Did Pamela Geller Defend Radovan Karadzic?

by Sheila Musaji

Pamela Geller is once again attempting to defend herself against those who find her efforts to be bigoted, anti-Muslim hate speech.  This time she is upset about an article in The Times of London Don’t Bar the Demagogue.  In the course of this most recent attempt to defend herself, in the face of having been banned from entry into Britain to participate in an EDL event, Geller is particularly incensed about one claim in that article.  Geller says:

“The Times says I defend Karadzic, but actually, I have posted a piece that said quite clearly: “I am not defending Radovan Karadzic…” Is what the Times is doing here journalism?  Anyway, as for Srebrenica, I quoted information from former BBC journalist Jonathan Rooper ...”

Fortunately for Geller, most of those who take her seriously, are not careful readers.  Actually, the first article Geller refers to was posted on her site and the entry was titled by Geller Serbs Had to Battle Islamic Jihad.  Geller posted a letter by Stella L. Jatras under this title.  It is not Geller, but Jatras that says in her letter “I am not defending Radovan Karadzic…”.  The rest of the letter makes it clear that this claim of “not defending Karadzic” is a hollow claim on Jatras’ part as well as Geller’s part, as within that letter Jatras also admiringly quotes (as if it is a reasonable position) Yossef Bodansky as saying:

“This callous self-killing was designed to shock the West, especially sentimental and gullible Washington, in order to raise the level of Western sympathy to the Bosnian Muslims and further demonize the Serbs so that Western governments would be more supportive of Sarajevo’s forthcoming aggressive moves, and perhaps even finally intervene [militarily].”

Geller’s title and the inclusion of this piece of hate propaganda by Jatras clearly shows Geller’s agreement with this.

And Geller’s own comment about the second quote from Jonathan Rooper is

“As Spencer says: “None of this information is consistent with the claims that there was a genocide of Muslims there, and it comes from a former BBC journalist, the World Health Organization, the Bosnian Government, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the New York Times, and Muslim General Enver Hadzihasanovic. Perhaps some challenge can be made to these claims, but it is a legitimate discussion that needs to be had, rather than waving away Pamela Geller as some hate-filled genocide denier, which is the purpose of the inclusion of Srebrenica in the Leftist/Islamic supremacist dossier on her.”

So, she and Robert Spencer are both sharing this quote from Rooper as though it is a respectable comment and not a despicable case of attempting to justify genocide.  Rooper’s journalistic qualifications do not make his hateful propaganda any less bigoted.

Geller has attempted to respond to this charge that she has defended Karadzic or other murderous criminals before - using the same sort of ridiculous mental gymnastics.  In a curious statement in which she refers to herself in the third person, she said:

“FALSE CHARGE: Pamela Geller has defended former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic.  Actually Geller has never defended Milosevic at all; she has only expressed skepticism about some of the claims made about Serbian concentration camps – a skepticism that many journalists and historians share.”

Charles Johnson reported in an article titled Pamela Geller, Genocide Denier:

... Today, Pamela Geller crossed the line into outright genocide denial, claiming that only a “couple of hundred people” were killed in Srebrenica by Serbian commander Ratko Mladic. The truth, of course, is that Mladic oversaw the massacre of thousands of innocent Muslims — including many children — who had sought safety from the genocide being perpetrated by Serbian forces in other parts of Yugoslavia. And that’s just one of his many documented war crimes.

And it gets even worse. Geller also claims that Muslim forces fired on their own people to create international sympathy, and that the well-documented attempted genocide by Serbians was completely fabricated.

Another despicable post supporting the mass murder of Muslims: DISTORTING HISTORY includes this:

Why aren’t the Bosnian Muslims held to the same standard as the Serb Christians? Why is this fabricated narrative protected so fiercely? The left is spitting bullets every time I post on Bosnia. They are so vested in establishing a militant Islamic state in the heart of Europe. Why?

The American people were fed an endless supply of distortions and deceptions in order to grease Clinton’s war. It began with a lie. How long will these human rights activists and international law clowns ignore the Serbian people and their stories? Refuting the Bosnian Lies.

The international community jumped to manufacture a “genocide” of a couple of hundred people, when real genocides like the millions of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians by the Muslims are systematically ignored, demied [sic]. Enough. When does the truth get a hearing?

Geller also posted an article on Karadzik by Julia Gorin under the title The Real Criminals Presiding over the International Criminal Court Part II of Nuremberg II, and Geller introduces this article with this commentary:

... Radovan Karadžić, the former Bosnian Serb politician, is on trial (more like a sharia court) in the United Nations Detention Unit of Scheveningen, accused of “war crimes committed against Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats during the Siege of Sarajevo” (now an entirely Muslim city, completely ethnically cleansed of non-Muslims.) Educated as a psychiatrist, he co-founded the Serbian Democratic Party in Bosnia and Herzegovina and was the first President of Republika Srpska from 1992 to 1996.

Geller again comments at the end of the article:

Karadzic’s opening statement (further down below) elaborates on that last incident, but first: A few months before the trial started, the prosecution disseminated what it hoped the public would interpret as a damning piece of evidence in the form of a recorded telephone conversation. The media duly lent their own efforts to portray it as damning. (Remember that in matters concerning the former Yugoslavia—the media, the court, the prosecution, world governments, NATO, and Hollywood are a single conglomerate.) In the example below, the prosecution and the media attempt to twist Karadzic’s efforts to avoid ethnic cleansing, into a fiendish desire to commit ethnic cleansing.  ...  If the tribunal at the Hague were a real court, by the end of the proceedings it would find that what Karadzic is actually guilty of is being a Serb general. And of defending a population that is guilty of breathing while Serbian. At the time of Karadzic’s arrest, John Laughland, writer for Britain’s Spectator and UK Daily Mail, wrote in the Brussels Journal ...

Geller includes passages from a number of other articles from individuals who are also attempting to recast the Bosnian Genocide as simply Serbs defending themselves against those evil Muslims, and she adds this gem of a comment:

Corroborating the point about the classic Islamic modus operandi of self-killing and manipulating media coverage, employed in Bosnia as in every other front of Jihad, is the May 7th testimony of David J. Harland. Between the years 1993 and 1999 Harland was first a civil affairs officer with the UNPROFOR (UN Protection Force) Command and then head of Civil Affairs for Sector Sarajevo.

As James Bloodworth reported:  “Geller is also a prominent genocide denier. As One Law for All put it in their brilliant report on the far-right, Enemies not Allies:  “Geller has defended Radovan Karadzic, and likened his war crimes trial at The Hague to a ‘Sharia court’. She has also asserted that Bosnian Muslims killed themselves during the conflict in question in order to ‘manipulate media coverage’. Further, Geller has published and endorsed articles by Julia Gorin, which in their criticism of Karadzic’s trial refer to the ‘8000’ Muslims supposedly executed by Serbian forces’ [sic], and place scare quotes around the word ‘genocide’ when discussing Srebrenica.”

In her own words, Geller considers the Bosnian genocide a “fabricated narrative”, a “lie” and a “manufactured genocide” that is part of a “classic Islamic modus operandi of self killing and manipulating media coverage” which is supported by media “distortions and deceptions” that needs to be “refuted”. 

The One Law for All report titled Enemies Not Allies includes this passage:

The SIOE leadership has written in defence of Radovan Karadzic, who is currently on trial for war crimes and genocide.38 In an article entitled The extraordinary rendition of Radavan Karadzic, they complain that anti-Serb media bias will deny Karadzic a ‘fair trial’. It also attempts to justify his actions, remarking that ‘The history of muslim oppression of Serbs during the Ottoman empire and the fear of the return of such persecution will not be allowed in Karadzic’s defence. The current persecution of Serbs in Kosovo as justification for that fear will not be allowed as evidence’ [sic].39

NOTE:  as is so often the case with the Islamophobes and disappearing articles, if you go to the SIOE article link given in the Enemies Not Allies report, all you will see is a statement saying that SIOE.wordpress.com is no longer available.  The article can still be found at this url http://sioeengland.wordpress.com/2008/07/

Pamela Geller is confused about what constitutes lies, lies, lies! and about Who Are the “Brownshirts”.  She also seems to be confused about what constitutes a defense or rejection of a position. 

Did Pamela Geller defend Radovan Karadzic?  Read what she has actually said and written, and it seems clear that she did and does.  And, then read Bosnians rebury Srebrenica genocide victims and decide just how despicable such a defense is.

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RESOURCES FOR DEALING WITH ISLAMOPHOBIA SUMMARY

The Islamophobia Industry exists and is engaged in an anti-Muslim Crusade.  They have a manifesto for spreading their propaganda, and which states their goal of “destroying Islam — as a culture, a political ideology, and a religion.” They produce anti-Muslim films.  They are forming new organizations and coalitions of organizations at a dizzying speed, not only nationally, but also internationally.   They have formed an International Leadership Team “which will function as a mobile, proactive, reactive on-the-ground team developing and executing confidential action plans that strike at the heart of the global anti-freedom agenda.”

Currently, the Islamophobia Industry is engaged in a full-scale, coordinated,  demonization campaign against American Muslims and Arabs. In just the past few months we have seen a series of inflammatory provocations:    There was the Innocence of Muslims film Titanic, a German satire magazine plans an “Islam” cover article to be published later this month.   Charlie Hebdo, a French satire magazine published an issue with inflammatory cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad.   Newsweek published their ‘Muslim Rage’ cover.  Terry Jones held a “trial of Prophet Muhammad”.  SION held a “global” gathering in NYC to plan propaganda strategy.  A group in Toronto publicized a “walk your dog at the mosque” day.   AFDI/SIOA has run a series of anti-Muslim ads on public transportation across the country.   AFDI/SIOA are planning to run 8 more anti-Muslim ads.  There are three more films on Prophet Muhammad in the works by Ali Sina, Mosab Hassan Yousef and Imran Farasat.   They are even bringing their hate messages into public schools.

Daniel Pipes is encouraging publication of “A Muhammad cartoon a day”, and says “So, this is my plea to all Western editors and producers: Display the Muhammad cartoon daily, until the Islamists become accustomed to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger.”.  Pipes joins Daniel Greenfield (aka Sultan Knish) who published an appeal on David Horowitz’ Front Page Magazine Is It Time for ‘Make Your Own Mohammed Movie Month’?.  And, both are following in the footsteps of such luminaries as Pamela Geller, who promoted just such a plan back in 2010 with her promotion of Draw Muhammad Day, even after the cartoonist who drew the first cartoon and suggested the idea, Molly Norris apologized to Muslims and asked for the day to be called off, and American Muslims had issued a defense of free speech.    None of this is surprising as one of the Islamophobes laid out their strategy as “The Muslims themselves have shown us their most vulnerable spot, which is the questionable (though unquestioned) character of the ‘Prophet’ himself. We need to satirise and ridicule baby-bonking Mo until the Muslims fly into uncontrollable tantrums, then ridicule them even more for their tantrums, and repeat the process until they froth at the mouth and steam comes out of their ears.”

The Islamophobia of these folks is very real, it is also strikingly similar to a previous generations’ anti-Semitism, and it has predictable consequences.   The reason that this is so obvious to so many is that rational people can tell the difference between legitimate concerns and bigoted stereotypes.

Sadly, the Islamophobic echo chamber has been aided by some in the Jewish and Christian clergy, and even by some of our elected representatives, particularly in the GOP.

The claim that the Islamophobes are “truth-tellers” and “defenders of freedom” who actually “love Muslims” and have never engaged in “broadbrush demonization” or “advocated violence”, or that nothing that they say could have had anything to do with any act of violence,  are nonsense.  The claim that they are falsely being accused of Islamophobia for no reason other than their legitimate concerns about real issues and that in fact there is not even such a thing as Islamophobia, or their claim that the fact that there are fewer hate crimes against Muslims than against Jews or that some Muslims have fabricated such crimes “proves” that Islamophobia doesn’t exist,  or that the term Islamophobia was made up by Muslims in order to stifle their freedom of speech, or that anti-Muslim bigotry is “not Islamophobia but Islamorealism” are all nonsense. 

These individuals and organizations consistently promote the false what everyone “knows” lies about Islam and Muslims (including distorting the meaning of Qur’anic verses, and distorting the meaning of Islamic terms such as taqiyya, jihad, sharia, etc.).  Islamophobes falsely claim to see “JIHAD” PLOTS everywhere, particularly where they don’t exist.   They, like Muslim extremists, don’t understand the true meaning of the term jihad.  The Islamophobes have uncovered countless examples of “shocking”, non-existent Muslim jihad plots.

Here are just a few ridiculous claims about nonsensical Muslim plots:

An Eid Celebration for Muslim Special Needs Kids was described as a “stealth jihad”.   A children’s page in a newspaper focusing on Eid was described as a toxic propaganda plot.  Joel Hinrichs (a Christian) had a beard and had walked through the parking lot of a campus mosque thus proving that his crime was an example of sudden jihad syndrome.  Leon Alphans Traille, Jr., the Arlington, Virginia Mall Bomber was accused of possible “sudden jihad syndrome” just because he had a beard, obviously, a case of beard jihad.   
Tyler Brehm who carried out the Hollywood shooting jihad was accused of “sudden jihad syndrome” because he shouted something that one witness from the Philippines said he might have shouted “Allahu Akbar”.  This report was not backed up by any other witnesses.  The awful April 2007 shooting at Virginia Tech by a Korean student was also called Islamic jihad because Cho’s father had once worked in Saudi Arabia (before he was married and before Cho was born).    A Muslim doctor had a heart attack and died at the wheel of his car which then crashed into a shopping mall and this was described as “vehicular jihad”.   A Muslim cab driver objected to what he considered pornographic ads on the roof of his cab, and that became a stealth-jihad plot to impose Sharia on America.  Any Muslim who has sued an employer for violation of their rights under the EEOC is engaged in employment jihad, or litigation jihad.  Muslim environmentalists are said to be actually engaged in “civilizational jihad”.  A cartoon series “The 99” aimed at young Muslims was described as “cultural jihad”.  The victims of the terrorist attack of 9/11 included Muslims, they were accused of dying as martyrs in an act of jihad. Muslims hoped to open a Muslim hospital in the U.S. and that was called hospital jihad.

The Islamophobes have uncovered countless examples of “shocking” Muslim jihad plots.  They have uncovered:

bumper sticker jihad — Thanksgiving turkey jihad — paisley scarf jihad — marriage to important men jihad — spit jihad —  fashion jihad — spelling bee jihad — rape jihad — defacing dollar bills jihad — population jihad — creeping Sharia jihad —  mosque building jihad — terror baby jihad — “creeping Sharia” jihad — pedophilia jihad — bus driver prayer jihad — forehead bruise jihad — postage stamp jihad — soup jihad —  banning alcohol jihad — fake hate crimes jihad — piggy bank jihad — tv reality series jihad — handshake jihad — prom jihad — interfaith jihad — Arabic language jihad — public school jihad — religious accommodation jihad — Crescent moon jihad — Christmas tree tax jihad — oath of office jihad — immigration jihad — community fundraiser jihad— public school/madrassa jihad — post office jihad — food jihad — pyramid jihad — crucifixion jihad in Egypt — fireworks jihad — computer donation jihad — civic participation jihad — Olympic “judo” jihad— stealth name jihad— pre-violent jihad — Love jihad — fashion jihad 2 — #MyJihad ad jihad — talk show host jihad — art museum jihad — Halloween jihad — DNC Muslim Prayer Jihad — cat crucifixion jihad in Ghana — Scottish Muslim women’s stealth jihad — anti-democracy jihad — un-neighborly Musims in Paris jihad — jihad on Christopher Columbus — Iranian smallpox jihad — Muslim Christmas grinch jihad — #MyJihad twitter jihad — Muslim takeover of National Parks jihad

 

Nothing is too trivial to escape the eagle eyes of these “defenders of Western civilization” against devious Muslim stealth jihad plots.  Christina Abraham (a Muslim) has a name that is not recognizably Muslim enough and so we have stealth name jihad. And, if a Muslim somewhere is not doing anything at all suspicious, then they are engaged in pre-violent jihad.

Islamophobes generalize specific incidents to reflect on all Muslims or all of Islam.    Islamophobes consistently push demonstrably false memes such as:  - we are in danger from creeping Sharia, - the Muslim population is increasing at an alarming rate, - 80% of American Mosques are radicalized,  -  There have been 270 million victims of “jihad”  -  There have been 17,000+ “Islamic terrorist” attacks since 9/11    - Muslims in government are accused of being Muslim Brotherhood plants, stealth jihadists, and creeping Sharia proponents and should be MARGINALIZED or excluded.  Muslim and Arab organizations and individuals are connected to the infamous Muslim Brotherhood document or the unindicted co-conspirator label, or accused of not condemning Hamas, telling American Muslims not to talk to the FBI, of being “Jew haters”, etc.

When Islamophobes are caught in the act of making up or distorting claims they engage in devious methods to attempt to conceal the evidence. 

Islamophobes do not understand freedom of speech or that freedom of speech does not include freedom from condemnation of that speech and they are quick to call for censorship and repression of speech they don’t like.

There is a reason that many, even outside of the Muslim community see such demonization of Muslims as Islamophobic.  There is a reason that the ADL has stated that Brigitte Gabriel’s Act for America, Pamela Geller & Robert Spencer’s Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), David Yerushalmi’s Society of Americans for National Existence (SANE)  are “groups that promote an extreme anti-Muslim agenda”.  There is a reason that The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated SIOA as a hate group, and that these individuals are featured in the SPLC reports Jihad Against Islam and The Anti-Muslim Inner Circle.  There is a reason that these individuals and organizations are featured prominently in: — the Center for American Progress reports “Fear Inc.” on the Islamophobia network in America and Understanding Sharia Law: Conservatives skewed interpretation needs debunking. — the People for the American Way Right Wing Playbook on Anti-Muslim Extremism.  — the NYCLU report Religious Freedom Under Attack:  The Rise of Anti-Mosque Activities in New York State.  — the Political Research Associates report Manufacturing the Muslim menace: Private firms, public servants, and the threat to rights and security.  — The ACLU report Nothing to Fear: Debunking the Mythical “Sharia Threat” to Our Judicial System — in The American Muslim TAM Who’s Who of the Anti-Muslim/Anti-Arab/Islamophobia Industry.   There is a reason that the SIOA’s trademark patent was denied by the U.S. government due to its anti-Muslim nature.    There is a reason that Spencer and Geller were both recently banned from entering Great Britain to participate in an EDL event, and that their own words and actionsproved the charges against them.  There is a reason that these individuals and organizations are featured in just about every legitimate report on Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred. 

See Resources for dealing with Islamophobes for many more reasons that these people cannot be trusted.

Sheila Musaji is the founding editor of The American Muslim (TAM), published since 1989.  Sheila received the Council on American-Islamic Relations 2007 Islamic Community Service Award for Journalism,  and the Loonwatch Anti-Loons of 2011: Profiles in Courage Award for her work in fighting Islamophobia.  Sheila was selected for inclusion in the 2012 edition of The Muslim 500: The World’s 500 Most Influential Muslims published since 2009 by the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Amman, Jordan.    Biography  You can follow her on twitter @sheilamusaji ( https://twitter.com/SheilaMusaji )