In my mailbox this morning…
“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 theuglytruth.blogspot.com. I would greatly appreciate your comments.
Best wishes,
Eugene Gershin.”
Dear Eugene,
Thank you for taking the time to read the blog. I’m interested to know which of my posts you read to make you think I would be interested in the writings of Obidiah Shoher. Presumably not the ones featuring comedy vegetables.
Despite your dark insinuations, I found it remarkably easy to find references to his work online, and indeed the book is available on Amazon, complete with a user-friendly glimpse at an extract.
On reading the material online, I have to admit to a slight feeling of disquiet. Actually, make that a honking great lorryload.
Perhaps I misread Obidiah’s intentions. Perhaps his work is intended as a modern-day satire on Machiavelli’s book, “The Prince.” Please tell me that he’s joking when he talks about deploying biological and nuclear weapons at Palestine. Or sending troupes of “Indian mercenaries” into the region as Trojan horses. What kind of Indians he’s talking about is not made clear. If he’s expecting floods of Iroquois to tear into the West Bank on ponies, he may be disappointed. I doubt that the Native American community are that willing to do the bidding of a pseudonymous politician who doesn’t have enough belief in his reactionary, eye-swivellingly lunatic pronouncements to publish them under his own name.
Thank you for forwarding me on the link to his blog. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter. I’ve found out enough through the perfunctory Googlege that is all this material deserves to realise that the man is either a comedy genius or a raving nutbag. And we all know how close the line between the two can be.
Yours, not knowing whether to laugh or cry,
Rob Wickings.
(This is what I get for putting The Ugly Truth on Britblog. To think, I used to pine for readers.
(We return to the amusing veg and comic book references tomorrow.
eyethangyew.))
EXCUSES AND HALF TRUTHS 