In this brief CIW Board Analysis, you will find some general bullet-points prepared by a think tank study group in January 2016, at the very inception of the smear campaign against Marc Gafni. This is an early document whose themes have been deeply elaborated in later writing. However it serves as an easy touchstone for some of the core issues.

There is an entire section on Marc Gafni’s personal website at MarcGafni.com as well as on this dedicated website WhoIsMarcGafni.com. Both websites expose, with extensive evidence the false claims of the 2015/16 smear campaign against Dr. Gafni. The WhoIsMarcGafni.com site also points to the memetic and moral structures at play which allow for smear campaigns to happen in current virtual culture.

You can also find a broader cultural conversation on the crucial underlying issues at a new site that the Center for Integral Wisdom has sponsored EvolvingPublicCulture.com.

  • The British Crown was a system in which there was little due process that could not be overridden by the Monarch. We fought a revolution to create an ironclad system of due process as an affirmation of core principles.
  • These principles include the irreducible dignity and even sanctity of the individual. That means careful fact checking of all sides, objective investigation and the like.
  • It also involves a deeper premise which is “innocent until proven guilty.” Jefferson wrote famously that it was better to let a thousand guilty men go than to wrongly indict an innocent man.
  • Even when there is no formal legal process, careful fact checking with speaking to all sides, checking objective documentation, and much more are part of how fair decisions are made.
  • Indicting can happen in the court of the Internet or in a formal legal court.
  • All of this was absent ten years ago when false accusations of sexual harassment were made against Marc Gafni in Israel, organized by two of the key figures, David Ingber and Chaya Lester, also active in catalyzing, directly or indirectly, the current smear campaign.
  • Slowly in the two following years (2006-2008) an enormous amount of objective evidence was gathered to support Marc’s assertions. The other side of the issue – those who initiated the accusations – did not allow for any forum to review the evidence or to challenge the truth of the accusations.
  • They also refused any and all overtures by Marc Gafni or his representatives to create a professionally facilitated healing forum that might create resolution. The accusers and their supporters – all linked socially – formed a wall of accusation which was impregnable even as they rejected and ridiculed any overture for fact checking, healing or resolution.
  • The ones who claimed to be victims might legitimately be challenged here. Were they victims or were they, as is well documented sometimes the case, really the perpetrators? It is clear, based on extensive evidence, that the latter is the case.
  • It appears based on the information available that the ostensible victims were actually – without any due process or any sense of fairness at all – acting as judge, jury, and executioner, acting deliberately to block any fact checking, truth telling, or healing.
  • The fact that the original claims of harassment were false is an egregious offense that has not yet been exposed.
  • It feels to us critical that we properly defend authentic victims of sexual predation. That is a sacred principle for our entire organization.
  • Part of doing so is to not confuse between genuine victims and perpetrators disguised as victims.
  • It is particularly suspect and a violation of core principle of ethics when accusations are made outside of one’s field of competence which by definition cannot be countered. For example accusations of sociopathic nature by people who have not done any sort of formal evaluation, is problematic at best and heinous at worst.
  • In the case of Marc Gafni four professional evaluations were done by five persons. All are highly credible professionals, most of whom have done many formal court appointed evaluations. Those evaluations are posted in the public domain.
  • When a person with possible hidden ulterior motives steps in, speaks to one side of a conflict and takes it as truth, despite the fact that none of these truths were established through any credible process, refuses to speak or inquire on the other side of the issues with countervailing perspectives, and then acts to attack persons that they have never even had a conversation with, all of that is, to major in understatement, grossly problematic. That is precisely what was done by Stephen Dinan. Stephen Dinan has been the lead organizer of the smear campaign, both directly and indirectly.
  • Particular if such person were to initiate a campaign aimed at destruction, attempting to initiate negative press to “destroy” a person without any appropriate process of cross checking such action would have to be seen as egregious.
  • It is also important to note that the public dissemination of these kind of accusations about fundamental being, fueled by hidden agendas, which are by their nature undefendable, are well understood as a particular form of what the early feminists termed social rape. The accusations are posted online. There is no recourse for self defense and they are seen daily by any and all new viewers so that the violation is recommitted daily.
  • It is also worth noting that CBT, cognitive behavior therapy, points towards some classical fallacies which are relevant to the kinds of false discernments that can be made in these types of situations. Three that we will state briefly would be negativity bias, catastrophizing, and most importantly wrong pattern analysis. The latter takes place when people say “there is a pattern” and use the claim of a pattern instead of carefully culled and clear evidence of any kind.
  • Sometimes there is a pattern but actually reading the pattern correctly is an entirely different story. For example in Marc’s case he has a life pattern of post-conventional relationships which clashed with some of the formal structures that he lived and worked inside. It took him many years to integrate his post-conventional vision with his personal and professional life. He has owned that in very clear and profound ways. To then turn that without evidence, (garnered from carefully speaking to both sides of the conflict, careful discernment of underlying motives, social collusion and reward etc.), into a pathological patterns is reckless and irresponsible at best. More likely, at least for the organizers it seems to be driven by malice and others of the more base of human motivations.
  • It is as problematic to protect bad guys who are abusive as it is to manufacture bad guys where there is no bad guy.
  • Barbara Marx Hubbard had made clear her own sense of being violated and disrespected in the process by Stephen Dinan. She has pointed to his underlying rage at her – triggered by what she called a Greek drama triangle – specifically by her enrolling Marc Gafni and the Center in projects that Stephen felt were owned by him (a claim that was wholly unknown to Marc and the Center). This rage has been shown by Barbara and other evidence to be a primary trigger in the smear campaign.
  • Sociopaths rarely apologize, take personal responsibility, and are known to their circle of colleagues as decent and kind. Marc fits all three of the above. He has posted an apology for this part in the events of a decade ago even though in very substantive ways he should fairly be considered to be the aggrieved party. The apology is posted in the public forum and is nuanced and detailed.
  • Marc, to this day, remains fully available for any genuine process of truth telling and healing.