This guy Max Blumenthal. Courageous or reckless I’m not sure which. His site (where this video was originally posted) is great. It offers real skeptical journalism that’s sadly missing from the big boys.
I mean, he broke the story about the doctored radio transmission featuring the hilarious Daffy Duck as menacing Arab voiceover (and forced an IDF retraction) but it should not have been up to a blogger to do that. Paid journalists seemed contented to just type their talking points and call it a day in the crucial early hours after the Israeli pirate attack in international waters. Now they’re coming around and are acting all shocked and scrambling to offer both sides of the story. (Too late, though, as one of the protesters interviewed by Blumenthal is already quoting the “go back to Auschwitz” fabrication as fact.)
Blumenthal walks a fine line. To me, it’s kind of funny/ kind of scary when he suggests to a Tel Aviv protester that the “activists smashed their heads into the bullets,” or that the commandos descended from the “helicopter of love.” Funny because he can never come up with a suggestion that’s too extreme for his interview subjects. “Helicopter of love? If you say so…..” Scary because I am beginning to fear for his safety in this atmosphere of … what? “Collective Israeli derangement” is Max’s phrase. Which from a distance seems apt.
He’s done this before with his “Feeling the hate in Jerusalem and Feeling the Hate in New York videos. And of course he’s had a lot of fun with the Tea Party people. But I’m afraid the stakes are different now. He’s in a country that’s gone into uncharted waters of crazy.