Henry Siegman's Lies About Israel

special thanks to Richard Silverstein for exposing one of his own:
Response
ASDL:

Here is another ethnic Ashkenazi who hates his own religion, and keeps on going!

"Hamas undertook to stop firing rockets into Israel"
ASDL: You don't mention that they use this time to smuggle more weapons into Gaza via tunnels that Israel destroys during it's raids. Whoops Henry-caught you in a lie!

"It cannot be said that Israel launched its assault to protect its citizens from rockets. It did so to protect its right to continue the strangulation of Gaza’s population."
ASDL: Cannot be said? You haven't finished your own half-cocked article and you are already telling us how not to reply to it? Talk about control-freak ala Silverstein! Why do you put a punch and a block in the same sentence? Because you know how weak your statements are? If the United States was being rocketed by a border country-how would it react? If this border country was amassing weapons to attack the USA, would Bush or Obama allow it to occur?

"when Hamas – brutally, to be sure"
ASDL: Here we go. Now the truth comes out! The end of הסברה, Henry? Hamas is brutal and Israelis "inside the green line" are on the receiving end, Professor.

"Hamas brought to Gaza a level of law and order unknown in recent years,"
ASDL: Bold-face lie. Hamas was responsible for the rockets hitting inside Israel for years. This statement is absurd. All fears of Hamas leadership became materialized when they took over.

"and did so without the large sums of money that donors showered on the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority."
ASDL: You mean the billions that Arafat put in his pocket? Where did that money go? Maybe you should ask Suha Arafat?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasser_Arafat#Financial_dealings
Financial dealings
Arafat speaking at the World Economic Forum in 2001

In August 2002, the Israeli Military Intelligence Chief alleged that Arafat's personal wealth was in the range of USD $1.3 billion. In 2003 the International Monetary Fund (IMF) conducted an audit of the PNA and stated that Arafat diverted $900 million in public funds to a special bank account controlled by Arafat and the PNA Chief Economic Financial adviser. However, the IMF did not claim that there were any improprieties, and it specifically stated that most of the funds had been used to invest in Palestinian assets, both internally and abroad.

Also in 2003, a team of American accountants–hired by Arafat's own finance ministry–began examining Arafat's finances. The team claimed that part of the Palestinian leader's wealth was in a secret portfolio worth close to $1 billion, with investments in companies like a Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ramallah, a Tunisian cell phone company and venture capital funds in the US and the Cayman Islands. The head of the investigation stated that "although the money for the portfolio came from public funds like Palestinian taxes, virtually none of it was used for the Palestinian people; it was all controlled by Arafat. And none of these dealings were made public."

Although Arafat lived a modest lifestyle, Dennis Ross, former Middle East negotiator for Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, stated that Arafat's "walking-around money" financed a vast patronage system known as neopatrimonialism. According to Salam Fayyad, - a former World Bank official whom Arafat appointed Finance Minister of the PNA in 2002—Arafat's commodity monopolies could accurately be seen as gouging his own people, "especially in Gaza which is poorer, which is something that is totally unacceptable and immoral." Fayyad claims that Arafat used $20 million from public funds to pay the leadership of the PNA security forces (the Preventive Security Service) alone.

An investigation by the European Union into claims that their funds were misused by the Palestinian Authority found no evidence that funds were diverted to finance terrorist activities. Fuad Shubaki, former financial aide to Arafat, told the Israeli security service Shin Bet that Arafat used several million dollars of aid money to buy weapons and support militant groups.

"In fact, Hamas is no more a ‘terror organisation’ (Israel’s preferred term) than the Zionist movement was during its struggle for a Jewish homeland."
ASDL: Mr. Siegman, when your fellow Jews were being slaughtered in Europe, there were Jews in the Land of Israel trying to secure a place that Jews could go to without being attacked. Perhaps that is one of the only true victories of "Zionism" (other than the adoption of Hebrew as a national language)-that the State Of Israel regulates it's own borders. This is the only such case in the world in the past 20 centuries-where Jews are able to regulate the borders of their own country (or any country). And some 60 years later "Jews" like yourself equate Hamas with the earlier Zionists? Is that what you learned in Hebrew school?

"While Hamas’s ideology formally calls for that state to be established on the ruins of the state of Israel, this doesn’t determine Hamas’s actual policies today"
ASDL: Oh my. Here it states in black and white what Hamas is up to, but that isn't what they are thinking today? Did they suddenly have an epiphany? Did they start reading Tikkun Olam and now they see the whole world in the "framework of hug and kiss?" This is an absolutely ludicrous statement, which undermines the entire article. That is like someone like David Duke who was once in the Klan and now seeks legitimacy. Someone like Siegman wouldn't buy it, but with Israel and Hamas he takes the side of foe? Thanks for giving the benefit of the doubt to your fellow Jews, Henry!

"The Hamas leadership has undergone a change ‘right under our very noses’,"
ASDL: Tell that to the families of the people who were killed in rocket attacks? Why don't you, Henry?

"But this is a delusion that would bring about the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state."
ASDL: This is a scare tactic. Israel will remain here. Most Holocaust survivors are in Israel. They and their descendants won't allow another catastrophe to happen. Your words were meant to scare Israel into making concessions to it's enemies.

"they have disgraced themselves and damaged their country and their friends.’"
ASDL: Perhaps they disgraced themselves by waiting for an opportune time politically to defend their own people. What do you expect from conniving politicians? Their friends are the enemies of their country-what is your point? Just as Bush had nothing to lose by looking away-they had nothing to lose being that Olmert had as much of a horrific tenure as Bush did!