“I’m not insinuating that David is the only person that uses the Dov Gordon pen name, but as it pertains to politics, he is far and away the only person writing about inside baseball,” Stefanie Fedak, Greenfield’s former chief of staff, told the CityandStateNY website.

Greenfield laid off Fedak 18 months ago, and now Fedak is spilling the beans.

Greenfield confirmed Fedak’s version, according to a source close to the city councilman and who was quoted by CityandState.

However, an official statement from a spokesperson for Greenfield staged to the website, “Your story is a vicious lie being spread by an obsessed and disgruntled former staffer who was fired nearly two years ago. The Clintons have Vince Foster nuts, President Obama has his crazy birthers and Councilman Greenfield has lunatics who think he writes daily news columns while maintaining a very public 70-hour-a-week work schedule. All of these conspiracy theorists should be institutionalized.”

“Dov Gordon” is a frequent blogger for Yeshiva World News.

State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, far from a close friend of Greenfield, alleged that Yeshiva World’s coverage of him “mean-spirited” and “degrading.”

“You can criticize me; that’s not the issue, we can all be criticized at times,” Hikind said in an interview with the website’s Nick Powell. “This is way beyond that … this is someone with an agenda. … One of the most interesting things is, there’s one person who’s always very popular with Dov Gordon: David Greenfield.”

So who is Dov Gordon?

CityandState searched but did not come up with a final answer.

Powell wrote, “City & State searched public records for people named Dov Gordon, but was unable to identify anyone with that name who admitted to writing for Yeshiva World.

“A report by journalist Ross Barkan refers to a Dov Gordon as the spokesperson for an organization called Save Flatbush, which ran an ad in the Jewish newspaper Hamodia condemning the City Council’s proposed redistricting of south Brooklyn.

“The report, including an interview with this Dov Gordon, was posted on Barkan’s blog in February, two months after Pete Appel had speculated whether Greenfield might be Dov Gordon. City & State sent an email to Save Flatbush asking if the Dov Gordon that worked for the organization also wrote for Yeshiva World, but received no response.

“The Flatbush Jewish Journal also posted a letter to the editor from someone named Dov Gordon in late January. The letter criticizes unnamed elected officials for failing residents in a redistricting process that had allowed the community to be divided up.”

The word “bravery” is pranced around way too frequently these days, but a young Arab, in a country struggling to free itself from the yoke of tyranny – who defiantly promotes the causes of democracy, tolerance and peace between Arabs and Israelis deserves such recognition.

Liberal Egyptian blogger, human rights dissident, and peace advocate Maikel Nabil spent over 302 days in prison for criticizing the Egyptian Military after it took power in early 2011. Before he was released on Jan. 24, 2012 - after a “Free Maikel” Twitter campaign captured the support of millions worldwide, and after his 130-day hunger strike – Nabil was subjected to beatings, torture and other cruel forms of abuse.

I met Nabil, one of the genuine heroes of Tahir Square, briefly today in Jerusalem while he was on a peace tour of the Jewish state – where he’s delivering lectures, meeting with leading public figures and peace activists, and visiting the disputed territories – and it was clear while speaking to him that he’s as passionately patriotic towards Egypt as he is sincere in his benevolence towards both Palestinians and Israelis.

Nabil believes there is a much greater degree of goodwill on behalf of Egyptians towards Israelis than what the media is reporting, and it would be fair to characterize his trip to Israel and the territories (sponsored by UN Watch) as a genuine “peace mission” aimed at dispelling myths about both Egyptians and Israelis – all of which makes the disruption of his speech at Hebrew University yesterday, by “pro-Palestinian activists” almost inexplicable.

Israelis who advocate on behalf of Palestinians – either Arabs or Jews – should, it seems, be heartened by a genuine human rights activist who’s working to bring about a peaceful, democratic Middle East where the rights of all in the region are respected.

However, undeterred by such criticism, Nabil is remarkably optimistic.

Nabil believes that the Muslim Brotherhood-led government is indeed a step backwards for Egyptian democracy (and for Egyptian-Israeli relations), but he expressed confidence that the truly liberal values of the revolution will ultimately prevail.

“It might take 3 or 4 years”, he told me, but a democratic Egypt which respects the human rights of all its citizens, secular and religious, will, he fervently believes, eventually emerge.

In one blog post, written while he was in prison, Nabil reiterated his refusal to engage with the military’s interrogators, and – evoking the courageous resistance of Natan Sharansky during his imprisonment in the Soviet gulags vividly described in ‘Fear No Evil‘ – wrote “I don’t beg for my freedom from a group of killers and homeland-stealers.” He added:

The military council is the one that has to apologize for my imprisonment, my torture, silencing my mouth, spying on my life, my relatives and my friends,” he wrote. “The military council is the one that has to apologize [for] its crimes of killing, torturing and unlawful prosecutions.

Finally, I’d highly recommend reading Nabil’s blog post about Israel, also written while in an Egyptian prison, titled “Why am I pro-Israel“, which provides a fascinating insight into the mind of the truly liberal activist, and should offer a glimmer of hope even to the most cynical among us.

Visit CifWatch.

“I’m breaking a taboo coming to Israel, but I’m not the first Egyptian to do so,” said Maikel Nabil Sanad, a political activist and blogger who was jailed and tortured for 302 days for criticizing the Egyptian army post-Mubarak. He was pardoned by the Egyptian military in January 2012 following international pressure and efforts of several different human rights organizations including UN Watch.

During his first visit to Israel organized by the Geneva-based NGO, UN Watch, Maikel Sanad was warmly received by Hebrew University’s Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace on Sunday, December 23.

Described as a peace-building mission, Sanad’s visit to the Holy Land sparked a myriad responses.

Speaking to the Israeli and Arabic press in English and Arabic, before the open lecture to Hebrew University students, Sanad stated that he would like to see Israel exist in the Middle East but that Israel had to build initiatives and approach peace activists like himself.

“I would like to see Israel coexist in the Middle East,” said the self-described pro-Israel dissident who was the first political prisoner in post-revolution Egypt. “The majority of my people don’t want war with Israel.” But he was sharply critical of settlement building and Palestinian rights.

“It’s amazing to see that people like Sanad exist,” said Orit Sulitzean, the spokeswoman for Hebrew University to Tazpit News Agency. “There is a thirst and hunger among Israelis to learn more about our southern neighbor,” added Hebrew University Professor Eli Podch.

Others were significantly less happy. When Sanad spoke to the large audience at Hebrew University, and stated that in order for peace to take place in the Middle East, he believes that nationalism would have to end, a group of Israeli-Arab students shouted the speaker down. “Shame on you!” and “Don’t speak about Nasser” they yelled in English at Sanad and at the frustrated audience, who wanted to hear the Egyptian blogger speak.

During the talk, Sanad also offered his historical perspective on Egypt, and spoke about the Egyptian Jewish community, which numbered at 80,000 until 1954 following Egyptian nationalist, Gamal Abdel Nasser’s takeover. “Before Nasser’s coup d’etat, all religions in Egypt coexisted peacefully during the country’s 30 years of democracy from 1923-1952,” he emphasized.

Sanad belongs to the Egyptian Coptic community, also known as Copts, who are native Christians of Egypt and have been severely oppressed by the Egyptian government. The Copts face such obstacles as government restrictions on church building and hate crimes in the form of physical assaults and property destruction by Muslims, have forced many Copts to flee Egypt.

Today, Sanad lives in Germany where he is pursuing a master’s degree in public diplomacy. He says that he is an atheist who doesn’t believe in any religion.

“In Egypt, I am considered crazy for my beliefs,” Sanad said. The 27-year-old Egyptian is a conscientious objector and pacifist, who was recruited to serve in the Egyptian army for three years and refused. Sanad said he was exempted because of army examiners deemed him mentally unstable.

“Egyptian leadership’s belief that Israel is our eternal enemy says something about their mental stability,” pointed out Sanad.

“I’m here to say that I care about the future and that we should not have pay for the mistakes of our fathers and grandfathers,” said Sanad. “I am not and elected official and I don’t represent Egypt, but I am against an Islamic dictatorship under Morsi and I consider Hamas and Hezbullah terrorist organizations.”

An Associated Press reporter who interviewed Sanad right after he was released from jail in Egypt in January of this year, told Tazpit News Agency that Sanad “doesn’t represent the typical protestor of the Egyptian street.”

“People wonder why the Muslim Brotherhood is in power because people like Maikal Sanad stood out during the revolution,” she said. “Sanad, however, represents maybe less than one percent of Egypt. He and the other peace activists are educated, speak fluent English, and are photogenic. Foreign journalists could easily follow their Twitter posts and blogs. But by basing their information from Egyptian peace activists, many foreign journalists created this false impression that Egypt was heading towards peace and freedom.”

The AP reporter who lived in Egypt during the post-war revolution, said that reality on the ground was far different from the peace sentiments on Twitter. “Egypt is a mess today,” she concludes. “And the average Egyptian is in the same position today as he was before the revolution, maybe even worse.”