In the wake of the controversy over Hamzeh Daoud, the Stanford University student who vowed that he was “gonna physically fight zionists on campus,” Emily Wilder, who is “an undergraduate sophomore studying history with a regional concentration on the Middle East,” has taken to the august pages of the Stanford Daily to write an appallingly fact-free anti-Israel screed in defense of her “best friend, Hamzeh Daoud.” It’s called “A defense of Palestinian pain on campus” — one wonders if Emily’s “regional concentration on the Middle East” has led her to the discovery that the “Palestinian” people do not exist and have never existed. Somehow I doubt it.
Anyway, the thrust of Emily Wilder’s op-ed is that Israel is so evil (established with generous helpings of demonstrably false “Palestinian” jihad propaganda) that it’s understandable that Hamzeh Daoud, the poor victim, would want to assault Jews and other supporters of Israel physically. That’s bad enough, but Wilder goes even farther with her victimhood posturing, claiming fantastically that “Gazans’ kites and demands for basic human rights are met with bombs and exploding bullets,” as if innocent kite-flyers were mown down by the merciless Israelis; she doesn’t mention that the kites were fitted out with molotov cocktails and burned hundreds of acres of Israeli farmland. She also claims that “Palestinian student activists are subjected to immediate and unforgiving institutional punishment” — at Stanford? Come on — “while organizations like SCR [Stanford College Republicans], for example, are permitted to repeatedly slander them with baseless claims of terrorist affiliation or invite guest speakers who subject them to death threats and harassment.”
The link there on “invite guest speakers who subject them to death threats and harassment” goes to one of the defamatory tirades Stanford published about me last November, when I was about speak there. So the clear point Wilder is making is that the Stanford College Republicans brought me in, and I subjected students to death threats and harassment. Although “guest speakers” is plural, I am the only one specifically referenced, so this claim can only be about me.
This is, of course, plain libel. Nor is it the first time that the Stanford Daily has libeled me. Stanford student Terrence Zhao libeled me in the Stanford Daily last February; the paper had to alter his remarks and issue a correction. It seems that these Left-fascist students are so self-righteous, so full of the certainty that only a shoddy education and a steady diet of propaganda can give them, that they feel free to lie with impunity about those whom they hate. They are right and righteous, you see, and so anything they do in the service of their goal of destroying those whom they consider evil is justified.
Once again, I am asking the Stanford Daily for a retraction. I ask the Daily and Emily Wilder to produce evidence that I ever issued a death threat to any Stanford student, or harassed any Stanford student (Stanford students and faculty seem to think that my engaging their attacks on me intellectually was “harassment,” but I’m talking about a planet-Earth definition of “harassment”). Failing that, I am requesting a public retraction and apology.
jihad3tracker says
Please — everyone: Find a contact path to her and write a suitably shredding response. But disguise it with a neutral subject line so she will open it.
Bill says
No thanks. The last thing I would ever do would be to put my email address into this person’s possession. No good could possibly come of it.
jihad3tracker says
HELLO BILL — Yes, you are right, of course. In the first post above, I omitted my usual suggestion when getting in touch with smug young jerks like this one:
If you do not already have a “disposable” email address, create one and use it instead of your main one.
G-Mail makes that very easy — I have two.
Robert Spencer says
I must exhort you, if you write Emily Wilder, do not write anything that could remotely be construed as a threat or “harassment.” Be unfailingly courteous. Anything else would be stooping to her own gutter tactics, would feed her already off-the-charts self-righteousness and sense of victimhood, and enable her to dismiss all criticism of her libelous piece.
jihad3tracker says
IN DEFERENCE TO ROBERT SPENCER’S WISDOM — about my suggestion to write that student, I RETRACT IT.
She is already getting shredded in the Stanford Daily’s comment section.
If you must leave a comment, just stick to facts and COMPLETELY OMIT ANY AD HOMINEMS or other “gutter tactics”, as RS puts it.
mortimer says
Agree with Robert Spencer. Unless you know what your are doing, do not muddy the waters. I have personally found that when I am upset by anything, the complaint is much more likely to be received objectively if I am objective and ‘STEP BACK’ a bit from expressing matters in the STRONGEST TERMS. I find that a mild criticism will make people stop and think more than cruel and rash words.
Jak says
Just one question. Is that arab d*ck THAT good?
Bill says
Well Mr. Spencer, as it is likely that who will receive no adequate response to your first request, and even less likely to receive an adequate response to your proposed second request, I hope you have a Plan C at the ready with some legal teeth in it.
Good luck.
Gary Rossbach says
Agree.
Jay says
Liberalism is truly the mental disease Emily Wilder is suffering from! And there is also no cure for stupid!
Her parents must be so proud!! Mr Spencer, please stand your ground! ??????????
J D S says
I think she is DONE already!
ElderlyZionist says
Go for it, RS!
Wellington says
Facts and true argument are mere options for the Left but demonization is a must. Islam works this way too.
Wellington says
I would add that mendacity is also a major feature of the Left and Islam.
mortimer says
Wellington is correct times two.
60% of the Koran is demonization as is most of Marxism.
Lydia Church says
So someone else makes ‘death threats’ against others, and somehow Robert is responsible for their actions as well? This is typical leftist denial of reality thinking (or lack thereof).
This is the product of today’s ‘higher education,’ nothing more then propaganda, indoctrination, and leftist brainwashing! Now they are able to call good evil, and evil good. That is the result.
Westman says
Stanford is so screwed up that it’s even trying to push PC onto Artificial Intelligence! (AI)
http://history.stanford.edu/news/ai-can-be-sexist-and-racist-%E2%80%94-it%E2%80%99s-time-make-it-fair
GP says
Hahaha……that IS funny.
Hugh Fitzgerald says
Perhaps Emily Wilder will take the time from her busy schedule to choose, for her summer reading, “The History of Jihad.”
mortimer says
Agree with Fitgerald. I believe that THE HISTORY OF JIHAD by Robert Spencer will in fact be read by many serious historians and they will begin to do their own research on jihad, thus completely the study of jihad with new material. There is no way a serious historian can look at jihad without understanding that jihad is a form of GENOCIDE.
James Lincoln says
I hope that Robert Spencer considers a lawsuit for libel.
Wellington says
The problem with a libel suit in this instance is that since Robert Spencer is a public figure by, I believe, any definition of the law, a twofold requirement exists, to wit, that the person making a false statement about Spencer KNEW it was false when she made it. For a non-public figure one only has to prove the libel was false but for a public figure the added requirement I mentioned makes it deuce problematical to successfully win a libel case. It can be done but public figures have a much more difficult time proving libel or slander because of this extra requirement. Of course, theoretically, I suppose it could be argued that Mr. Spencer is not a public figure but that might prove a higher hurdle to surmount than proving that this foolish young woman knew she was lying when she wrote what she wrote.
mortimer says
Emily Wilder made a clear libellous slander against Robert Spencer. She should be challenged in court and forced to pay a LARGE SUM of money if she cannot prove that Robert Spencer called AT ANY TIME for violence against anyone.
Robert Spencer is a man of peace and always was one.
Wellington says
mortimer: See my 4:24 P.M. post above.
Charlie says
Shallow minded “journalists” like Emily Wilder think their hoax lies and smears give them some kind of power. The truth is in the evidence. Robert Spencer only engages his audience with citable facts that they themselves can source and read. Self-evidence is the fundamental tenet of the independent mind, and it is to that end that Robert Spencer stakes his appeal. I’ve seen too often the leftists make lies and smears, and claim victimhood to impugn an opponent on false pretenses. It is a pervasive Saul Alinsky tactic. Never once have I seen Robert Spencer exhort his audience to attack anybody, but rather he informs them on how those, inculcated in Islamic doctrine, view the nonbeliever, (kafr), based on clearly written imperatives and exhortations abundantly embedded in their theological literature.
CogitoErgoSum says
I’ve never heard Robert Spencer exhort anyone to commit an act of violence. I have heard him provide factual information concerning Islam which infuriates some Muslims and others so much that they commit acts of violent rage. Mr. Spencer is always very rational and peaceful in his presentations. The violence is coming from Muslims and radical leftists who support the spread of Islam. Islam is what is subjecting her and her fellow students to violence and threats of violence and Islam is what should be banned from her campus. Does she really expect me to blame the man being clubbed to death for an act of violence or should I hold responsible the man swinging the bloody club? (If you don’t know the answer, Emily, it’s the man with the bloody club who is responsible for the violence.)
Sam says
What will these idiots do when they are falsely defamed and harassed by their ilk. How stupid liberals get these days is really a concern to freedom lovers for sure.
This is how civil wars start by trying to silence opposition with lies and false accusations.
duh swami says
RS is a thorn in the side of Muslims and leftist useful idiots, because he wields the sword of truth and pokes hokes in the ‘Islam has nothing to do with it’ myth…
When the profane can’t win an intellectual argument, their next move is to shoot the messenger…
Norger says
What sophomoric and hysterical nonsense.
RCCA says
Once again I am disappointed by the level of “intelligence” of Stanford students. I’ve seen this elsewhere though, with pompous youthful elites and leftists who confuse their emotionally wrought opinions with facts. There’s no getting through to them with evidence or logic.
I don’t get the rationalization that he should be forgiven for his threats of physical violence because he editied his post several hours later. Who can guarantee he will never hear something else in the future which infuriates him? No one. He didn’t act on his anger, which is good, but putting Daoud in a position of authority over other students seems foolish. He’s too politically polarized and volatile to be a reliable source of support and guidance for younger students. Of course that will probably have no bearing on Stanford’s decision. The administration is probably more motivated by the desire to prove they are not Islamophobic.
Norger says
Yes let’s put young Daoud in a position to exercise authority over Jewish students and see how that works out.
George says
A retraction? Pigs will sooner dive bomb Muslims that an apology is to be expected from this crowd.
Indiana Tom says
“invite guest speakers who subject them to death threats and harassment”
I have yet to hear of any guest speaker making death threats or harassing them.
gravenimage says
Stanford Daily’s Emily Wilder libels Robert Spencer, claims he subjected students to death threats
……………………….
Absolute calumny.