Hypocrisy at Muzzlewatch: AIPAC, PennBDS, and Mitchell Plitnick

Over at MuzzleWatch, Mitchell Plitnick is upset that AIPAC has taken back his press credentials, and will not give him media access at their Annual Policy Conference.

Now, AIPAC does not consult me about these things, so I don't know why his press credentials were either granted or revoked.  However, I would like to note that JVP, which produces MuzzleWatch, and of which Plitnick is a former co-director, did not protest or comment when, a month ago, the National BDS Conference at the University of Pennsylvania*, which JVP officially endorsed, revoked the press credentials of one local Jewish newspaper, the Jewish Exponent, and refused press access outright to the Philadelphia Jewish Voice.

MuzzleWatch's newfound concern about censorship rings hollow. They are happy to complain when AIPAC withholds press credentials, but the barring of the local Jewish press from a major anti-Israel conference (which JVP endorsed, did I mention that?) rates not even a yawn.

It's convenient to be the eternal victim over at MuzzleWatch, proudly wearing tape over your mouth for all to see. It's less convenient to hold all conferences to one standard, especially when one conference is being run by a group you want to please, and another by a group you despise. But that's the only way to avoid being rightly identified as a whiner and a hypocrite.

(I also hate to point this out, but AIPAC has had some trouble with JVP activists, which Plitnick certainly is, in the past. To the best of my knowledge, the Philadelphia Jewish Voice has no record of disrupting BDS conferences.)


*Please note an edit--this was formerly 'Pennsylvania State'. Thanks to a kind reader, the error has been corrected. I apologize profusely to Pennsylvania State University, and assure them that I did not mean any insult to Penn State students by suggesting that they would host an anti-Semitic conference like this on their fine campus.