The Invisible Library

Yesterday, I received this frankly baffling email:

Hi. My name is Eugene Gershin. Perhaps we have met online, but more probably you don’t know me from Adam. I monitor blogs for SamsonBlinded, and came across your post.

I’d like to welcome you to look at Obadiah Shoher’s blog. Obadiah - an anonymous Israeli politician - writes extremely controversial articles about Israel, the Middle East politics, and terrorism.

Shoher is equally critical of Jewish and Muslim myths, and advocates political rationalism instead of moralizing.

Google banned our site from the AdWords, Yahoo blocked most pages, and Amazon deleted all reviews of Obadiah’s book, Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict.

Nevertheless, 170,000 people from 78 countries read the book.

Various Internet providers ban us periodically, but you can look up the site on search engines. The mirror www.terrorism-in-israel.com/blog currently works.

Please help us spread Obadiah’s message, and mention the blog in one of your posts, or link to us from invisiblelibrary.blogspot.com. I would greatly appreciate your comments.

Best wishes,
Eugene Gershin

First off, Eugene is right, I don’t know him from Adam. I don’t recognize him form the comment threads on any of my regular reads and he’s never commented on this blog. And seeing as he wants a link form the old blogger version that I shut down over a year ago, I’m guessing he hasn’t read anything I’ve written here lately.

But more to the point: Who is Obadiah Shoher, and how exactly does one become an anonymous Israeli politician? Israel hasn’t been around that long and it’s not that big so as to have politicians that could be anonymous, if we can even grant that there ever could be such a beast as an anonymous politician to begin with. I suspect they sit at the same lunch table with tiny giants and compassionate conservatives.

Googling his name doesn’t really answer the question, as it’s apparently a pen name for someone who describes himself as having a Machiavellian perspective, which is refreshing in it’s honesty, if still a bit scary.

Shoher’s “political rationalism” advocates an Imperialist Israel that controls the entire Middle East. He also applauded the war between Israel and Hezbullah over the summer, and seems to advocate war (nuclear or just good old killing) with well, everyone within reach of Israel’s missiles. It’s a little hard to make out just what policies he’s advocating from his site’s entries as they ramble all over the map of Cloud Kuckooland without ever making a real point. But the general impression one gets is that he’s awfully fond of the idea of starting wars he’ll never have to personally fight. Which makes me wonder how he managed to avoid getting appointed to some high ranking post in the Bush Administration. I guess that’s one of the downsides to being an anonymous politician.

I don’t know what to make of Amazon deleting reviews of his silly book, unless they were simply so racist and militant that they constituted hate speech. Which is not out of the question. Right wingers like Shoher tend to bring out the worst in those with poor impulse control and childish world views.

Why they would think I might be interested in promoting such bloody and fantastical nonsense escapes me. I doubt that Eugene is really singling me out here. This is very likely just a rare bit of kook spam but I clearly got on someone’s list because if something I wrote here or on my old blog.

So, let me make something clear: I never have and never will espouse an ideology like Shoher’s. I’m morally opposed to Imperialism and war, no matter what the excuse. If my anti-religious stance has given someone the impression that I’m just another antimuslim or antisemite ranter, let me clear that up as well: I’m opposed to religious indoctrination, not religious people. You have every right to believe any damn fool thing you like. But I am neither obligated to play make believe with you or to suffer your ignorant jibber jabber, especially when that barely coherent rambling involves celebrating murder and advocating killing as if it were just part of the daily routine of politics.

I’m not in the habit of discouraging people from reading this site but Mr. Shoher and Eugene, you are not welcome here. Tolerance only goes so far but it does not mean that I will suffer idiots and fools.