Talk:Steven Plaut

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Contents

[edit] NPOV Issues with recent legal issues

Here is a Ha'aretz article that covers the side not present in the current version of the article: [1] --Deodar 19:14, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

That is a dead link.

Ruthfulbarbarity 07:38, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Try here: [2]RolandR 00:17, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

This article has gone way beyond reasonable reporting and now amounts to a vicious and probably legally libellous attack on Neve Gordon and Rim Naddaf. I'm listing it at Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. --Zerotalk 13:31, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ma'ariv Article

I have removed the inaccurate summary of Ben-Dror Yemini's column on 23 June 23 2006. He did not "Attack judge Naddaf as a neo-nazi and a Holocaust denier". In fact, he did not even name her, nor even identify the trial. He was making a general point about the limits of free speech, and used the (unnamed) judge's words as an illustration. RolandR 15:06, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

The section on the Gordon versus Plaut trial is so clearly biased, it looks like it was written by Plaut himself. For a decisive refutation of the charges raised by Alan Dershowitz against Gordon, see Gordon's response in an article titled, "Anti-Semitism? Mr. Dershowitz, You Just Don't Like What I Say" http://www.counterpunch.org/gordon11082006.html

Steady on, folks, we are supposed to give a fair report of what involved persons claim, not to argue the case ourselves. Opinions have to be in the name of people who gave them, not in straight narrative. --Zerotalk 05:33, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
The article needs one more good example of an article supportive of Gordon against Plaut. At the moment there is only Gordon defending himself. --Zerotalk 05:44, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consistent Misrepresentation

There have been consistent attempts to revert to an older and false version of the section on the Neve Gordon versus Plaut civil suit. This false version presents the person found by the court to have been a perpetrator of libel (Plaut) as the victim, while the plaintiff (Gordon) and the judge are portrayed as villains. This is compounded by demonstrably false claims, as if Israeli journalists accused the judge of being a neo-Nazi and holocaust denier. They did not. The nature and content of these allegations, raise the suspicion that Steven Plaut himself is behind these claims. It seems he is using this forum to 'win' what he lost in court. Can this be stopped?

[edit] edit war

I had a comment on my talk about edit warring here, and IMO it would be really cool were that to stop. Please don't add or remove any information on this article. If you disagree with something, discuss it here. Please read WP:3RR, and remember that any more than 3 reverts in any 24-hour period will result in a block. Thanks! ST47Talk 20:35, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I understand why you request that information not be removed. But why do you request that nothing be added? Surely new -- and properly cited -- information vcan only add to our understanding, and improve the article.--RolandR 01:20, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
That may have been overgeneralizing for me to say that, just don't revert anything and don't add or remove the specific thing that was being warred over until it's been decided on, it isn't going to help the project. ST47Talk 01:42, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Tikkun magazine

Several editors (or possibly one editor using several ids) have been removing a quote from Tikkun magazine on the grounds that it is "not a serious source". On the contrary, Tikkun is an extremely serious and influential magazine. It is worthy of its own entry in Wikipedia, and many other articles link to or cite it. I do not believe that this is a "good faith" edit, rather that the editors do not wish Wikipedia readers to know that "Writing under assumed names, Plaut has a long history of attacking, labeling, and targeting left-wing scholars in Israel" I have accordingly reinstated the quote. --RolandR 17:29, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

Someone keeps removing material that provides a more balanced perspective on the matter (material from Tikkun, by David Newman, reproduced in other places as well). This is unacceptable. It is particularly ironic that the person who removed the material from Tikkun, under the excuse that it is a 'smear', has no problems with other claims that appear in the same section: that some academics are 'self-hating' Jews who are 'apologists' for terrorism. Why is that not a 'smear' or a 'libellous' claim? You cannot be selective here.Rangreen 13:31, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

The Threat to Academic Freedom in Israel-Palestine by David Newman Tikkun Magazine July/August 2004

http://www.tikkun.org/magazine/index.cfm/action/tikkun/issue/tik0407/article/040725.html

In 2002, a letter was published in the British newspaper, the Guardian, calling for a blanket boycott of the Israeli academic community. The letter's authors, two academics at Britain's Open University, offered the boycott as a legitimate means for the academic community to protest the continuation of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, the denial of Palestinian rights to self-determination, and the hard line retaliation of the Sharon government against the Palestinian terror and suicide bombings inside Israel. The proponents of the boycott argued that the situation was similar to that which occurred in South Africa during the apartheid period; they suggested that an academic boycott, along with sports and cultural boycotts, could have a similar impact in Israel.

In reality, the call for an academic boycott has had a limited effect. Israeli academics continue to participate in international research and conferences and they still publish in peer journals. But there is another, perhaps greater, threat to the integrity and quality of academic research and freedom of expression that has emerged in recent years—it is a growing McCarthyism, both in Israel and North America, that opposes any expression of critical social or political thought. This is aimed at silencing the Israeli liberal Left in their critique of Israeli government policy vis-à-vis the Occupied Territories and the fate of the Palestinians. It is a campaign that has gained in strength in the post-9/11 era (in the United States) and the post-Camp-David era (in Israel) as the right wing has grown in self-confidence at the expense of a confused and disoriented Left. The Academic Boycott

The Guardian letter urging an academic boycott did have some legs. It spawned a petition which was signed by an additional seventy academics. In the following months, similar calls for a boycott were put forward amongst French academics, while a number of American universities raised the issue of disinvestment in Israel. In some cases, such as at U.C. Berkeley, there was a noticeable increase in anti-Israel activity on campus accompanying these calls, while at some Canadian universities such as Concordia in Montreal and York in Toronto, Israeli politicians and pro-Israel pundits (Netanyahu at Concordia and Daniel Pipes at York) were prevented from speaking. Some academics refused to attend scientific seminars and conferences in Israel, while some international academic organizations postponed symposiums in Israel until a later, unspecified, date.

Two cases of attempted boycott achieved prominence. The Egyptian editor (based at Manchester University) of an international journal fired two Israeli members of her editorial board because of their national affiliation. In another case, the British editor of the international journal, Political Geography, refused to process a manuscript which had been submitted by an Israeli academic. Ironically, in the latter case, the paper had been submitted by Oren Yiftachel of Ben Gurion University, an Israeli professor of geography who is generally considered to be one of the most critical voices against the Occupation and in favor of Palestinian rights. The paper had been submitted jointly with a Palestinian scholar, Asad Ghanem of Haifa University, who suddenly found himself a target of the attempted boycott. The manuscript was later processed by the American editor of the journal, who made it clear that it was not the policy of the journal to engage in such a boycott, that the editorial board had never been consulted on this issue by the British editor, and that he (the British editor) had acted on his own personal instinct. But following the publication of this story as a major feature in the Guardian newspaper, this incident became a rallying cry to all those opposed to such a boycott, including many right-wing Israeli politicians and academics who would not normally have desired to see the critical writings of Yiftachel and Ghanem published in any form.

The attempted boycott brought in its wake a counter-petition from many amongst the international academic community. Within the space of a few weeks, a counter-boycott website had attracted more than 14,000 signatures from universities throughout the globe, including many prominent scientists who, while stating that they opposed the policies of the Israeli government and supported the immediate end of occupation and the establishment of a Palestinian State, equally opposed the attempt to tamper with freedom of expression. Some even went so far as to equate such blanket boycotts with similar sorts of activities practiced during the Nazi regime.

The calls for an academic boycott were immediately seized upon by the Israeli and Jewish right wing to accuse the boycotters of anti-Semitism. The fact that the boycott petition emanated from Europe, rather than the United States, was for many of them proof that Europe remained a hotbed for latent anti-Semitism, even amongst the educated and intellectual sectors of society. Of greater significance, however, was the fact that many left-wing Israeli academics who were also very critical of Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories opposed the boycott on the grounds that it would cause irreparable harm to those who constituted the voice of protest inside Israel, who worked closely with Palestinian academic and human rights organizations, and who promoted joint Israeli-Palestinian dialogue and scientific activities. The academic community was among the first to undertake pro-peace activities in the past and continues to be in the forefront of pro-peace, anti-occupation dialogue. The implementation of a blanket boycott would, they argued, severely damage those groups and activities which the boycotters, in principle, supported.

Overall, the attempts at boycott have had a minimal influence on Israeli academic activities. Israeli scientists continue to participate in international conventions, to receive prestigious research grants, and to be invited to universities and research institutions throughout the world. At most, there has been a significant downturn in the number and size of international conventions being held in Israel itself, with some being postponed to later dates. However, this is due more to fear amongst participants of traveling to a volatile area where they could be affected by chance violence (which also explains the almost total collapse of the Israeli tourism industry during the past two years) than to any ideological pro-boycott conviction. Academic Discourse in Israeli Life

Israeli academics are closely involved in the public and political debates inside Israel. They often appear on TV with politicians. The political petitions which are commonplace in the weekend editions of Israeli newspapers are often composed, and signed, by university faculty. Many academics write regular opinion columns in the popular press, promoting specific arguments relating to the peace process. Notable among these have been Professor Zeev Sternhell (a political scientist) and Professor Barukh Kimmerling (a sociologist) from the Hebrew University, both of whom have advocated anti-occupation and post-Zionist discourses in the liberal newspaper, Haaretz.

Because many of these columnists are anti-Occupation and pro-peace, it is common to suggest that most Israeli academics are leftists. The truth is that the Israeli academic community, like any other, is characterized by a diversity of political opinion—faculty are equally rolled out by politicians to show their support of left-wing, centrist, right-wing, and security-oriented discourses. Independent research institutes not affiliated with the universities have been founded to promote specific political discourses. The most notable of these is the Shalem Institute, funded by the Lauder family, whose attested objective is to promote a pro-nationalist, pro-Zionist discourse amongst its research faculty. Of Israel's five universities, one of them—Bar Ilan University—is a religious university and has a far higher proportion of faculty supporting a rightist discourse. Bar Ilan's BESA (Begin-Sadat) Center for Strategic Studies, set up and funded by a member of the Canadian Jewish community, Mr. Tommy Hecht, has the professed aim of presenting an alternative analysis of events to that offered by the more centrist Yaffe center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. The Ariel College, a right-wing institute established in the West Bank settlement of Ariel, has been pressing for full university status from the national Council for Higher Education, and is supported by the right-wing Minister of Education Limor Livnat.

By contrast, there are two major centers for peace studies: the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and the Steinmetz Center at Tel Aviv University. Both of these centers promote and support peace-related research, and their findings are often used by politicians on the Left to advance their own specific political agendas. While the "peace industry" has become a major source of funding for research activities in the post-Oslo period, the Truman Institute was a pioneer in the field, promoting contacts between Israeli and Palestinian scholars as far back as the early 1980's, in a period when such relationships were almost unheard of. Until the onset of the Oslo Accords, Israeli law forbade the meeting of Israeli citizens with known members of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, which often precluded any form of political contact at all. Meetings between academics at bona fide international workshops and conventions became one of the most common conduits through which Israelis and Palestinians met with each other, exchanged ideas, and created a common discourse. A third leftist center, the Givat Haviva Institute, promotes Israeli-Arab dialogue and cooperative research and tends to attract faculty who are pro-peace in their orientation, much in the same way the Shalem Institute and the Ariel College attract faculty whose political orientations are to the right.

The only organized group of Israeli academics with a clear political orientation is the extreme right-wing Professors for a Strong Israel. Members of this group advocate policies which are far to the right of the present Likud government, including the transfer of Arab-Palestinian citizens out of Israel and opposition to any form of peace accords or territorial withdrawal—even the limited Gaza disengagement proposed by Sharon. Some of their articles appear on extreme right-wing websites, including those associated with the illegal Kahane organization.

The Israeli parliament (the Knesset) has a number of members who emerged from within the academic community. The most notable of these are Dr. Yossi Beilin, a historian, one of the architects of the Oslo Peace Accords, and the recently elected leader of the new Yachad Party which will replace Meretz at the next elections; and Professor Naomi Chazan [featured in this issue on page 23], a political scientist, expert on Africa, and the former director of the Truman Institute at the Hebrew University. At the other end of the political spectrum, Dr. Yuval Steinitz, a philosopher from Haifa University, has recently been appointed as chairman of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee of the current Israeli government, while Moshe Arens, former Defense and Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the United States, was a professor of aeronautical engineering. The New McCarthyism

The political atmosphere in both the United States and Israel during the past two to three years has brought, in its wake, an emerging McCarthyism aimed at preventing pro-peace and left-of-center academics from expressing their opinions. This is reflected both in the right-wing takeover of most of the main media outlets (often on the back of their criticism of the media for being too left wing and pro-Oslo), as well as in a concerted attack against faculty who express their views in media and other forms of popular debate.

In the past, academic political activity in Israel has had the kind of free rein one would expect in a democracy. Though politicians have been known to express their dissatisfaction with what some of them perceive to be excessive intervention of faculty in the public debate, the academic system itself—particularly the promotion system—has been relatively free of any direct political intervention (although the lack of transparency in the decision-making process relating to academic promotions makes it difficult to know how undercurrents of political sympathies may, or may not, influence the decisions). There have been a small number of well-publicized cases where political intervention in the process has been more blatant. For example, specific members of the Israeli academic community who are known for their strong political critiques of Israeli government policy, over and beyond what are normally considered acceptable levels of criticism, such as revisionist historian Professor Ilan Pappe at Haifa University and education professor Haim Gordon at Ben Gurion University, have been targets of much political and public criticism. In the case of Pappe, there was even an attempt to formally censure him for his activities which, it was argued, discredited the name of his university. While the accusations against him dealt with a series of procedural matters, it was commonly believed that the underlying factor behind the attempt at censure was Pappe's outspoken political positions—including his support of the proposed international boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

The attacks on left-of-center views have come from two sources: from within academia itself and from political circles. The critiques focus on two areas of discussion: first, support for what is euphemistically known as "post-Zionism" debate; and second, support for the peace process despite the return of terror to the streets of Israel.

In the former case, well known academics such as Kimmerling and Sternhell (at the Hebrew University) and Oren Yiftachel and Uri Ram (at Ben Gurion University) have been at the forefront of the so-called "post-Zionist" debate, which posits Israel as a "State of all its citizens" rather than as a nationally defined Jewish State in which one national or religious group has preferential status. This has become the core of post-Zionism, drawing on notions of post-nationalism as a framework for a critical analysis of Israeli statehood and society. Critique of this post-Zionist approach has come not only from the right wing, but even—in some cases most specifically—from the left-of-center, liberal academic establishment, including some of Israel's best known professors of history, political science, and sociology. This Left has traditionally based its critique of Israeli society and institutions within the accepted framework of the raison d'être of the Jewish State, while the post-Zionist critique takes the debate beyond these accepted discourse boundaries. As such, the more traditional Left see their own analytical hegemony being challenged by a younger, more globally influenced, more critical group of scholars.

Much of this debate has taken place within the framework of what has become known as the "Humphrey Seminar," a weekly interdisciplinary colloquium at Ben Gurion University. Organized by the Humphrey Institute of Social Research, it attracts upwards of forty participants—faculty and research students—from almost all the social science departments in this university.

The critique of this new post-Zionist analytical approach has been adopted by many politicians, including some government ministers, most notably—and most dangerously—the current radical Minister of Education in the right-wing Likud government, Limor Livnat. She has attacked critical scholars for being anti-ideological and anti-Israel and, as such, has attempted to use her political influence to intervene in the free academic debate which has traditionally taken place in Israel. Some of the younger scholars have been warned that their future promotion, especially their tenure process, could be affected by their involvement in the critical political debate. In some cases, right-wing academics and media polemicists have used their own forums to "name" the so-called anti-State academics, to accuse them of accepting research funding from anti-Israel organizations (of which the European Community tops the list).

In one case, a young political philosopher and human rights campaigner from Ben Gurion University, Dr. Neve Gordon, was accused by an extreme right-wing polemicist from Haifa University, Dr. Stephen Plaut, of being a supporter of Norman Finkelstein, whose book, The Holocaust Industry, led many on the Right to associate him with Holocaust deniers. When Gordon decided to sue him for libel, Plaut subsequently disseminated articles attacking Gordon on the Internet, including on some extreme right-wing Kahanist sites. Morton Klein, the head of the Zionist Organization in America, also weighed in against Gordon by writing to the President and the Rector of Ben Gurion University questioning the continued employment of Gordon and protesing his libel case which, Klein argued, was an intervention in the civil liberties of Plaut because it denied Plaut's right to freedom of expression! Klein's letter included citations and sources taken from extreme right-wing websites including the outlawed Kahane organization.

Writing under assumed names, Plaut has a long history of attacking, labeling, and targeting left-wing scholars in Israel. One anonymous article appeared under the name of Socrates in the Middle East Review of 2001. He is joined on the pages of the neo-conservative magazine Azure by fellow right-wing polemicist Alek Epstein, who has accused much of the Israeli sociological community of having been overly involved in political and post-Zionist critique at the expense of qualitative academic research and teaching within the wider field of sociology. Extreme websites such as the outlawed Kahane site have become full of right-wing polemical attacks on anything seen as constituting a liberal critique of Israel or Israeli government policies. American neo-conservative academic Daniel Pipes is responsible for the creation of a website which asks students to report on any lecturer perceived as being critical of Israel. Pipes' hardline positions on Islam and his blind support for the Bush Administration and its policies, along with his critique of Israeli peace plans aimed at the eventual creation of two States, have pushed him into a position of prominence in the post-9/11 era. He has recently been named by President Bush as a member of the advisory board of the United States Institute of Peace.

This overt political intervention in academic freedom of expression came to a head with a letter sent by right-wing Minister of Education Limor Livnat to Ben Gurion University President Professor Avishay Braverman, in which she stated that she would not be attending the annual meeting of the university's Board of Governors since the university continued to employ faculty who, she argued, were anti-Israel. Livnat singled out an article by Dr. Lev Grinberg which was published in Belgium and which used the term "symbolic genocide" to characterize the Israeli government policy of political assassinations, such as that of Sheikh Yassin in Gaza. This attempted intervention on the part of the Education Minister resulted in a strong letter of protest on the part of the Israeli Association of Civil Rights, as well as a number of petitions signed by Israeli academics, supporting the refusal of university heads to cave in to these political demands. Self-appointed super-patriots in the United States have written to donors and supporters of the university, urging them to withhold their support as long as these "seditious" members of the faculty are not fired. Such pressure has not been applied to faculty members at the same university who adopt extreme far-right positions, reflecting perhaps on the political preferences of some of the more activist elements of the North American Jewish community.

This form of right-wing critique has strong roots. A decade ago, Haifa University professor of geography, Arnon Soffer, attacked me and my Palestinian colleague, Ghazi Falah, for having undertaken joint academic research in the pre-Oslo period. Soffer even distributed a "secret" letter to the Israeli geographic community recommending that we be expelled from the Israel Geographical Association (IGA). In a later lecture at the annual conference of the IGA, Soffer described some liberal geographers as being no more than "pen mercenaries" in the service of foreign interests. Soffer regularly lectures to the National Security Council, composed of the military and defense elites of the country, and is known for his doomsday demographic predictions for the country if Arab birth rates continue to increase at their present pace, thus eventually outstripping the Jewish demographic majority in the country.

In the post-9/11 era in the United States, and in the post-Oslo period in Israel, attempts to silence the voices of criticism have become even stronger. Barely a week goes by without an anti-academic opinion column in one of the country's newspapers. The Jerusalem Post has become the home for writers representing neo-conservative and extreme Republican perspectives on Israeli society, with alternative opinion columns relegated to a marginal position or ceased/stopped altogether. In some ways, this is seen as a counter-balance to the liberal opinions reflected in the country's main quality and intellectual paper, Haaretz (in some ways the equivalent of The Guardian or Le Monde). But it has become increasingly polemical, radical, and threatening in the past eighteen months—using the collapse of the Oslo peace process as a reason for supporting the Sharon government, opposing any form of Palestinian statehood, and attacking all of critical, alternative analyses of Israeli society or the peace process. Liberal and critical authors who are not Israeli or Jewish are, more often than not, simplistically labeled as anti-Semites, while others are refered to as "self hating Jews."

Israel still enjoys a relativity free and open public and academic debate. But the forces of McCarthyism are at work in their attempt to silence alternative opinions. Voices calling for the trial of the "Oslo criminals" (meaning Shimon Peres and Yossi Beilin) and posters in the streets calling for "Transfer Now" (meaning the transfer of Palestinians out of Israel—a play on the slogan "Peace Now") have become an accepted part of public discourse, where once they would have been labeled as radical and fringe. This, in turn, reflects the way the Israeli (Jewish) public has moved from the left to the center and from the center to the right during the past three years, influenced greatly by the increase in Palestinian suicide bombings and acts of violence against Israeli civilians. The threat of an academic boycott is used by these nationalist and self-appointed guardians of Israeli patriotism as a means of pouring even more scorn upon anyone who would be critical of Israel, serving to weaken the cause of liberal and/or post-peace critiques. Just as it is not easy for an American academic to be critical of U.S. policies in a post-9/11 environment, so it is not easy for Israeli academics to be critical of anti-Palestinian policy following the collapse of the Oslo Agreements and the return to terror and mutual violence.

Boycotting the Israeli academic community only plays into the hands of the right-wing critiques. The fact that a small number of misguided left-wing Israeli academics have supported the call for such a boycott has only added unnecessary fuel to the fire. But what is really at stake is not the limited success of the boycott, but the real threat facing critical social perspectives on Israeli society in general, and academia in particular. It is important that this growing right-wing McCarthyism be combated, that letters of support for the principles of academic freedom be sent to supporters and leaders of Israeli universities and academic institutions, encouraging them to stand firm and not give in to the pressures of the radical Right. If the field of criticism is left vacant for the right wing and its constant barrage of letters and protests, then it will win the battle over public discourse. Rather than becoming involved in an unethical boycott, it is important for left-wing members of the Israeli academic community to be supported, rather than shunned, by their colleagues throughout the world. Otherwise they will become increasingly isolated within a hostile political environment. It is incumbent upon the international academic community, as well as the progressive members of the Jewish community, to be as active in upholding the right of academic freedom as are the right wingers in their attempt to destroy it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.243.233.226 (talk) 08:06, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] BLP

I've sprotected the article because the anon edits here may be related to the vandalism and abuse elsewhere directed at one of the editors. I don't know what the issues are exactly, but having glanced at the diff, it seems one bone of contention may be that articles from Counterpunch are used as sources. It's important to source any criticism of a living person from the best sources possible, and for that reason, publications such as Counterpunch and Frontpagemag are best avoided. Anything negative about a living person must be impeccably sourced and written very neutrally, or else should be removed. Basically, if in doubt, remove it. See WP:BLP, which applies to talk pages too.

It's quite common for living persons and their friends and family, if they feel they're being treated unfairly on Wikipedia, to resort to tactics that end up seeing them blocked. The ArbCom is very sympathetic to this, because the priority is to be as fair as possible to living persons, within the policies. Perhaps the regular editors here could try to go the extra mile in the interests of fairness, because that might put a stop to the vandalism, which is becoming quite extensive. Not that I'm excusing it, but sometimes people feel they have no other way to express themselves. Cheers, SlimVirgin (talk) 10:31, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the sprotect, and I've done the same a few times myself for this article. However, the problem is not what you identify. It is the anon/new editors (almost surely socks of the same individual) who repeatedly and egregiously violate BLP. Such as "Norman Finkelstein, widely regarded as a Holocaust Denier", "Israeli writer Alon Dahan has denounced Gordon as a neo-nazi", "Judge Rim Naddaf, an Arab woman with radical anti-Israel views" (add racism to the charge), etc. Not to mention the unsourced repetition of claims that the Israeli court ruled to be libelous. I'm not saying the article is perfect, of course. --Zerotalk 11:36, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, okay, thanks. SlimVirgin (talk) 17:25, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
I also agree with the sprotect. It seems that it isn't just anons though. In the case of the Finkelstein libel at least, it's being added by a registered user.--G-Dett 16:02, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
If you are referring to me there, I added the libel inadvertently, by reverting to the wrong version. Some other "registered users" may as well be anonymous, since the accounts seem to be established purely in order to repeat Plaut's original libel in Wikipedia. It would be interesting to see where these edits are being posted from. Anyway, semi-protection will mean that accounts can't be established and immediately used to vandalise this article; and if they vandalise others in the mean time, they won't remain users long enough to be able to edit this one. RolandR 16:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
My apologies Roland, and thanks for the explanation. --G-Dett 17:21, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Footnotes

Isarig is constantly removing the article by Norman Finkelstein in which he comprehensively rebuts every one of Plaut's allegations against him. Despite my insistence that the article is thoroughly footnoted, Isarig insists that "there are no footnotes there", and demands that I detail them in talk. So, despite having several better things to do, I have gone through the article, eliminated duplicates, and come up with footnotes to no less than 32 separate articles ([3]; [4]; [5]; [6]; [7]; [8]; [9]; [10]; [11]; [12]; [13]; [14]; [15]; [16]; [17]; [18]; [19]; [20]; [21]; [22]; [23]; [24]; [25]; [26]; [27]; [28]; [29]; [30]; [31]; [32]; [33]; [34]),in which Finkelstein deals with all of Plaut's assertions.

I have also reinserted the reference and link to this thoroughly researched and documented challenge to Plaut's mélange of half-truths, lies and smears. RolandR 20:27, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

What you are deceptively calling "footnotes" are nothing of the kind. They are nearly random links, where F has underlined a certain term used by Plaut, and linked that term to a nearly random article on his web site. The articles linked to do not address, neither directly nor indirectly, any of the arguments made by Plaut. Taking just the first link you provided, as an example of the nonsensical nature of calling these "footnotes" - Plaut writes "Finkelstein has called Dershowitz a nazi". F links this statement to an article titled "Should Alan Dershowitz Target Himself for Assassination?" , written 10.8.2006, a full 3 months AFTER Plaut wrote his article, so obviosuly the article F linked to can't be what Plaut is reffering to, and of course, it isn't, it's just a random article in which F smears Dershowitz. These are not footbnotes, they are not responses to Plaut, and this article is not a soapbox for F's rantings. If he has responded to Plaut - produce such a source. This doesn't cut it. Isarig 22:56, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
These are not "random links"; they are Finkelstein's responses to Plaut's lies and smears against him. In the specific article you mention, if you read Dershowitz's own complaint in Front Page Magazine, it is clear that Dershowitz is referring to the comments in the article Finkelstein cites.
You are mistaken about the dates; these have been written using the US convention (month day year) rather than the British (day month year), so Plaut's essay was actually dated "October 05, 2006" when it originally appeared in American Thinker [35], ie almost two months after Finkelstein's original Counterpunch article of "August 12 / 13, 2006" [36].
Given this, I have once again restored the link, so that Plaut's lies and smears are not allowed to pass unchallenged. RolandR 23:39, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
again, these are not footnotes, and this article, which should be edited according to WP:BLP, is not a soapbox for Finkelstein's smears. If there is a direct response from F to Plaut's article - produce it. A page full of links to semi-relevant screeds that F penned at one time or another is not going to cut it. Isarig 23:46, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=2095

[edit] Plaut's spoofing and spamming activities

Messages posted on 13 April 2004 to the ALEF electronic discussion forum (which is based at the University of Haifa) seem to indicate something about Plaut's mentality. These messages, which were posted to ALEF by somebody else and which seem to report on an email conversation that Plaut had with someone who was banned from the ALEF forum for excessive spamming, seem to indicate that Plaut boasted about stealing the ALEF membership list so that messages could be sent to ALEF members without being passed through the ALEF system. Specifically, Plaut seems to have written the following. The typographical errors appeared in the original: I stoll their membership list. If you want to sen dthings to the whole list, use any email and send to: (via BCC so they do not know what you are doing): ...Put the alef address in the header and write (alef) before subject and they will think it is coming thru their list!

He also seemed to be connected with somebody called Rocky who, pretending to be a pro-Zionism Palestinian living in the West Bank, used the pseudonym "Yusuf" to plague the ALEF list with racist emails until he was excluded from the forum. Look at Rocky's description to see how Rocky finally made a mistake which spilled the beans. http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=5008

Rocky, apparently a friend of Steven Plaut (certainly a fellow conspirator), is a Zionist who harassed the ALEF electronic discussion forum for a period during the Autumn of 2004. Rocky masqueraded as a pro-Zionist Palestinian Arab living in the West Bank, using the pseudonyms "Yusuf Abdullah" and "Yusuf Chouri" for this invented persona. Unfortunately for himself and for Plaut, Rocky screwed up, as he confesses in the first email quoted below, which he sent to Plaut but which he accidentally copied to all the people named in the cc (carbon-copy distribution) list for the message. One of the recipients, copied it to the ALEF forum. Rocky must have been very het up when he sent this email, because, when sending it, he repeated the same error that he admits in the email -- that is, he copied what was intended to be a private conspiratorial message to many of the people who were the intended victims of his conspiracy. [Rocky's repeated use of the acronym "BBC" below is incorrect -- it should be "BCC" or "bcc" (blind carbon-copy distribution).]

The emphasis on blind carbon-copy (bcc) is especially interesting because it is reminiscent of an instruction that Plaut had given a few months earlier: in April 2004, Plaut had boasted that he had stolen the ALEF emailing list and said that the best way to fool ALEF subscribers into believing that they were receiving messages from the ALEF server was to use bcc when sending out mass-mailings -- see above.

Below is the email in which Rocky confesses his mistake to Steven Plaut. The typographical errors appeared in the original:

Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 15:47:58 -0800 (PST) From: Yusuf Jones Subject: Ohhhh, Nooooooo To: Steven_Plaut@yahoo.com Cc: [list of addresses that were herein are being deleted to protect them] X-Probable-Spam: no X-Spam-Hits: 0.986 X-Scanned-By: smtp.ucla.edu

Steven,

It just happened. I may have ****ed up royally. I just sent out my first batch of "[ALEF] Get that monkey off my back" emails. My first attempts at sending them as BBC all failed. I got the message "There was a problem. Your BBC contains too many addresses." In the past I was able to have up to 25 BBCs per each mailing. SO I reducedc it to 20... then 15... then a dozen and still got the error message. So I transferred the addresses from BBC to CC and was able to send off all 25 of them.

Then it hit me! I forgot to remove YOUR name from the list so your email went out with those first 25. I'm usually very careful about things like that which is why I generally only use BBC. But my mind is pre-occupied with so many other things that need to be done that I got careless.

I havonly sent out those first 25 emails. I won't send out the remainder. I hope this will not cause a problem.

Sorry, Rocky

Apparently, Rocky's above email was triggered by the mistake that he had made, a few minutes earlier, when he sent the following email. Again, the typographical errors appeared in the original:

Date: Thu, 9 Dec 2004 15:41:00 -0800 (PST) From: Yusuf Jones Subject: [ALEF] Get That Monkey Off My Back! To: steven_Plaut@yahoo.com Cc: [Recients are again deleted herein for their privacy] X-Probable-Spam: no X-Spam-Hits: 1.051 X-Spam-Score: * X-Scanned-By: smtp.ucla.edu

I strongly suspect that my Hotmail account was sabotaged by Ran HaCohen. You know. The Ran HaCohen who endorses Hizbollah attacks on Northern Israel. The help prevent this from happening again, the good people at Yahoo have installed a security wall (actually, it's an electronic fence) around my new account. They agree that an Israel-supporting Arab's voice is a terrible thing to waste.

Re: Arab Fiddle While Nablus Burns"

I know there's plenty of accusatory middle fingers pointed at the IDF for making that Arab play "Chopsticks" on his fiddle. From what I can see, they only wanted to be sure there were no rocket launchers, small nuclear devices or perhaps a half dozen Arab midgets with rocks inside his case. This was a defensive move, pure and simple. But the pro-Arab propagandists and certain Jewish intellectual professors connected the dots and saw a similarity between Jews made to play at death camps.

This was not the case at that checkpoint. If you were to look closely at photos, you'd see quite clearly that there was a hat [with "Go Red Socks" on it] at this Arab's dusty sandals and inside that hat was quite a significant collection of Israeli sheckels. The man was not there being humiliated. He was there trying to make a few bucks! What next? Perhaps Ran HaCohen at the end of a monkey chain playing Richard Wagner tunes?

Peace. Shalom. Salam.

Yusuf, your token Arab who adores Israel.

[The email just quoted was triggered by the fact that Ran HaCohen had complained to Microsoft about the use of a hotmail account, to send the racist email quoted below to the ALEF forum. Microsoft disabled that account on 8 December 2004, because it violated the Hotmail Terms of Use. This upset Rocky, leading to the sequence of emails from Rocky to Plaut quoted above. Two days before Rocky sent the sequence of emails quoted above, he had sent the following piece to his list of ALEF subscribers. This email, which was sent by Rocky using the pseudonym "Yusuf Abdullah", was prompted by the fact that, after repeated violations, his previous "Yusuf Chouri" persona had been excluded from the ALEF forum.]

From: "Yusuf Abdullah" To: [recipient deleted herein] Subject: [ALEF] Arabs 4 Israel .. Including Me Date: Tue, 07 Dec 2004 23:40:50 -0500

I nearly s**t out my Arab pancreas when I was sent a link to this page! "Arabs for Israel" http://www.arabsforisrael.com/pages/1/

I hate to say this but these guys make most of the [ALEF] crew look like [PFLP] supporters.

Hey, don't take this remark personally for I truly wish to have my [ALEF] membership re-established [ASAP]. I ask that you please put in a few good words for me.

Peace. Shalom. Salam, Yusuf

[A few days earlier, Rocky, still using his earlier "Yusuf Chouri" persona, had sent the following email to Avraham Oz, moderator of the ALEF forum, complaining abut the fact that, finally, "Yusuf" had been excluded from the forum, after ignoring repeated requests to abide by the rules of the forum. Again, the typographical errors appeared in the original:

From: "yusuf chouri" Date: 03:03:59 GMT+02:00 2 =E3=F6=EE=E1=F8 2004 To: alef@list.haifa.ac.il Subject: [ALEF] "How Dare You!"

How dare ALEF terminate my membership as a free Arab man and scholar and deny me the right to post commentary onto the ALEF site!

Do you not like what a free-thinking, educated Arab has to say? Must I agree and march lockstep with your anti-Zionist views? Can I not admire brave Jews who struggle daily against both external treats and threats by its very own citizens?

Yesterday, a certain Yael Korin wrote the following message to ALEF members. "I do believe that this address [yusef_chouri@hotmail.com] belong to a provocateur, that has taken up a middle eastern sounding name, so they could pretend to be someone they are not."

First of all, I use the name, Yusuf Chouri, to keep my true identity secret for I live in what you call the "occupied territories" and would certainly be branded as a collaborator. You see, I see it differently than my fellow Palestinians. I see Arab murderers and thieves as occupying=A0your land. Further, were it not for Arab thugs, than we are now under Fatah, Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

Secondly, who does Yael Korin think she is lecturing me about pretending to be someone I are not? I have attached a photo of Yael Korin pretending to be an Arab when, in fact, she was born a Jew! She even wrapped on a kaffiya! And you think I am the one with a problem!

You think I am the one with a sick, dual personality. You think I am the enemy?

There are others among you that deserve to be investigated. People like that flunky Marxist, anti-Semite, anti-Zionist professor Ran Greenstein at some backwater South African university. Now that he's abandoned Israel, moved thousands of miles away and married a shvastse, does he have the right to cast shame on Israel? Shouldn't he more concerned about trying not to be eaten by the local cannibals? And, speaking of local cannibals, do any of his students know how to read? Why is he allowed to spew hatred against Israel while I cannot spew love and admiration for the Israeli people? What, may I ask, is ALEF's purpose? To make Israel safer or to denegrate her at every turn?

In conclusion, I ask that you reinstate me onto your ALEF group. I also appeal directly to Avraham "Oz", the wizard who created the ALEF group. Without his personal efforts to bring together Jews for Jihad, how would the world understand why more Jews are in therapy than any other group on the face of the earth. Continuing along this line of thought, I cannot help wonder if they make explosive belts in his size.

I look forward to my re-instatement into ALEF. A letter of apology would be appreciated but not expected.

Peace. Shalom. Salam. Yusuf Chouri

[The email above, which reeks of racism, is a good example of the kind of stuff that Rocky, using the pseudonym "Yusuf Chouri", had been previously sending to the ALEF forum and for which he had been removed from the forum. Its use of the word "shvastse" (presumably a typo for "shvartse", Yiddisch for "black") is just yet another giveaway of that fact that, while he pretends to be a Palestinian Arab, he is basically someone whose English is laced with Yiddisch -- he would appear to be a Jewish American.] 190.64.226.190 21:32, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

http://www.richardsilverstein.com/tikun_olam/2007/04/27/computerworld-interviews-tikun-olam-over-steven-plaut-cyberstalking/#more-2410

Computerworld Interviews Tikun Olam Over Steven Plaut Cyberstalking

April 27, 2007 at 5:52 pm

My thanks to Mary Brandel for taking up the subject of cyberstalking in today's Computerworld article, Five Ways to Defeat Blog Trolls and Cyberstalkers (for full page version). She interviewed me at length and we had a comprehensive discussion on the subject. This is a topic that internet free speech absolutists and blogging platforms and hosts don't take nearly seriously enough. Personally, I think we all need to treat this not just as a free speech issue but as an issue of human dignity, respect and rights.

As I mentioned in the article, I appreciate blogging platforms like Wordpress which give their users innovative plugins allowing them to exert more control, if they wish, over the content and tone of their comment threads. Further development of such features should be encouraged by the platforms. Plugin authors are playing a major role in providing the tools to combat blog trolling and other cybermischief.

The latest on my cyberstalker, Steven Plaut. I spoke with Neve Gordon this week about his libel case against the former. Gordon expects the District Court (acting as a court of appeals) to render a verdict in the case which Plaut originally lost. It may come as early as a month from now. I asked Neve whether Plaut had created a fake blog through Blogger as revenge against Gordon's legal action. As I suspected, Plaut did create one. It isn't active now, but thankfully it's preserved through the Internet Archive's invaluable Wayback Machine. This further confirms Plaut as my cyberstalker fraud blogger since he's also created a fake Blogger blog about Roland Rance after Rance took an active role in writing the Wikipedia article on Plaut. I find it remarkable that with a pattern of fraudulent behavior such as this that Blogger would continue to stand behind the fig leaf of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

I've made clear before here that I understand the importance of Section 230 as a protection for web and blog hosts from third parties who upload illegal material to their servers. But Section 230 shouldn't give a blank check to such hosts and absolve them of any responsibility to remove vulgar, defamatory material which damages the victim's psyche and reputation. Just because you're protected from liability doesn't mean you aren't free to use common sense as a host. Bsinet used such common sense in taking down Masada2000. Unfortunately, Blogger takes a more obstinate, unreasonable position.

My brother discovered Google's public listing of its top five executive officers and one of them, Jonathan Rosenberg, is senior vice president for marketing. I contacted his executive assistant who, on first conversation with me understood the severe annoyance this fake blog caused me and said she hoped there was something that might be done. She asked me to forward all the supporting material to her and she said she'd bring it to the attention of someone at Blogger. Within a few minutes she replied:

   …It appears that there is nothing more Blogger can do and you must go after the creator of the website.

Which is of course not true. There is plenty Blogger CAN do; but nothing that it WILL do.

My hope is that if Gordon's victory is upheld by the Israeli court there would then be a pattern of lawbreaking established. I'll be querying an Israeli attorney about whether I would have standing to sue Plaut in Israel (or here). If not, we may try to persuade other Israelis who've been similarly slandered by Plaut to sue him.190.64.212.119 21:11, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anti-Plaut soapbox?

RolandR's latest edit amounts to this:

1. Restoring an unsourced allegation from a leftist magazine that Plaut wrote under the name "Solomon Socrates."

2. Deleting, without explanation, and without disputing the facts, a paragraph listing the points Plaut made to explain his claims about Gordon.

3. Deleting, without explanation, a quotation from the verdict that is interpreted by Plaut's supporters as advocacy of Holocaust denial.

4. Restoring a long reply from Gordon to Dershowitz, which is relevant to Gordon and Dershowitz, but not to an entry on Plaut.

5. Deleting the link to letters by Dershowitz and Plaut in reply to Gordon.

In effect, RolandR has deleted relevant and properly sourced material and restored irrelevant and/or unsourced material. All of these changes are hostile to Plaut and friendly to Gordon. Perhaps RolandR could explain how he reconciles this conduct with WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:NOT#SOAPBOX?

Truthprofessor 00:45, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Sir, an edit war is NOT going to solve this, and I am growing tired of having sockpuppets blocked. PLEASE DISCUSS your changes with other editors, or visit WP:RfC, WP:MEDCAB, or WP:MEDCOM. ST47Talk 00:54, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Excuse me, but what do you think he was doing right above your post? He's discussing it. If you have something to add to the discussion, add it. If you have proof that he's a sockpuppet - please present it. If you have none of the above, kindly stay out of this discussion. Isarig 00:57, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Sir, I do not have proof, but i have reasonable evidence. The article has had this going on for months. That you choose to call the user who hasn't been blocked a vandal right after the page is protected is not proof of anything, at least not to me. ST47Talk 01:17, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Huh? Who have I called a vandal? What is your reasonable proof that Truthprofessor is a sockpuppet? Isarig 01:49, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
The claim by ST47 that I'm a sockpuppet is false and disgraceful and I request that he withdraw it at once. Truthprofessor 01:55, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Replies to points from above: 1. It is not unsourced, it is sourced to Tikkun which is a highly respected magazine. 2. This is just an attack on Gordon which obviously violates WP:BLP, and anyway this is not an article on Neve Gordon. 3. Obviously violates WP:BLP in respect to Judge Nadaf. 4. The article is obviously relevant and its presence here is justified by the prominence given to Dershowitz's attack on Gordon. 5. I don't object to that link. --Zerotalk 13:12, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

In reply:
1. I meant that the Tikkun allegation is unsourced. The Tikkun writer gave absolutely no evidence. Even a newspaper would be expected to give evidence for such a claim.
2. This is a summary PLAUT's attack on Gordon, which is why it should be included, along with Gordon's rebuttal (or the court's rebuttal).
3. Quoting the judge's official verdict can hardly violate WP:BLP!!!
4. The Gordon quotes defended himself against Dershowitz - his dispute with Plaut is not mentioned in those particular comments. So those quotes should be in the entries on Gordon or Dershowitz, not Plaut.
Truthprofessor 14:44, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Gordon's article has to do mostly with Dershowitz's version of the verdict against Plaut. Hence, it is clearly relevant to the Plaut entry. Check this out: "DERSHOWITZ'S inability to refute the evidence led to his vicious personal attack against me. However, Dershowitz also makes a political claim when he contends that my successful suit against Prof. Steven Plaut was, in effect, an attempt to undermine freedom of speech. Again he distorts the truth to suit his own purpose.

I filed a libel suit against Plaut when he began publishing a series of slanderous articles in which he calls me a "fanatic anti-Semite," "a Judenrat wannabe," "a promoter of Hitler," and "a groupie of the world's leading Holocaust denier." He went on to compare me to the notorious Holocaust denier David Irving.

In various places he claimed that I have called on Arabs to use violence against Israel; he published an article on the racist Kahane Web site, asking his readers to harass me - some obediently complied; he also disseminated the falsehood that my academic ability is poor, and even initiated an international campaign to have me fired.

Make no mistake, my suit against Plaut is about slander and not about our opposing political views.

YES, I AM a severe critic of the Israeli government's policies, but just as I want my opinions to be heard, I believe in freedom of expression and am not interested in censoring other people's opinions, including those of Dershowitz or Plaut. If anyone disagrees with my views, he or she has the right to try and refute my position. Notice, that throughout his article Dershowitz does not engage my political arguments. Instead, he picks up the cudgels of defamation and vilification.

In fact, both Plaut and Dershowitz are the ones who aim to silence their political rivals. In order to accomplish their goals they exploit the Holocaust, thus undermining the significance of this uniquely catastrophic historical event.

Their attack against me illustrates this point. Despite the fact that most of Plaut's criticism is related to my positions vis- -vis the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he characterizes me as an anti-Semite, Judenrat wannabe, and promoter of Hitler. The use of Holocaust vocabulary is intentional and emotive, designed to destroy my credibility in the political arena. The sad irony is that in order to advance his political goals Plaut ends up trivializing the Holocaust.

Despite the ruthless efforts to ruin my good name, the Israeli court has had its say. It found Plaut guilty of libel. Now, in the aftermath of this case, allowing his personal vendetta to blur his legal judgment, Dershowitz shamelessly attacks the judge's verdict. This lack of judgment is apparent when the Harvard professor calls me names and concludes with a cheap dare that I sue him, instead of rising to the academic challenge of proving that he did not "lift" information from others.

Unlike Dershowitz, however, when choosing between truth or dare I always side with truth."190.64.211.100 20:56, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Admin assistance needed

I am afraid that this item is not going to raise much controversy with my colleagues from both sides of this discussion. The article talks about "hisorical memory of the Holocaust" instead of "historical memory". Since editing is blocked, I would appreciate if an admin can fix the problem. In the meantime, I will think of something more shocking to say! ;-) gidonb 02:18, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] editprotected

I find this article mostly highly favorable to Steven Plaut, a notorious figure among many who promote the concept of Israeli-Palestinian peace. I request that you add under "Political Views" the following true anecdote which is documented on my weblog. I have the e mail received from Steven Plaut and quoted below:

Among the Israeli academics Plaut has targeted were Tanya Reinhart, a linguistics professor at NYU and student of Noam Chomsky. After she died in 2007, Plaut circulated to members of the Alef academic list, a parody of a song from the Wizard of Oz vilifying her memory.

Richard 08:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)richards1052Richard 08:09, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Although I agree that we should mention Plaut's vile incitement against Tanya Reinhart, I don't want to see the content itself appear in Wikipedia. So I'm sorry Richards, I have edited your contribution above.
After Tanya died, various editors -- sockpuppets of the Runtshit vandal -- posted this on the article about her. Soon afterwards, when another Israeli dissident, Shimon Tzabar, died, a variant was posted on the article about him. All of these were removed, and I don't think that we should allow the libellers to include this material "through the back door". RolandR 08:21, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I don't see any problem with the parody. I don't see evidence that he wrote it though. But to the point, claiming that this person, Reinhart, who is now dead and it's not WP:BLP, was in fact a witch, seems a legitimate parody. In Plaut's opinion, the damage that this "witch" has done to the Jewish people, is extensive, and he has a right to express that opinion in the song, in the parody. Amoruso (talk) 02:37, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
I have no problem with your edit. I tend to believe that Plaut's handiwork should be seen & read as widely as possible so ordinary folks know & understand what he is capable of. But this is Wikipedia & not a blog. So I'm fine with what you've done.

Richard 06:17, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

{{Editprotected}} As per above, request to add at end of second paragraph in "Political views" the following:

Among the Israeli academics he has targeted is Tanya Reinhart, a linguistics professor at NYU and student of Noam Chomsky. After she died in 2007, Plaut circulated to members of the Alef (Israel Academic Left) mailing list a parody of a song from the Wizard of Oz vilifying her memory. On the same day, a variation of this parody was added to the Wikipedia article on Shimon Tzabar.

RolandR 22:33, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

I unprotected the article, so everyone can edit it again. Please note the neutral point of view and biography policies, which everyone should take care to follow. This article has been protected several times for edit warring, but there seems to be a trend towards giving more user blocks rather than continually protecting pages. Based on the comments above, I think it would be reasonable to discuss this change some more before editing the article. CMummert · talk 14:40, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Has this entry been re-protected by Zero0000 or not? Since then, RolandR has yet again rv'ed the entry while refusing to discuss his reasons on this page. Truthprofessor 15:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Why has this benn taken off? "In an article in Tikkun magazine, Israeli political geographer David Newman alleges that "Writing under assumed names, Plaut has a long history of attacking, labeling, and targeting left-wing scholars in Israel. One anonymous article appeared under the name of Socrates in the MiddleEast Review of 2001". Newman went on to argue that right-wing "forces of McCarthyism are at work in their attempt to silence alternative opinions" within the Israeli academia." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 41.243.233.226 (talk) 08:11, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Category

The article page is protected. Someone should add Category:Kidney cancer survivors. --Jetman 16:57, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

Can someone figure out a way to re-establish a major resource - a reliable archive of Steven Plaut's articles. His BLOGSPOT is bogus / hacked. User:101.101.101.101 R.Srchr 11:42, 8 July 2007 (UTC) —The preceding falsely signed comment was really added by 4.236.177.101 (talk)

The above User ID is forged. There is no such user as 101.101.101.101, and the edit was atually made by anon User:4.236.177.101. And the blog and archives linked from the article appear to be the genuine ultra-right wing Plaut material. What is this all about? RolandR 07:30, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] OR

This sentence seems to be pure WP:OR, as it does not seems to refer in particular to Plaut's judicial matters, but to Gordon: "While Plaut never claimed Gordon himself was a Holocaust Denier, merely a fan of Holocaust Deniers, a few other writers and newspapers have claimed that Gordon himself is indeed a Holocaust Denier, such as the Jewish Voice and Opinion11." It should be removed. Tazmaniacs 00:24, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling of name "Reem Naddaf"

The judge who presided over the case has her first name transliterated in Latin letters as "Reem", not "Rim". The spelling should be changed when the article becomes unprotected. Her offical bio from the State of Israel's Judicial Authority, in Hebrew with her name in English can be found here:

http://elyon1.court.gov.il/heb/cv/fe_html_out/judges/k_hayim/69520691.htm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.225.173.163 (talk) 20:33, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] External links

{{editprotected}}

Due to Haaretz's archiving practices, some of the urls in the article now lead to "Page not found" errors. Please note that Footnotes 7, 8 and 9, http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/724857.html should be replaced by http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=724857 RolandR (talk) 09:42, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

done! --Haemo (talk) 03:04, 23 November 2007 (UTC)

Not sure what the overlap is with other EL's, but how about: http://www.newyorkmonthlyherald.com/column_of_professor_steven_plaut.htm ? Andyvphil (talk) 12:42, 24 November 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Update

Appeals court overturns earlier verdict. Plaut beats Gordon on almost all counts. Breaking News: The "Steven Plaut" entry is out of date - please add the updated information from this http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=8431B5B9-9777-4A3D-8218-94679BB9DCF9 --- Borisyy —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.109.51.71 (talk) 15:06, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

For a more objective account than FrontPage Magazine, see the report in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Israeli Appeals Court Upholds Libel Judgment Against Academic but Reduces Damages. The bottom line is that, even following this ruling which Plaut describes a "near-complete victory", he is still a convicted libeller. RolandR (talk) 15:39, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Actually the bottom line is that Plaut is NOT a libeler. The court ruled that Plaut was factually correct in reporting Gordon's pro-terror illegal "human shield" sedition, but opposed attaching to it the adjective "judenrat-wannabe." But that adjective is not only accurate but would be protected speech in any other democratic legal system. I suggest that RolandR take off his anti-Israel blinders and admit that an anti-Israel radical got creamed well deservedly for attempting to suppress freedom of speech! Or maybe RolandR just is opposed to freedom of speech for non-communists? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Borisyy (talk • contribs) 07:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

I am simply quoting the reputable and authoritative Chronicle of Higher Education, which writes "In a 2-to-1 ruling last week, a three-judge panel of the appeals court, also in Nazareth, upheld the trial court's ruling, but found that Mr. Gordon had exaggerated Mr. Plaut's alleged libels". So I am correct; an Israeli Appeals Court has upheld the veerdict of the District Court; Steven Plaut is a convicted libeller. RolandR (talk) 08:26, 6 March 2008 (UTC)
It is not possible to be convicted in a civil action. Conviction is a term reserved for criminal offenses. Steven Plaut is not a convicted "libeller" - he paid some damages in a civil suit. Hardly a big deal. Amoruso (talk) 02:35, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Take it up with Haaretz, which writes "Haifa University economist Steven Plaut was convicted last week of libeling a fellow academic, Neve Gordon". I am quoting a reliable source; you are making it up as you go. RolandR (talk) 12:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
In addition to all of the above, I wonder whether excessive attention is paid to the suit in the article. It now consumes one-third of the space and I think that raises WEIGHT issues.--Mantanmoreland (talk) 16:05, 21 April 2008 (UTC)
Unfortunately that's not what you're doing. You're proving that you don't speak English very well... Conviction (see article or open up a dictionary) is a term reserved for criminal procedure. It is not a term used anywhere in the world for a civil action. Whoever used that word for a civil action either (a) doesn't speak English well, and Haaretz is not Abba Even. or (b) made a grave mistake without realising it. Furthermore, Haaretz is not a reliable source for your false assertion. A layman is not a reliable source - a jurist is. Ira Moskowitz is not a jurist. [37] . Sorry. Amoruso (talk) 00:53, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree. It shouldn't be more than a paragraph. Amoruso (talk) 00:20, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
I don't know about a paragraph, as it has received substantial attention, some generated by Plaut himself. However, six seems like overkill. Maybe half the size, or thereabouts. On "convicted": in Israel and in most places, that word is legitimately used only for criminal libel. Unless this is a criminal libel case, the term should not be used.--Mantanmoreland (talk) 15:44, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
As I said above, if you don't like the term, take it up with Haaretz. That is a reliable source; your OR is not. RolandR (talk) 16:06, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
We don't have to replicate every term used casually by a newspaper in reference to this case. I'd like to see more sources refer to Plaut as "convicted" or other use of that terminology with regard to Israeli libel cases. Barring that, I'd err on the side of caution in this BLP.--Mantanmoreland (talk) 17:16, 23 April 2008 (UTC)
For example 1) Counterpunch "Haifa University economist Steven Plaut was convicted last week of libeling a fellow academic [and CounterPuncher], Neve Gordon of Ben-Gurion University's Department of Politics and Government"; 2) Peter N. Kirstein "Professor Plaut was convicted of libel in ISRAEL for calling Israeli academic Neve Gordon an anti-semite"; 30 Jerusalem Post "The United States Supreme Court recognized long ago in New York Times vs. Sullivan (1964) that private libel actions can be employed to stifle free speech. Plaut’s conviction is a case in point"
And note, by the way, Plaut's own usage of the term: "Chamish had previously been repeatedly convicted in Israel of libeling other people"; "Sheleg's honey Amira has already been convicted of libel"Since he uses this term when discussing others, he can hardly protest when it is used in exactly the same context in describing him. RolandR (talk) 09:51, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

(restoring indent)In the only two online law journal articles I could find that specifically discussed an Israeli libel case, both referred to the defendant as being "found liable" not "convicted." In C 032986/03 Moshe Boshmitz v. Anat Aronowitz, Magistrates Court of Tel-Aviv Jaffa, Israeli Judge Shoshana Almagor held that the manager of an online forum may be liable for the content published by the forum users on a theory of negligence. etc.[38][39] I think that IBLS has greater authority on the proper terminology than casual journalistic usage or Plaut talking about a guy he doesn't like.--Mantanmoreland (talk) 14:18, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

It is not our job to assess "greater authority", but to cite reliable sources. As far as legal and political developments in Israel are concerned, two of the most frequently-used sources in Wikipedia are Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post. Both refer to Plaut being convicted of libel. That's good enough for me, and good enough for Wikipedia. RolandR (talk) 16:43, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Take it up with the English dictionary and also edit the article Conviction. You're embarrassing yourself. Mantanmoreland is of course correct. Also, you should refrain from editing subjects which you're not familiar with, i.e. legal issues. Amoruso (talk) 02:53, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Is this article still protected after seven months?? Of course, I can almost see why, given the depths of animosity over "convicted of" vs. "liable for". Roland, it strikes me that you might be able to extract more cooperation from your opponents on this article by giving in on this one. cheers, Nomoskedasticity (talk) 22:06, 24 May 2008 (UTC)

The article is protected not because of a dispute, however bitter, over the precise term for the outcome of the libel action. And in any case, that dispute related only to the term to be used on this talk page; it did not relate to the article itself. It was protected because several editors -- most now indefinitely blocked as sockpuppets -- were introducing into the article the precise allegations found by an Israeli court to be libellous. They were also making racist and defamatory accusations against the judge in the case. This is absolutely unacceptable, under any circumstances. RolandR (talk) 23:07, 24 May 2008 (UTC)