Another day and another example of Zionist fanatics trying to silence alternative views on the Middle East. This was sent to me from The Berkeley Daily Planet:
A few East Bay individuals are threatening to bankrupt the Berkeley Daily Planet unless it stops publishing criticisms of Israel’s policies and actions—opinions and ideas they brand “anti-Semitic.”
Some of them have been contacting the paper’s advertisers, urging them to cancel their contracts. One has created a website dedicated to attacks on the paper.
The expressed goal, in the words of an April 21 e-mail from one of them to the Planet’s executive editor, is to make the Daily Planet “reform, or close, or bleed money until you are forced out of business or die broke.”
In today’s economic climate, small businesses have enough trouble surviving and promoting their wares without threats from political partisans. And with the media climate every bit as dire, attempts to intimidate advertisers can seriously imperil an independent community newspaper’s existence.
Some Daily Planet advertisers, incensed at the threats, have renewed their contracts. Others have fled, at least one prompted by the loss of paying clients.
These partisans even tar fellow Jews with the same broad brush of anti-Semitism if they criticize Israel’s policies, or more specifically, the goals of the kind of hard-line Israeli militants frequently identified with the Likud party.
One of these individuals, Jim Sinkinson, has been waging a sophisticated war of letters targeting Daily Planet advertisers, complete with a form to be sent to the paper to cancel ads. He’s a professional publicist, and also a director of a well-financed pro-Israel advocacy group, Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME).