Wikipedia’s entry on Alison Weir is rife with falsehoods and bias

Notes from IAK:

• The mention of Alison’s media criticism should have a citation. For example: Examining Big Media’s ‘Israeli-Centric Perspectives’ — FAIR, Analysis of Media Coverage of Israel/Palestine
• The citation for the first part of the sentence links to an inaccurate article by Israeli journalist Yair Rosenberg in Tablet Magazine, which is full of misinformation and should be considered an unreliable source. (A Mondoweiss article reports Rosenberg “has been a Netanyahu ideological ally.”) Wikipedia should remove that citation.
• This sentence does not maintain a neutral point of view. There are many other statements and sources about what Alison is known for that Wikipedia could include, drawing from the multitude of sources and work listed in the overview section above.
  • ‣Click to expand for examples.

    She is known as “a California journalist and activist who chronicles the bias in U.S. media coverage of Middle East events.”

    Or: She is known for providing “one of the most reliable and versatile sources of news on Palestine/Israel.”

    Or: She is known as an “internationally renowned media critic and Middle East expert.”

    Or: She is known for “having tirelessly investigated and reported on the history and realities of Israel’s dispossession and occupation of Palestine…”

• ‣There are major problems with this sentence.
  • It elevates efforts to derail Alison’s work and attack her personally, making them a key focus of the introduction to the Wikipedia entry, which is upside-down. It is unbalanced to elevate these accusations so high in the article, above information about Alison’s actual work and impact.
  • The sentence furthermore leaves out the fact that many more people have praised Alison’s work and supported her against these false claims. This includes many of the most respected people, both in Palestine itself and around the world, who have dedicated their lives to working for justice for Palestinians. It is NOT a neutral point of view to elevate these smears while not mentioning the counter opinions in the same place.

  • The citation for this sentence is rife with problems. It gives a link to an article and fraudulently lists that article as having six authors, while in fact it has one author. The article was written by one of the self-proclaimed “antifascists,” Shane Burley, covered in the article by David Rovics discussed above. Burley has a habit of writing such pieces about activists for justice in Palestine. (Incidentally, another focus of his is writing about alleged antisemitism for an Israeli newspaper. This may be a worthy endeavor, but its pairing with his indefatigable attacks on critics of Israeli oppression of Palestinians makes one wonder if he supports the use of accusations of antisemitism as a cudgel to silence such critics.)

    In his article about Alison, Burley claims that Alison “elevates far-right ideas and relationships.” His source for this inaccurate claim is one article in the Israeli newspaper, the Times of Israel. However, that article does not mention anything about “far-right ideas and relationships.” (Its focus is on groups that oppose Alison, which it names: the “ADL, American Jewish Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, and the Progressive Zionists of California.” All are Israel advocacy organizations.)

  • If the Wikipedia entry is going to give prominence to false accusations of antisemitism, it should also report on Alison’s work documenting the active campaign to legally redefine “antisemitism” to include criticism of Israeli government policies and actions.In a long and heavily cited article entitled International campaign is criminalizing criticism of Israel as ‘antisemitism’, Alison wrote in part:

    As the world has witnessed the oppression and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, many people have risen in protest. In response, the Israeli government and certain of its advocates have conducted a campaign to crack down on this activism, running roughshod over civil liberties (and the English language) in the process.The mechanism of this crackdown is the redefinition of “antisemitism”[1] to include criticism of Israel, and the insertion of this definition into the bodies of law of various countries.

    Where most people would consider “antisemitism” to mean bigotry against Jewish people (and rightly consider it abhorrent), for two decades a campaign has been underway to replace that definition with an Israel-centric definition. That definition can then be used to block speech and activism in support of Palestinian human rights as “hate.” Various groups are applying this definition in law enforcement evaluations of possible crimes.

    Proponents of this Israel-centric definition have promoted it step by step in various arenas, from the U.S. State Department and European governments to local governments around the U.S. and universities.

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Notes from IAK:

While traveling in the West Bank and Gaza in early 2001, Alison wrote extensively about what she saw, giving specific eyewitness accounts of the “Palestinian suffering” that this Wikipedia sentence references so vaguely. She also wrote, “Again and again, I can’t believe the incredible arrogance, cruelty, selfishness I’m seeing.” She clearly did not say that all Israelis were arrogant, cruel, or selfish and would never make such a foolish claim. In fact, she often cites Israeli journalists and activists in her articles. Why not simply cite the full sentence, which is very short, instead of truncating it in order to insert words she never wrote ー unless the editors’ goal was to misconstrue her words?

Wikipedia should include other more representative quotes from the passage cited. If it also keeps the existing quote, the sentence should be quoted in full.

It would be more accurately representative of the passage to include one or more quotes about the Palestinian suffering she witnessed, or her report of being shot at by Israeli forces. (This was shortly after Israeli forces shot an American working for the Associated Press, destroying her pelvis, and before Israeli forces bulldozed American Rachel Corrie to death.)

• ‣Click to expand each item to see other quotes from the same passage that are more representative and more noteworthy, all giving her eyewitness accounts from a southern Gaza refugee camp.
  • “Houses were riddled — and I mean riddled — with bullets. There were 2-foot wide holes in roofs where mortars had come through. People showed me around their homes — for the most part they had moved into areas away from the outside, where, they hoped, they would be safe — huddled on mattresses on the floor. … When the children saw I was curious about the bullets, they gathered them for me by handfuls — smashed, distorted pieces of metal that tear through walls and people.”
  • “I saw a picture of four boys probably about 7-12 sitting on chairs in a waiting room somewhere, looking at the camera with no expression on their faces, and each with a large piece of gauze where one of their eyes should be. They were the lucky kids — these were only rubber bullets, and they hadn’t gone on into the brain…”
  • “Some people in the refugee camp told me about a new gas bomb the israelis shot last weekend at them. They said it had black smoke, and a “good” smell. At least 40 people are still hospitalized from it … I saw a 22-year-old man in the ICU. He was moaning and had IVs in both arms. He said it felt like knives in his intestines. Sometimes he had trouble breathing. His mother and aunt were hovering over him. His little sister was sitting next to him. I went to another ward, and saw six more. I met a father who was obviously distraught — two of his sons were in the hospital. I saw two men have seizures while I was there — convulsing.”
  • “I visited Mawasi, a lovely agricultural district along the beach that Israel has closed off and is steadily destroying. I saw 100 year-old palm trees they had bulldozed, acres and acres of palms, olive trees, vegetables, that Israel leveled. I talked to farmers whose families have worked on this land for untold generations, who now have no livehoods [sic], their fields destroyed and confiscated.”

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Notes from IAK:

The citation and wording here are highly problematic. Alison has written about extensive evidence regarding efforts by specific Zionist individuals, organizations, and even the Israeli government to promote war policies in the U.S. However, it is inaccurate to say she claimed “Israel’s US supporters are responsible for involving America in wars.” This indicates that she says all supporters of Israel in the U.S. support war, which is incorrect and which she does not say.

In addition, rather than mention any of the evidence Alison documents, the entry cites an article in The Times of Israel, written by Israeli journalist Marcy Oster. The article focuses on unfounded accusations from the ADL, American Jewish Committee, the Simon Wiesenthal Center, StandWithUs, and the Progressive Zionists of California. All are Israel advocacy organizations known for maligning supporters of justice for Palestinians.

A neutral Wikipedia entry would cite Alison’s detailed articles and statements directly, which would show them to be well documented.

For example, the entry could reference the video, “How Pro-Israel Neocons Pushed Iraq War, which cites Israeli journalists, and Alison’s articles discussing this, e.g. “Israeli Journalist reports that Israel Is Pushing US into War with Iran,” “Israel escalates efforts to get US to attack Iran, as it did Iraq,” and “Will the Israel Lobby Cause America’s Downfall?”

Notes from IAK:

Regarding Nazis and Zionists, Alison discusses this in an article published by CounterPunch and in her book. It is strange to include this one element from the book while excluding the extensive and highly cited other information covered in the book. It is not clear that it’s worth including this topic in the Wikipedia entry at all, but if it is included it should (1) be part of a summary of the book as a whole and (2) include Alison’s sources for this information.

• At least as relevant from the book are a number of very strong statements it cites from U.S. State Department officials who opposed the 1940s creation of Israel on land already inhabited by Palestinians, saying it would be immoral, destabilizing, and counter to U.S. interests.
  • ‣Click to expand for quotes from the book.

    Henry Grady, Assistant Secretary of State, called “America’s top diplomatic soldier for a critical period of the Cold War,” concluded that without Zionist pressure, the U.S. would not have had “the ill-will with the Arab states, which are of such strategic importance in our ‘cold war’ with the Soviets.”

    Former Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson also opposed Zionism. Acheson‘s biographer writes that Acheson “worried that the West would pay a high price for Israel.” Another author, John Mulhall, records Acheson‘s warning of the danger for U.S. interests:

    “…to transform [Palestine] into a Jewish State capable of receiving a million or more immigrants would vastly exacerbate the political problem and imperil not only American but all Western interests in the Near East.”

    The Joint Chiefs of Staff reported in late 1947, “A decision to partition Palestine, if the decision were supported by the United States, would prejudice United States strategic interests in the Near and Middle East” to the point that “United States influence in the area would be curtailed to that which could be maintained by military force.”

    …The CIA stated that Zionist leadership was pursuing objectives that would endanger both Jews and “the strategic interests of the Western powers in the Near and Middle East.”

    Loy Henderson, the director of the State Department‘s Office of Near Eastern and African Affairs, warned that the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine would go against locals’ wishes, imperil U.S. interests and violate democratic principles.

    Henderson emphasized that the U.S. would lose moral standing in the world if it supported Zionism:

    “At the present time the United States has a moral prestige in the Near and Middle East unequaled by that of any other great power. We would lose that prestige and would be likely for many years to be considered as a betrayer of the high principles which we ourselves have enunciated during the period of the [second world] war.”

    When Zionists pushed the partition plan in the UN, Henderson recommended strongly against supporting their proposal, saying that such a partition would have to be implemented by force and was “not based on any principle.” He warned that partition “would guarantee that the Palestine problem would be permanent and still more complicated in the future…”

    Henderson elaborated further on how plans to partition Palestine would violate American and UN principles:

    “…[Proposals for partition] are in definite contravention to various principles laid down in the [UN] Charter as well as to principles on which American concepts of Government are based. These proposals, for instance, ignore such principles as self-determination and majority rule. They recognize the principle of a theocratic racial state and even go so far in several instances as to discriminate on grounds of religion and race…”

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• If the topic is included, Wikipedia must at least state that Alison sources her information on this topic to writings by such significant authors as Hannah Arendt, Edwin Black, Lenni Brenner, and Tom Segev, among others. A more accurate statement on this topic would say something like: “Her book cites writings by Hannah Arendt and others alleging that Nazi and Zionist leaders collaborated to displace Jewish residents from Germany to Palestine during World War II.” For context, here is an excerpt of the book on that subject. This segment is so heavily documented that the citations for the section are longer than the section itself.
  • ‣Click to expand and read book excerpt and citations.

    There was even a certain amount of collusion between Zionists and Nazi leaders. When disturbing facts emerged in the 1950s about this, these caused considerable scandal in Israel and led to the fall of the Israeli government of the time. A number of books are dedicated to this subject and it is discussed in numerous others. In some cases there were accusations that Zionist collaboration with Nazis had saved people with connections at the expense of those with none.[i] The topic inspired novels by well-known Israeli writers Amos Elon and Neil Gordon, was the subject of a 1987 British play, and was portrayed in a 1994 Israeli docudrama. [ii]

    Some Zionist leaders worked out what became known as the “transfer agreement,“ a 1933 pact with the Nazis in which Jews who wished to go to Palestine could transfer their capital to Palestine.[iii] As part of this agreement, these Zionists agreed to reject a boycott that had been implemented against Germany.[iv]

    Critics were outraged at their undermining of the boycott, a fellow Zionist calling them “Hitler’s allies.”[v] According to author Edwin Black, “The great irony is that Adolph Hitler became the chief economic sponsor of Israel.”[vi]

    Israeli author Tom Segev explains that the agreement “was based on the complementary interests of the German government and the Zionist movement: the Nazis wanted the Jews out of Germany; the Zionists wanted them to come to Palestine.”[vii]

    ---

    [i] Hecht, Ben. Perfidy. New York: Messner, 1961.

    [ii] Various books explore these sabotage efforts: Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil by Hannah Arendt, The Transfer Agreement: The Dramatic Story of the Pact between the Third Reich and Jewish Palestine by Edwin Black, Zionism in the Age of Dictators by Lenni Brenner, 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis by Lenni Brenner, and The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust by Tom Segev.

    Segev describes the accusations by writer Hannah Arendt, whose book on the Eichmann trial, from her reports in the New Yorker, roused considerable controversy. Segev writes that Arendt stated that many Jews would have survived “had their leaders not helped the Nazis organize the concentration of Jews in the ghettos, their deportation to the east, and their transport to the death camps.” (Segev, Seventh Million, 359)

    This information is sometimes covered up in American media reports; see, for example, my article “Denying Nazi-Zionist collusion: McClatchy, the Sacramento Bee, Darrell Steinberg, and Islamophobia,” CounterPunch, March 17, 2001. Online at

    http://ifamericansknew.org/media/sacbee.html

    [iii] Segev, Seventh Million, 19. Its Yiddish name was the “Haavara” Agreement, which was also the word used in Nazi documents.

    [iv] “Zionists Reject Boycott.” New York Times, August 24, 1933, P.6 sec. Accessed February 17, 2014. “Zionists Reject Boycott.” New York Times, August 24, 1933, P.6 sec. Accessed February 17, 2014.

    http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=FA0915FD39551A7A93C7AB1783D85F478385F9&scp=1&sq=zionists+reject+boycott+of+reich&st=p

    Some Zionists favored the boycott. Chief among them was American Samuel Untermyer, who dramatically described a “holy war” being conducted against Germany in a radio address on WABC in New York, which was reported in the New York Times. Untermyer called for destroying Germany’s export trade “on which their very existence depends.”

    “Text of Untermyer‘s Address,” New York Times, August 7, 1933,

    http://www.untermyergardens.org/pdfs/Untermyer-Hitler.pdf

    This boycott against Germany was the subject of a strange March 24, 1933 front-page article in the British newspaper, the Daily Express. The bellicose report was strongly sympathetic to the boycott and may have been placed by boycott leaders. The headline read, “Judea Declares War on Germany,” with a drop deck stating, “JEWS OF ALL THE WORLD UNITE, BOYCOTT OF GERMAN GOODS, MASS DEMONSTRATIONS.

    The article claimed, “A strange and unforeseen sequel has emerged from the stories of German Jew-baiting.

    “The whole of Israel [i.e. the Jewish population] throughout the world is uniting to declare an economic and financial war on Germany.”

    The article went on to proclaim:

    “World Jewry has made up its mind not to rest quiescent in face of this revival of medieval Jew-baiting.

    “Germany may be called on to pay a heavy price for Hitler’s antagonism to the Jews. She is faced with an international boycott in commerce, finance, and industry.

    “The Jewish merchant prince is leaving his counting-house, the banker his board-room, the shopkeeper his store, and the pedlar his humble barrow, to join together in what has become a holy war to combat the Hitlerite enemies of the Jew.

    “Plans for concerted Jewish action are being matured in Europe and America to strike back in reprisal at Hitlerite Germany.”

    The article also described anti-German activities in Britain, Poland, France, and the U.S.

    While such rhetorical saber-rattling was perhaps meant to frighten Germans into ridding themselves of Hitler, its end result may have been to reinforce the kind of negative views that led to his rise.

    For the full text of the article see:

    http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/orgs/british/daily-express/judea-declares-war

    [v] Segev, 24.

    [vi] Television report by Channel 5 News WMAQ Chicago, April 22, 1984, by Deborah Norville and Rich Samuels containing interview with Black following publication of his book The Transfer Agreement. Black was attacked widely by Zionist organizations when his book was published. Twenty-five years later, in an interview broadcast by Book TV, he discussed his close attachment to Israel, explained that he considered the transfer agreement a necessary rescue activity, and said he is now friends with a Zionist leader who had previously censored his work.

    http://youtu.be/uE2hsaHAEX0

    [vii] Segev, Seventh Million, 19.

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Notes from IAK:

Alison never said this. This is a prime example of a tiny social media conversation being drastically misrepresented and presented out of context ー classic hallmarks of smear campaigns ー and given inappropriate prominence in the Wikipedia entry. Wikipedia’s citation for this sensationalist and inaccurate statement is an article in Tablet by Israel partisan Benjamin Gladstone, “Young Anti-Zionist Jews Claim to Speak For My Generation. They Don’t. It’s Time We Called Them On It.” In the same paragraph, Gladstone also attacks Israeli activist Miko Peled.

Gladstone’s link for this claim is a 2016 If Americans Knew Facebook post inviting conversation on a prominent Times of Israel report titled “Obama nominates Jewish judge Merrick Garland for Supreme Court – Garland will become fourth Jewish jurist on bench if confirmed.”

The post did not say there were “too many Jews” on the court (offensive and inflammatory language that is nothing like Alison’s precise and heavily cited writing and speeches). Rather, it invited consideration of the impact that a lack of diverse backgrounds among justices might have. It noted an imbalance in which Muslim Americans, Protestant Americans, and Asian Americans had no representation on the court.

The post discussed legal cases regarding Israel-Palestine, as well as the topic of disproportionate representation, saying in part:

The post argued that it’s often considered appropriate to discuss issues of representation: “When there was concern that there were no women on the court, such concerns were not ‘anti-male.’”

It also noted that others who had raised similar concerns were former AIPAC staffer MJ Rosenberg and former chair of the Jewish Committee On the Middle East Mark Bruzonsky.

Finally, the post argued for the value of diverse voices (a value frequently espoused in the U.S. these days): “While many people may transcend their potential chauvinism and bias – whether it be based on ethnicity, race, gender, or religion – most of us feel that both fairness of opportunity and fairness of outcome are better served by diversity than by extreme overrepresentation of some groups and underrepresentation of others.”

Incidentally, it turns out that Garland is a member of a Washington DC synagogue whose website says that one of “the primary reasons members belong to Temple Sinai” is “concern for Israel as a Jewish homeland.”

Notes from IAK:

This is the most outrageous and wildly inaccurate claim in the whole entry, and illustrates the extreme unreliability of Wikipedia on topics related to Israel-Palestine.In reality, this quote is from a Jewish author writing in the 1800s! It was quoted by another Jewish writer, a Palestine supporter named Roger Tucker, as one small part of a very long article.

Alison reposted that article on her low-traffic personal blog as one of a roundup of articles by other pro-Palestine writers discussing efforts to effectively “cancel” a pro-Palestinian Israeli journalist that were causing a big controversy among activists at the time. Alison republished a roundup of articles from other sources to showcase the conversation around this controversy.

Yet, an anonymous Wikipedia editor literally attributes this 1894 statement to her, again citing the Tablet Magazine article by Yair Rosenberg mentioned above. Wikipedia should correct this immediately and block future edits citing the unreliable Tablet article.

[Back to: Overview of Problems with the Wikipedia Entry on Alison Weir]

Notes from IAK:

This is another case of giving undue prominence to a few articles in Alison’s huge body of work, and it is also presented in a misleading and outlandishly biased way that, among other things, completely erases Palestinian voices. If this tiny portion of Alison’s work is discussed at all, it should be balanced by other information from her more prominent work.

Even more importantly, Wikipedia must correct its language to be accurate and maintain a neutral point of view. If this sentence is kept in the entry, it should give information about her sources and it should remove the absurd “blood libel” smear.

Alison documented numerous credible claims by legitimate sources and experts in the field, reporting on expert testimony from Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Chancellor’s Professor of Medical Anthropology at the University of California Berkeley, the founder of Organ Watch, and the author of scholarly books and articles on organ trafficking. (She was the pundit the mainstream media called upon for expert commentary on the topic.)

Palestinians have repeatedly raised concerns of organ harvesting over many years. A fair mention of the subject would cite statements by living family members of alleged victims. The current formulation literally erases Palestinian voices, instead prioritizing medieval Europeans over living Palestinians.

Finally, there are problems with the citations given for this sentence. The first citation is the Tablet article by Yair Rosenberg mentioned above, which should be excluded as an unreliable source. The second one is the Times of Israel article by Marcy Oster also discussed above. Neither provides any links for their claims.

Finally, the third citation links to the shorter of Alison’s two detailed, thoroughly cited articles, published by Counterpunch and the Washington Report for Middle East affairs. It omits the second, longer and even more cited article, and it also omits any mention of her follow-up discussions on why she wrote the articles and updates on the claims. If this is to be included at all, it should reference accurate and complete information.

Notes from IAK:

No, Alison has not and does not partner with white supremacists or Holocaust deniers. This is an absurd accusation. This inflammatory accusation is clearly designed to silence Alison and intimidate people out of reading her work or speaking up about the plight of Palestinians, and Wikipedia should remove it immediately.

The first citation for this is the Benjamin Gladstone article in the Tablet mentioned above. Interestingly, Gladstone’s citation for this outlandish claim provides no evidence of Alison “partnering” with anyone. Rather, it simply is a link to a video of her being interviewed by phone on an obscure internet radio program hosted by a man named Clayton Douglas. (As discussed in detail below, granting an interview does not constitute a partnership. Moreover, Alison has never claimed to vet interviewers and has always held that it is crucial to share documented information and principled opinions with every audience available.)

The second citation is to the aforementioned article in The Forward about a detailed report Weir had written, although the Forward article does not even link to her actual article.

Neither citation actually even mentions the American Free Press, a conservative magazine, so that part of the false Wikipedia claim is entirely uncited.

However, a search of the AFP website reveals a few articles about Alison. For example, one reports on a talk she gave at a rally in Dearborn Michigan: “Hard Realities of U.S. Aid to Israel Outlined in Michigan Speech.” Another is about her book: “Historical Book on Israel Censored in U.S.” And another is an interview with Alison about the Palestine issue. (AFP also has published interviews with Medea Benjamin and with then-head of Jewish Voice for Peace Rebecca Vilkomerson, as well as articles about numerous others working on the Israel-Palestine issue.)

Alison and If Americans Knew strenuously object to any claim that they “partner with” or “work with” outlets or individuals who have interviewed Alison, reposted her work, or written about her or If Americans Knew.

A Youtuber or a website interviewing or writing about Alison does not constitute “partnering” with them. That kind of extreme guilt-by-association claim is both designed to quell all dissent and is patently absurd. It would be like saying that because Barack Obama was quoted on Fox News or CNN, he had partnered with them and was responsible for anything else either outlet ever did.

For those who are interested, here is some additional context: Alison has been interviewed by a great number of radio, TV, internet, and print journalists and independent content producers over the last 20+ years. She has not discriminated about where she would appear, instead attempting to get information out whenever and wherever she could. She has appeared on a wide spectrum of outlets, from a rightwing Israeli radio program to Iranian TV to left-wing platforms and a whole host of U.S. programs all across the political spectrum (a few are here).

Time permitting, Alison has agreed to as many interviews as possible, with the goal of reaching as many audiences as possible with factual information about Israel-Palestine. She has always held that it was crucial to share documented information and principled opinions with every audience available. There has been an incredible media blackout on this issue, particularly during the earlier years of her work, and at times almost the only hope of getting information out was via small and alternative programs and sites.

While some liberal advocates of Palestinian justice or other causes object to being interviewed on conservative stations, she has argued that it is especially essential that the listeners of these programs learn the facts on Israel-Palestine. She has consistently held that the best chance to affect U.S. policy is informing as many U.S. voters as possible about the horrible tragedies of Israel-Palestine, and the best means to counteract Islamophobia is to get factual information to rightwing audiences in addition to left-leaning ones.

Notes from IAK:

Once again, this assertion is based entirely on the same obscure, inflammatory, and dishonest articles as much of what has come before it: the entirely unreliable Yair Rosenberg Tablet article, the Benjamin Gladstone Tablet article, and the Forward article, also discussed above.

The reliance of the Wikipedia entry on these highly flawed sources paints a clear picture of an entry that has been hijacked by internet trolls aimed at preventing important facts from reaching a wide audience.

They ignore Alison’s hundreds of interviews, most often on liberal programs, and instead repeats inaccurate claims by critics who honed in on one interviewer with an obscure internet radio program, who interviewed Alison by phone a few times.

The Douglas show is an extremely obscure internet program with almost no followers. The transcript of this interview seems to have first been highlighted on an antifa related website that was launched in 2010 to target If Americans Knew and Alison. The site seems to have been launched by an Israel partisan and antifa associate named Robert Foster Ogman.

On the Douglas shows, Alison informed listeners in detail about Palestine, spoke against racism, reminded Douglas that many Jewish Americans and Israelis oppose Zionism, conveyed her belief that all people should be treated with compassion and respect, and opposed violence, eliciting his agreement with many of these views.

She didn’t use her airtime to try to address the somewhat long, rambling statements that Douglas occasionally strung together over the somewhat fuzzy phone line before getting to his questions for her, and instead focused on conveying her message to whatever audience might hear it.

Apparently Douglas played a quote from David Duke to Alison, but she did not hear who the source was and as such was not responding to Douglas playing Duke’s words.

Many people have written to If Americans Knew in support, condemning smears on Alison based on this minor exchange.

Regardless, no matter what individuals think of the Douglas interview, it is highly inappropriate for Wikipedia to highlight it while omitting the hundreds of other interviews Alison has taken part in, virtually all on more significant platforms with vastly more listeners.

• ‣Click to expand and read Alison’s statement about the Douglas interviews.

  I do not vet who may or may not listen to my information…. We wish our important facts to reach every possible person, and I endeavor to be polite to all my hosts, even when they are hard-core Zionists.

  I always use this airtime to the best of my ability to give important facts about Palestine to listeners of all backgrounds and beliefs in an effort to counter the media misinformation about the region and about Muslims.

  Some sectors of US society are specifically being targeted by misinformation that is causing an alarming growth of Islamophobia in this country, some of it taking violent turns.

  I feel it is critical that our facts, which counter this Islamophobia campaign, reach every portion of our diverse population, particularly those that are most vulnerable to this anti-Muslim propaganda.

  As best I recall about this particular radio show from five years ago, Douglas was from Oklahoma or somewhere similar, seemed to have had a hard life and was, I suspected, a bit down and out.

  In his somewhat wandering, occasionally conspiracy-tinged questions, Douglas touched on a lot of out-there thoughts, but I recall that he differentiated between Jews and Zionists, spoke strongly against violence, decried Israeli oppression, and seemed to be striving to be a fair person. When one time he failed to distinguish between Zionists and Jewish people in general, I corrected him.

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Notes from IAK:

Once again, the entry intentionally misleads readers by using the words “worked with” to describe people who have quoted her work or who she has briefly met. The citation for this claim again links to the Forward article mentioned above.

This reports: “Her message has appeared in ‘The Final Call,’ a publication of the Nation of Islam, according to the ADL; she was photographed with Ashahed Muhammad of the NOI at an American Muslims for Palestine event.” As above, this in no way indicates that Alison “worked with” the Nation of Islam, and Wikipedia should remove this unsupported claim.

Furthermore, Alison is pleased to have conversations with many people of diverse backgrounds and found her few interactions with Final Call staff professional and pleasant. She dislikes the whiff of racism this Wikipedia statement contains. She is of course willing to be interviewed by Final Call.

Many others have also been interviewed by Final Call, including author Marc Lamont Hill.

The Final Call often has articles about Palestine, e.g.:

• Colleges, universities enact policies to quell student protests for Palestine
• Prospects grim for a diplomatic solution in the Middle East
• Israel escalating abduction of Palestinian children: Rights group

Notes from IAK:

There are many problems with this section, specifically it (1) fails to maintain any semblance of a neutral point of view and (2) it relies on the ADL, yet Wikipedia editors themselves have raised specific concerns about using the ADL as a source.

• The section is titled “Reception and Controversy” and yet it focuses only on accusations designed to undermine Alison and her work. The first sentence contains non-neutral Israel-centric framing, which is not surprising given that it is a quote from the ADL, an Israel advocacy organization. Many people would term Alison as a prominent voice in the pro-justice, pro-human rights movement. A neutral point of view would include some of the many positive statements about Alison and her work in this section, such as the praise her book has received from prominent people, and the fact it has well over 1,000 5-star reviews on Amazon. For example, Wikipedia could include any of these published statements or characterizations of Alison (in no particular order):
  • “The indefatigable Alison Weir’s If Americans Knew blog, one of the most reliable and versatile sources of news on Palestine/Israel.” – Professor Raouf J. Halaby
  • “Internationally Renowned Media Critic and Middle East Expert” – Salem News
  • “Ms. Weir writes and speaks widely on the Middle East and is the author of a meticulously sourced book on the history of the US-Israel relationship” – Arab World Books
  • “Weir is generally considered the foremost analyst on media coverage of Israel-Palestine.” College of Charleston
  • “Alison Weir is at the forefront of combating the biased coverage of Israeli – Palestinian conflict in the mainstream media and through her sincere efforts has revealed the plight of the Palestinian nation under the occupation of Zionist regime.” – Kourosh Ziabari
  • “Alison Weir is contributing greatly to rectifying the distortion of the image of Palestinians in the American Media. Her work should be commended and supported. Her courageous voice, and the voices of other people like her, is revealing the truth and dispelling myths about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and the Israeli military occupation of Palestine.” – Professor. Saed Abu Hijleh
  • “Ms. Weir presents a powerful, well documented view of the Middle East today. She is intelligent, careful, and critical.” – Thomas Campbell, Former US Congressman (R-CA)

• The citation for these exceedingly biased accusations is again the Forward article mentioned above. The article doesn’t provide the link to the ADL claims, making it hard for readers to evaluate them, but when we look at the ADL original, it has (unsurprisingly) misrepresented Alison’s work, as it does the work of virtually everyone who works on Palestine.

  Recently, Wikipedia’s editors voted to declare the ADL “generally unreliable” on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, adding it to a list of banned and partially banned sources. JTA reported: “in a near consensus, dozens of Wikipedia editors involved in the discussion said they believe the ADL should not be cited for factual information on antisemitism as well because it acts primarily as a pro-Israel organization and tends to label legitimate criticism of Israel as antisemitism.” (More information on the ADL’s Israel advocacy is here.)

  Yet this source is still being used to malign Alison in the Wikipedia entry. Wikipedia must remove it entirely. Read Alison’s long refutation here of the ADL’s 10 page dossier on her. If the entry continues to give space to the ADL’s misinformation about her, basic neutrality would require it to also give space to refutations of those accusations.

The citation is again the article by Shane Burley, the self-designated “antifa” writer whose coordinated efforts to silence critics of Israel David Rovics reported on. Again, as mentioned above, Burley’s citation for the second claim is not supported by the article he links to. Additionally, this does not adhere to a neutral point of view.

Notes from IAK:

“Responded in detail” is an understatement. Alison addressed every point claimed by JVP management (and others) in exhaustive detail. At any rate, this section has two problems that should be corrected:

• The statement that she “granted interviews to people it believed held such views” is ambiguous. It should make clear that Alison allowed herself to be interviewed by people that the JVP authors objected to ー not that she interviewed them about their views, which the wording could seem to imply. Wikipedia should correct this to something more like “accused her of allowing herself to be interviewed by people it believed…”
• For neutrality and balance, this paragraph should mention that many more members of JVP at that time signed a letter opposing this decision by JVP leadership, and that a JVP chapter specifically sponsored a talk by her in defiance of the JVP leadership. The first fact is alluded to briefly deep in the next paragraph, but it should be included in the same paragraph reporting the action by JVP’s then-leadership. That is necessary for a fairer representation of the action and of the rank-and-file membership of JVP. Additionally, Wikipedia omits the context that the then-head of JVP’s husband worked for an Israeli company closely connected to the Israeli military, a potentially relevant connection in terms of assessing that leader’s position on Israel-Palestine issues.

Notes from IAK:

This topic is already covered more thoroughly in the Reception and Controversy section of the entry, so it should not be repeated here. Wikipedia should remove it from this section and simply cover it in one section (with a neutral point of view). Additionally, the citation for this is yet again the Tablet article by Yair Rosenberg that is an unreliable source and should be removed.

Finally, this again fails to adhere to a neutral point of view, once more omitting the fact that thousands of people publicly objected to these misinformation-based smears.

Notes from IAK:

There are many other reviews about the book by prominent people that Wikipedia leaves out.

• ‣Click to expand and see example quotes.
  • “Prodigiously documented… Alison Weir must be highly commended for throwing such a brilliantly hard light on the relationship between the United States and Israel. I hope this marvelous book gets all the attention it deserves.” – Ambassador Andrew Killgore
  • “This provocative book documents a history that is essential in understanding today’s world. Scholarly, yet readable, it is a must for all Americans. We all need to know what we have spent by coddling Israel and its aggressions, and why the cost has become more than we have bargained for.” – Senator James Abourezk
  • “This book is the best history of the origin of big trouble for the United States in the Middle East. Author Weir is is a gifted writer who here illuminates neglected history.” – Congressman Paul Findley
  • “Weir has indeed succeeded in her goal to provide ‘a concise, clear sketch of what has been going on’ in historical Palestine. Against Our Better Judgment is a brilliant introduction to Zionism, the Lobby, and Israel/Palestine.” – Kim Petersen, co-editor of Dissident Voice
  • “Ms. Weir’s text is revelatory and articulate… Even those who are well read on the Israeli-Palestinian relationship have much to learn from this slender volume.” – L. Michael Hager, cofounder of the International Development Law Organization
  • “Alison Weir’s study of U.S. engagement with Zionism, Against Our Better Judgment, includes a chapter on this little-known aspect of World War I history.” – Dr George P. Smith, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in an article about Palestine
  • “Its scholarly content makes it an indispensable tool for any researcher on the root cause of Middle Eastern turmoil… Meticulously researched, explosive” – Ziad Hafez, Contemporary Arab Affairs
  • “This short book is quite powerful and displays historical accounts and analyses supported by a solid documentation showing scholarly knowledge and objective reporting.” – Daily Times
  • “If you never read another book, read this one.” – Daily Kos blogger
  • The Wikipedia entry also does not mention that the book has received over a thousand five-star reviews on Amazon.

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