Diaspora Museum to honor site responsible for Obama-hating clips

Caroline Glick’s “Latma” site will receive special honor from the museum on its yearly board of governors meeting next week

The Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv is about to honor this week the people behind the rightwing satire and media site Latma for the “we con the world” video they produced in the aftermath of the IDF raid on the Gaza-bound flotilla. The evening will be hosted by the celebrated Liberal writer and TV pundit, Yaron London.

I must admit that when I saw this item for the first time on Richard Silverstine’s Tikkun Olam blog, I found it hard to believe. What does “Beit Hatfutsot” (the Hebrew name on the Diaspora Museum), a respectable establishment that sits at the heart of Tel Aviv University, has to do with a vulgar and extreme satire group like Latma?

As it turned, the honoring is being made by the Nadav fund, established by Israeli-Russian oligarch Leonid Nevzlin. A few years ago, the Diaspora Museum ran into financial difficulties, and Nevzlin had promised to donate to the museum, through the Nadav fund, a sum of 6 million dollars. Could it be that in return, the museum adopted a right-wing political line to better suit Nevzlin, who now sits at the head of its International Board of Governors? How else can we explain the museum’s decision to honor Latma during the annual Board of Governors’ meeting?

Latma’s favorite targets are left wing NGOs and Palestinian politician, who are often treated in the site’s satirical video’s in a way that borders racism. But more than anything, Latma loves to portray the US president as an anti-Israeli, anti-Semite Muslim. Take a look at this satirical video, in which Obama “admits” to hating Jews, and explains how he plans to join Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinajad in his quest to destroy Israel:

In another video a fake Obama in a black-face makeup sings lines like “dirty Jews won’t be missed by me.” and “I hate them, it so excites me” (h/t Richard Silverstein).

The editor in Chief of Latma is the Jerusalem Post’s Caroline Glick, known for her radical right-wing views. Here is what Glick wrote about the Israeli Left and Haaretz newspaper when the Kamm-Blau affair was made public (and this is just one example out of many):

By collaborating with Kamm first by publishing her stolen documents and hiring her as a reporter, and finally by covering up her crimes while suborning Blau’s perjury, Haaretz has demonstrated that leftist traitors have a powerful sponsor capable of exacting painful revenge on the State of Israel for daring to prosecute them.

In facilitating and supporting treason, Haaretz itself can depend on a massive network of supporters in Israel and internationally. Reporters, self-proclaimed human rights groups, and the leftist blogosphere in Israel and throughout the world as well as foreign governments happily swallow whole Haaretz’s manufactured stories about Israel’s purported venality.

This lefty blogger would like to know what do the members of the International Board of Governors of Beit Hatfutsot – among them former head of Tel Aviv university Prof. Itamar Rabinovich, notable businessman Dov Lautman and also the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg – think of the museum’s decision to honor Glick and Latma. What message will this event send to the Jewish community, who for most part is supportive of President Obama, and certainly opposes to portraying him as a Jew-hater?

It should be made clear that I believe Latma is a perfectly legitimate site and their internet TV show is well within the limits of the political discourse in Israel. But I certainly don’t think that Latma’s xenophobic, vulgar and extreme face is the one an institution like the Diaspora Museum – which is all about the connection between Israel and the Jewish communities around the world – would like to show. Or is it?

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You can write Beit Hatfutson regarding their plan honor “Latma” on this link.