Lisa Goldman to Javad Zarif: No, Your Excellency, +972 is not a Zionist site

Lisa Goldman as depicted on her Twitter page

The sordid story starts with a +972 report on Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister public interview (conversation) with the Washington Post’s David Ignatius of April 29, 2015. Frankly, for some reason Ms Goldman has chosen not to use this opportunity to bash Israel and has even found some good reasons to (very gently) criticize Mr Zarif. Some ingrown journalistic habits die hard, it appears...

The immediate consequences of the story remain somewhat foggy. The Twitter sites I have checked: these of +972 and of Mohammad Javad Zarif are scrubbed clean and do not contain the initial response by Zarif to that article, but obviously he expressed some displeasure by the gentle criticism and found a way to convey the said displeasure.  The response* by Ms Goldman is stunning :

This mash note to the Iranian foreign minister from New America Foundation's @lisang is just amazing pic.twitter.com/tY9NW0LvYv

— Noah Pollak (@NoahPollak) May 5, 2015

To make sure the text in question doesn't disappear, here is a (manual) copy:

Just a correction, Your Excellency: my article for +972 Magazine is not angry at all. The headline that you reference is taken from a Gershwin song "Autumn in New York" ("Why is it so inviting?"). Also, +972 is not a Zionist website. I enjoyed listening to you speak at New York University and was sincere in my admiration for your mastery of colloquial English, as well as your confident manner.

Aside of being a clear-cut case of sycophantic groveling, the note half-states what was an open secret for everyone: +972 is not a Zionist website. The reason I say "half-states" is simple: it is telling only half of the truth, because +972 is openly anti-Zionist, and this is a completely different cup of tea. This here blog is not Zionist (see item 8 of our Charter), but there is a looong way from here to a virulently anti-Israeli rag that calls itself +972 only because some of the failures that claim to be +972 journalists are still responding to phone calls with +972 country code...

So - no need to strain yourself, Lisa, with half-truths, keep them for your articles. We know all about your "non-Zionism", it's fine...

As for that picture above: was there any special need to cover the nose? Possibly after that correspondence with His Excellency?**

(*) Noah Pollack has picked up the snapshot of this remarkable response, you can see it and the conversation that developed, where Lisa is, in her usual combative fashion, hurling incoherent responses, thinly veiled insults and her ultimate adjective - "reactionary" - at some people.

(**) To make sure that the reader receives full information, a comment by Lisa Goldman is copied here:

This popped up in my Google alerts! It is a bit amusing, but mostly absurd. Yan, your entire post is so full of factual errors and inanities that I can't even bother responding. Spluttering over +972 "not a Zionist site"? Of course it's not. It's an independent digital news magazine with lots of different contributors who have different political views. Including Palestinian contributors. It's not the organ of a political party, as Davar was for the Labor party.

But I must correct you regarding the photo. The girl in the photo is not me. She was 12 when I took it (I was 42, so thanks for the compliment), and her surname is Tamimi. I took it in 2010 in her house in Nabi Saleh, a small village near Ramallah. The girl covered her face with a Palestinian flag that was sitting on a chair, to protect her nose and mouth from fumes after Israeli soldiers shot a tear gas canister directly into her living room. You can see the broken glass behind her head. Her younger brothers and cousins were playing in the next room. A year later her older brother Mustafa, died after soldiers shot him in the face at point blank range with a high velocity tear gas canister. You can read more about that here [link omitted - see in the comments].

Now you can see how a person that blames her opponents in being shallow and reactionary clumsily deflects anything thrown at her. First of all, +972 is not Zionist (or anti-Zionist), because a) it is "not the organ of a political party" and b) it has "lots of different contributors who have different political views". And of course, the photograph is a crucial element in the exhibit of "factual errors and inanities"... oh well, this goes for an argument these days in certain circles.