Boteach posts censored videotape of Columbia debate

Yesterday we did a post on Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s debate at Barnard. He posted this picture after the event on Twitter, of him saying goodnight to liberal Zionist panelist Peter Beinart.

And Boteach put up video of the debate here that specifically censors the argument over videotaping that you could see in my video. His video removes two sections, at 15:30 and 53:18, in which Boteach interrupted the debate to confront me over my videotaping. I.e., this is not a true record of the debate. (Thanks, Sycamores.)

Just watch Boteach speak at 39:39 to get a sense of his manner. He begins:

Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I believe in Make Love and Not War. Most of you know me from my books like Kosher Sex… I would much rather be speaking to you today about my new book, Kosher Lust, available at fine book stores everywhere, that was just released… But I am a love prophet on loan to the state of Israel…”

I think that’s disingenuous. I know about Boteach because of his political activities, including the very important job of helping Samantha Power become UN ambassador by vouching for her in the rightwing Jewish community– to which President Obama is beholden (for reasons explained by Power herself in 2002, when she spoke of “a domestic constituency of tremendous political and financial import”).

Since the event, I got a look at a sheet of donors to Boteach’s “This World, The Jewish Values Network,” from 2011; and the biggest backer on it is the Slager family foundation, benefactors of Chabad, the religious group.

But the list includes, at $64,300, Kevin Bermeister, an Australian tech baron who is a mogul for the Israeli settlement project, and wants to build an airport in the West Bank to serve Greater Jewish Jerusalem and end Palestinian dreams of having a capital in Jerusalem. This is the kind of project Beinart believes in boycotting.

Bermeister told the LATimes (2012) he’s a religious Jew and:

Can you show me on any street in Jerusalem where the Green Line is? I’ve never seen it…. We are focusing on looking at the optimal use of the city. No divided city has ever performed as well as a united one. We don’t look at the political landscape.

Then there’s Denise Rich at $18,000; she is a giant supporter of the Democratic Party and friend of Israel, who helped get her former husband, the late Marc Rich, fugitive financier, pardoned by Bill Clinton. (P.S. This is some crowd. Another man who helped on the Rich pardon is Rabbi Shlomo Riskin who has now come out for Jewish worship on the Temple Mount, a rightwing occupier position.)

There’s Stanley Black, who has given a ton to the LA Children’s Hospital and seems to split his political givings between Dems and Republicans at $25,000; and the Cohen family, which owns Hudson News– they gave $27,000; and a Jersey neocon, Mark Gerson, at $26,000.

Yesterday we noted that Boteach had stopped us from videotaping the event at Barnard. The wonderful cartoonist Carlos Latuff has seen fit to memorialize the incident. He got the smoke coming out of my ears right: