Shalom all, and shalom!

Investigative reporter Khody Akhavi of Inter press Services (IPS) news agency, in what is sure to earn him a Pulitzer Prize nomination, has unearthed the astonishing revelation that Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West was, and I quote, "marketed and supported in part by self-described 'pro-Israel' groups, according to an IPS investigation." This and the other quotes below are from Khody Akhavi's article entitled "Film on 'Radical Islam' Tied to Pro-Israel Groups" at http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=37090

That's some masterful detective work, Sherlock! This is a journalistic coup d'etat!

An anti-terror film marketed and supported in part by pro-Israel groups!

Say it ain't so, Shlomo!

I'm guessing the Jewish Defense League is hiding in the Batcave with its collective tail tucked between its collective legs as we speak!

By the way, I've noticed that Batman has developed quite a paunch around the middle, and seems to be graying at the Temples! And the Batcave is dusty and filled with cobwebs since Albert passed away.

Nu, a good Shabbes goy is difficult to find these days!
 

DETECTIVE HOLMES -- ER, uh, Akhavi -- describes Obsession as "a controversial documentary on the threat of radical Islam," eventually getting around to revealing the controversy near the end of the unnecessarily lengthy article, after such startling revelations as this:

"According to the St. Louis Dispatch, a summer screening of Obsession in St. Louis was sponsored by the local branch of Aish Hatora and featured a post-film discussion with Walid Shoebat, an ex-Palestine Liberation Organisation militant who was interviewed in the film. In the summer of 2006, Shoebat, a convert to evangelical Christianity, also spoke at the "Night to Honour Israel," a three-day event presented by Pastor John Hagee's Christians United for Israel, a lobby group that aims to mobilise Christian Zionists as a political force, according to the San Antonio Express."

The horror! Imagine the gall of those "pro-Israel groups" to interview a former PLO terrorist in a documentary about Islamic terrorism! Is there no end to this Zionist propaganda?

And what, in Sherlock's mind, is controversial about this film? Fasten your seat belts, folks:

"...the controversy surrounding Obsession has less to with what it says about the threat of radical Islam, than how it presents the information. While the film contains disclaimers stating that 'it's important to remember most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror,' critics argue that it makes little distinction between the religion of Islam and the political realities that inform terrorism."

The "political realities that inform terrorism"! What in Hadesville does that mean? In actuality, what it means is that the "political realities," i.e., the "Zionist occupation of 'Palestine'," has "created" the Monster of Islamic Terrorism. Blame it on the Jews.

That's why the doctor is named Frankenstein. He's Jewish, dont'cha know?

Reminds me of the old joke that the sinking of the Titanic was part of the Zionist Conspiracy: Ice BERG! (That the producers of Obsession could somehow make the claim that the majority of Muslims "are peaceful and do not support terror" is what should be unsettling to the Detective!)

Evidently, these tricky Zionists forgot the Golden Rule of discussing Islam: a disclaimer at the beginning of the film is not enough; there should be disclaimers sprinkled throughout the film, preferably every fifteen seconds or so. Better yet, why not present Islamic terrorism for what it really is -- a beacon in the night, the world's only bastion of legitimate freedom and peace! Thorough collaboration with Theo Van Gogh should be extremely helpful for guidance in this area.

Sherlock Akhavi of the IPS Detective Agency spends a great deal of time in this piece (and it is a piece of work) revealing the dishonesty of the film's producers and promoters, but never denies the film's accuracy, nor does he even attempt to deny the "threat of radical Islam"!
 

SHERLOCK AKHAVI IS not only a darn fine detective, he is a master editorialist as well! As examples:

"Abbreviated versions and segments of Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West ran on FOX News and CNN, but neither station disclosed the film's connection to HonestReporting, a watchdog group that monitors the media for allegedly negative portrayals of Israel."

Honest Reporting (HR) indeed is a watchdog group that monitors the media for negative portrayals of Israel. That's why it's called "HonestReporting," Sherlock. Yes, I have noted your slick usage of the descriptive "allegedly" here.

"HonestReporting marketed Obsession but denies it produced or funded the project."

I'm guessing the implication here is in the alleged denial. The truth is that HR marketed Obsession, but did not produce or fund it -- that, Sherlock, is "honest reporting"! -- but, undaunted, our hero plunges forward (maybe he should take his plunger to northern Gaza), revealing this HR participation (or should I use a more sinister word, like, say, collaboration?) in the plot:

"We initially gave some guidance to the Obsession staff," wrote Pesach Bensen, editor of Mediabackspin.Com, the organisation's weblog, in an email response to IPS." Such collaboration! The tentacles of the sneaky Zionists are everywhere!

After pointing out that Glenn Beck, described as "CNN's right-wing pundit," and Sean Hannity of Fox praised the film, which in itself discredits Obsession in the eyes of the vast majority of those opposed to the "NeoCon pro-Zionist Conspiracists," whose time is spent on Jeff Rense's site, reading between the lines of the articles about UFO sightings and extraterrestrial kidnappings, Detective Akhavi says this:

"While such enthusiasm from right-wing talk show personalities comes as no surprise, mainstream cable news programmes also appeared to accept, without question, the premise of the film, which explicitly compares the threat posed by radical Islam to that of Nazi Germany in the 1930s."

Here, Sherlock is correct in stating that the Islam of today should not be compared to Nazism. For those of you who missed it the first thousand times it's been stated: "Arafat the Egyptian's Uncle Al (-Husseini), the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem in the 1930's, met with Hitler in Berlin at least twice, and convinced the National Socialist that ethnically cleansing Europe of Jews and sending them to 'Palestine' would be a huge mistake, because it would congregate them, thus allowing them to become a stronger entity."

That wouldn't do, so the Mufti suggested to Hitler, and convinced him of, a more Final Solution.

Hitler's Final Solution was not Hitler's Final Solution. It was Mufti al-Husseini's Final Solution.

Therefore, when Detective Sherlock Akhavi suggests that today's Islam should not be compared to Nazism, he is correct. Today's Islam should not be merely compared to 1930's Nazi Germany, because they are directly linked!
 

SHERLOCK THE EDITORIALIST leaps from there to this example:

"Consider, for example, CNN news anchor Kyra Phillips's exhortations during an adulatory interview in December 2006 with Raphael Shore, the film's producer: 'I encourage everybody to see this movie. You definitely get an incredible education from watching this film! The movie left many of us speechless! We appreciate what you've done.'"

Yes, of course CNN would posit its usual pro-Zionist propaganda, right? We all know that CNN is slanted in favor of Israel, eh? HonestReporting.Com would never expose an anti-Israel bias from CNN, or give it the coveted annual Biased Reporting Award, right?

There you have it, folks: CNN is part of the world-wide Zionist Conspiracy!

More evidence of the trickery and dishonesty of the filmmakers is revealed here:

"There is no mention of HonestReporting's connection to Obsession on the film's website, www.obsessionthemovie.com. In an online 'Ask the Filmmakers' segment on the FOX News website, Shore stated that he could not identify the film's funders for fear of retaliation by the "radicals" the filmmakers exposed."

I'm guessing that maybe the film's funders did indeed consult with Theo Van Gogh on this issue! Note the quotations around "radical," as if the terrorism of "radical extremists" was somehow less deadly than the terrorism of "moderate" Muslims, as states such as Egypt or Jordan are presented to be.

The massive cover-up continues:

"Brian Gaffney, executive producer of the FOX News Documentary Unit, declined to comment on whether HonestReporting's connection was disclosed to the audience, or whether FOX was aware of the organisation's ideological perspective."

It would seem to be a good idea for Fox, or anybody else to reveal the "connection" of HR to the film, so that more people might visit its website and discover the media bias against Israel, in favor of giving legitimacy in the form of statehood to terrorists (see: "Palestine"). "Hiding" the link between HR and a film which exposes the radical agenda of modern Islam is definitely a tactical error!

"There is no mistaking that this was a film with a clear point of view," Gaffney wrote in an email to IPS. "Its forceful case against Radical Islam spoke for itself."

The extent of the cover-up is astonishing!

"In the case of CNN, which ran segments of the film in the context of a joint interview with Shore and cast member Nonie Darwish, it appears that producers were unaware of the connection."

The adorable description of Nonie Darwish as a "cast member" is quite endearing, Detective.

"'I was told that HonestReporting was not involved with this film,' said CNN spokeswoman Megan Mahoney.

"Any relation between HonestReporting and Obsession is also missing on the film's website, but the organisation's name does appear at the end of the film's credits. In addition, a call for tax-deductible donations to help 'launch' the film appeared on HonestReporting's website, promising a free DVD of Obsession upon release. Contributors of 250 dollars or more were promised a free copy of the book Israel: Life in the Shadow of Terror. An entry on Mediabackspin.Com, the organisation's weblog, also describes HonestReporting as a proud partner of the film."

Such deceit and trickery!
 

NEXT, THOUGH, COMES a magnificent piece of detective work from Sherlock the Editor!

"Obsession features interviews with Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, investigative journalist Steve Emerson, Itimar Marcus of Israel-based Palestinian Media Watch, and Daniel Pipes, a controversial scholar of medieval Islamic history whose website campuswatch.Com sparked criticism in 2002 for its alleged McCarthyesque attacks on Middle East studies professors."

You caught us red-handed, Sherlock! Opposing Islamic terrorism is just exactly the same thing as McCarthyism! (Well, at least he didn't compare Israel to Nazi Germany or Apartheid South Africa, like so many anti-Semites are now doing, such as Jimmyboy Cahuh, the Jew-Hater from Jaw-Juh.)

Having uncovered all the clues that Dr. Watson has missed to this point, Sherlock continues his investigative journalistic endeavor:

"Its production credits include the Middle East Media Research Institute, or MEMRI, a translation service founded in 1998 by Col. Yigal Carmon, who spent more than 20 years in Israeli intelligence and later advised two Israeli prime ministers; and the Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli group founded by Marcus, that monitors Palestinian news organisations for alleged anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic propaganda."

The fuzzy alleged differentiation between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism notwithstanding, I am certain that MEMRI and PMW are thankful for the plug, and yes, I again note your cute usage of the descriptive "alleged" here.

Detective Akhavi, evidently unaware that he has entered a No Man's Land in terms of credibility by now, enters this dark alley in his unending search for more facts in the cover-up of this diabolical scheme:

"Obsession, for all its fans, has engendered contentious debate on U.S. university campuses not only for its disquieting barrage of video footage culled from the Arab media, but also for the film's distribution network."

The wild popularity of this film is because they have somehow been misled by these devious filmmakers, who have the gall to actually present actual film footage from the actual Arab media and the actual terrorists themselves?! I'm shocked!

Shocked, I tell you!
 

BUT SHERLOCK AKHAVI, THE VERSATILE Detective/Journalist/Editorialist/Terrorism Apologist has another ace up his sleeve, Ibrahim Hooper of CAIR (itself in no danger of being accused of "honest reporting"), who, in terms of integrity, character, dignity, and honesty, should be a role model for everybody's children, CAIR's ties to Terrorist funding notwithstanding:

" 'It's all part of that industry of Muslim bashers,' said Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations."

Ah, but in the obsession (okay, okay; pun intended!) of his never-ending quest for thorough detective work, Sherlock also gives us this tidbit:

"'The sentiment is there, you can see in the [1995] Oklahoma City bombing that it was originally seen as an act of Islamic terrorism,' said Peter Hart of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. 'It's almost a default position for the media, so you're going to have work like this received uncritically.'"

Ah, yes! Here is the Western media, once again making the incredible, phenomenal leap that a terrorist act may have actually been committed by radical Muslims!

I mean, come on! Detailed studies have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Muslims have only been involved in a mere 99.3% of all terrorist activity in the past century!

Then (here we pause for the dramatic sound-effect music), Sherlock gets his egg cracked in that dark ghetto alley of reality he has so unwisely entered:

"The Oklahoma City bombing, initially attributed by the mainstream media to Islamic terrorists, was actually perpetrated by right-wing extremists from the U.S. midwest."

Did somebody say something about "honest reporting"? I watched CNN the day of that bombing, and it was almost immediately attributed to McVeigh and his knuckleheaded friends. Ironically enough, it was later discovered that there are apparent ties to McVeigh & his buddies by Middle East terrorists operating out of South America.

What Sherlock fails to point out to you, dear reader, is that McVeigh was not a member of a globalist religion, whose stated goal is world domination. McVeigh was not part of a group which has been linked to virtually every other terrorist bombing in the last 100 years, the previous milennium notwithstanding. McVeigh's group is not calling for global jihad each and every day in its mosques and media outlets, nor training 4-year-old girls to become genocide-bombers.

Then, apparently dazed by getting conked on the noggin in that destitute, rat-infested ghetto alleyway, Sherlock unravels his own case in finishing the piece with these last two paragraphs. Staring in dazed disbelief as Dr. Watson applies the dressing to his bleeding dome, he mumbles in a voice barely audible (due in part to the din of the bloodthirsty cries for jihad from the Muslims outside his window), "I was wrong, Watson, old chum.":

"The film's director, Wayne Kopping, argues that it aims to uncover the mixed messages propagated by radical Islamists in the Muslim world, who moderate their voices only when they speak in Western media outlets.

"'Children in the Arab world are... breastfed on a diet of hatred for the West. Not only that -- the entire culture is permeated with it,' said Kopping in a FOX interview. 'The question is what are they [the spokespeople] saying in their own language, on their own TV stations to their own people. That's when you really hear what they think, and they call for jihad.'"

No shellac, Sherlock!
-Efffrem.

This essay was submitted April 6, 2007.

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