Lee Camp: is he now "controlled opposition" on Israel?

Yes, THAT Lee Camp, of Redacted Tonight, brave new world former RT commentariat, who writes a column about "Top 11 Signs Israel is Collapsing." No, really. It would be funnier if not so sad. 

My response? Semi-blistering, with the following being an extended version of a Substack note.

(I should note that I pretty much, though not totally, reject a literal idea of controlled opposition. For instance, nobody in the GOP is paying Democrats to act like Republicans-lite in many cases. It's all self-chosen.)

Can I have what Lee Camp is smoking?

No. 4 and 5 are laughs; Israel’s partnerships with the EU and the US are not at all “strained.” In the US, The Donald still cuts blank checks to Israel. In the EU, states that have said they will recognize Palestine, or in France's case, have done so, have made such recognitions conditional, and also still let their countries' weapons makers sell away to Israel. (Same is true of Canada.)

To quote Mondoweiss?

The sum total is that, despite the outcry over the attack on Nasser Hospital, the beginning of the massive invasion of Gaza City, and the United Nations finally declaring a full-blown famine in Gaza, the United States and Europe remain in performance mode, with little prospect of any real action being taken.

And to quote further?

Unfortunately, with feckless leaders in Europe and the autocratic, impatient, and ignorant Trump in the White House, Netanyahu has a lot of potential for manipulating diplomatic affairs around the Middle East.

And, it's not just Israel vs Gaza, it's Israel against Palestinians, period. In what is surely against international law, Trump has had Lil Marco Rubio revoke the visas of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and 80 other Palestinians in advance of the kickoff for a new session of the UN General Assembly. 

Mondoweiss ALSO reports that the Washington Post has a leaked document about Team Trump officially backing ethnic cleansing in Gaza, part of Trump's "Gaza Riviera" idea floated this spring.

A leaked 38-page document details the Trump administration’s “Gaza Riviera” plan to forcibly relocate 2 million Palestinians and place Gaza’s territory in U.S. trusteeship for over a decade. 

The Washington Post reported on the prospectus for the plan, which calls for “temporary relocation” of Gaza’s population so that “AI-powered smart cities,” and a manufacturing hub named after Trump-donor Elon Musk could be erected. 

“Gaza can transform into a Mediterranean hub for manufacturing, trade, data, and tourism, benefiting from its strategic location, access to markets… resources, and a young workforce all supported by Israeli tech and [Gulf Cooperation Council] investments,” states the document.

But, Lee Camp would have you believe the US partnership with Israel is "strained." 

No. 2? The US will bail out Israel’s economy if it really goes that far in the dumpster. Otherwise, this sounds like a #BlueAnon Democrap saying Russia's economy will collapse at any moment.

No. 6? The UN case for genocide? Rather, the ICC’s head is facing hasbara-like charges and it’s otherwise largely being ignored by the US, the EU, and even the Gulf Arab states, at least for public consumption. Ditto on the ICC arrest warrants. Hasn’t Bibi been in Merikkka since then? Survey says yes and less than two months ago.

No. 10? BDS having a profound impact? Most Western multinationals facing boycotts in Muslim-majority nations know those nations’ elites still buy a Starbucks latte. Also note that, per Lee’s own story, we’re actually talking about franchises that aren’t owned by Star Bux or McDonald’s and in many cases franchise only in Israhell. That's Economics 101, and I was getting hits on that with 30 seconds of searching.

Small companies may be avoiding Israel, and certainly academics? Fortune 500 types? Not so much, and of course that doesn’t count the defense contractors eating this up.

Also, this column may be a recycled and updated version of an earlier one, or else he pulls some stuff out from behind the paywall after a month or two, which adds to the idea that he's become controlled opposition, relatively speaking. 

If THAT's the case, as the original is from nearly three months ago, he looks stupider yet. 

He's also a liar. 

The first two words of the header are "New Column." If all he did pull out an old column from behind a paywall and spiff it up around the edges, it's not new.

That's also self-plagiarism, and yes, that's a journalistic issue.

As a member of the media, I respect that issue. I may, at certain points on the calendar, write about a subject that is time-sensitive about which I have written before, even a theme related to that. But, I don't pull up an old saved column to that end on my computer and give it some tiny tweaks, not even if it was several years ago.

Per Stravinsky, on a long-ago column, I may "steal" some of the talking points, but it still gets a rewrite. 

Finally, it's intellectually lazy. In this case, the talking points weren't true in the original paywalled version and you did nothing to defend them in the un-paywalled one.