DebkaFile and Haaretz- for the morons out there

Periodically, out of boredom or curiosity, I still visit both the Debkafile and  Haaretz websites.

They remain on my bookmark list because years ago I used to take them seriously. DEBKAfile claims to have inside scoops on everything about Israel, security, terrorism and the Middle East. Sometimes their analyses seems intelligent, with a conservative, security oriented slant. Other times their articles really seem over the edge, like this story. Are well really stupid enough to believe that the US president would be visiting Israel if there was a serious credible threat of a chemical attack at the airport? Sometimes they just make shit up, apparently due to a Caroline Glick-like paranoia and hatred of the left and Obama.

In many ways, DEBKAfile is the Jewish equivalent of the right wing Christian WorldNet Daily. They openly promote radical right wing conspiracy theories and fear-mongering. If their analyses and predictions were true, Al-Qeeda would have taken over the world years ago, and we Jews (and Christians) would all be kneeling down to Allah in front of our Salafi Muslim masters.

On the other side of the spectrum, there is the English Haaretz website. The English and Hebrew pages for Haaretz are quite different. The Hebrew site , although decidedly left wing and whiny about anything related to the settlements and the Palestinians, represents an authentic Zionist and dovish perspective. In Israeli it is read by a small but elite group, especially for its excellent finance section. The English site, on the other hand, has a  anti-Israel, post-Zionist slant. If you didn't know you were reading Haaretz, often you would guess that you were looking at a leftist anti-Israel European newspaper.  An editorial slant is acceptable. However, the choice of news stories of leading headlines, as well as mis-translations, change the tone of a story entirely. This has been written about and documented by several observers. There is an unfortunate parallel to the doom-and gloom fantasies of DEBKAfile.  If we were to believe Haaretz's scoops and analyses, Israel long ago would have either become a shunned South Africa-like country, living in poverty due to sanctions and boycott, or a Jewish State living in bliss next to a peaceful, progressive and democratic Arab state of Palestine.

Both websites suffer from the same pseudo-intellectual and delusional thinking.