest you find a group that is not working to roil the war on Israel but that will really work for peace. The ISM doesn’t condemn terrorism and follows the PFLP formula for dismantling Israel. Adam Shapiro at Ohio State admitted the ISM is ultimately controlled by Palestinian “handlers” from the PA. By the way, don’t tell me the Ism and PSm are separate; Shapiro says they are not and many chapters of the PSM in the US call themselves ISM.

U say:
3)I understand that the PSM has never come out and condemned suicide bombings. However, they have condemned violence in general. I'm not quite sure why it is that this would not suffice.

It does not suffice because like Charlotte, they use doublespeak: “We are against violence but we recognize the right to resist as per international law.” If you go to the reference at the JAT website you can see that ISM leaders like Shapiro and Arraf have said openly that violence must accompany their nonviolence to “resist.” Show me an incident where the ISM even visited an Israeli child injured by a terrorit attack. Peace activists try to mediate between both sides. Finally, the ISM trains people to go to the West Bank and work to help errorists without doing the shooting themselves. They usually do this a human shields to prevent anti-terrorist activities of the IDF. Arraf at Duke admitted they work with Hamas, Islamic Jihad and the PFLP. That;s why it does not suffice.
Stop being a dupe if you really want "peace."

5) Lee, please don't get angry with your words. I was merely noting the fact that none of the sources came from neutral 3rd parties. As a journalist, you understand how one would be skeptical of this.

“Neutral third parties” are why the ISM gets away with its doublespeak and lies about Israel being an apartheid state. “Neutral third parties” accept misinformation from ISM spokespeople as fact without doing the research. If you support the ISM/PSM understand this: it is a wing of the PLO under PFLP guidance and increasingly Hamas guidance that is a war movement posing as a peace movement only because it sounds better. It's like selling cigarettes to someone with cancer; he thinks it's making him look like the Marlboro man while it kills him and others. Even the local Palestinians last month asked the IDF to kick the ISM activists out of the Hebron region because they contribute nothing to their lives and only make things worse for them. I’m not angry, but disappointed that people will excuse murder perpetrated by terrorists then claim they are “peace activists.” It’s just rhetoric to deceive people.

I am a true Palestinian activist. I want to see Palestinians with jobs, homes, careers and raising their children in peace. The ISM/PSM wants to see them living inside a dismantled Israel where they can outnumber and eventually do to the Jews what they have always done, render them dhimmis or exteminate them entirely. Are you so obuse you can't see how the Arabs treat Jews in the rest of the Arab world? You are such a "peace activist" you run with the very people who are preventing "peace"? Are you really such a useful idiot for the kleptocrats of the PLO?

If you support the PSM you support terrorism because it has yet to say to the PA “Stop
suicide bombings, stop killing Israelis and arrest and disarm the terrorists instead of excusing their activities. A dead Jewish child isn’t brought back by rhetoric. Your support of the PSM/ISM only lends support to the murderer.

7. ShyGuy said:

Bravo, Mr. Kaplan!

8. Anon said:

Steve Q. just got served.

9. Ted Belman said:

Lee

You come to battle well prepared. Your arguments are well researched and well put. Thanks.

10. Bill Narvey said:

Excellent response Lee.

I would however be most interested to hear further from Steve Q, who while raising quesitons of Lee, seems in a way to be questioning his own thinking.

It would be interesting to see what Steve Q now thinks in light of your comments in reply to his quesitons. I hope Steve Q takes the time to comment further.

11. Bill Narvey said:

I should add that if Steve Q does comment further, he should do what he asks of Lee and that is cite his facts and independent sources of information, where he might find himself in disagreement.

For anyone with even passing familiarity with the South African apartheid regime as it was and the Islamic notion of Dar ul Harb, Islamic society is the one that closely resembles an apartheid regime. In fact one Hamas leader recently was quoted that the Hamas' goal is that Palestinians should govern all the land of Israel and Jews can live there under Islamic rule. A permanent state of dhimmitude for the Israelis in such circumstances would be akin to the situation for Black Africans under the apartheid regime in South Africa, except even worse.

There is nothing in the Israeli democratic political and societal structure that is even remotely close to the South African apartheid regime as it was constituted and functioned.

12. Charles Martel said:

I am a true Palestinian activist. I want to see Palestinians with jobs, homes, careers and raising their children in peace. The ISM/PSM wants to see them living inside a dismantled Israel where they can outnumber and eventually do to the Jews what they have always done, render them dhimmis or exteminate them entirely. Are you so obuse you can't see how the Arabs treat Jews in the rest of the Arab world? You are such a "peace activist" you run with the very people who are preventing "peace"? Are you really such a useful idiot for the kleptocrats of the PLO?

CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP-CLAP

13. Bill Levinson said:

Lee Kaplan wrote, "I am a true Palestinian activist. I want to see Palestinians with jobs, homes, careers and raising their children in peace."

Henry Ford said that world peace consisted of economic opportunities for men to go from wearing kerchiefs around their necks (like Humphrey Bogart in "The African Queen") to wearing collared shirts, and women to wear hats instead of shawls (or, by implication, face-covering Islamic headgear).

The Palestinians were handed that vision on a silver platter: greenhouses in which to grow food, the equivalent of forty acres and a mule. The first thing they did was kill the mule and salt the land by looting and destroying the greenhouses. They also burned synagogues that they might have turned into houses, schools, hospitals, and so on. This suggests that their society (by their own choice, including the way they raise their children as walking bombs) is so dysfunctional that it is impossible to make peace with it, and it must be quarantined.

14. allyson said:

I was at the Rutgers PSM "conf" and taped all the speakers who stood outside for hours yeliing "Free Free Palestine" "From the Jordan to the Sea". Charlotte was there, in her too tight striped sweater, looking like a buffoon, however, the worst was Tariq Ali, who in his eloquent british accent, tried to defined the position of murder by suicide due to "occupation". The speakers were a joke, especially this woman who called blacks "colored" and rambled on and on. I still laugh when I think of her speech. Charlotte has made herself a joke within the community of the ISM/PSM folks, as well as with the law. However, she mingles with the enemy, and cannot be overlooked. So to "brainwashing 101", even Malony's website, see the video on stream.

15. Ed D said:

WOW!

16. Dan Barkye said:

To say that Israel is an apartheid state, which is mentioned b/c of the Law of Return (this is my understanding), a law taylored esp for Jews to enable a seemless assimilation in Israel after the immigration, is akin IMO to saying that France is an apartheid state b/c of the religious gadgetry recent law (not permitting the wearing of skullcaps, muslim girls scarves, etc.), or to saying that the citizenship laws of US define it as such.

Steve Q, this is for you and I will be grateful if you answer to the following. A bit long, but enlightening, I assure you.

You and the like of you, never cease to amaze me w your ability to contort your mind and tongues in trying to justify what is plain for all to read, hear and see.

What's your specific problem in seeing that a child killing, like the cold murder of Shalhevet in Hevron, is a murder of the utmost outrageous league, nothing less than that?
What's your problem in seeing the Sbarro incident as a pure cold-blooded murder, nothing less?
What's your problem in seeing the Passover and the wedding incidents of murder as pure cold-blooded, deliberate, murder, nothing less?

Can you ever justify these as liberation acts of violence?

I know that you point to the condemnation of all acts of violence by the most unrespected Mr. Nadeem, as a sufficient proof of his condemnation of such acts, too, but no, sir, this isn't enough in the light of what this woman, Kate, is saying, and of his and his friends' call for suicides as acts of so-called liberation (see Bill's facts sheet again for a thorough enlightment of the issue).
This isn't enough, sir. What is needed, is a specific call to put an end, but a true end, not a fake lips pay, to this utterly barbarous, bloodthirsty, form of combat that is in direct line w the death culture seen there daily.

Did you know that their excuse for it is that they don't have helicopters, nor tanks, nor airplanes, like their foe, Israel has?

Now, if that lame excuse, as an elementary school kid's excuse for being late at school, is holding some water, then you'd say, by implication, that the Isr's are bombing daily, as the Pals are doing, and kill kids and people, freely and deliberately.

THIS, sir, you know or you should know by now, as I know, is untrue, incorrect, is a falsification of the facts, an aberration of the cognitive faculties in their perception of the senses, as exercised in seeing and hearing the facts there.

Yes, we, Isr's, do make mistakes, which I and my conationalists decry sincerely and deeply, unlike Nadeem and his cohorts of darkness, but let me bring to your attention that there is no other army in the world, including the US army, that exercises such a sustained and deliberate effort to spare civilians in the fight against avowed terrorists for such a long time and in such difficult circumstances - being shot at from inhabited homes, from schools, from hospitals, from ambulances, from mosques and so on, by Pal police and terrorists; being unable for hours on end to collect and bring to a hospital the wounded soldiers, as happened in the famous Erez crossing fight, or civilians, as happened in the famous civilian trip near Nablus, b/c of deliberate shooting on ambulances and medevac choppers. It would be a true distortion of the facts to negate this.

BTW, from what the Pals want to be liberated, I don't really know if they really know, b/c their lives under the enlightened Pal rule will be hell on earth, compared w the Isr living standard given freely and generously to the Arab minority/fifth Pal column there. I urge you to visit the Arab "villages" in Israel to see the palaces, literally so, no exageration, in which many of them live. I doubt, in fact I cannot believe, if one (1) Arab will be willing to live in a future Pal state, which said state, BTW, will be swallowed the day after its implementation (if it comes to life) by its "brother" country, Syria (see Jordan entry in the annals of history of the year 1970, Sept, see Lebanon of 20 yrs ago and of now, too).

Last, but not least, let's deal w the eternal (biiiiiiig) thorn in the side of the Pals, presented by the irrefutable argument that the Jewish nation and its representatives in the land of Israel, our ancestral land of five (5) thousand years plus and counting, are in their full legitimate and absolutely lawful rights to claim as their land.

I call upon you, here and now, to tell me if you think that being dispossessed of your home, of your orchard, of your wheat fields, of your husbandry, of your landscape w its mountains and hills and seas, by another while you are exiled, is, and can be called, a legitimate act?
I call upon you, here and now, to tell me if your inner decent voice of a human being is telling you that such an action is acceptable?

For me and for my conationalists it is not, and no ammount of time is, and can be, a justifiable excuse for it. If the Spaniards fought for Spain for 800 yrs, if the Serbs claim Kosovo their craddle after 300 yrs, if the Germans call Danzig and the Sudeten their place, we certainly have the same right. And b/c we were dispossessed of it while in exile, not as a war spoil, not as a renounce of the properry by us, we have tenfold the right to claim it our own.

Therefore, I state here and now, in the name of all my Jewish sisters and brothers that no matter how much the Pals and their stooges, with whom you, so regretfully, are counted, and is counted on by them so joyfully and sacrificially, howl "foul", my claim is here to stay as rightful and lawful forever and ever, until the end of time.

To witness, the establishment of the State of Israel, and enough said.

All this said, I still wait for your sincere, honest, answers.

17. Bill Levinson said:

Charlotte, you haven't a snowflake's chance in Hell of lasting an instant in a public-relations match with Lee Kaplan, or me for that matter. Nor does ISM/PSM; I doubt it will be around at the end of the year. Take my advice; switch sides and join the winners.. Yyou will like the company on our side a lot better anyway.

P.S. THE COMMUNISTS ALSO LOST!

18. Lee Kaplan said:

Charlotte Kates as one of us????? Bill Levinson, have you lost your mind? I don't do morons
who support murderers.

19. Bill Levinson said:

Well, Lee, Charlotte doesn't actually have to join our side; she (or anyone else in her position) can just turn against ISM/PSM for whatever personal advantage can be gained. As Johann Tserclaes Graf von Tilly put it (while his men sacked Magdeburg during the Thirty Years War), "the soldiers ought to get something for their trouble." Sometimes soldiers of that era, upon realizing that the city they were defending was going to fall despite their best efforts, sacked it themselves. ISM/PSM members might consider doing the moral equivalent as described here:

http://www.israpundit.com/archives/2006/01/palestine_solid_5.php