How David Sheen Lies About Israel

David Sheen is an anti-Israel extremist who often lectures to American college students about the supposed evils of the Jewish state. He was a speaker, for example, at last weekend’s Open Hillel conference at Harvard.

With Sheen’s participation, Open Hillel has shown that it’s open to people who peddle brazen falsehoods about the Jewish state. Just one day after he spoke to the students, Sheen took to Twitter to lie about Israel’s prime minister and compare him to the Nazis.

Just as Nazis compared Jews to vermin to incite racism against them, Netanyahu compares non-Jewish Africans to ebola http://t.co/n9eIcim9jN

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) October 13, 2014

Sheen appears to substantiate his shocking allegation with a URL. But the link would be unhelpful to most of his Twitter followers — the article it leads to is in Hebrew, a language Israel-haters don’t generally know how to read. And that’s what Sheen was counting on. Indeed, when a Twitter user challenged Sheen’s allegation, he responded by mocking the user’s use of Google Translate:

@johnmknox it says it in the headline of the article, but you would not know that because you don't read Hebrew & require Google translate

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) October 13, 2014

But the Twitter user was right, of course. Neither in the headline nor anywhere else in the article does Netanyahu, Nazi-like, “compare” Africans to a disease. He was simply discussing Israel’s efforts to keep Israelis safe from Ebola (yes, the same conversation leaders in every country across the world is having) and pointing out that Israel’s tight border controls, a result of the country’s struggle with terrorism and illegal immigration, also serve to protect the country from the epidemic.

The headline, which notwithstanding its quotation marks appears to be a paraphrase of the Israeli leader and not a direct quote (it does not appear in the body of the article), states: “Netanyahu: ‘As part of the struggle against infiltrators and terror — we will prevent the entry of Eblola into Israel.'”

The article is introduced by a second passage in quotation marks that again appears to be a paraphrase: “Netanyahu: ‘As part of the struggle against infiltrators and terror — we will work to prevent Ebola.'”

Those both appear to be summaries of the actual quote, which appears in the body of the article and the embedded video. Netanyahu says:

The state of Israel is preparing to stop, as much as possible, the entry of people with Ebola into its borders. This is part of the effort we’re making in order to defend the borders in general, from illegal infiltrators or from terror.

We are talking about a global epidemic. We are cooperating with other countries. In addition to guarding our borders, we are also taking a number of steps in order to isolate the sick, if they arrive, and also of course to treat them in our healthcare network.

We hope there will not be a need for this, but we are prepared for all possibilities.

Sheen, whose specialty is finding extremist and racist Israelis and broadcasting them to the world as if they represent the entire country, is now casting himself as an expert on “Israeli incitement” to those who don’t and don’t have the language skills to fact-check him.

Come hear me speak about Israeli incitement today at 11 AM at FSU at Strozier Library in Scholar's Common Room #0005A http://t.co/djp7fGXYkt

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) October 20, 2014

This week I'll present on Israeli incitement at 4 Florida colleges: Today @FIU, tomorrow @USouthFlorida, Friday @UCF & Sunday Florida State

— David Sheen (@davidsheen) October 15, 2014

It must be easy to lecture about Israeli incitement when you’re so willing to lie to your audience.