Jenni Frazer in the Jewish Chronicle has a darkly amusing story about yet another hoax perpetrated by the Iranian Holocaust denial outfit, Press TV.
The story, which quotes both myself and Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, concerns crackpot conspiracy theorist and Counterpunch contributor Franklin Lamb, who claims to be the recipient of a leaked CIA report forecasting Israel’s demise within twenty years.
This is one scoop which hasn’t been picked up by any mainstream, respectable outlets for the simple reason that it’s hogwash. And it tells us much more about Press TV than it does about the relationship between the US and Israel.
It tells us that Press TV is the mouthpiece of brutal Islamist regime. It tells us that Press TV is an operation based on lies. When it comes to “journalists,” figure on a diet of George Galloway, Yvonne Ridley and Alan Hart. It is trash.
Yet Press TV would like us to think - despite the bevy of conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers drawn to it as inexorably as rodents are to sewers - that it is a legitimate news operation. To the contrary, it should be boycotted by anyone who values press freedom and journalistic rigor. Which means don’t appear on it, don’t answer calls from their “correspondents,” don’t credential its “correspondents” - don’t, in fact, do anything which might allow Press TV to claim credibility when its sponsors routinely imprison, torture and murder proper journalists and bloggers. Consign Press TV to the foul-smelling hinterland where it belongs.
When I first read this “news story” I was skeptical about its veracity. However, I thought that someone in the CIA might have written such a scenario since this is what such organizations do; they make up all sorts of probably but not necessarily possible scenarios.
The story reminds me of the Iraqi broadcaster telling the world, during the American invasion, that they were winning the war when the US forces were a few miles outside his studio in Baghdad.
Hope springs eternal in the true believers heart, it also overrides reality.
This item was (again?) on PressTV last night (Sun 22Mar’09). The numbers were interesting claiming 300 000 Israelis already living in California and about 500 000 Israelis in Israel with foreign passports. These numbers have figured in Israeli press items about “yerida” since the 80’s (?)and reflect that there is an expatriate phenomenon and a number of people who live in Israel without rushing to trade in their old passports. There was no effort by Lamb to analyse the turn over within the stats over time, nor to compare and contrast with other countries with large immigrant or expat communities; eg Portugal with about ten million pop is reckoned to have a million expats. After 1945 over two million Brits left for Australia S.Af USA and other places; so many Poles lived in France in the first half of the late century tha tboth in 14-18 and 1940 France formed complete Polish divisions from them….