My Nasty Mailers

The Internet is a whole world filled with...nuts.

Seriously, though, it is mostly filled with nice people who write beautiful notes thanking me for writing something they wish they'd written; something that touched them; opened their minds and eyes to a point of view they might not have known. I get letters from people who wish to know my opinion on all manner of things and even more those who wish to enlighten me...and I do learn. I have received letters from mothers of American soldiers who have reached out to me - mother to mother and so many other wonderful and touching notes.

I also get notes from people who live in Poland (or have Polish roots) and think I hate the Poles...I don't. Or that I believe all Poles collaborated with the Nazis...I know that this isn't true. I get notes from people who believe that I believe that the Jews have a patent on suffering...I don't, of course...but they keep writing to me, condemning me, judging me, telling me what I believe (not that they have a clue).

I get notes from people who love to call me all sorts of names, and so far to date, my absolute favorite nut is the lunatic in Pacific Palisades who actually went to a Haitian priestess to (hope you are sitting down for this one...) voodoo me (read about that here).

I've been writing for years...it is a part of who I am and what I have to do. If I'm upset...I write; if I'm happy...I write. Give me 5 minutes and a computer...and I'm off writing. Most of my articles get published in a handfull of sites...and from there spread. For years now, I've been archiving them here.

I don't know why this never occurred to me before, but here goes. I have finally decided I shouldn't be the only one to be royally entertained...and so, I offer you the "Nasty Mailer's Hall of Fame" - no profanities, but a view perhaps, of a side of life, a world of hatred that we want to believe, in this day and age, no longer exists.

Oh, and I'm putting their email addresses (in bold, no less) hoping that the spam crawlers have a field day - may you each be blessed with tons of spam, thousands of obnoxious messages offering you all sorts of wonders and drugs. Judging by some of your messages to me, I think you really need them!

The Paula Stern Nasty Mailer's Hall of Fame

Finalist: Ross Vachon

Ross Vachon wrote to me on and off for about 4 years, cursing, complaining, threatening. He's actually not sure of his name - sometimes he writes as Trevor Mack, sometimes as some other name, and sometimes as "Ross Vachon" - I'm not even sure if he knows his real name, but really, who cares.  

“This evening I attended a Haitian voodoo ceremony…[attached] a little name tag reading: ‘Mademoiselle Stern’…The stick-figure was placed in a compost of insect dung, and then lit afire. All assembled in the living room cursed your name: ‘Nazi Mama’, ‘Parasite’, and ‘Crepuscular Zionazi Insect’ were three of the milder ones….The voodoo priestess, a charming Haitian matron told me: ‘The hateful devil Paula R. Stern will not live past autumn of this year. A righteous soul will strike her dead.’” [For the record, he sent this to me in the Summer of 2003]

“so long as you are walking, humanity, the best of us will see your unctuous ‘virtue’ for what it really is: NAZI-ISM WITH GEFILTE FISH.”

You're losing, Mishkite,
Walt and Mearshimer, Colin Powell, Jimmy Carter's Super Best-Seller, Independent Voices (Prominent UK Jews), Muzzlewatch (American Jews), Hezbollah's Victory, American Public Opinion, Tony Judt, Norman Finkelstein cheered at Stanford, Harvard, Yale..., you're losing, and you're losing big.
"The Arc of the Universe bends towards Justice" (Martin Luther King)
"Israel is not as bad as Apartheid South Africa. It is worse." (Bishop Desmond Tutu)
"Israel is a poison, a plague, an Evil beyond Nazi Germany." (Jose Sarramego, Nobel Laureate)
You and your ilk- the "Good Germans" of our day...are going D-O-W-N.
How does it feel?
V

Semi-Finalists and Runners-Up

Semi-Finalist: Patricia Blair ()

Patricia is a prolific emailer, ever ready to write and send me emails (she's been nagging me for months, hoping I'll see the "truth"). The only problem is her refusal to actually read anything that might teach her about a side that differs from her's. Blinded to all but her image of the world, Patricia is ever ready to label and attack that which she does not understand. Unfortunately, her lack of knowledge is so wide, so all encompassing. To her, the Middle East is black and white - Israel evil and the Palestinians righteous. I first heard from Patricia in relation to the Nadia Abu El-Haj tenure decision. According to Patricia, I have no right (even as a Barnard graduate) to an opinion that differs from hers. Patricia refuses to say if she graduated from Barnard College...or any college...or even high school for that matter. It always amazes me how the Archie Bunkers of the world thrive on their ignorance. Following are some samples of one Nasty Mailer Semi-Finalist:

Paula, the nasty printer, is an absolutely amazing  piece of Zionist denial. It is astonishing the selective info that she has chosen to recycle, ignoring so much. Her hatred toward any one with a sane view of Israel's policies is astonishing and to call such people anti-semitic!  Imagine that! Perhaps we should connect her to the Christian Peacemakers or Women in Black, etc. Jews against demolition, Jewish Voice for Peace, the sane people.  PB

Paula Stern, your petition to deny Prof. Nadia Abu El-Haj  tenure at Barnard smacks of what the Nazi's did to the Jews in Germany, etc. to shut down discourse and truth.  How very un_Jewish of you! SHAME!

And, as I wrote to Patricia, "Tell me, have you read her book? I have.   Why is my attempt to make Barnard answerable anything equivalent to the Nazis. Do you have ANY idea what the Nazis did to the Jews in Germany...and all over Europe? Would you like to hear how my mother-in-law was put in a gas chamber? How my father-in-law suffered? How his brothers died? How my grandfather cried decades later over the loss of his mother and sisters? I am not shutting down any discourse and certainly not truth. I am attempting to stop another Big Lie....I truly wish all the Nazis ever did to the Jews was write a few letters, post a few articles on the Internet, and create a petition. What an amazing, amazing, amazing simplification...or perhaps the term is Holocaust denial?

This was enough to have Patricia take off the gloves and reveal more of her true inner self...

I am not Jewish but I am weary of this "victim" mentality of some Jews. Millions of people of numerous ethnic groups died during WWII. Why should you be the primary martyred race? What Israel is doing to the Palestinians right now is no different and just as inhumane. Wake up to the truth!  PB

Give someone enough time...and the truth will come out. This isn't about Abu El Haj. This is about anti-Semitism as old as time and still just as wrong. And a little more from Patricia...the only thing lacking from her emails...is truth, fact, historical accuracy...etc. :

Actually it is not the Iranians who want to wipe you out as has so falsely been propogated by Zionists. Israel will is its own demise by its paranoia and web of lies.

And her best quote yet...one that almost propelled her into the Finalist category:

Are you aware of the IDF snipers or the IDF troops who constantly harass the Palestinian children as they walk to school or force Palestinian women to give birth at check points or the over 500 Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel? Of course the Palestinians do not have bull dozers to destroyer homes, or tanks, or obscene walls, or jets, or cluster bombs. Please clean up your own act. Israel has made Gaza a ghetto.

The amazing part is that Patricia actually believes this nonsense. For a more factual picture, see Violence for Food - a Palestinian message? and Thousands of words...but for a picture and To Save a Life and many more posts from the This is Israel blog. And, of course, there is the story of my own son, Elie, who serves on the local ambulance squad and was called to go into an Arab village to help a pregnant woman who had been hit by an Arab truck driver (read What the Arabs Have Done to Themselves).

Patricia's latest accusation is that Israel persecutes Christians. Despite evidence to the contrary I(including The Prism Group's comprehensive study on Palestinian Treatment of Christian Arabs) continues to send me her opinion that:

According to my Palestinian Christian sources, the only persecutors are the illegal settlers, IDF, and the Israel Government. The Palestinian Christians and Muslims are treated inhumanely by Israel.

Good one, Patricia - that must be the way to refute a clearly documented report! Though she is quickly making her place in the Nasty Mailer's Hall of Fame for her persistance, one would hope she might have a better source that "my Palestinian Christian sources."

After a while, Patricia bores me, and so I have written my final note to her today:

Patty, Patty, Patty  
Tell me -
In, Sudan, international laws for the inhumane treatment of Muslims in Darfur are being violated every day... murder, rape, and more...have you done ANYTHING about that situation?  
Throughout the past century, the Bahá'ís of Iran have been persecuted. Had you done anything about that?  
Iraq's Sabian Mandeans, one of the world's oldest religious groups, report increased persecution from extremist groups through forced conversion, rape, and murder. Anything, Patricia?  
In Malaysia, religious freedom forums have been cancelled because of protestors claiming the organizers are "enemies of Islam." Anything, there Patricia?  
Have you done anything about Darfur? Israel has saved over 3,000 MUSLIM refugees (as compared to Egypt that hounds them, hunts them, and has murdered them in cold blood to try to keep them from entering Egyptian soil). So what have you done? Anything?  
I'm sure, with complete sincerety and all nonsense aside, that you are so busy hating those wicked settlers...that the real suffering of the world passes you by...and for that, I find your attitude appalling, pathetic, hate-filled, and utterly grotesque and worst of all, Patty - I find it typical of what I would expect from someone who is a product of thousands of years of similar attitudes.  
It is YOU who are filled with hatred. I live in a city where Arabs can enter freely (yes, they must have a work pass...but with that, they can work day after day. I know some of them by name, have given some rides to work, offered cold water on a hot day and warm sweet tea on winter days...more than you with your hypocritical self-righteous indignation for the "poor Palestinians" has ever done to aid a single Palestinian. It is YOU who can't see what is really happening in the Middle East because you are just plain too stupid to understand that your good "Christian Palestinian sources" are playing you for the fool you are.

Semi-Finalist/Runner Up: Genevieve

Genevieve's email was borderline. She, like Patricia, first contacted me regarding the Abu El Haj case - putting forth the absurd comparison that denying Abu El Haj is in some way connected to the denial for El Haj's "freedom of speech." As far as I am concerned, El Haj can say whatever she wants...so long as it isn't from the inside of one of Barnard's classrooms. But, anyway, from easily and loosely throwing around the term Nazi, Genevieve and Patricia and others were but a hop, skip and a jump from actual Holocaust denial - see, more people died in WWII than "just" Jews...so let's blur the numbers by adding in soldiers that died and anyone else we can think of...and forget the concept of genocide, of the systematic way in which the Nazis went after the Jewish people. No, five soldiers died in battle and a Jew was beaten, starved, and then gassed to death...let's make this numbers...you take 6, divide it by 6, multiply it by 1,000, divided by the number of countries in Europe...add to that the number 74 and divide by 1939, then add 1945...and there you have it - "incontrovertible" proof that ....well, I'm not sure what their point was, but leave it to Genevieve and Patricia to figure it out...Genevieve wrote to me recently:

I own Nadia's "Facts on the Ground."  It is a masterwork of scholarly research and considered by archaeological scholars to be very even handed.  Nadia is another victim of the Zionist witch hunt.

Actually, the campaign to encourage Columbia to deny Abu El Haj tenure is neither Zionist nor a witch hunt and to call El Haj's flawed work "masterwork of scholarly research" and "even handed" is about as whimisical as...as...well, pretty much all the other nonesense Genevieve wrote to me.

How about printing our comments, Paula.
Of course, it is the people like her [that would apparently be me] that are anti-Semitic - hating Arabs. Genevieve

Of course, they don't know me, don't know what I feel or think, what I hate or like, but again, like Patricia, why muddle facts with...well, facts. But I must admit I am impressed - I have had people incorrectly accuse me of hating Arabs, but I have never had anyone call me anti-Semitic before. So, for this and other honors, we'll leave the door open and say Genevieve is somewhere between a Semi-Finalist and a Runner-Up. Here's part of one of Genevieve's emails attempting to belittle, and thus obscure the death of 6 million (interestingly enough, while Yad VaShem and other organizations have spent more than 60 years trying to determine the number of Jews who perished, and all put the figure at over 6 million, Genevieve is able to pinpoint it 5.7 million...but what matter the lives (and deaths) of 300,000+ Jew

According to a variety of sources, the total estimated human loss of life caused by World War II, irrespective of political alignment, was roughly 72 million people. The civilian toll was around 47 million, including about 20 million due to war related famine and disease. The military toll was about 25 million, including about 5 million prisoners of war. The Allies lost around 61 million people, and the Axis lost 11 million. As some Axis countries switched sides and reentered the war on the side of the Allies, those nations are included in the Allied count, regardless of when the deaths occurred. There was a disproportionate loss of life and property; some nations had a higher casualty rate than others, due to a number of factors including military tactics, crimes against humanity, economic preparedness and the level of technology. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties)

Not all the Jews died in gas chambers.  Many died of starvation and disease.  The exact figures will not be known until the recently opened Nazi archives are examined.  However, current estimates claim deaths due to the Nazi Holocaust totaled 12.1 million, 5.7 million were Jewish.

G.

Nasty-Mailer Wanna Be: Richard Silverstein

Silverstein maintains a blog in which he writes about...well, anything he wants to. He caught onto the Nadia Abu El Haj controversy and decided that the best way to make his point...was to attack the messengers.

I know enough about you fr. what you write about Abu El Haj.  I judge you based on the scurrility of your own words.  Talk about thinking.  If yr Barnard education had taught you anything about research & proper treatment of sources including accurate quotation, you actually might have created a semi-credible campaign against Abu El Haj.  I received a Columbia education too.  Apparently those lessons sunk in a bit better w. me than you.   When Abu El Haj gains tenure I'll be lifting a glass both to her & to yr ugly campaign which will end up in the place it belongs.  As for Columbia & Barnard--they will survive yr efforts to smear them.  I hope the 50 of you (if that) who will stop giving & stop going to reunions actually follow through on yr word.  The schools will be the better for it & the $5,000 (if that) you all gave combined lifetime to yr alma mater will not be terribly missed.   Pls. don't check out my site.  I'd prefer you didn't.

Ok, Richard...you got it. I won't waste my time.

Nasty-Mailer Runner-Up: Dean Chancery [pterodactyl666@yahoo.com]

Here's a nice one - I almost missed it, as it went into my spam folder. I think it is related to the blog about my son, as the subject line was "soldier" - but who can tell? Here's Dean's pearl of wisdom...I think he should win some award for the most adjectives in a sentence.

Make sure you tattoo a swastika on your kid's ass.

Shielding an expansionist, Apartheid, militarized, crypto-fascist junta from harm is a mighty important thing.

Dean may not be very intelligent or aware, but he doesn't let that stop him. Here's another of his great pearls of wisdom (think I should waste my time telling him I'm not from Brooklyn?):

Obama didn't see you- a "Crazy Howie from Brooklyn" type who likes to pretend that Israel isn't the shitty, little Apartheid country it is.. And, for that small blessing....we can all give laconic thanks