Long-time readers may remember that one of my first, longest, and most widely-read blogwars was with a blogger named Aziz Poonawalla, who is held up as a shining light of the “moderate” Muslim variety. I was actually rather shocked at the vehemence with which Aziz tried so very hard to prove that Israel was developing a “genetic” bomb that would kill Arabs while not harming Jews. The concept itself is wrong in so many ways that he managed to get most of the Jewish political blogosphere posting on the subject. It is also the subject that got Tacitus (long since revealed to be Josh Trevino) the hottest, inspiring him to endow on me my title as the Master of Juvenile Scorn.™
But here’s the pertinent information from this long introduction: Uzi Mahnaimi, the author of the article claiming that Israel was developing that “gene bomb” also happens to be the author who wrote the Sunday Times article that says Israel is practicing for a nuclear attack on Iran. Several other bloggers picked up on it. There’s Joe’s Dartblog and Israel Matzav, both of whom go into great detail, and Allison Kaplan Sommer debunks the author on PJ Media, where she also points out that Mahnaimi has published this story several times before. If he sounds like a broken record, well, hey—nobody ever went broke accusing the Jews of doing, or attempting to do, evil. It seems that Mahnaimi has made a living at it.
On December 17, 2000, Uzi Mahnaimi also announced in the “Sunday Times” that Israel was going to war against Syria. Supposedly, when Barak was Prime Minister, he was under pressure from his “generals” to prepare actively for war against Syria in the event of failure of the negotiations with the Palestinians. The negotiations did not succeed. The war did not take place.
Journalistic speculations are rife. The possibility that an open conflict with Iran will burst out exists indeed and many are those who gamble; the [mode of] operation is known and has been long practised: “if war breaks out, I would have been the first to announce it”.
But there is worse yet. On November 15, 1998, the “Sunday Times” published an article signed by Uzi Mahnaimi and Marie Colvin according to which Israel supposedly launched a military research program of a new kind: “ethnic targeting”. It would act according to authors of the article, using a derived technique of bacteriological warfare, suppoedly invented thanks to medical research, which makes it possible “to distinguish Arab genes, and to thus create a bacterium or a genetically modified virus. The goal is to use the viruses or the bacteria to modify the DNA of the living cells.” The scientists supposedly were developing micro-organisms which would attack only people carrying the genes in question… According to the journalist, “the Israeli secret program is based at the Biological Research Institute of at Nes Tsiona, a small city in the south east of Tel Aviv”…
In 1998, the Anti-Defamation League severely reproached the “Sunday Times” for publishing the article on “the ethno-bomb”, calling it irresponsible and dangerous.” Its director, Abraham Foxman wrote then: “This sensational story is reminiscent of the golden age of anti-Semitism when the Jews were accused of ritual crimes, that targeted non-Jews, with poison.” At the time, the Israeli government had not seen fit to comment on the article of Uzi Mahnaimi and Marie Colvin, published in the “Sunday Times”: “It is the sort of story which does not deserve denial”…
The article on the “ethno-bomb” written by Mahnaimi and Colvin was included in a number of organs of the Arab press, including the Egyptian daily newspaper “Al Ahram”, in its edition of November 18, 1998.
The article is now carried by the Holocaust-Denial site “The Institute for Historical Review” (no link forthcoming; I’m tired of the David Duke defenders in my comments).
I think the Sunday Times’ quality has sunk an order of magnitude in my mind. Perhaps two.
Maybe they’re working on the stopped-clock method. Sooner or later, Israel will “start” a war with somebody (by shamelessly responding to repeated attacks, against all standards of behavior which are only applicable to Israel) and then he can say, “See, I was right!”