In my recent post on The Nation’s censorship of Eric Alterman – who had dared to mention the LDB Research Paper that documents Max Blumenthal’s anti-Semitism – I noted that the decision to delete Alterman’s reference might be connected to the criticism Max Blumenthal and his fellow anti-Israel activist David Sheen were encountering from some leading left-wing German politicians during their current visit to Berlin. The events that have been unfolding in the meantime are worth highlighting, not only because Blumenthal’s and Sheen’s shockingly thuggish conduct is by now widely reported news in Germany, but also because it arguably illustrates what Mondoweiss founder Philip Weiss had in mind when he anticipated last spring that a victory for BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) activists was assured because “things are going to get much more belligerent.” Blumenthal and Sheen, who are often hosted by groups campaigning for BDS, have been in Berlin for the past few days. They were scheduled to speak at several events, including one at the Volksbühne theater on November 9 and another one hosted by some members of The Left (party) at the German parliament on November 11. Some of the scheduled events were also advertised, sponsored and promoted by the BDS organization in Berlin. However, Gregor Gysi, the leader of The Left, as well as several prominent left-wing politicians and other public figures, opposed giving Blumenthal and Sheen prestigious platforms like the Volksbühne and the German parliament for fear that they would repeat their usual anti-Semitic rhetoric demonzing Israel as the Nazi Germany of our time. As a result of these concerns, the Volksbühne event – which would have coincided with the anniversary of the Kristallnacht pogroms – was eventually cancelled and moved to a fringe venue after a protest in front of the theater. But while party leader Gysi had announced that the event at the German parliament would also be cancelled, the two party members who had invited Blumenthal and Sheen defied his decision and hosted them in a conference room available for the use of MPs. Before the event started, Blumenthal found it appropriate to post a photo of himself in front of the German parliament building with the caption: “The Bundestag is in our hands.” It soon turned out that this was not necessarily meant as a joke. After their presentation, Blumenthal and Sheen reportedly insisted on a meeting with party leader Gysi, and when this meeting was not granted, they apparently waited for Gysi in the hallway near his office, accosted him when he left to go to the bathroom and pursued him aggressively through the corridors until he managed to shut the door of the bathroom stall. Astonishingly, Blumenthal and Sheen felt their conduct was something to be proud of: they filmed their harassment of Gysi, posted the clip on YouTube and promoted it on Twitter, boasting about having forced him to seek shelter in the toilet – and unbelievably enough, they even demanded an apology from Gysi. As Ali Abuninah put it triumphantly in a post on these events at his Electronic Intifada blog: “Blumenthal and Sheen confronted Gysi … demanding to know why he had endorsed the smear campaign against them. In the end, they came out fighting and it is the German politician’s reputation that ended up in the toilet.” Given Abunimah’s support for Hamas, it probably wouldn’t change his opinion of Gysi if he knew that the German politician had marked the recent 10-year anniversary of Yassir Arafat’s death by posting a photo of himself paying his respects at the Palestinian leader’s grave, noting that he had met Arafat personally and believed he wanted to achieve a Palestinian state coexisting with Israel. Blumenthal for his part denounced Gysi on Twitter as an “anti-Palestinian Stasi-ist” and a “coward from the New Stasi” – alluding to repeated allegations that Gysi had collaborated with the former East German Ministry for State Security; he also retweeted insulting remarks about Gysi posted by his supportive fans; and even when the German media were already full of shocked reports about the incident, Blumenthal still continued to mock Gysi. In an apparent reaction to the media coverage, Blumenthal also pontificated on Twitter that Germany’s [media?] “culture is not yet ready for democracy,” dismissing his critics as “the children & grandchildren of Nazis.” Unsurprisingly, the German media reacted with shock and bewilderment. The popular Bild posted the blunt headline “Lunatic Israel-haters pursue Gysi into the loo” and featured several screen shots showing a clearly distressed Gysi – who, it should perhaps be noted in this context, survived brain surgery and a heart attack 10 years ago. Berlin’s B.Z. featured similar pictures under the headline “Political thugs [Polit-Pöbler] chase Gysi through the Bundestag [i.e. parliament building];” the magazine Focus headlined their story “Shocking incident: Enemies of Israel chase Gysi through Bundestag,” while Spiegel Online run the headline “Harrassed leader of The Left: Israel critics pursue Gysi into the loo.” The high-brow Zeit reported about “Gysi’s uninvited guests,” noting that Blumenthal and Sheen were “hostile” to Israel and had “aggressively” tried to confront Gysi. The headline in the respected Welt read: “Gregor Gysi flees from anti-Zionists to the toilet;” the report noted that the video of the incident showed “scary” and “grotesque” scenes reminiscent of a “hunt” or a “school mobbing.” The Welt article also mentioned that the MPs who hosted Blumenthal and Sheen already had a record of radical anti-Israel activism and that such attitudes had led to previous controversies about anti-Semitism in Gysi’s party. According to the Welt report, the party debated the incident on Tuesday evening and the MPs who hosted Blumenthal and Sheen apologized for the conduct of their guests. Other press reports noted that, while Gysi did not intend to initiate legal proceedings against Blumenthal and Sheen, the party rejected any further contact with them. At the time of this writing, it seems that Mondoweiss has not yet covered the story – though in view of the eager anticipation of a BDS “war” expressed a few months ago by Philip Weiss, one would have to assume that the site should welcome the massive media coverage Blumenthal and Sheen have generated for their cause. After all, Blumenthal and his fellow anti-Israel activists Sheen and Abunimah, as well as their many supporters who chimed in on Twitter, clearly feel that their conduct was entirely justified. This is perhaps hardly surprising considering that they are used to being indulged when they habitually react to dissent and criticism by attacking their opponents as far-right racists or Zionist fanatics and the like. One can hardly be more left than Gregor Gysi, but as the events in Berlin showed, Blumenthal and his ilk will still lash out in fury if they encounter criticism. For Blumenthal, the experience in Berlin must have been truly shocking: just a year ago, the prestigious New America Foundation insisted on ignoring his record and all warnings that it was inappropriate to host him, while the flagship publication of American progressives decided only last week that its “standards” require shielding Blumenthal from criticism even at the cost of publicly censoring a widely respected longtime columnist and well-regarded academic. Who can blame anti-Israel activists when they expect that anti-Semitism masquerading as anti-Zionism will be rewarded with applause wherever they go? *** Update: Bloomberg reports that Blumenthal and Sheen “are banned from entering the German parliament in the future, according to an e-mailed statement today by the chamber’s president, Norbert Lammert. ‘Every attempt to exert pressure on members of parliament, to physically threaten them and thus endanger the parliamentary process is intolerable and must be prevented,’ Lammert said, according to the statement.”