Courtenay J. Werleman is an Australian born Californian who is aggressively atheist. He’s the host of a show on iTunes, has written several books  hawking his atheist views, and, for some reason, has more than thirty thousand followers on the thinnest of all social media: Twitter.

Of course CJ Werleman, as he calls himself, is au currant and therefore rabidly anti-Israel. He is also an outed plagiarizer and so somewhat of an embarrassment to the radical left who otherwise tended to view his anti-religious mantle as a halo.

But never mind all that, Werleman still has those tens of thousands of Twitter followers who enjoy retweeting his witticisms, whether or not there is substance or truth to his bon mots.

And so when, on Dec. 26, Werleman tweeted a video clip of soldiers beating up on some young boys and labeled those soldiers evil Israelis, hundreds of Werlebots blithely retweeted the calumny.

But some bright folks looked at the video and saw that something did not look right.

In fact, those aren’t members of the Israeli Defense Forces beating up on the young kids in the video at all. The video, which appears to have been intentionally stripped of its banner identifying the source, is actually a video of Guatemalan army soldiers beating up young boys.

That video of Guatemalan soldiers physically assaulting young Guatemalans was an Al Jazeera video shown on Yahoo! News.

Max Blumenthal and CJ Werleman passed off a vicious soldier abuse video as the IDF doing wrong

Hours after having posted the deceptive video and after its falsity was repeatedly brought to his attention, Werleman issued a tweet acknowledging that the video was not what he had claimed it was.

The post “explaining” Werleman’s removal of the tweet did not refer to how the earlier post was wrong, or even what he had falsely claimed in the prior tweet. He also passed off blame on the person from whom he received the tweet, rather than admitting he should have verified it before tweeting it as fact. Werleman wrote: “I have deleted a tweet (video) that contained incorrect information. It was a video emailed to me by someone who has a record of accuracy.”

So was this an aberration? Putting aside, of course, that Werleman had already been caught red-handed having plagiarized more than a dozen articles.

A glance at another post on Werleman’s Twitter feed over the weekend reveals he is clearly unencumbered by a guilty conscience or embarrassed by erupting with unsubstantiated aspersions disguised as fact-based pronunciamentos, especially if the one being attacked is Israel.

“Israel shoots Gazans for sport on the eastern border. Egypt does same on Gaza’s western border,” was posted by Werleman on Dec. 26. His statement is accompanied by a link to an Al Jazeera article, which has nothing to do with Israel. That Al Jazeera article describes the shooting death by Egyptian guards of a naked Gazan man who wandered slightly into Egyptian territory while wading in the Mediterranean Sea. People, careless ones like Werleman, will see the link to a news story and assume that the article provides a factual basis for Werelman’s claim about Israel.

One of Werleman’s Twitter followers and apparently a big admirer of Werleman’s is Max Blumenthal, overgrown enfant terrible son of former Clinton White House hanger-on and Hillary’s unofficial and inappropriate “adviser,” Sidney Blumenthal. Blumenthal the son encouraged other like-minded always-ready-to-put-a-hate-on-for-Israel followers to retweet the video falsely accusing Israel of the Guatemalan strong-arm (and leg) police tactics.

Matthew Luke, former director of Al Jazeera America’s media and archive management, is suing his boss at the network, in Manhattan Supreme Court, for “overt misogynistic behavior and bias against women,” as well as “anti-American and anti-Semitic” diatribes suggesting “whoever supports Israel should die a fiery death in hell.”

Luke is seeking $15 million from Al Jazeera and his boss, one Osman Mahmud.

The suit claims that Mahmud’s M.O. was to replace women executives with Arab Muslim men, and an Israeli cameraman with a Palestinian; that he was moved up in the organization—owned by the House of Thani, the ruling family of Qatar—”because of his religion, nationality” and connections; and that he made anti-Semitic and anti-American statements around the office.

Luke believes he was fired because—as the company allegedly told him—he “did not fit into the company culture.” Luke’s attorney said in a statement:

“When Mr. Luke, an exemplary and loyal employee at Al Jazeera, reported the biased and discriminatory conduct of a high-level newsroom executive, the response was to circle the wagons and fire the messenger. This is a clear violation of the law. One would expect more from an organization whose mission statement is ‘to be recognized as the world’s leading and most trusted media network.’”

Speaking to the Erik Wemple Blog, Mahmud denied the allegations, and suggested the real problem was that Luke likes “yelling” at people. “He’s an aggressive person. He yells at you. He wants to have the plan according to his way of working.”

Qatar “loaned” the Palestinian Authority $100 million dollars today, to help pay salaries and make up for the tax revenue being withheld by Israel after the PA took unilateral steps against Israel in the ICC and the UN, according to a Reuters report.

PA Chairman Mahmoud “Abu Mazen” Abbas officially thanked Qatar.

Qatar owns the Al Jazeera news station.

Said Arikat is not the only journalist in the State Dept. briefing room who makes blatantly false statements about Israel. Arikat gets in his slams against Israel at just about every briefing. He also has repeatedly acted as if he works for the Palestinian Authority, beseeching the State Dept. spokesperson to please, provide more funding to the aggrieved Palestinian Arabs.

Such statements remain etched to a greater or lesser degree on the people in the room, including the other journalists, plus, of course, the State Department spokesperson heading the briefing.

Rosalind Jordan, though not a serial slanderer, uttered a flatly false statement about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to the joint session of Congress on Tuesday, March 3.

Jordan is a reporter for Al Jazeera. Perhaps it is a cheap shot to mention, but Jordan worked as a journalist for several years during the mid-2000’s with NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams (yes, that Brian Williams.)

A State Department daily press briefing took place within two hours of the prime minister’s speech on Tues, March 3. During that briefing there was a good deal of discussion about Netanyahu’s speech. There was, not surprisingly, significant pushback by Marie Harf, State’s deputy spokesperson.

Jordan, however, asked a question that revealed how little attention she and others actually paid to the speech. The question Jordan asked had to do with Iran and ISIL (ISIS).

First, this is what the prime minister actually said about those two terrorist entities:

Don’t be fooled. The battle between Iran and ISIS doesn’t turn Iran into a friend of America.

Iran and ISIS are competing for the crown of militant Islam. One calls itself the Islamic Republic. The other calls itself the Islamic State. Both want to impose a militant Islamic empire first on the region and then on the entire world. They just disagree among themselves who will be the ruler of that empire.

In this deadly game of thrones, there’s no place for America or for Israel, no peace for Christians, Jews or Muslims who don’t share the Islamist medieval creed, no rights for women, no freedom for anyone.

So when it comes to Iran and ISIS, the enemy of your enemy is your enemy.

The difference is that ISIS is armed with butcher knives, captured weapons and YouTube, whereas Iran could soon be armed with intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear bombs. We must always remember — I’ll say it one more time — the greatest dangers facing our world is the marriage of militant Islam with nuclear weapons. To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle, but lose the war. We can’t let that happen.

That is what Netanyahu said. Two terrorist entities, fighting each other for who will be the radical hegemon in the region. And the prime minister’s central point was that just because Iran and ISIS are fighting each other, and the U.S. is fighting ISIS, that does not mean that Iran is a friend to the U.S.

But here is what Al-Jazeera’s Rosalind Jordan asks the State Department’s Harf:

JORDAN: Did the Prime Minister mis-state the relationship between Iran and ISIL?

MS. HARF: I’m trying to remember how he stated it.

JORDAN: (Inaudible.)

JORDAN: He said that —

JORDAN: He basically suggested that they were working together.

Really? No, Netanyahu actually – not basically – said the exact opposite. He said Iran and ISIS were enemies, battling it out for top bad dog in the ‘hood. But Harf responded as if Jordan’s question accurately reflected Netanyahu’s statement:

MS. HARF: Well, I mean, I think that’s a gross oversimplification. Clearly, ISIL is a serious threat that we are taking on with direct military action. It is a terrorist organization. It is not a state. It is not a country. It has taken over a territory, and we’re working to push it back. Certainly, it poses a threat, but Iran’s destabilizing activities in places are a little bit different and require different tools. Even their support for terrorism with a group like Hizballah, Hizballah is different than ISIL. They’re just different groups, and you deal with them in different ways.

At the point in the briefing at which Jordan asked this question, Harf had already been speaking about the Israeli prime minister’s speech for at least ten minutes. So, either Harf had not watched the speech at all, but was just lecturing from talking points, or she had watched the speech but did not understand one of the most basic points Netanyahu made.

And no one else in the State Department briefing room pointed out how completely off-target either Jordan’s question was, or Harf’s response to it.  And those reporters are the ones informing the news consumers of this planet.

Can there be a greater indicator of accuracy for something to appear in the New York Times which supports a controversial position taken by Israel or her friends? Maybe, but it is hard to imagine one.

That is why a story in Saturday’s Times, brought to the attention of those who care by Middle East observer and journalist Jeff Dunetz, is so significant.

Qatar, the blindingly wealthy little country which owns its own (and we do mean own) global communications network, al Jazeera, is considered one of the main financial supporters of the terrorist organization Hamas. That is not news.

What is news is that Qatar also funds the Brookings Institution, and last year it agreed to bestow on Brookings a $14.8 million donation, to be paid out over four years. This wealthy Arab nation had already been generous with Brookings: Qatar helped fund a Brookings affiliate in its country (the Brookings Doha Center), as well as a project on U.S. relations with the Islamic World.

That is the same Brookings Institution at which President Obama’s Special Middle East Envoy, Martin Indyk, tasked with re-igniting the Palestinian Arab-Israeli peace talks, served as vice president and director of foreign policy. He held that position until he went to serve the administration in July of 2013, a position which he left in late June of this year.

Despite his resume (born to a Jewish family, U.S. Ambassador to Israel twice, a researcher for AIPAC at the beginning of his career) Indyk is considered by most strongly pro-Israel observers to be anti-Israel.

According to the Times article, there are quite a few former Brookings employees who caution readers of reports from the Institute that material which reflects poorly on Qatar may well be excised – or simply never written due to self-censorship – because it is understood at Brookings such positions are not acceptable.

“If a member of Congress is using the Brookings reports, they should be aware — they are not getting the full story,” said Saleem Ali, who served as a visiting fellow at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar and who said he had been told during his job interview that he could not take positions critical of the Qatari government in papers. “They may not be getting a false story, but they are not getting the full story.”

The New York Times article does not focus solely on Indyk, it deals more generally with financing of think tanks by foreign governments. There appears to be plenty of eyebrow-raising to go around.

The special investigation revealed that a little over a dozen U.S. think tanks have been the recipients of tens of millions of dollars from foreign governments. And, the Times claims, those think tanks have been “pushing United States government officials to adopt policies that often reflect the donors’ priorities.”

Ask anyone who cares strongly about Israel and watched last year’s efforts to kickstart the mercifully moribund “peace talks” between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs, and the Qatari moneyed Brookings Institution where Indyk hung his hat looms large.  Indyk’s role as a mediator between two parties, one of whom is at least largely funded by your very own sugar daddy, seems beyond the pale.

Not that Indyk could have been called a Zionist before Qatar’s money belt was cinched around his office building. As Dunetz wrote, “it’s difficult to discern which came first, the hatred or the cash.”

Naftali Bennett takes on and takes down Al Jazeera, and what a great job he did of it.

“Your owner, Qatar, funds the daily murder of children in Israel and Gaza.”

Journalists around the world are expressing outrage in the wake of an Egyptian court’s decision to sentence three Al Jazeera journalists to prison for seven years.

The three were taken from their hotel room in Cairo in December 2013 and charged with conspiring with the Muslim Brotherhood to tarnish Egypt’s international reputation. Australian ex-BBC reporter Peter Greste, Canadian-Egyptian ex-CNN journalist Mohamed Fahmy, and local Egyptian producer Baher Mohamed were among 20 accused in connection with the charges.

Al Jazeera has denied the accusations and journalists around the world have condemned Egypt for conducting what is seen as a direct campaign by Egypt’s new president to snuff out freedom of speech.

In the United States, the issue was also perceived as a diplomatic slap to the White House, which condemned the sentence. Secretary of State John Kerry phoned Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shukri to express his government’s “serious displeasure” over the matter.

The court decision had come just one day after Kerry’s unannounced visit to Cairo in which he announced that Washington had unfrozen billions of dollars in military aid to Egypt. He also vowed during his visit that the U.S. would deliver 10 Apache attack helicopters for use in the fight against terrorists in the Sinai Peninsula.

Newly-elected President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi refused to “interfere in the judicial verdict,” setting off an international firestorm.

“Egypt should review its unacceptable sentences against Egyptian and international journalists, and show commitment to freedom of the press,” said British Foreign Secretary William Hague, Al Jazeera reported.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott added that his government would work to get the imprisoned journalists out of the country “quickly.”

Leaders from various other international groups said that they, too, would work to free the journalists.