Seattle blogger Richard Silverstein: Caught in a web of this own paranoia

Does anyone still take Seattle blogger Richard Silverstein seriously?

Ever indebted to the team at Israelycool  for their documentation of all the times Silversteins' been wrong, terribly wrong, laughably wrong,  simply wrong, and sincerely wrong.

From Israellycool:

With the media once again getting duped by anti-Israel blogger Richard Silverstein, and based on a number of requests by readers, I have compiled this list of links pointing to Silverstein’s:

• Unreliability, whether it be lies or lack of factchecking
• Defence of Hamas and palestinian terrorists, or otherwise explaining away their crimes
• Ignorance of Israel and Judaism, despite his claims of expertise
• Hypocrisy
• Possible crimes 
• Following by antisemites     

Via Israellycool: Richard Silverstein caught in Another Lie

In his latest rant, anti-Israel blogger Richard Silverstein posts about being ostracized at his synagogue for his political views. His diatribe includes the following conspiracy theory regarding the “leaking” of the news his son had an upcoming bar mitzvah.

Silverstein goes on to accuse various staff members of Seattle's  Congregation Beth Shalom of various improprieties and of violating his families privacy (though he had no qualms about violating their privacy on his blog.)

But as Israellycool points out,  it was Silverstein himself who leaked the news of his son's upcoming bar mitzvah and there are screenshots from his own timeline to prove it. Oops.

Will Silverstein rise to the occasion and apologize to those he has publicly slandered?  Not likely. Given his reputation, he'll dig his heels in even deeper and insist all along that he is the victim.


 UPDATE:Read the Mike Report's take on the recent events:

Seattle blogger Richard Silverstein is well known for his hatred of Israel and for flying loose and light with the facts. With the obsessive drive of a Captain Ahab and the energy of a toddler primed on Skittles and Coca Cola, Silverstein has sent out over 29,000 tweets and near countless Blog posts. Despite his tenuous relationship with accuracy, Silverstein appears to have a good number of followers and admirers who share his ideological bent.

Silverstein has doggedly pursued and excoriated countless unwary visitors who have crossed his radar or the transom of the comments section of his blog. Whether it be blaming Israel for motivating terrorist attacks against a Jewish family in India or vilifying a Gazan activist for being critical of Hamas, whatever red line there may have been, Richard crossed it long ago.

    And we have an apology from Silverstein.

Last night I published a post dealing with my relationship with my local synagogue, the local StandWithUs pro-Israel loyalists, and a Twitter user who used my son’s impending bar mitzvah to insult me.

I made an error believing that an employee of the synagogue leaked private information about the event to the Twitter user. After correcting and updating the information in the post , and adding an apology, I republished it. Though all the information in the republished post was accurate–on reconsideration, I realized that a significant portion of the post dealt with old history, some of which I’ve even already recounted here. What wasn’t old history, my discussion of the growing dysfunction and irrelevance of many American synagogues, can be saved for another post. Undoubtedly, there will come a time when this will be appropriate to republish. Until then, I thought it best to remove it and leave this explanation in its place.

I apologize of course to those I wrongfully blamed and to those who may be confused by this unusual situation.