Aw: Anti-semitic Berkeley paper closes up shop

O’Malley’s objectivity ebbed and flowed, as did her attempts to portray the Planet as a local newspaper. On August 8, 2006, O’Malley published a commentary written by Kurosh Arianpour, an Iranian living in India. Arianpour’s screed recounted tragedies Jews experienced over the centuries, including the Holocaust, and then proceeded to blame the Jews themselves for incurring the wrath of those who hated and murdered them…

Certainly, O’Malley evidenced no compelling need to portray other ethnic or racial groups with similar contempt or generally to push her First Amendment rights elsewhere without restraint. As John Gertz, O’Malley’s most insightful, passionate and influential critic and editor of the web site DPwatchdog, points out from his intensive analysis of the Planet’s writing, the Planet editorialized about its decision not to publish the Danish cartoons mocking Mohammed. But true to form, O’Malley published a series of anti-Semitic cartoons by Justin DeFreitas that could have come straight from the Nazi party paper Der Sturmer…

One of O’Malley’s contributors, Joanna Graham, herself Jewish, wrote some of the pieces most demeaning of Jews. Berkeley is flush with self-hating Jews caught between their ultra-leftist politics and their Jewish background, a conflict reconciled in favor of their politics. And O’Malley seemed only too eager to give Graham an outlet for her anti-Semitism. When Gertz asked O’Malley why she would provide a forum for Graham’s rancid pieces, O’Malley dismissively responded that Graham was a good writer.