Good news for Jews - we're taking over Britain

According to UK Channel 4, the "Israel Lobby" (AKA World Jewish conspiracy) is poised to take over Britain when and if the Conservative party comes to power, since an all powerful Jew conspiracy has permeated the corridors of British power. The next British monarch will be Ikey I, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain, and the Menorah will be printed on British bank notes. The Channel 4 documentary evidently has compiled a list of the Jew lovers in the Conservative party, preparing to subvert the innocent British people, about to pass legislation that forces pubs to serve Manischewitz wine and kosher snacks. It must be the influential Jewish conspiracy that is responsible for tacit recognition of Sharia law and other pro-Zionist moves of the Zionist Occupied British government. The same Jew lobby was no doubt responsible for the spate of British Boycott Israel initiatives. Them Jews will get you every time, right?

Or is the documentary evidence of a quite different trend in Britain? What do you think?

Ami Isseroff

Israel lobby 'big influence in UK'
The programme links Hague, left, and Cameron to the Conservative Friends of Israel [EPA]

A British documentary has alleged that any future Conservative government will be disproportionately influenced by a powerful pro-Israeli lobby in the country.

Channel 4's Dispatches programme on Monday said that at least half of the Conservative shadow cabinet are members of the Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI), one of a number of pro-Israel lobby organisations.

The prorgramme, entitled 'Inside Britain's Israel Lobby', said that such organisations make up "one of the most powerful and influential political lobbies in Britain", but that "little is known" about these groups and their associated individuals.

CFI members and their businesses are alleged to have donated more than $16.8m to the Conservative Party over the past eight years.

The alleged donations include tens of thousands of pounds to William Hague, after he was appointed shadow foreign secretary in 2005.

The documentary alleged that Lord Kalm, a CFI member and significant donor to the Conservatives, threatened to remove Hague's funding after he said that Israel had used "disproportionate" force during its war in Lebanon in 2006.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, is alleged to have promised not to repeat the conjecture.

'Transparent'

Stuart Polak, CFI's director, disputed the figures in the UK's Guardian newspaper.

"CFI as an organisation has donated only £30,000 [$50,000] since 2005. Each of these donations has been made transparently and publicly registered," he said.

"In addition to this £30,000, it is undoubtedly the case that some of our supporters have also chosen, separately, to donate to the party as individuals."

The Dispatches documentary also claims that Poju Zabludowicz, a Finnish billionaire and chairman of Bicom (the British Israel Communications and Research Centre), gave $25,000 and $84,000 donations to Cameron and the Conservative Central Office respectively.

Zabludowicz has a business interest in a shopping centre in Ma'aleh Adumim, an Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank deemed illegal under international law.

Bicom organises briefings on and trips to Israel for journalists. The CFI and the Labour Friends of Israel (LFI) group, which is described in the documentary as "less unquestioning in its support of the Israeli government than CFI", plays a similar role, accounting for 13 per cent of the total number of paid-for foreign trips for MPs and candidates.

'Openness needed'

Zabludowicz told The Jerusalem Post newspaper that the Dispatches programme "seems to have a predetermined agenda".

"Some people have suggested that the production team felt compelled to 'balance out' their two recent programs exposing the footprint of radical Islamism in the UK," he said.

"I come to this conclusion with a heavy heart, having been led [through] a not-so-merry dance over the past 10 days by the programme-makers.

"Bicom is an advocacy organisation. We work with journalists every day. It is in our DNA to put our side of the story forward and to be transparent."

While the programme said that the donations are legal, one of its makers, David Oborne, a political columnist for the British Daily Mail newspaper, said that more needs to be known about the Israeli lobby's workings and power.

"There is nothing resembling a conspiracy," he wrote in the Guardian.

"The pro-Israel lobby, in common with other lobbies, has every right to operate and indeed to flourish in Britain.

"But it needs to be far more open about how it is funded and what it does ... mainly because politics in a democracy ... should be out in the open for all to see."

In 2006, Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, two American academics, released a paper stating that Washington's support for Israel was predicated by a hugely powerful Israeli lobby in the US.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Will Tel-Aviv become an "illegal settlement"?

They are after Tel Aviv now. It was inevitable.

First they went after Jerusalem. UN resolutions "internationalized" Jerusalem. The "international" status of the city was ignored as long as Jordan illegally occupied the old city and east Jerusalem, but vigorous protests were issued when Israel conquered Jerusalem in the Six day war. Even the United States does not recognize any Jewish claims to Jerusalem, does not recognize any part of Jerusalem as part of Israel in violation of United States law, the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act. The US Consulate in Jerusalem insists that it is a mission to the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinians have long insisted that Jews had no historical connection with Jerusalem. The most recent statement to that effect was issued by the Muslim Chief Justice, Taysir Tamimi, denying Jewish historical rights in Jerusalem. He claimed it was never inhabited by Jews. The first temple is erased from history as well as the second temple, as well as the long habitation of Jews in Jerusalem prior to 1948, when Jerusalem was ethnically cleansed by the Jordan Legion.

The Arab and Muslim "narrative," given academic credentials by such people as Nadia Abu el-Hajj of Barnard University, is that Jerusalem was always an Arab city. Never mind the Menorah in the Arch of Titus. Never mind the description of the siege of Jerusalem by Josephus Flavius. Never mind the inscription from the time of Hezekiah, which describes the tunnel built to divert water from Shiloach during the siege - precisely as recorded in the Old Testament. The Palestinians have a different "narrative." The Beit al Maqdes (temple) was built by Suleiman the Muslim. Muhammad secured Jerusalem for the Muslims by flying to Jerusalem in one night on his horse (pretty good horse!) al-buraq, and tying it up at the Wailing wall, which ensures that the wailing wall is Muslim too. So much for "Zionist Myths. Jerusalem is Arab and "Arab East Jerusalem" now belongs to the Muslims.

But now they are going after Tel Aviv as well. According to the old "Zionist narrative," apparently incorrect, Tel Aviv was founded in 1909, originally to be called "Achuzt Bayit." It was built on empty land purchased from Arabs. But a film festival in Toronto celebrating Tel-Aviv's Centennial is being boycotted, on the grounds that Tel-Aviv was stolen from the Arabs! No doubt, soon it will be discovered that Muhammad visited Tel Aviv too, and tied his horse up in Dizengoff Center. Such luminaries as Jane Fonda are boycotting the film festival:

Jane Fonda, Danny Glover and Eve Ensler have joined the growing list of artists who are boycotting the Toronto film festival over a program honoring Tel Aviv's 100th anniversary, gossip blogger Perez Hilton reported on Friday.

The three have added their names to a letter aimed at festival officials claiming that Tel Aviv was built on violence, ignoring the "suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants," Hilton reported.

Well yes, there was a war here. We didn't start it. Remember? There were also a few wars between Germany and France. Alsace is also "built on violence, ignoring the 'suffering of thousands of former residents and descendants.'" What about "former residents" of Washington DC or for that matter Toronto? Or former Jewish residents of Cairo and Baghdad? Is that a reason to boycott these cities? Will Jane Fonda and her friends leave any corner of Israel that may be claimed by Jews as our birthright?

If Tel Aviv does not belong to the Jewish people by right, then surely Beersheba, an Arab town from 640 C.E. until 1948 is Arab by right, and Neve Gordon, the boycott advocate, should not be living and teaching there. Even the most obtuse boycotters can now understand that the boycott movement is not aimed at ending the occupation, but at ending Israel.

Ami Isseroff

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Continued (Permanent Link)

Saudi Prof: TV channel owners as bad as Zionists and Crusaders and should be executed. Islam casts fear...

TV channel owners who show the "wrong" materials are as bad as the Zionist enemy and the crusader Americans and therefore should be tried and executed, according to a Saudi professor.

The professor was frank about the nature of Islam in his view:

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: Islam itself casts fear...

Interviewer: No, it doesn't. Islam is a religion of tolerance and leniency, Sheik.

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: Allah says otherwise. Islam is lenient, but the infidel West trembles in fear of it. Allah has ordered us to prepare: "Prepare for them what force and steeds of war you can, to cast fear in the hearts of Allah's enemies and of your own." Our human nature may tell us that stoning is unacceptable, but this is a punishment decreed by Allah. If Allah decrees death – this is how it should be. If the Islamic scholars ruled that the punishment for drug dealers is death, this is how it should be.

I believe that [the TV channel owners] are more dangerous than all of these. Forget about whether or not they should be killed – we demand that they face trial in an Islamic court of law. I call upon the good, honorable businessmen to contribute their millions in order to hire lawyers to file Islamic lawsuits against these TV channels owners, and to persecute them legally. I call upon lawyers and good people in Saudi Arabia, in the Gulf states, in Egypt, in Yemen, and everywhere, to banish them from all Muslim countries.

The religion of fear...

Ami Isseroff

MEMRI August 8, 2009 Clip No. 2216

Saudi University Professor Yousuf Al-Ahmad: Al-Walid bin Talal and Other Owners of Saudi TV Channels Should Be Executed According to Islamic Law

Following are excerpts from an interview with Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad, a professor of Islamic law at Al-Imam University, Riyadh, which aired on Daleel TV on August 8, 2009.

Interviewer: A year ago, Sheik Saleh Al-Lahidan issued a fatwa that made all hell break loose. He demanded that owners [of liberal Arab TV channels be placed on trial] and repent. Do you support Sheik Al-Lahidan's demand?

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: I believe all Muslim scholars support him in this.

[...]

I believe that one of our problems is that we continue to bury our heads in the sand, and talk about "Lebanese" TV channels, as if we are being honest. Take LBC, for example. We all know who owns it. We should say to [the owner] Al-Walid bin Talal: Beware. The same is true of MBC TV, Al-Arabiya TV, the ART and Rotana channels – all these [Saudi] channels serve to destroy Islam and the Muslims.

[...]

Regarding these base channels that I have mentioned, and others like them – I have no doubt whatsoever that their danger to the Islamic nation is no less than that of the Zionist Jews, or of the Crusader Americans in Iraq and elsewhere.

Interviewer: What led you to such an extremist view? Note that you are equating channels owned by Muslims, by Saudi citizens, with the Jews.

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: I wasn't equating them. I said they are more dangerous. I was being precise. in my view, the deadly poison that they are spreading has reached the bone marrow.

[...]

The people who spread corruption in the land – whether highway robbers, drug dealers, or the owners of these TV channels, who are even more dangerous... These channels broadcast corruption and nudity. They are all people who spread corruption in the land, and they should be tried in an Islamic court of law and sentenced to death. This [fatwa] is clearly in accordance with Islamic law. There's no doubt about it.

Interviewer: The ferocity of this fatwa has cast fear in the hearts of...

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: ... of the hypocrites.

Interviewer: In everybody's hearts. Even in the West, it received much attention.

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: Islam itself casts fear...

Interviewer: No, it doesn't. Islam is a religion of tolerance and leniency, Sheik.

Sheik Yousuf Al-Ahmad: Allah says otherwise. Islam is lenient, but the infidel West trembles in fear of it. Allah has ordered us to prepare: "Prepare for them what force and steeds of war you can, to cast fear in the hearts of Allah's enemies and of your own." Our human nature may tell us that stoning is unacceptable, but this is a punishment decreed by Allah. If Allah decrees death – this is how it should be. If the Islamic scholars ruled that the punishment for drug dealers is death, this is how it should be.

I believe that [the TV channel owners] are more dangerous than all of these. Forget about whether or not they should be killed – we demand that they face trial in an Islamic court of law. I call upon the good, honorable businessmen to contribute their millions in order to hire lawyers to file Islamic lawsuits against these TV channels owners, and to persecute them legally. I call upon lawyers and good people in Saudi Arabia, in the Gulf states, in Egypt, in Yemen, and everywhere, to banish them from all Muslim countries.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Sweden revives blood libel against Israel

"Legitimate criticism" of Israel reached new lows of depravity in Sweden when Sweden's leading daily newspaper revived the medieval blood libel accusation against the IDF. in a sensational article titled ""Our sons plundered for their organs"(Swedish article is here: aftonbladet.se/kultur/article5652583.ab). Based on this accusation, "Anti-Zionist" Web sites and e-mail lists are hurrying to circulate the "news" that the IDF kills Palestinian Arabs in order to extract their organs for transplants.

The reporter, one Donald Bostrom, assembled a farrago of unrelated stories about illegal organ trafficking from Israel, including a story about the arrest of a New York Jew engaged in selling kidneys contrary to Israeli law. He used hearsay and rumor from Palestinians about the fate of relatives killed during the Intifada:

I was in the area and worked on a book when I several times was contacted by UN staff who were concerned about the development. Those who contacted me felt that body theft actually took place, but that they were unable to act. On behalf of a television company, I then went around and spoke to a large number of Palestinian families in the West Bank and Gaza....

"'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied. - Why did they keep the bodies up to five days before we can bury them? What happened to the bodies in the meantime? And why is the autopsy when the cause of death is obvious, and in all cases against our will? And why are the bodies returned at night?".

Evidently, the rumors spread due to ignorance of forensic autopsy procedures and Jew hate, encouraged by UN personnel. Bostrom described in detail the case of one Bilal Achmed Ghanian, 19, whose body was returned after autopsy after he was killed in 1992. It is probable, but unclear, that the victims were dead when they were evacuated. Of course, organs cannot be harvested from cadavers. Bostrom quoted an IDF denial and explanation that the autopsies were routine, but Bostrom implied that the denial is false:

The routine autopsy of killed Palestinians, as told by the army spokesman is not true in reality in the Occupied Territories. .

The use of rumor and hearsay, and more especially the unrelated material about illegal organ traffic, make it clear that Bostrom set out to intentionally libel Israel and the Jewish people. The Israeli ambassador lodged a strong protest, but this can hardly be a deterrent to people like Bostrom. If a similar report about Muslims had been published in a Scandinavian journal, wouldn't there be violent world wide demonstrations as there were after the Danish Muhammad cartoons?

Swedish Jews claim Bostrom is a known anti-Semite and AftonBladet has published similar articles. The Swedish Embassy in Israel has apologized, but a culture editor of Aftonbladet told Haaretz that the publication stands by the story and insists on an "international investigation" of the alleged nefarious Jewish activities.

The libel of organ stealing is not new and may have originated with Yasser Arafat himself. According to a 2002 Honest Reporting article:

the Islamic Association for Palestine reported that Yasser Arafat "has accused the Israeli apartheid regime of murdering Palestinian children and youths and extricating their vital organs for organ transplants."

It is one thing when racist Palestinian leaders make accusations of Jewish blood libel, but quite another phenomenon and much more ominous when they appear in a respected northern European "Nordic" country journal. It seems that there are no longer any real limits to what may be published under the guise of supposedly "legitimate criticism of Israel." A competing Swedish newspaper has published a horrified editorial.The liberal Sydsvenskan - southern Sweden's major daily ran an opinion piece of Mats Skogkär called "Antisemitbladet" (a play on the name Aftonbladet):

"We have heard the story before, in one form or the other. It follows the traditional pattern of conspiracy theory: a great number of loose threads that the theorist tempts the reader to tie into a neat knot without having been provided with any proven connection whatsoever..."

"Whispers in the dark. Anonymous sources. Rumors. That is all it takes. After all we all know what they [the Jews] are like, don't we: inhuman, hardened. Capable of anything," the opinion piece says. "Now all that remains is the defense, equally predictable: 'Anti-Semitism' No, no, just criticism of Israel."

The tale is not told in a cultural vacuum of course. The stories of Bilal Achmed Ghanian and the others are backed by a rich European tradition of "legitimate criticism" of Jews. They have joined the European pantheon of fraudulent blood libel martys, which includes numerous "saints" revered by the Catholic church for many years, such as Saint Andreas of Rinn , Saint Simon of Trent, and Saint Hugh of Lincoln. Aftonbladet has carried on in a more modern tradition of Nordic journalism, illustrated by the following twentieth century cartoon from the Westdeutchen Beobachter, also considered "legitimate criticism" by its defenders:

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

IDF Investigation Refutes the Testimonies About Gaza Killings.

IDF Investigation Refutes the Testimonies About Gaza Killings.

Maariv in (Hebrew)

22.3.09

[Complete translation by Israel News ]

Today, Sunday, an IDF officer whose troops fought in Gaza will present the conclusions of his personal investigation in the wake of testimony of soldiers in his brigade about incidents of killing of Palestinian civilians during Operation Cast Lead. The investigation reveals that in at least two of the incidents mentioned in the testimony, which raised a storm of public controversy, no Palestinian women were killed as had been claimed.

Two central incidents that were brought to light in the testimony, which Danny Zamir, the head of the Rabin pre-military academy presented to Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi, focus on one infantry brigade. Today the brigade's commander will present the findings of his personal investigation about the matter which he undertook in the last few day to Brigadier General Eyal Eisenberg, commander of the Gaza division,, and after approval, he will present his findings to the head of the Southern Command, Major General Yoav Gallant.

Light Finger on the trigger

Regarding the incident in which it was claimed that a sniper fired at a Palestinian woman and her two daughters, the brigade commander's investigation cites the sniper: "I saw the woman and her daughters and I shot warning shots. The section commander came up to the roof and shouted at me, ?Why did you shoot at them.' I explained that I did not shoot at them, but I fired warning shots."

Officers from the brigade suspect that fighters who remained in the lower story of the Palestinian house thought that he hit the the women, and from there the rumor that a sniper killed a mother and her two daughters spread.

Regarding the second incident, in which it was claimed that soldiers went up to the roof to entertain themselves with firing and killed an elderly Palestinian woman, the brigade commander investigation found that there was no such incident.

According to one of the officers, "The number of terrorists killed and the extent of arrests in "Operation Cast Lead" varied from brigade to brigade because the troops fought in different areas, and as part of the tradition there is always competition to show that your brigade is more combat ready. Nonetheless, the official evaluation has not yet begun and among field commanders there is a fear that troops will bring to light additional incidents that took place during the fighting.

An officer of an elite unit that fought deep in Palestinian territory in Operation Cast Lead told NRG Maariv, "There was a light trigger finger during operation Cast Lead without a doubt, and non-combatant ("uninvolved") civilians were killed without doubt. But there was no deliberate harm done to innocent civilians. I am fully convinced that there was no soldier who shot for no reason out of a desire for revenge. I don't know of any such cases.

Continued (Permanent Link)

About "Bullets in box" - letter to Ethan Bronner

Mr. Ethan Bronner

c/o  N.Y. Times

620 Eighth Avenue

New York, N.Y. 10018

                                                       

                                                In re: "The Bullets in My Box,"  January 25, 2009

 

 

 

 

 

Dear Mr. Bronner,

 

Forgive me if this letter is not quite coherent. I'm still weeping over your sad plight. You want to be a good journalist by reporting "in a way both sides can accept as fair" and everyone is picking on you. No one's happy. What's a reporter to do? To paraphrase Herr Eichman, you are just doing your job, following your conscience. We all know (we all should know) that there is no such thing as absolute truth. There are only different perspectives, competing narratives. Had you been working for the Times during World War II, you would surely have been the one courageous enough to show the Nazi side (After all, there's always another side to the story): how traitorous Jews betrayed Germany's war effort causing it to lose World War I; how plutocratic Jews undermined the German economy; how Communist Jews were trying to take away the profits of hard-working German citizens; how degenerate Jews were leading to the general decline of culture and morality; how even American auto magnate, Henry Ford, and the inspirational Catholic priest, Father Coughlin, subscribed to Nazi views on the Jewish menace.  And, as the advertisers say, there's much, much more. Indeed, a very good case could be made for Hitler's cause. Morality is in the eye of the beholder. If you put a pound of gold on one side of the scales and a pound of baloney on the other, the scales will balance. A pound is a pound no matter what it's made of. If it balances, it's fair. No? A good journalist understands that everyone has his own truth. His job is to keep things even.

 

That is why you can write that "Among Israel's Jews . . .  Zionism . . . is bathed in a celestial glow," even though you know that there is an active peace movement in Israel for whom the word "Zionism" has become radically tainted. Israel's insular arrogance must be emphasized in order to balance your statement that "Zionism stands for theft, oppression, [and] racist exclusionism" throughout the Middle East. Jews may be well-meaning, but they're blind. Arabs may be overly hostile, but they have good reason to be. Each side overstates his case. What's not a good idea is to mention that while there are over a million Arab Muslims living as citizens in Israel, no Jew is allowed to live in Jordan or Saudi Arabia (although Jews once had a flourishing population in the Arabian Peninsula). Forget also that close to a million Jews were unceremoniously kicked out of practically every other Muslim state. And that even though the Arab world is, for all intents and purposes, Judenrein, somehow, it's Israel that's apartheid. But there are no villains, just a "cycle of violence" that goes on and on.

 

Because everyone's at fault in the "Greek Tragedy" that is the Middle East "crisis," it is important to blame both sides for the failure to bring about peace. Thus you write that "an understanding crystallized over a decade ago over the outline of an eventual solution," but you do not mention that the PLO never changed the clause in its charter that refused to accept the existence of a Jewish state, although acceptance was a core requirement of that understanding. Better to write that "the two sides' narratives have actually hardened." For it would certainly be hitting below the belt to call attention to the ways in which Arafat's P.A. broke all of its agreements within a day of the arrangement with vicious attacks and educational propaganda essentially erasing Israel from the map. And it would be snide for someone to point out that Israel "actually" softened her stance by choosing to ignore Palestinian violations. Even more troubling would be to mention that in 2000 and in 2001 Israel offered deals that "actually" sweetened the Oslo accords and that Arafat turned them down unequivocally (never pondered them, argued them, or came back with an alternative). Instead his response was the second Intifada--suicide bombings--the murder of school children in pizza parlors and buses, the murder of celebrants during a Passover Seder. So, the  P.A. has a terrorist wing. So, Israel has settlers. The Arabs make terror! The Jews make concessions! If you want to do business you have to have bargaining chips. Only the Mafia would recognize this deal as a form of extortion called "the protection racket." Besides, both sides accepted the agreement--didn't they? Both are responsible for its failure--aren't they? If Arafat was a bad guy, so was Ariel Sharon.

 

 

And if the "bad guys" are on both sides of the fence, there can be no aggressor, no defender. There can be no deterrence, only retaliation (a dirty word). Thus you can write that "opponents of Israel" believe her to be "a kind of Sparta that dehumanizes the Palestinians" as an excuse for her use of  "overwhelming force," but it would be tacky to even hint that overwhelming force (a dirty phrase) is the only way Israel has of stopping Hamas rockets. Because that would suggest that Israel's "excuse" for using overwhelming force might not be an excuse. And it would be just as tacky to suggest that Israel could, with minimal risk to her army, have carpet bombed Gaza and Hamas (as well as most Palestinians) would have been obliterated. But that would suggest that Israel's restraint showed she was interested in deterrence not retaliation (You know, that Jewish thing, an eye for an eye?). Nor is it in the best of taste to remind folks how Israel tolerated eight years of weapon smuggling and rocket attacks of an ever-increasing range on her innocent civilians--nursery schools and kindergartens; or that her civilian losses have been low because she has gone to the trouble and expense (cheated?) of building bomb shelters and early warning systems; or that the trauma for Israeli children undergoing years of close calls is comparable to the P.T.D.S of adult war veterans.  True! True! But, if a reporter has any decency at all, as you so obviously do, he must consider that the casualty count for operation Cast Lead was so lopsided, it would hardly be cricket to say anything that allows Israel to claim existential necessity. And, as an unfortunate corollary, gives the Palestinians the burden of responsibility.

 

In the same way (For obvious reasons Palestinians always seem to be getting the worst of things) it's perfectly legitimate to quote those who say that Israelis put "racist graffiti" on walls (I'd be curious to know how prevalent such graffiti are, or if the statement is even true). But it would be racist to bring out the fact that there has never been a national celebration of Palestinian deaths in Israel, whereas thousands turned out on the streets of Gaza and the West Bank to cheer and pass out candy whenever Jews were murdered in horrific explosions by devices filled with nails and poisons or, more recently, when eight Yeshiva students were shot in cold blood as they were studying torah. And it would certainly smack of bigotry to condemn the feisty Gazans who poured into the streets to mock in effigy a captured Israeli soldier who is being kept, against all international standards, incognito with never a single visit by the Red Cross. The barbaric pleasure Palestinians get from reveling in Jewish misery and Jewish blood must be downplayed, rationalized and justified lest charges of Islamophobia be brought to bear. That is why news of the omnipresence of anti-Semitic graffiti on Palestinian walls must be suppressed along with the broadcasts of anti-Semitic libels on Palestinian TV where even kiddie shows watched by three year olds feature a rabbit named Assud who kills and eats Jews. The scales must not tip. Palestinians must look at least as good as Jews. Better! Because to look at Palestinian blood lust squarely would be too appalling. True, anti-Semitism is a kind of entitlement for the poor, down-trodden Arabs, but it's wiser not to hit people over the head with it.

 

In this eternal war without cause, no reporter worth his salt would charge either side with evil intent. Palestinians may seem a little over-ardent in their struggle against "occupation," but then Israel is only too ready to demonize them in order to justify her "assault" (as one news report put it) on women and children. And you can write about "those who saw in this war an affirmation of their [Israeli's] beliefs--that Hamas . . . hides its fighters behind women and children," even though you know that this charge is not merely a belief but a fact corroborated by eye-witnesses and video tape; even though, in fact, Palestinians speaking among themselves on their own TV stations brag about their citizens' willing martyrdom and the delight it gives them; even though it is a well-known fact that Palestinians have, for years, been putting their families, their children, in harm's way as a PR gambit. But it is standard media fare that when Palestinians kill they are Hamas and when they get killed they are "innocent civilians." We mustn't blame the victim. Yes, Israel has every right to defend herself, but not to violate the rules of war. How an army can defend itself without returning enemy fire is not a question reporters need answer. Point-of-view determines fact.

 

That is why you can write that "one side says . . . the Jewish nation has returned to its rightful home" and the other side says "there is no Jewish nation," as if every argument were a simple matter of narrative disjunction. Although you know (you must know) that, despite Palestinian efforts to "prove" that there was never a Jewish nation in the Middle East, every archeological study, every legitimate history (including Muslim ones) documents the opposite. And you also know (you must know) that there is not and has never been a Palestinian state because the people who call themselves Palestinians have said to Israel "No negotiations. No recognition. No Peace." And you know (you must know) that before 1948 Palestine was a geo-political territory designated as such since 135 C.E., and that Palestinians were considered Jews (even by most Arabs) until the creation of the state of Israel; and that a unit called The Palestinian Brigade, comprised entirely of Jews, fought along side the British in World War I. And you know (you must know) that those who now call themselves Palestinians have never worked to build a state in the territories they lay claim to by creating viable institutions through government, commerce, and the arts or even by setting forth reasonable boundaries. Instead they turned the lushly developed area where Israel gave them total autonomy into a vast warren of weapons caches, a launching pad for deadlier and deadlier aerial attacks.  Why? Because they've based their nationhood on one overarching principle: the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people. No Jew may have a sovereign state in Arab/Muslim territory. No Jew may triumph over a Muslim. It says so in the Koran: "He made you masters of their [the Jewish tribe of Khayber]  lands, their houses, and their goods," Sura 33:23. Jews cannot be winners. (It would be too humiliating.) As one who's written about the Middle East for years, you have to know this because it's plainly stated in the charters of both Hamas and the PLO.

 

But admitting that "occupation" in the Palestinian lexicon means that Israel and the Jews must be wiped off the face of the earth would be to stack the deck against a proud and ancient people whose language, culture, and religion just happen to have originated in the Arabian Peninsula. You might have to acknowledge that the real Palestinians (Philistines) were a sea people from the European continent, invaders who disappeared some 2500 years ago, absorbed into the dominant population who happened to be (Hmm!) Jewish. Well, if there's no Palestine, only disputed territory; no Palestinian ethnicity, only one sample of Arab particularity, of what does the vaunted Palestinian identity consist? Is it a hoax? Could it be that it is made entirely of lies, hatred, bigotry and self-pity? Is this the glue that holds Palestinians together? Dear me, no. Such an ugly characterization must not be promulgated. That would be--mean-spirited

 

The Palestinians are too abject. The Israelis too successful. "Envy," "intolerance," they're only a "story line," a construct of the pro-Jewish lobby that has nothing to do with reality. Thus it is imperative that you write that "the other side tells a different story . . .;" that you repeat the canard that the Israeli Jews are colonialists who "stole and pillaged, throwing hundreds of thousands off their lands," that Israel was "born in sin" (an Israeli formulation, by the way); even though you know that Jews bought every inch of land they had, land which Arabs were happy to sell at exorbitant prices, until five Arab nations declared war on them.. You also know, I'm sure you do, that if any ethnic cleansing went on, it was done by Arabs whose pogroms pushed the Jews completely out of areas like Hebron where Jews had resided since biblical times. And this was before there was ever a Jewish State. You must also know, I'm sure, that since the middle of the 19^th century, Jerusalem was a predominately Jewish city until Jordan purged East Jerusalem of its Jews after the '48 war. Are you lying? Heaven forbid. Unless there's such a thing as the lie of omission. You're just telling what you've heard. What you choose to hear.

 

As you say, everything depends on who is telling the story. What does it matter if one side strains toward peace and the other is full of murderous violence? If the Israelis are always apologizing, they must be guilty of something. If the Palestinians are always defiant, they are obviously being oppressed. The Israelis have their tanks. The Palestinians their suffering. No back story is necessary. As long as balance is maintained, the reporter has fulfilled his obligations. A reporter cannot lie if he is quoting each side accurately. He is being objective. He is performing a great public service. No one's self-perception should be denied or discounted, even if it is false or falsely acquired. If one side looks bad (or good), the true reporter must make the other side look the same. No favoritism--for heaven's sake. Taking sides is for the Op-Ed pages. Everyone sees himself as victim anyways.

 

Truth, as you so diligently have reminded us, depends upon the light in which it's shown. Of course, it is the reporter's task to shed that light. Ultimately (the media's dirty little secret), it is the reporter who tells the story. That is why certain uncomfortable glitches must be smoothed out, covered over, or ignored like the emperor's new clothes. And that is why certain uncomfortable stories like the Mohammad Al-Dura hoax gets not one word of press from the New York Times. Again, I'm sure that you must have some knowledge of this affair which is prominent on the internet. It concerns a cynical fraud perpetrated by Palestinians that was instrumental in the death of thousands of people, including that of reporter Daniel Pearl and, if given appropriate attention by the mainstream media, might inspire more than a few pundits to call into question every explanation, every justification, every claim Palestinians make for themselves.

 

But righteousness (self-righteousness) must never give way to moral fatigue. Fair play demands that other side be given its due, especially when the "other" comes from an exotic culture that the reporter can never really comprehend. He must struggle against his "natural" biases in order to equalize the scales. He must neutralize (neuter?) the issues so that no one side can stake a claim to the moral high ground. He must make blanket pronouncements and all-purpose generalizations so that only noble ends are weighed, never despicable means, especially if those means belong to the underdog. Above all, justice, as well as his journalistic honor, demands that he work the text and shape the context, so that his piece will conform to some abstract model of public virtue. Thus the underdog (as he is perceived) must be raised up and the lucky dog (as he is perceived) must be put down. Deficiencies on one side need to be made up by subtractions on the other (besides, the pornography of violence sells). And, since the Palestinians are the needier, they are the ones who merit the handicap. If they come out slightly ahead, it's only because the Jews tend to win the battles (if not the war).  And when Jews are winners the reporter, especially if he himself is Jewish, must, often as not, look the other way. But then again, just as an Ahmedinejad can make homosexuals disappear by saying "There are no homosexuals in Iran," a reporter, particularly one working for as prestigious a vehicle as the New York Times, can always say, "If we don't print it, it doesn't exist." 
           

                                             Yours,

 

 

                                               Mitzi Alvin

Continued (Permanent Link)

Israelis abroad make excuses

Roi Ben Yehuda is an Israeli, or ex-Israeli, who lives in Spain and writes frequently for Ha'aretz. He previously (see 'Epiphany in a Spanish neo-Nazi bookstore,' Haaretz June 15, 2008) alleged that a Neo-Nazi Book shop is selling anti-Semitic materials in Barcelona. He further alleged that "just about everywhere he looked" he saw swastikas and anti-Nazi graffit. These claims were made by no-one else to my knowledge. They made Barcelona sound like a description of Berlin in 1932. This assertion could not be verified by a friend living in Spain. She notes that the sale of such materials is forbidden by Spanish law and that she did not see much graffiti in or posters of the type described in Barcelona. Perhaps others can enlighten us. Roi's story about Nazi bookstores and graffiti in Spain is therefore dubious, to say the least.

Roi's latest article tells us that many people, including apparently himself, believe that you can be an Israeli living in Spain or the United States or some other country. (See "Why Jews can have more than one home," Haaretz August 26, 2008). As Roi notes, there are as many as 600,000 such "Israelis" living in the United States.

This concept of "Israeli Lite" is shared by many Israelis living abroad. But the truth is that most people can have only one home and are not happy with split identities. You can be an Israeli with Spanish or American citizenship or an American with ties to Israel, but you cannot really be both an American and an Israeli at the same time.

If you live and work in the United States or Spain, your children will learn Spanish or English, and not Hebrew, and they will be Spanish or American. It is not likely they will be Israeli. Sooner or later, they or their children or their grandchildren are going to decide they are not Israelis. Roi is going to find himself less and less Israeli the longer he lives in Spain.

Everyone must make their own choices, but I am fascinated by the phenomenon of Jews who insist on living in various European countries: Spain, Poland, Germany, and also insist on complaining about anti-Semitism in those countries. All those countries have a history of anti-Semitism of course. If you live in France, expect good wine. If you live in Spain or Poland, expect the characteristic specialties of those countries.

In my view, living in Spain and complaining about anti-Semitism is like eating ripe Camembert and complaining about the taste. Often, these claims are clearly exaggerated, as happened in a hoax letter circulated about French anti-Semitism. Is anti-Semitic persecution a part of the "Jewishness" of these folks?

Roi is entitled to his opinion. The question is, why Ha'aretz wants to publish it.

More interesting is the question of why Sara Miller of Ha'aretz, as well as Roi Ben Yehuda himself sent me letters trying to tell me what I can and cannot write about Roi Ben Yehuda and claiming that what I wrote was 'libelous.' Of course, Ha'aretz would be justifiably upset if someone tried to censor them. What I wrote can scarcely be libelous unless there is indeed a major Nazi revival in Barcelona, which no other journalist has reported. Nor did anyone else report that everywhere they looked in Barcelona there are Swastikas. And if it is "libelous," what are we to make of the writings of Gideon Levi, Amira Hass and Yitzhak Laor about Israelis and Zionists? Is Ha'aretz prepared to guarantee that every accusation they make is absolutely grounded in fact and provable in a court of law?

As I have no desire for legal problems with Ha'aretz, the article is duly altered, but the message is the same.
Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Media Watch International: some background

Here are some notes on Media Watch International, a pro-Israel advocacy group that has been mentioned in media reports about Prime Minister Olmert's finances.

Israel police on July 9 questioned Sharon Tzur, executive director of the New York-based group. Investigators reportedly asked Tzur about her connection to Morris Talansky, who had told police that Tzur was present on at least one occasion when Olmert received an envelope containing thousands of dollars. Media articles have described Tzur as an Olmert confidante and former Likud activist, and as "the mastermind behind HonestReporting.com."

In May, the newspaper Haaretz reported that in 2005 Tzur and Media Watch International paid a $2,200 bill for Olmert and his wife, Aliza, at the Peninsula hotel in New York City. According to the newspaper, Tzur said Olmert, who was then a cabinet minister, took part in eight meetings on behalf of her organization.

According to the group's website, "Tzur founded Media Watch International to counter the growing media bias in coverage of the Middle East. She oversaw the runaway success of Honestreporting.com, until it reached over 50,000 activists and became an independent organization."

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency quoted Tzur in 2001 as explaining that Aish HaTorah helped create Media Watch International: "In December [2000], the Jerusalem Fund of Aish HaTorah, an Orthodox group focused on outreach to secular Jews, provided close to $150,000 in seed money to create Media Watch International for a dual purpose: to absorb HonestReporting and continue with its activism and media watchdog work, and to educate the media with position papers, Tzur said." HonestReporting began as a project of Jewish university students in London after the Second Intifada broke out in late September 2000.

On its U.S. tax return, Media Watch International states that its primary purpose is to "monitor, review and evaluate the accuracy, quality and fairness of media coverage regarding the Middle East."

In 2006, the most recent period for which its tax return is available, Media Watch International reported it received tax-exempt gifts of $496,468 and spent $522,566. The outlays included $111,430 in salary and pension benefits for Tzur, who is listed as the organization's president. Its assets at the end of 2006 were $29,100 in cash, according to the tax return.

According to the tax return, the group's corporate name is "Media Caravan Inc. D/B/A Media Watch International."

The Media Watch International website states that its flagship program is Caravan for Democracy, which "fosters pro-Israel sentiment about Israel and the Middle East on colleges throughout the United States."

Media Watch International's website lists four other key people in addition to Tzur:

* Laura B. Newmark, manager of programs

* Lenny Ben-David, consultant and writer. A former deputy chief of mission at the Israel embassy in Washington, Ben-David is an independent consultant and publishes a blog at http://lennybendavid.com/

* Ronn Torossian, communications and marketing consultant. Owner of a New York public-relations business with a Los Angeles office, Torossian publishes a blog at http://ronntorossian.com.

* "Our ghost writer," described as a New York native who lives in Israel.

How does Media Watch International compare to other pro-Israel organizations engaged in public affairs and media monitoring? Here are some highlights from tax returns for 2006:

The Israel Project, Washington, D.C.
Purpose: "The purpose of the Israel Project is to help protect the existence of Israel and the Jewish people and to combat anti-Semitism by educating the public in the US and in other countries about Israel and situation in the Middle East, and by educating opinion leaders and the media to the same effect."
Total revenue: $6,088,157
Officers' salaries and benefits:
$200,000 - Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi
Net assets: $2,808,608

Zionist Organization of America, New York City
Purpose: "Public affairs -- to create public awareness in communities around the country about the happenings affecting the Jewish people. Zionist education -- to educate the public concerning the values of Zionism."
Total revenue:
$4,199,958
Officers' salaries and benefits:
$279,346 - Morton Klein, president
$170,144 - Meir Jolovitz, executive director
$48,000 - Sheldon Fliegelman, executive director
Net assets: $11,315,771

Middle East Media and Research Institute, Inc. (MEMRI) Washington, D.C.
Purpose: "to serve as a clearinghouse for information regarding news and other cultural media in and on the subject of the Middle East"
Total revenue: $4,078,038
Officers' salaries and benefits:
$87,268 - Steven Stalinsky, executive director
$62,314 - Yigal Carmon, president (20 hours per week)
Net assets: $1,551,622

Committee on Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, Inc., Boston, Mass. (CAMERA)
Purpose: "To provide the educational services necessary to give members and the general public the ability to evaluate Middle Eastern reporting"
Total revenue: $2,559,469
Officers' salaries and benefits:
$174,368 - Andrea Levin, president
$115,707 - Alex Safian, associate director
Net assets: $4,169,269

HonestReporting.com, Inc., New York City (Middle East Media Watch, Skokie, Ill.)
Purpose: "To monitor and promote objective reporting by the media of events emanating from the Middle East in connection with the Israeli-Arab conflict."
Total revenue: $1,146,018
Officers' salaries and benefits:
None.
Net assets: $230,626
NOTE: HonestReporting.com, Inc., reported a total U.S. payroll of only $20,880. It listed as key officers [Rabbi] Ephraim Shore, Beitar, Israel, president; Joe Hyams, Beit Shemesh, international director; [Rabbi] Shraga Simmons, Kiryat Sefer, Israel, secretary; and Michael Weinstein, Jerusalem, treasurer. Its largest expense item was a $414,476 payment to HonestReporting Israel.

--Joseph M. Hochstein, Tel Aviv

Continued (Permanent Link)

British media bias: Israel at 60

British media bias: Israel at 60


Following is a summary of the main points of this important analysis (Israel at 60 in the UK media – an analysis). Not surprisingly, it shows that BBC and journals such as the Guardian and Independent were consistently biased against Israel, and included gratuitous conclusions that indicate an active anti- Israel slant rather than opinions based on fact: Israel doesn't want peace, Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians... This is a good study, but we always want more. We would like to see (wouldn't we?):

1. An analysis of television broadcasts. Television and radio are more difficult to analyze for many reasons - images and tone are hard to quantify.

2. A comparison of the coverage of Israel at 60 to the coverage of Israel at 50. Is anti-Israel bias getting worse or is it receding?

3. A tabulation of specific factual errors and omissions in op-ed articles. Opinion pieces are "allowed" to get the facts wrong. When they are always wrong in a specific direction they point to bias.

4. Did accounts of 1948 mention that it was the Arabs that attacked Israel?

5. How much of this British coverage included criticism of Britain's own role in creating the conflict, in reneging on its role as the British mandatory, and in attempting itself to ignore or violate
UN Resolution 181, which called for partition? A mass of evidence indicates that the British wanted to ensure that the Negev would be part of Jordan. British failed to cooperate with UN officials and allowed Arab infiltrators to enter Palestine. It would be interesting to find out if any of this was mentioned in British commentary.

Ami Isseroff

Israel at 60 in the UK media – an analysis

http://www.justjournalism.com/plugins/p1999_media_special_articles/pdf/1504_Israel60Booklet_05.pdf


Just Journalism

contact@justjournalism.com

INTRODUCTION

In May 2008, Israel celebrated 60 years of independence since its inception in 1948. Just Journalism carried out a thematic and statistical analysis of coverage of this event in the UK media, during April and May 2008.

Scope of coverage

Our monitoring covered nine national daily newspapers, eight Sunday newspapers, one London daily and three weekly current affairs magazines. We also monitored the BBC News Website and six BBC Radio 4 programmes as well as a BBC2 documentary. (See Appendix A for a complete list of outlets and programmes monitored.)

Methodology

Our report has three objectives:

1 To summarise and evaluate the volume and depth of the coverage devoted to this event.

2 To identify the key messages that came through from the coverage as a whole.

3 To conclude at a macro level whether the coverage was broadly favourable, unfavourable or neutral.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Scope:

Israel's 60th anniversary was an event which received wide coverage in the UK media.

Seventy articles appeared in the print media, BBC Radio 4 aired 12 segments in the programmes we monitored, while the BBC News website featured over 40 articles related to this event. The Guardian carried the most coverage, followed by The Independent.

Themes:

A number of themes emerged from the coverage:

A key theme to emerge from the UK media coverage was that Israel does not seek peace. Eighty-three per cent of all press coverage which took a position on the issue contained the message that Israel does not seek peace.

Seventeen per cent of all press coverage which took a position on Israel's stance on peace contained the message that Israel seeks peace.

Only 16% of articles conveyed that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.

Just Journalism found that across all the coverage as a whole, the strongest theme to emerge was that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians. While Israel's anniversary celebrations received extensive coverage, this was generally offset by reporting on what the Palestinians call the "Nakba" or catastrophe.

A snapshot of the overall newspaper coverage indicates that 44 % of articles contained the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians, and this rises to 54% when looking at the broadsheets.

This message is particularly prominent in The Guardian and The Independent. Sixty-seven per cent of articles in The Guardian contained this message.

There was a noticeable lack of coverage of domestic issues in Israel, of concessions Israel has made for peace and of the existential threat to Israel posed by Iran.

Nevertheless, there were divergences in messages across media outlets:

Eighty per cent of the coverage in the Daily Telegraph, for instance, contained the message that Israel faces existential threats.

On BBC Radio 4, the strongest message was that Israel is a homeland for the Jews – a message appearing in 42% of items.

By contrast, the strongest message on the BBC News website was that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians – a message appearing in 45% of web articles

....

The purpose of extracting the key messages from each item of coverage was specifically to focus on the main

impression that was being conveyed to the reader or listener. We extracted the key messages from each individual

news item or article and then aggregated all the individual messages into common categories.

The messages we identified fall into eleven main categories, described below. Each article may contain one or more

of the following messages:

1. Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians

This message came through from pieces that implied that Israel's 60th anniversary should necessarily be seen alongside Palestinian displacement and dispossession in 1948. These pieces usually refer to what is often described as the "Nakba" or "catastrophe".

2. Israel does not seek peace

Coverage in this category conveyed the sense that Israel is not seeking peace.

3. Israel is an entirely negative phenomenon

Coverage in this message category portrayed Israel in a fundamentally negative way, occasionally questioning the legitimacy of the Jewish State.

4. The Palestinian refugee problem is the fault of Israel

Coverage in this category referred exclusively to the events of 1948, but suggested that Israel is chiefly to blame for the Palestinian problem.

5. Israel has lost its ideals

This message was derived from coverage relating to an erosion of Israel's founding ideals and values.

6. Israel's future is uncertain

This message came through from pieces raising questions over Israel's future existence as a result of demographic trends, regional conditions or its policies.

7. Israel faces existential threats

Coverage in this message category highlighted the existential threats facing Israel, most commonly the threat from Iran.

8. Israel is a homeland for the Jews

This included pieces conveying the sense that Israel is a focal point for Jewish identity or that Israel is a haven for Jews around the world.

9. Israel is a successful country

Coverage containing this message conveyed admiration for Israel's accomplishments or recognised that Israel has excelled in key areas such as democracy, economy, social diversity and the high-tech industry.

10. Israel seeks peace

Coverage in this category conveyed the sense that Israel is seeking peace.

11. The Palestinian refugee problem is the fault of the Arab world

This covered pieces that referred exclusively to the events of 1948, and suggested that the Arab world is chiefly to blame for the Palestinian problem.

MESSAGING IN NEWSPAPERS

The section below summarises the key messages within the printed publications. A full discussion of the messaging in individual newspapers and magazines can be found in Part 5 – Analysis of Individual Media Outlets.

The broadsheets and tabloids are addressed separately.

Key messages across all newspapers

Eighty-three per cent of articles which took a position on Israel's stance on peace contained the message that

Israel did not seek peace.

Sixty-two per cent of articles which blamed one party for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem

blamed Israel.

Forty-four per cent of articles contained the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians.

Twenty-seven per cent of articles contained the message that Israel is a successful country.

Twenty-four per cent of articles contained the message that Israel faces existential threats.

Sixteen per cent of articles contained the message that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.

Sixteen per cent of articles contained the message that Israel has lost its ideals.

Fourteen per cent of articles carried the message that Israel's future is uncertain.

Ten per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel is an entirely negative phenomenon.

...

Key messages in broadsheets

Fifty-four per cent of articles contained the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians.

Eighty-eight per cent of articles which took a position on Israel's stance on peace contained the message that

Israel does not seek peace.

Ninety per cent of articles which blamed one party for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem

blamed Israel.

Twelve per cent of articles contained the message that Israel is an entirely negative phenomenon.

Twenty-two per cent of articles contained the message that Israel faces existential threats.

Twenty-six per cent of articles contained the message that Israel is a successful country.

Sixteen per cent of articles contained the message that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.

ISRAEL WAS CREATED AT THE EXPENSE OF THE PALESTINIANS

[Figure omitted]

.... For instance, out of 15 articles on Israel's 60th anniversary published in The Guardian, 10 (67%) contained the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians, whereas neither of the two articles in The Independent on Sunday contained that message.

Overall, 54% of articles in the broadsheets carried the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians.

All the daily broadsheets published at least one article containing the message.

Two out of four Sunday broadsheets published articles with the same message.

An example of this message:

"That is why today – the anniversary of the end of the British mandate in Palestine and the declaration of Israeli statehood – is also a day of mourning for 10 million Palestinians and their supporters: the commemoration of the nakba, or catastrophe, that led to the destruction of their society and expulsion from their homeland."

(Seamus Milne, Expulsion and dispossession can't be cause for celebration, The Guardian, May 15, 2008)

ISRAEL IS AN ENTIRELY NEGATIVE PHENOMENON

[Figure omitted - only the Guardian and the Independent carried this message]

Overall, 12% of articles in the broadsheets carried the message that Israel is an entirely negative phenomenon.

This message was only carried in The Guardian and The Independent.

An example of this message:

"Sixty years after the creation of Israel, there could not be a wider gap between the cruel reality of Israel today and Herzl's dream." (Jacqueline Rose, Israeli fiction – the nation's conscience, The Guardian, May 10, 2008)

ISRAEL DOES NOT SEEK PEACE

[Figure omitted]

Forty per cent of articles carried the message that Israel does not seek peace. All the daily broadsheets published articles containing the message.

Of the Sunday broadsheets, only The Observer published an article with this message.

An example of this message is the following:

"there has always been a strain of Israeli society that preferred violently setting its own borders, on its own terms, to talk and compromise. This weekend, the elected Hamas government offered a six-month truce that could have led to talks. The Israeli government responded within hours by blowing up a senior Hamas leader and killing a 14-year-old girl." (Johann Hari, Israel is suppressing a secret it must face, The Independent, April 28, 2008).

ISRAEL HAS LOST ITS IDEALS

[Figure omitted]

Overall, 14% of articles in the broadsheets carried the message that Israel has lost its ideals. Of the daily broadsheets, The Guardian, Financial Times and The Times carried the message. Of the Sunday broadsheets, only The Observer published an article with this message.

An example of this message is the following: "Today, with the 60th anniversary of independence fast approaching, there are a significant number of Israelis on both left and right asking whether in the intervening period the Israel declared by its founding fathers as a largely secular, communitarian project has not somehow lost the plot.." (Sam Kiley, Israel: 60 years of hope and despair,

The Observer, April 20, 2008)

ISRAEL IS A SUCCESSFUL COUNTRY

[Figure omitted]

Overall, only 26% of articles in the broadsheets carried the message that Israel is a successful country. All the daily broadsheets published at least one article containing the message.

Three out of four of the Sunday broadsheets published articles with the same message.

An example of this message:

"…60 years after its creation the very existence of the state of Israel remains nothing short of a miracle: a miracle of human will, determination and ultimately of hope. In less than three generations and in spite of extremely difficult conditions, Israelis have managed not only to survive but also to create a rich and original culture; to achieve spectacular results in science and medicine; and to create a technological hub in the region." (Dominique Moisi,

Israel's Pride and Prejudice at 60, Financial Times, April 30, 2008)

ISRAEL IS A HOMELAND FOR THE JEWS

Overall, 16% of articles in the broadsheets carried the message that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.All the daily broadsheets except The Times published at least one article containing this message. Three out of four of the Sunday broadsheets published articles with the same message.

An example of this message:

" …This Zionist anthem articulates something very deep in Israelis' sense of themselves: they are a nation formed by those who had no other place to live. The Holocaust, inevitably, looms large in this: the establishment of a Jewish state just three years after the liberation of Auschwitz was no coincidence. After 2,000 years, the world was finally persuaded that the Jews deserved what every other people regarded as a basic right: a place of their own." (Jonathan Freedland, As it turns 60, the fear is Israel has decided it can get by without peace,

The Guardian, May 7, 2008)

ISRAEL SEEKS PEACE

[Figure omitted]

Overall, only 6% of articles carried the message that Israel seeks peace. This message was only contained in three articles in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and The Sunday Telegraph. An example of this message:

"Mr Rabin, who won the Nobel peace prize for negotiating the Oslo Accords with the Palestinian leader Yasser

Arafat in 1993, showed that the Jewish state could also make painful concessions in the interests of peaceful

coexistence with its Arab neighbours". (Con Coughlin, As Israel remembers horrors of the past, the future

looms dark, The Daily Telegraph, May 2, 2008)

ISRAEL'S FUTURE IS UNCERTAIN

[Figure omitted]

Overall, 18% of articles carried the message that Israel's future is uncertain.

The Guardian, The Independent, Financial Times and The Observer published articles carrying this message.

An example of this message:

"..Hopefully I will not live to see the day when it becomes possible that the State of Israel might no longer exist" (Daniel Barenboim, Israel and me, The Guardian, May 14, 2008)

ISRAEL FACES EXISTENTIAL THREATS

[Figure omitted]

Overall, 22% of articles carried the message that Israel faces existential threats. This message featured particularly strongly in The Daily Telegraph. The message was not carried in The Guardian, The Observer, The Times, and The Sunday Times.

An example of this message:

"For a long time Israel has been accused of crying wolf over surrounding countries that want to "drive it into the sea". Now it has a neighbour whose president has not only made that threat explicit, but who intends to develop the capacity to do it." (Martin Bright, New Statesman, The Great Betrayal, May 19, 2008)

21

BBC Radio

Key messages in BBC Radio coverage

Forty-two per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.

Thirty-three per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians.

Twenty-five per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel faces existential threats.

Twenty-five per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel's future is uncertain.

BBC News Website

Key messages on BBC News website

Forty-five per cent of web coverage contained the message that Israel was created at the expense ofthe Palestinians.

Thirty-one per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel is a homeland for the Jews.

Twenty-six per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel is not seeking peace.

Twenty-one per cent of coverage contained the message that Israel is a successful country.

PART 3: POSITIONING ANALYSIS

In addition to categorising key messages, we also observed how Israel was presented in broad terms, by noting whether each piece of coverage was positive, negative, or neutral, as defined below:

Positive

Israel was cast in a largely favourable light.

Negative

Israel was cast in a largely unfavourable light.

Neutral

Israel was cast neither in a favourable nor unfavourable light.

Overall Statistics For All Newspapers

Just Journalism found 70 articles across all the newspapers with relevant coverage.

Thirty-six per cent of coverage was negative.

Forty-three per cent of coverage was neutral.

Twenty-one per cent was positive.

[Figure omitted]

23

Broadsheets

Just Journalism found 50 articles across the broadsheets with relevant coverage.

Thirty-eight per cent of coverage was negative.

Forty-two per cent of coverage was neutral.

Twenty per cent of coverage was positive.

Therefore nearly twice as many broadsheet articles were negative than positive.

[Figure omitted]

... The Guardian and The Independent contained the most negative coverage while the

Telegraph titles carried the most positive coverage. None of the Sunday broadsheets carried negative articles.

BBC Radio

Just Journalism monitored 42 broadcasts on BBC Radio 4, including Sunday, Today and The World Tonight, finding 12 pieces of relevant coverage.

Seventeen per cent of the coverage was negative.

Sixty-six per cent of the coverage was neutral.

Seventeen per cent of the coverage was positive.

BBC News Website

Just Journalism found 42 web items on the BBC News website.

Forty-three per cent of the coverage was negative.

Fifty-two per cent of the coverage was neutral.

Five per cent of the coverage was positive.

Therefore negative coverage outweighed positive coverage by almost nine to one.

Of the 42 items published, 20 were authored pieces. Interestingly, a separate study of the authored pieces

revealed the following:

Sixty per cent of the coverage was negative.

Forty per cent of the coverage was neutral.

[The detailed analysis of journals is omitted]

CONCLUSION

The 60th anniversary of Israel's creation was an event that received extensive coverage in the UK media. This coverage varied across the media outlets, but the strongest theme overall was that Israel was created at the expense of the Palestinians. The focus on this theme suggests a shift in the British media towards the Palestinian narrative on 1948.

A second theme that emerged from the UK media was that Israel does not seek peace, characterised by the focus on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and its policy towards Gaza. In contrast, there were few references to the concessions that Israeli governments have made over recent years in order to advance peace with the Palestinians– from Oslo in 1993 through to the Camp David talks in 2000 and the Disengagement from Gaza in 2005.

Arguably, the most noticeable omission in the coverage was the lack of focus on Israel's domestic issues, such as the hi-tech industry, the impact of immigration on Israeli society or relations between the religious and secular populations. Israel's 60th anniversary provided a rare opportunity for the UK media to explore and scrutinize the diverse challenges facing the Jewish State and its society. Yet, with a few exceptions, such as the Economist, the Financial Times and BBC Radio 4, the British media missed this opportunity.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Censored: A tourist's view of Israelis practicing the art of normalcy

Believe it or not, the writers of mighty Ha'aretz are reaching out to try to censor little old me. Here is one of two instances. I will report the other one elsewhere if time permits.

Brigitta Moll from Cologne Germany visited Israel as a tourist for a few weeks. Evidently that made her into an expert, as all such tourists are. So Haaretz published her article: First impressions of a European in Israel to tell people of the world what Israel is like. She seems to have come with the idea that she is entering a war zone, and so she diligently gathered material in support of her views. If Israelis act like almost anyone else, it must be because we are pretending and hiding the truth.

The truth is, that even in the worst days of the Intifada, Israelis were far more likely to die of traffic accidents (or coronary occlusion) than of suicide bombings or other terror attacks, as Brigitta notes. At the time, and during the Second Lebanon War, nobody pretended that things were "normal" here. But the truth is also that generally Israelis, like everyone else, go about their business most of the time and do not even think of the conflict. We are busy here with other things as well. The conflict is one aspect of life, but not an all-consuming one. If anything, the accusation of Palestinian Arabs is that for Israelis they are invisible. It is not entirely an unfair accusation.

Israelis have also developed, to some extent, a certain familiarity with and contempt for danger. The sight of soldiers in the streets has not been familiar in Europe for a long time. Israelis are used to seeing soldiers in the streets, in their own homes (our kids) and in the mirror for that matter. It has been that way for 60 years now. That is "normal" for us. It must strike visitors as odd. But objectively it is really not especially dangerous here. This normality is somewhat maddening to those who think we are all "bad guys" who should be suffering, though tourists will find it reassuring.

If Ha'aretz editors really think Israel is under such immediate danger, it is difficult to understand why they publish so many articles that are critical of Israel. When the guns are shooting, the pen of criticism is generally silent.

But the stereotype of Israel as a target of suicide bombers, as a country of fearful Jews anticipating a second Holocuast persists. It is exploited for different purposes by the right and the left in this country, and Brigitta's article must've filled the editorial bill for such articles.

Israel has many things to offer tourists - holy places for religious people, topless beaches for those who want sun and sex, bauhaus architecture in Tel Aviv, nightlife, quaint corners of life preserved from other periods of Middle Eastern history. But Brigitta came to write about the conflict it seems, so none of these attractions are evident in her article. But if she wanted to write about that, why didn't she come to Sderot when the Qassam rockets were falling, rather than writing about Tel Aviv? Isn't it strange to come to a peaceful city and write only about the conflict?

Air travel and fast boats have made the world a small place. It is very strange to read such a "travelogue" article, appropriate to the days of Richard Burton or perhaps Marco Polo, when today any interested European can come to Israel and see what is here for themselves, rather than seeing it through the peculiar lens of Brigitta Moll.

After telling her readers that Israel looks normal on the surface, Brigitta Moll felt the compulsion nonetheless to show that Israel is really only about the conflict. She wrote that the normal animation surprises her. She wonders how people can cope with conflict ridden reality.

Brigitta evidently interprets everything she hears and sees to support her view. A graffiti about a "Secret Nuke Cellar" must certainly be a sign of conflict tension according to her, since Europeans never joke about war, Brigitta tells us. Really? During the Cold War there were many jokes in USA about nuclear war, and I remember that Danish and Italian tourist guides joke about the activities of their neighbors in World War II. Everyone has war jokes. Perhaps it is tactless to tell Brigitta this, but the German war jokes are quite famous, though often not very funny to others.

Brigitta finds a soldier who took a trip to India. This too must be all about the conflict, because the soldier says that sometimes you just have to get out of here. What, European young people don't take trips around the world? We find them in Israel and Jordan and Egypt and America and India. Are all these backpackers escaping some conflict in Europe we do not know about? It doesn't occur to Brigitta that it might be possible that young people want to see the world before settling down, and not be confined to our little, wonderful country. The wanderlust of Israeli youth must be due to the conflict.

Imagine that someone from the Middle East visits the USA as a tourist. They are convinced that Americans must think only of the war in Iraq. But all they see around them are people going to work, shopping or relaxing. So they seek out someone who says they went for a trip abroad to get some "space," and present that as proof that all Americans are obsessed about the war in Iraq.

Of course, most people will see what they are prepared to see and use it to justify whatever they believe. Such people can never learn anything new. They know all about it already. It is their privilege to write what they want, and it is up to the reader to beware, to come and see with their own eyes when they can, and judge for themselves.

If a travelogue still has any value today, it is to try to capture what a people really think about their country and their life, rather than perpetuating what others think about them. Brigitta did not have to come here at all to write her prejudiced opinions. All over the world there are such people, who think in terms of stereotypes: Spain is only about bull fights, Germans are only engaged in drinking beer, French people are always in bed and British have no sense of humor. These are OK for ethnic jokes, but they can't be the basis of reasonable journalism. Travel is supposed to broaden one's vistas and change the stereotypes, and travelogues should pass on realistic information, not more stereotypes.

That is hardly the end of the story. Brigitta has written to me that I must delete this Web log article because she does not agree with the way her text is being used in the blog. She protests that her article was intended to be "balanced." She came to a peaceful city and reported only conflict, and she thought that was "balanced." It does not not occur to her that I have the same license to see things through my eyes, as she has to see things through her eyes. Only Brigitta's opinion can be heard.

But Brigitta of course, did not ask the graffiti writer if that is how the graffiti was intended, and did not get permission to use it in the article. She did not ask me or anyone else if we agree with the way she portrayed our country, which she thinks is sensitive and balanced.

If I have somehow misinterpreted Brigitta's message, if she has not portrayed Israel as a place full of people obsessed with the conflict, then she failed to communicate very well in her article. If she has written about the theater and the concerts in the Mann auditorium and the beaches and the nightclubs, then maybe I have a reading deficiency because I couldn't find anything abut those things. It is not that Brigitta should not have been critical. There are bad things here. If she wrote about the nice or ill mannered people she met here, I missed that too. To visit Israel and not meet one rude person is really exceptional! If she noticed the disorder and regrettable uncleanliness of Tel Aviv streets, which must be striking to European eyes, I must've missed it. I could see only one thing in that article: conflict, conflict, conflict. It is not a problem of unfair criticism, but of a peculiar monomania.

I know that many people often misunderstand what I write as well. It is their privilege - the article has to stand on its own. It never occurred to me to try to silence them.

This is not the first time that Ha'aretz writers have attempted to censor my opinion of them. They have been given a great forum for their ideas, but they begrudge me this little one. More about that another time.

I have removed the text of the article, which you can find at Ha'aretz and judge for yourselves unless Ha'aretz has archived it.

I have not asked Brigitta to remove her article from Ha'aretz, on the grounds that I do not agree with the way she has used my country. But Brigitta should not be able to dictate to me what I can and cannot write. "Die Gedanken Sind Frei."

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Palestinian Ma'an News: 2 Stories - one in Arabic, one in English

Netherlands and Denmark fund terror glorification, hate language of Palestinian news agency

By Itamar Marcus and Barbara Crook

 

 

A Palestinian news agency that receives financial support from the governments of The Netherlands and Denmark glorifies terrorists, releases news stories using hate language and is a highly politicized, hate-promoting news organization. Paradoxically, Ma'an News claims to be "objective, accurate, balanced" and to "increase Palestinian media credibility," according to its web site.

1- Ma'an Honoring Terrorists and Murderers as Shahids

 

Ma'an has glorified the recent Palestinian murderer of eight Israeli yeshiva students, the Dimona suicide terrorist, the killers of the two Israeli hikers and the terrorists who attacked a boys' high school with the very highest Islamic status attainable, elevating them to the status of "Shahids" or "Martyrs for Allah." According to the accepted Palestinian interpretation of Islam, there is no higher status that a Muslim can achieve today than that of Shahid. In defining terrorist murderers as "Shahids," Ma'an is by definition sending its readers a straightforward message of honor for the killers, and approval for the many murders. Negative or dishonorable actions could not elevate an individual to Shahid status. (See below for full sources.)

 

In its English versions of these reports, Ma'an did not honor the terrorists  as "Shahids" or use the similar English term "Martyrs."Note, for example, the difference in Ma'an reporting on the murder of the two hikers:

 

Ma'an Arabic News	Ma'an English News
"Two of the operatives died as Shahids."  [Dec. 28, 2007]	"Two Israelis, two Palestinians killed by gunfire near Hebron."

 

The explanation for this and all other discrepancies between Ma'an's English and Arabic reporting is that this politically-charged Arabic terminology, together with the examples of Ma'an's use of hate-language (below), would readily expose Ma'an's lack of professionalism and messages of approval of terror if repeated in English. In addition, it must be assumed that the governments of The Netherlands and Denmark would be outraged to know they are funding terror glorification and hate journalism.

 

2 - Suicide Bombers: Ma'an uses term of higher honor: Shahada-Seekers

 

With regard to suicide terrorists Ma'an goes even further. According to Islam, someone who intentionally seeks Shahada - death for Allah - is greater than someone who achieves Shahada while not actively hoping to die. The Arabic term Istishhadi - Shahada- Seeker- is used by terror organizations to define and add a higher status of honor specifically to suicide terrorists .

 

Ma'an has followed this lead in its Arabic reporting of the Dimona suicide bombing that killed one Israeli woman and critically injured her husband. Note the apolitical report by Ma'an in English, where the suicide bomber is reported to be just that, "a bomber," followed by the Arabic Ma'an reports that use the term of highest honor, "Shahada-Seekers."

 

Ma'an Arabic News	Ma'an English News
"Ma'an - Senior military figure [Abu Al-Walid] of the Al-Aqsa Brigades in Gaza, rejected the suspicion that Israel aroused regarding the identity of the two Shahada-Seekers, who carried out the Dimona action... Pictures of the two Shahada-Seekers etc ..."  [February 5, 2008]	"Al-Aqsa Brigades dispel doubts about identity of second Dimona bomber... Speaking to Ma'an on Tuesday, Abu Al-Walid reiterated that the bombers were Luay Al-Ghawani and Mousa Arafat ... Israeli security officials had expressed doubt about the validity of the image of the second bomber."

 

 

Note also that under similar pictures of the mothers of the bombers, Ma'an uses the objective caption in English: "Mother of suspected bomber," and the honor caption in Arabic: "Mothers of the Shahada-Seekers".

Ma'an Arabic caption	Ma'an English caption
"Mothers of Shahada-Seekers"	"Mother of suspected bomber"

 

3- Ma'an denies Israel's right to exist- all Israel is "Occupation"

Ma'an uses very politicized hate language to routinely reject Israel's right to exist, and even to deny Israel's existence. For example, when reporting on Israeli Arab doctors who visited Gaza, Ma'an defined them in Arabic as "Palestinian doctors from inside 'Occupied Palestine'," Ma'an's term for Israel. In this case, Ma'an's English language report on this story followed similar hate language:

"Palestinian doctors from 1948 territories [another Ma'an euphemism for Israel] visit Gaza... A delegation of doctors from Palestinian territories occupied since 1948, from outside of the Green Line, visited the Gaza Strip."  [February 29, 2008]

 In this article to deny Israel's legitimacy on its land, Ma'an went out of its way to use a particularly awkward hate expression. Instead of using the simple, accurate and apolitical wording, "doctors from Israel," Ma'an used 13 cumbersome, politically-charged hate words to describe the doctors' origins:

Ma'an political language	Accurate apolitical language
"doctors from Palestinian territories occupied since 1948, from outside of the Green Line"	"doctors from Israel"

 

It is also important to note that later in the same article, Ma'an used the term "Israel" as follows: "...crippling siege led by Israel." The difference is striking. When referring to the land or location - Ma'an called Israel "Occupied Palestine."  In referring to the government of Israel or criticizing Israeli policy Ma'an used "Israel." (See other examples below.)

 

Finally, since Israel's very existence is presented by Ma'an as an "Occupation," the Israeli army in Arabic is referred to with hate language identical to that used by the terrorist organizations: "the occupation forces." Here, as in some of the cases above, Ma'an avoids the hate language in English. One example is a Ma'an report after Israel arrested three suspected terrorists.

 

Ma'an Arabic News	Ma'an English News
"Occupation forces arrest ..."  [March 25, 2008]	"Israeli forces raid ..."

 

See below a list of examples where Ma'an glorifies terrorists and uses hate language.

 

PMW comment:

Last year PMW documented that Ma'an used this politicized hate language after the suicide terror attack in the Israeli city of Eilat. [See PMW Bulletin]

In Arabic, Ma'an had reported that Eilat was "in the south of occupied Palestine," the mother of the terrorist was said to be from the "occupied city of Jaffa", though Jaffa is part of Tel Aviv, and Ma'an had honored the suicide bomber as a Shahid.

We find it surprising and unfortunate that the governments of The Netherlands and Denmark continue to fund this hate journalism without demanding a change. Hate incitement, including denial of Israel's existence and glorifying terror, is universally accepted as a paramount cause of continued Palestinian terror. These governments, together with governments who have blindly funded Palestinian schoolbooks, bear direct moral responsibility for the continued hatred that is being ingrained into future Palestinian generations, and bear a moral responsibility for the terror and its victims.

  

The following are additional examples of Ma'an using hate language and honoring terrorists.

Ma'an grants Shahid status to all terrorists in recent terror attacks. The following are in addition to examples above.

 

1. Jerusalem Yeshiva terror attack - 8 students killed:

Ma'an Arabic News:

"8 dead and two Shahids in the Jerusalem Operation. The operatives were from [village of] Jabal Mukbar..."  [Ma'an, Arabic news, March 6, 2008]

 

2. Terror attack in High School in Kfar Ezion:

Ma'an Arabic News:

"Ma'an discloses the identity of the two Shahids from the Ezion operation."  [Ma'an, Arabic news, January 24 , 2008]

 

3. Two hikers ambushed and murdered as they strolled on nature walk

Ma'an Arabic News:

"Two of the operatives died as Shahids, two more were injured and two Israeli soldiers were killed."  [Ma'an, Arabic news, December 28, 2007]

 

Ma'an English News:

"Two Israelis, two Palestinians killed by gunfire near Hebron."

[Ma'an, English news, December 28, 2007]

 

4. Suicide Terror attack in Dimona- one woman killed:

Ma'an Arabic News:

"Ma'an - Senior military figure [Abu Al-Walid] of the Al-Aqsa Brigades in Gaza, rejected the suspicion that Israel aroused regarding the identity of the two Shahada-Seekers, who carried out the Dimona action... Pictures of the two Shahada-Seekers etc ..."  

 

Ma'an English News:

"Speaking to Ma'an on Tuesday, Abu Al-Walid reiterated that the bombers were Luay Al-Ghawani and Mousa Arafat"    [ English news, February 5, 2008]

 

Ma'an news releases promote the hate message that Israel has no right to exist, calling Israel "Occupied Palestine" or "territories occupied after 1948," Israel's government the "Occupation Authority" and its soldiers the "Occupation forces." Note also when Israel is mentioned it is often put within quotation marks- a common linguistic method to express non-recognition.

 

1."The Occupation authorities [editor: replaces 'Israeli authorities'] have been enforcing severe restrictions since the morning hours on the entrance of residents to the blessed Al-Aqsa Mosque, and even on the entrance into the city of Jerusalem within the borders of the occupation municipality [editor: replaces 'Jerusalem']. They have prevented hundreds of the residents of Jerusalem and the Palestinian territories occupied since 1948, [editor: replaces 'Israel'] who hold blue "Israeli" identity cards from..."

[Ma'an, Arabic news, February 29, 2008]

 

2."He said that 72 prisoners have died as Shahids during the al-Aqsa intifada, 58 of them from the West Bank, one from the territories occupied since 1948 [editor: replaces 'Israel'] and 13 from the Gaza Strip..."       [Ma'an, Arabic news, February 29, 2008]

 

3."In a research paper he published on the issue of the number of prisoners of Palestine which has been occupied since 1948 (The "inside" prisoners) [editor: replaces 'Israeli prisoners'], he emphasized that this number is an important number in the equation of the historical and cultural struggle against the Israeli occupier..."    [Ma'an, Arabic news, March 15, 2008]

 

Note in this previous example that instead of just writing the single word "Israel," Ma"an used a very long term: Palestine which has been occupied since 1948. However, Ma"an itself felt the need to further explain its own cumbersome usage by adding in parentheses, ("inside" prisoners) meaning 'Israeli Arab prisoners.'  It shows again that Ma"an is willing to burden its readers with linguistic contortions, rather than use simple and accurate language which would indicate recognition of Israel. In this case the language it avoided writing was "Arab prisoners from Israel."

 

4. "Dr. al-Asta did not compare the outlook... to one who lives in the racist Ghetto in Occupied Palestine..."   [Ma'an, Arabic news, February 24, 2008]

 

5. "A delegation of doctors from Palestinian territories occupied since 1948... visited the Gaza Strip." [Ma'an, Arabic news, March 17, 2008]

 

6. Discrepancies between English and Arabic reports:

Ma'an Arabic Report:

"The occupation forces" detained 3 residents in Bethlehem and al-Duha".    [Ma'an, Arabic news, March 25, 2008]

Ma'an English Report:

"Israeli forces raid Bethlehem and seize 3 Palestinians"

[Ma'an, English news, March 25, 2008]

Ma'an Arabic Report:

"The Israeli occupation army seized the town of Kafin afternoon today, Wednesday..."  [Ma'an, Arabic news, March 26, 2008]

Ma'an EnglishReport:

"Israeli forces stormed the town of Kafin in the West Bank Wednesday..."  [Ma'an, English news, March 26, 2008]

Continued (Permanent Link)

Flour power claim: Each Palestinian eats half a ton of flour each day

No wonder those Palestinians were so anxious to buy flour in Egypt. It seems each and every Palestinian in Gaza consumes half a ton of flour every day!! At least, that is what the Boston Globe claims. Martin Kramer points this out. Apparently, their various activities result in a need to consume huge quantities of carbohydrates.

See also: Amazing fact about Gazans

Sahten!!

Ami Isseroff

Gaza buried in flour

posted Monday, 28 January 2008

The Boston Globe has just run an op-ed under the headline "Ending the Stranglehold on Gaza." The authors are Eyad al-Sarraj, identified as founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program, and Sara Roy, identified as senior research scholar at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard University. The bias of the op-ed speaks for itself, and I won't even dwell on it. But I do want to call attention to this sentence:

Although Gaza daily requires 680,000 tons of flour to feed its population, Israel had cut this to 90 tons per day by November 2007, a reduction of 99 percent.

You don't need to be a math genius to figure out that if Gaza has a population of 1.5 million, as the authors also note, then 680,000 tons of flour a day come out to almost half a ton of flour per Gazan, per day.

A typographical error at the Boston Globe? Hardly. The two authors used the same "statistic" in an earlier piece. They copied it from an article published in the Ahram Weekly last November, which reported that "the price of a bag of flour has risen 80 per cent, because of the 680,000 tonnes the Gaza Strip needs daily, only 90 tonnes are permitted to enter." Sarraj and Roy added the bit about this being "a reduction of 99 percent."

Note how an absurd and impossible "statistic" has made its way up the media feeding chain. It begins in an Egyptian newspaper, is cycled through a Palestinian activist, is submitted under the shared byline of a Harvard "research scholar," and finally appears in the Boston Globe, whose editors apparently can't do basic math. Now, in a viral contagion, this spreads across the Internet, where that "reduction of 99 percent" becomes a well-attested fact.

What's the truth? I see from a 2007 UN document that Gaza consumes 450 tons of flour daily. The Palestinian Ministry of Economy, according to another source, puts daily consumption at 350 tons. So the figure for total consumption retailed by Sarraj and Roy is off by more than three orders of magnitude, i.e. a factor of 1,000. No doubt, there's less flour shipped from Israel into Gaza--maybe it's those rocket barrages from Gaza into Israel?--but even if it's only the 90 tons claimed by Sarraj and Roy, it isn't anything near a "reduction of 99 percent." Unfortunately, if readers are going to remember one dramatic "statistic" from this op-ed, this one is it--and it's a lie.

Sarraj is a psychiatrist, but his co-author, Sara Roy, bills herself in her bio as a "political economist." Her research, the bio reports, is "primarily on the economic, social and political development of the Gaza Strip." You would think someone with this claim to expertise would know better than to copy some impossible pseudo-statistic on the consumption of the most basic foodstuff in Gaza. Indeed, in a piece she wrote a decade ago, she herself put Gaza's daily consumption of flour at 275 tons. Did she even read her own op-ed before she sent it off to Boston's leading paper? If she did, what we have here is a textbook example of the difference between a "political economist" and an economist.

Continued (Permanent Link)

Barry Rubin: How The News Is Made

Bad as this is, the idea that Israeli media are doing the same thing is really appalling. See  Israeli law and the media

How The News Is Made
Barry Rubin
December 26, 2007

Ring, ring, goes the telephone. And of course I answer it.

The voice on the other end says that he is "Joseph" of Reuters. I get many calls from journalists and wire services but never has someone I don't know introduced himself by first name only. Since he has an obvious Arabic accent it is quite clear that he thinks I am either so biased as to care what his family name is or so stupid not to guess why he isn't giving it.

So the effect is to achieve the exact opposite of what he wants. It puts me on my guard.

Next he tells me that he is doing a story on how Israel is strangling the Palestinian economy. In such circumstances, I have taken to arguing back with correspondents. By framing the story that way, I explain, Reuters is building in a bias. After all, the story should be: What's wrong with the Palestinian economy, how to fix it, and will the massive infusion of aid--$7.4 billion just promised for three years by mostly Western donors--help?

Aren't wire services, and the media in general, supposed to be somewhat balanced? They ask an open question, collect viewpoints, and let the reader conclude what the factors are, or at least wait until they have gathered some evidence. This is supposed to be especially true of wire services, which supply newspapers and other media with the basic facts on which they can build their own stories.

What is going on here, then, is not reporting but propaganda.

Clearly unnerved, he promises to quote me accurately. And he does keep that promise fully, sort of. But the outcome is quite predictable. And here is the dramatic headline that went out in the resulting story: "Analysis-Aid can't save Palestinian economy in Israeli grip."

No doubt is to be left that it is Israel's fault that the Palestinian economy is in shambles. And so pervasive is this evil that even the whole world cannot save them. So after that $7.4 billion is all gone with no result everyone will know who to blame, right?

Before continuing let's note the problem with this analysis on two levels. First, Israeli closures and control on movement are the result of Palestinian terrorist attacks, coupled with the unwillingness and inability of the two Palestinian governments (Palestinian Authority-Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip) to stop them. No attacks; no closures.  And this is absolutely clear. If attacks were to stop, so would Israeli restrictions. But if Israel removed all roadblocks and closures, the attacks would continue. This makes obvious the principal, fundamental cause of the problem and what needs to change in order to fix it.

In other words: if Palestinian terrorism stops, Israeli restrictive measures will end and the Palestinian economy has a chance to develop.

But if Israeli restrictive measures end, Palestinian terrorism would continue and thus the Palestinian economy would not develop because Israel would put back on the restrictions eventually and also, of course, no one will invest in the middle of a war.

Is that clear and logical? Obviously, not for Western leaders and much of the news media.

Second, even if all Israeli action were to disappear, the Palestinian economy would still be in trouble. There are a number of reasons for this which are all well-known and were vividly seen in the 1990s, at a time when there was massive aid and a low level of Israeli security operations. These factors include: huge corruption which siphons off money; the lack of a clear legal framework for investment and commerce; the incompetence of the Palestinian regime; internal anarchy and violence by gangs with political cover; and an ongoing war against Israel.

Naturally, if you pump $7.8 billion over three years into a society of under 1.5 million people on the West Bank--around $1,600 a year for every individual person there--it is going to have a positive economic effect. Since current Palestinian per capita income is $1,200 a year it would more than double it. In 1992, the figure was around $2,000. This represents, for all practical purposes, an increase of 400 percent over the aid being supplied two years ago.

But most of the money is merely budget support for the Palestinian Authority, meaning it will pay salaries for the bloated government bureaucracy. At the end of that time the funds will be gone with no effect.

Yet the December 20, 2007, story by Reuters and two similar articles by the Associated Press (for my detailed analysis of the latter see http://www.gloriacenter.org/index.asp?pname=submenus/articles/2007/rubin/12_09.asp) simply omit all this information and put all the blame for problems on Israel.

In this case, though, slanting is not enough, however, and the Reuters report must stoop to outright dishonesty. It states:

"The $7.4 billion pledged exceeds the sum [Palestinian Prime Minister Salam]] Fayyad had asked for in his three-year economic plan, but is less than the $8.4 billion that the World Bank reckons Israeli curbs on movement have cost Palestinians in lost income over the past five years."

This is a lie and clearly a deliberate one. In fact, the World Bank annual reports are entitled "Intifada, Closures and Palestinian Economic Crisis." They make the very simple point that the intifada--an armed Palestinian war on Israel--leads to closures and thus the combination brings on a crisis. The reports are quite careful in pointing out all the factors that led to the Palestinian economic decline. They do not say the losses were strictly due to Israeli curbs on movement. On the contrary, the 2003 report for example, written at the height of the violence, says the closures and movement restrictions are pretty insignificant. (see it at http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTWESTBANKGAZA/Resources/wbgaza-4yrassessment.pdf). This specific example of dishonesty matters because the approach we see here--predetermining the story, ignoring most of the factors involved, blaming Israel--sets a pattern for a whole raft-full of stories:

• Why is there no peace? Israel doesn't give enough concessions. Often there is no mention of Palestinian hardline positions, behavior in not keeping commitment, terrorism as a key element in the failure to achieve peace. Most important of all, there is endless talk about what Israel can or should give for peace but far less about what the Palestinians must give: end of conflict, full recognition of Israel, return of refugees to a Palestinian state, a real end to incitement and terrorism.
• Why is there suffering in Gaza? Israel's restrictions. Far less mention of Hamas hard line, openly genocidal stance, constant aid to terrorist attacks and rocket firing, refusal to meet even minimal international requirements.
• Why are Palestinians, to quote the Reuters story, "Deprived of dignity"? No mention of a corrupt government and gangs of gunmen who couldn't care less about their well-being, and a strategy that starts unwinnable wars. It's all Israel's fault.

It is bad enough that this kind of coverage is shaping the way that many in the West see the Middle East. What is really horrible is that these articles are being deliberately written to do so.

---

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center http://www.gloriacenter.org and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal http://meria.idc.ac.il . His latest books are The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan) and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley) .

Continued (Permanent Link)

Al Dura case is far from proven

Those who rejoiced to hear that Israel has now "officially" denied that little Muhammad Al-Dura was a victim of Israeli fire may be disappointed. Though news stories said the denial was "official," it seems, as a sharp analyst has pointed out, that only Daniel Seaman, the official in charge of antagonizing the foreign press composed this denial and knew that it existed.  The Prime Minister's Office did not know. It is not clear what evidence, if any, led Seaman to this conclusion, The timing of Seaman's denial is also odd, since the raw footage of the France-2 film that was allegedly fabricated to show the Al-Dura murder has not been aired in court yet, and Seaman himself doesn't seem to have any independent evidence that he could not have had seven years ago.

 

The best outcome one could have wished for is that this little boy had never died. The worst outcome, worse even than finding out that Israeli soldiers killed him for whatever reason, would be if, in addition, it would now be proven that the film appears to be authentic, and that there is a great chance that al-Dura was killed by Israeli fire. That would make not only Seaman, but the Israeli government, look really silly. 

 

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

Sex, Lies, Fascism and clitoridectomy

Some people will do anything to get attention and smear the "opposition" as they see it. For much of the Zionist right, the real enemy is not Ahmadinejad in Iran, or Haniyeh in Gaza, but rather other Jews and Zionists who do not think as they do. In their war against these others, any weapon and any tactics are OK.

Israpundit, (israpundit.com/2006/?p=5887) posted an article by Steven Plaut. citing Israel National News (israelnationalnews.com/Blogs/Message.aspx/2274) . It regales us with a canard that insists that Education Minister Yuli Tami supports clitoridectomy - female circumcision. Israpundit includes this intelligent and mannerly comment,

QUOTE:

{Leftist bitch]

UNQUOTE.

Mismatched parentheses are in the original.

The Israbluff/Steven Plaut wisdom and the Israel National News enlightenment are based on an article Tamir wrote in 1996. What Tamir actually wrote in her article was:

Clitoridectomy is obviously a deplorable practice. It is, among other things, an extremely painful, traumatizing mutilation of young girls that leaves them permanently disfigured and deprived of sexual enjoyment. We should express no sympathy toward those who practice it, and support those who struggle to end it.

That doesn't look like Tamir supports clitoridectomy, does it? For the benefit of Steven Plaut, who has difficulties with the English language, we should perhaps explain that "deplorable, painful, traumatizing" are not words of praise. "Bitch" is not the only word that can be used to express disapproval. Get a dictionary, Steven Plaut.

But Israel National News, Israpundit and Plaut don't care much about facts, if they can have an occassion to attack a "leftist bitch."

Let's see what Tamir wrote again:

We should express no sympathy toward those who practice it, and support those who struggle to end it.

What part of that don't you understand, Steven Plaut, Israpundit and Israel National News?? Apparently you understood none of it. You wrote:

She is a great fan of clitoridectomy.

As Tamir points out:

My purpose, however, is not to justify clitoridectomy, but to expose the roots of the deep hostility to it -- to reveal the smug, unjustified self-satisfaction lurking behind the current condemnation of clitoridectomy. Referring to clitoridectomy, and emphasizing the distance of the practice from our own conventions, allows us to condemn them for what they do to their women, support the struggle of their women against their primitive, inhuman culture, and remain silent on the status of women in our society.

I won't call names. You can figure out your own names for these people. Next time you read anything in Israel National News, anything by Steven Plaut, or anything in Israpundit, remember the relation between what they write and the actual facts.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

The Jewish worriers - Open letter to Larry Derfner & Maurice Ostroff about God's Warriors and their correspondence

Dear Larry and Maurice,
I have followed your correspondence regarding the now notorious CNN film as best I could, and tried to make sense of all of it.

Larry Derfner wrote:

But on the subject of the Israeli-Arab conflict, you are, according to my definition, a hardline right-winger. I say that because your view, or at least your stated view, of the conflict is that in 100% of the disputes between Israel and the Arabs, Israel is 100% and the Arabs are 100% wrong.

This is a continuation of the sort of argument you used in your article, is it not? "It is right wing, and therefore it is wrong." Serious analysts don't base arguments on calling names. Leave that to Stalin in the sessions of the Politburo. It doesn't matter if Maurice is an agent of the reactionary kulaks, a right-deviationist, a wrecker of the five year plan or a left deviationist. It doesn't matter if CAMERA is composed of third-temple fanatics or A.N.S.W.E.R. advocates. What matters is the logic of their criticism.

If Maurice is a hardline right-winger, then what might Benjamin Netanyahu be? You don't seem to have much gradation in your scale. Such distinctions are usually the mark of superficial minds that want to substitute labeling for analysis, and to dismiss uncomfortable and inconvenient facts by painting them with the stigma of "wrong opinion" or "not PC." Churchill was a "hard line right winger" but he was right about Nazism, and his opponents were wrong. They got away with discrediting him for many years just by using labels like "war monger."

There are some simple propositions that are central to our problems: Settlements are wrong, terrorism is wrong, and Jihadist fanaticism is a danger to civilization of all types. It is hard to make all three statements without being labeled a leftist self-hating Jew and a traitor by one group, an Islamophobic neocon by the other side, and a Zionist war monger to boot. I happen to hold all three beliefs. I don't know where that puts me on the Larry Derfner political scale, and I don't care either. Until we get all those self-serving fools and fanatics out of the room, we cannot have a real discussion.

Propositions have to be considered independently of who is saying them, and independently of other ideological baggage they might bring with them. You need to learn to stick to the issues, and to teach your readers to think rather than to lob labels at each other like grenades. If Aumann or Haniyeh say that the Sun is shining, then the way to prove if they are right or wrong is to look out the window, rather than arguing about whether they are right-wingers or left-wingers. Forgive me for saying that it is an embarrassing and juvenile sort of argument. It may sell newspapers. You are in business to do that. But it makes heat, and not light.

The gab-fest benefits the film itself, because any publicity is good publicity, and it benefits the organizations who are dumping on the film, and who will get more donations from their loyal followers. It does nothing to advance either truth or the cause of Israel, regardless of whether these are the same or different. No neutral or anti-Israel person is going to be convinced by CAMERA or Honest Reporting, and there is no way to ascertain the facts without seen the film and doing the research. Reading these reviews adds nothing. I know who Osama Bin Laden is and I know what he wants. I don't need Honest Reporting or Christianne Anampour to tell me. By now I suspect that only about three dozen people care about that film. It was just another bit of vacuous entertainment with no more truth value (maybe less) than an episode of The Shield or House, and less entertainment value. Discussing it gives it publicity.

The last time there was a similar dustup it was about Spielberg's film, Munich. Reading the criticism of Jewish organizations, I thought that Spielberg must have joined the PLO or maybe the Hamas. Then I saw the film, which was largely sympathetic to Israel and the Zionist cause, and portrayed humanistic and humanitarian Zionists tortured by the necessity of killing, contrasted with fanatic and one-dimensional Arabs. I have learned not to trust the moral standards and aesthetic and professional judgements of these organizations and to form my own judgement.

That said, any film that shows, at the same time, and as part of the same problem, the Jihadist threat along with Zionist and Christian extremists, is showing a lie. Nobody disputes that Amanpour does that. There is a difference between a movement that is morally wrong and theoretically a problem, and a political movement that is an active problem and a clear and present danger. Anti-abortionist fanatics and third temple builders are not my favorite people, but they haven't yet the power or the announced intention to destroy Western civilization. They are not a danger of the same order of magnitude as Al-Qaeda and other Jihadist extremists. There is no way to make Baruch Goldstein into Osama Bin Laden, or to turn Mr. Hagee into the equivalent of Ahmadinejad. Hagee doesn't run a state. He isn't building an atom bomb, and he hasn't declared the intention to make a world without anyone. Goldstein and his friends and supporters represent a morally reprehensible cause. Fortunately there are not a lot of them, and they have no power. They are not a threat to the United States, Western Civilization or Israel. Not yet. The proposition that Bin Laden has something to do with Israeli settlements is intellectual rubbish. Bin Laden's last message didn't even mention Israel. Some people don't want to admit what the real problem is. There is no reason to assist them in their self-delusion.

Larry wrote:

But the question she raises is, if the settlements are a bad thing (a point of view she supports with factual material), and every U.S. government has spoken against them to some degree, why doesn't the U.S. back up its sentiments with action - by pressuring Israel monetarily and politically to stop building settlements? And her answer is: because of the Israel lobby.

But the question I raise, is what do settlements have to do with Islamist fundamentalism in Afghanistan or the price of hay in China? Just because Bin Laden may say it is an issue, doesn't mean it is so. Bin Laden and his followers are not against settlements in the West Bank. They are against the existence of Israel. Just because Jack Kelley wrote that settlements are due to the activities of religious fanatics, doesn't make it so either. The evil of Jim Crow in the United States did not justify, and was not equivalent to, the evil of Stalinism in the USSR. Some people did equate them. It is clear now that they were as wrong as those who equated Stalin and Hitler and insisted that the US and Britain should stay out of World War II.

In any case, a lot of very unreligious people support those settlements. So what is the point? What is the connection to God's Warriors?

Bin Laden and his friends are also against loose morals in women, such as allowing divorce and parading about without a Hijab. So what? Why should this issue even be raised? Who cares what these people claim they support? Their "issues" are all just excuses for taking power by violent means.

And the other question I raise is, if the Israel Lobby is so all-powerful as you and Mearsheimer and Walt and Amanpour pretend, then why hasn't the US taken an unequivocally pro-Israel stance on so many critical issues for Israel, even when Israel is clearly in the right (that happens too sometimes)? How do they screw us? Let us count the ways:

- Boycott - United States continues to do business with Gulf and other countries that maintain primary boycotts of Israel, and the US keeps making believe it doesn't happen.

- Israel's right to exist - US does business with, and supports, numerous regimes that deny and have denied the right of Israel to exist.

- Refugee problem - the perpetuation of the Palestinian refugee problem and the entire mechanism of UNRWA is possible only because of the support of the United States and its allies. No other group of refugees is treated in the same way as Palestinian refugees. An entire mechanism, funded by generous contributions of US and European taxpayers, has been created solely to perpetuate the conflict and the misery of the refugees. The United States has never lifted a finger to change this reality, never threatened to cut off support to the UN, never tried to cajole allies into changing the status of UNRWA.

- Jerusalem - the United States, despite the efforts of the vaunted Israel lobby, does not recognize even West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Congressional resolutions, promises of Presidential candidates, all avail nothing.

It may not suit either AIPAC nor Mearsheimer and Walt and their friends to admit it, but the effectiveness of the Israel lobby is close to zero. The US government does what it sees fit to do, and then justifies it in terms of support for Israel, or not.

Concerning the legality or illegality of settlements, it is a red herring issue, Maurice. You have to decide whether you want to fight Islamism with clean hands or defend settlements. You cannot have both. By raising this issue, you are playing right into the hands of those who want to equate Israeli actions with those of Osama Bin Laden. The whole settlement issue simply didn't belong in a documentary of that type, and its presence there is bizarre. The Tal lawthat exempts Ultraorthodox Jews from the draft is also wrong, and it is religiously motivated, but that doesn't have much to do with Jihadism either.


Ami Isseroff
Posted at Israel News

Continued (Permanent Link)

Independent headline claims defensive war is illegal

The Independent, famous for publishing the baby - eating Sharon cartoon, has proven again that its editors are incompetent, mendacious and biased with the following headline: "Secret memo shows Israel knew Six Day War was illegal." It is published here: news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2584164.ece

The Independent offers not a scintilla of of proof for their assertion. Not even close. Defensive war is not illegal. Egypt had given Israel Cassus Belli by closing the straits of Tiran. Jordan and Syria were firing on Israeli towns. How could the Six Day War have been illegal?

What Independent tells us instead has no relation at all to the headline:

A senior legal official who secretly warned the government of Israel after the Six Day War of 1967 that it would be illegal to build Jewish settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories has said, for the first time, that he still believes that he was right.

Meron said nothing about the war at all. The memo was sent after the war. The Israeli government could not have known anything about it before the war. The settlements were not contemplated until after the war. What could the Independent be going on about?

A different version of the same nonsense was written up in an AFP story as:

A SECRET memo proves that the Israeli government knew that its occupation of Palestinian land was illegal...

In this case, the mistake is that the article says Israel knew the occupation is illegal. Meron wrote nothing about the occupation. Britain, France, the United States and USSR occupied German. It was not "illegal."

Meron's opinion regarding the settlements is a different matter.

Ami Isseroff

Continued (Permanent Link)

NUJ Boycott Explanation: Boycott Israel because Palestinians Kidnap Reporter

Below is the entire text of a reply sent by the UK National Union of Journalists regarding their recent vote to boycott Israeli goods. The people who prepared this statement do not, apparently, grasp the full illogic of this paragraph:

The call for the boycott in part related it to the kidnap of Alan Johnston. The Palestinian journalists union has given huge support to the campaign for his release - holding demonstrations and strikes against the Palestinian authority to demand more action from them. We work closely with the Palestinian union through the International Federation of Journalists and the boycott call was a gesture of support for the Palestinian people - notably those suffering in the siege of Gaza, the community Alan Johnston has been so keen to help through his reporting.

Previously I had pointed out the perversity of punishing Israel because Palestinian terrorists kidnapped a British reporter. It seems that is exactly what these people want to do!! The equivalent approximately, would be if a British union in World War II had published a resolution condemning Poland for the Blitzkreig.

The following text should be awarded a prize for disingenuous pleading:

The boycott call has nothing to do with reporting. The NUJ is not telling members how to report Israel - beyond its permanent injunctions to members to report independently and fairly on all matters, and not to produce racist or discriminatory copy.

How could a union call to boycott the goods sold by a country, and condemning that country NOT affect the attitude of reporters and content of their reporters? The union took a totally unjustified stand condemning Israel. Every member of the union, and much of the general public has been exposed to the condemnatory text. Every NUJ reporter in Israel is enjoined to think before buying Israeli products. That means that the intent of the union is that every time a reporter buys a meal, pays for a hotel room, buys batteries, film or other supply, he or she is supposed to remember that Israel is an evil regime, apparently responsible in some way for the kidnapping of a BBC reporter! Few people could possibly be so stupid as to believe that this would not affect attitudes of reporters. The NUJ is either composed of cretins or they are insulting our intelligence.

NUJ also wrote:

we criticise those, including the Palestinian and Israeli authorities, when they act against journalists' freedom to report.

One would think that kidnapping a reporter would somewhat limit his "freedom to report."

NUJ further insults our intelligence with this statement:

It was pointed out in the debate that the year-long boycott of the Palestinian authority by the UK, the US and the European Union, not to mention the government of Israel, has led to a surge in the numbers of people who are unemployed, sick and dying because of the cessation of aid payments and revenue to the Palestinian authorities. This is a boycott of a democratically elected government.

The NUJ would presumably have boycotted Britain for blockading Nazi Germany, since that government was "democratically elected" as well. There can be no democratic elections in a society that is dominated by armed groups. A democracy cannot elect a party to power that is committed to genocide. The Hamas Charter advocates Genocide. Genocide is not "democratic." The wording of the above exposes the bias of the NUJ members who composed it, and indicates the sort of reporting that they consider "fair" and "unbiased," as does this:

"the general damage being done by the continued occupation. "

There is no Israeli occupation in Gaza. There are no Israeli troops in Gaza.

Hat tip - Maurice

Ami Isseroff

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Text of message:

The NUJ's Centenary Annual Conference last week debated more than 200 motions on topics ranging from opposition to plans to neuter the UK Freedom of Information Act, to launching a Stand Up for Journalism campaign against low pay and job cuts throughout the media industry. The conference condemned press freedom violations in China, Russia, Pakistan and Zimbabwe, and a special session was held on the kidnapping of Alan Johnston in Gaza and the safety of journalists. Among the motions passed in the international debate was one calling among other things for the NUJ to support a "boycott of Israeli goods… led by trade unions and the TUC" in response to the situation in Palestine and last year's conflict in Lebanon.

The call for the boycott in part related it to the kidnap of Alan Johnston. The Palestinian journalists union has given huge support to the campaign for his release - holding demonstrations and strikes against the Palestinian authority to demand more action from them. We work closely with the Palestinian union through the International Federation of Journalists and the boycott call was a gesture of support for the Palestinian people - notably those suffering in the siege of Gaza, the community Alan Johnston has been so keen to help through his reporting.

The boycott call has nothing to do with reporting. The NUJ is not telling members how to report Israel - beyond its permanent injunctions to members to report independently and fairly on all matters, and not to produce racist or discriminatory copy. The union has not and never would adopt a line on how any issue should be reported. We stand for free reporting and free speech – and we criticise those, including the Palestinian and Israeli authorities, when they act against journalists' freedom to report.

It was pointed out in the debate that the year-long boycott of the Palestinian authority by the UK, the US and the European Union, not to mention the government of Israel, has led to a surge in the numbers of people who are unemployed, sick and dying because of the cessation of aid payments and revenue to the Palestinian authorities. This is a boycott of a democratically elected government.

The decision made by elected representatives at our conference was a decision of NUJ members as trade unionists and as citizens to try to help put pressure on the Israeli government to reverse its block of these payments, its refusal to recognise Palestinian journalists carrying the international press card and the general damage being done by the continued occupation.

This is not, as some critics have indicated, an institutional boycott. The NUJ will continue to seek to work with all its sister unions in the region, be they Israelis or Palestinians. In fact the NUJ has sought at every opportunity to find ways of making journalists on both sides of the divide work together to advance common issues that concern journalists And it will continue to act within the framework of the International Federation of Journalists for the unity of all journalists in the region.

Members who disagree with the decision can attend their branch, pass motions and seek to change the decision. The NUJ is a democratic union and it is the delegates at our conference each year – elected representatives of all the union's branches – who make the decisions.

Continued (Permanent Link)

At the BBC, any occasion is good for Israel Bashing

In the good old days of the Middle Ages, there were three times to blame the Jews:
1. When things go bad - if there is a plague, the Jews must have poisoned the well.

2. When things go well - holidays like Christmans were always good occasions for pogroms. "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth" had a different meaning then.

3. Whenever else you feel like it.



The BBC has continued in this fine old tradition. When British sailors were released from Iran, BBC used the occassion for Israel-bashing. BBC is spending a fortune to supress a report about its anti-Israel bias. They are wasting their money. Why try to hide what everyone knows?

The item below is from Joy Wolfe. Please do complain to the BBC if you live in Britain and saw the show.

Ami Isseroff

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Complaint re Newsnight 05/04/07

Complaint registered on the website and reported by telephone on 08700100 222

I wish to complain most strongly that the report on last night's Newsnight about the release of the British marines and sailors was allowed to develop into yet another opportunity to put out negative views about Israel.

Firstly I would contend this report had absolutely no relevant link to Israel, so I question why the producer would invite such a pro Palestinian activist to comment on it.

Secondly if it did have to have a go at Israel, making the outrageous, and in my opinion unsustainable claim, that it was Israel who started hostage taking and at one point was the only country using this tactic, why no mention about those Israelis who currently are hostages, with nothing known about them and the world and the BBC conveniently choosing to forget all about them.

I consider this to be yet another example of the BBC's bias against Israel, and in this case to be particularly deplorable since a link was created where none should legitimately have existed

I would like you to treat this as an official complaint, acknowledge it with a reference number, and I look forward to a response before deciding how and where to pursue this complaint.

Below is the profile of the person you chose as the one to comment on this report last night. Hardly comes into the unbiased and balanced category even if the item was about Israel, which it most clearly was not.

May I suggest you think very carefully about trotting her out on air unless there is a balancing voice to put Israel's point of view, if you wish to retain your alleged view that the BBC is unbiased and balanced.

Karma Nabulsi is the fellow in politics at St Edmund Hall, Oxford, and university lecturer at the department of politics and international relations, Oxford University. She was a PLO representative from 1977-90, working at the United Nations, in Beirut, Tunis, and the United Kingdom. She was an advisory member of the Palestinian delegation to the peace talks in Washington from 1991-1993. She then did her doctorate at Balliol College, and was prize research fellow at Nuffield College until 2005. During this time she was the specialist adviser to the UK all-party parliamentary commission of inquiry on Palestinian refugees (and its report, Right of Return, 2000) and the specialist adviser to the House of Commons select committee's inquiry on development assistance and the occupied Palestinian territories, and its report on donor assistance.

She is currently engaged in an EU-funded collective research project, based at Nuffield College, entitled Foundations for Participation: Civic Structures in Palestinian Refugee Camps and Exile Communities.

She is the author of Traditions of War: Occupation, Resistance and the Law (Oxford University Press, paperback edition 2005) and writes on the philosophy and ethics of war, the laws of war, European political history and theory and Palestinian history and politics. She is currently writing Conspirators for Liberty: The Underground Struggle for Democracy in 19th century Europe for W W Norton, supported by a Leverhulme Trust research grant. The book uncovers the untold story of the associations and networks that worked together to build democratic societies in Europe. She contributes to the Guardian, al Hayat, the Electronic Intifada and other journals.

She is a patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, adviser for the Badil legal unit and a member of its expert forum and adviser to Arab Media Watch in the UK. She is a trustee of the Hoping Foundation, which raises money and provides grants to grassroots community organisations working with Palestinian youth in refugee camps all over the Middle East. She was a founding member of the Association of the Palestinian Community in the UK in 1988, and of the Palestinian Women's Union, UK branch.

www.scottishfriendsofisrael.org

"Between the Lines "

I sent the following email to Honest Reporting UK on action@honestreporting.uk

Did anybody see the slot on Newsnight tonight?

"Hi,

I want to draw your attention to yet another side swipe at Israel by the BBC, on Newsnight tonight.

As you know the news is full of the return of the 15 British Marines and sailors from Iran. As a spin-off on Newsnight, there was a slot about hostage-taking in the Middle East. They mentioned all the people taken hostage by Islamists since the American Embassy siege in the 1980s, but as you can guess the Israelis held hostage by terrorists were conspicuous by their absence.

To add insult to injury, the BBC trotted out Karma Nabulsi who then proceeded to list Israel as one of the countries which took hostages and even said there was a time when they were the only ones doing it.

I wasn't able to get a full transcript of what was said, but surely we can complain to the BBC about trotting out a person who sympathises with the aspirations of Hamas in a slot like this is bias of the worst kind?

I look forward to your alert about this, and will gladly join with everybody else in protest. Keep up your wonderful work.

Chag Same'ach LPesach

Ilana Rosen"

Continued (Permanent Link)

NY Review of Books: Lelyveld unmasked

The New York Review of Books has been an unending source of anti-Israel criticism, often very biased. It is interesting that a former editor reveals himself as systematically and hopelessly biased against Israel.

Ami Isseroff

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Former NY Times Editor Reveals his Bias in Anti-Israel Magazine
http://camera.org/index.asp?x_context=2&x_outlet=35&x_article=1305  

The New York Review of Books has been described as "the premier journal of the American intellectual elite." It's also been said to have an "ingrained distrust of Israel."

Unfortunately, these two often go hand in hand. While there's no inherent relationship between progressive thought and Israel-bashing, one-sided attacks on Israel and its legitimacy are a staple of some self-styled "progressive" publications.

The New York Review, for example, was cited in Alvin Rosenfeld's essay implicating "segments of the intellectual left," including some Jews who call themselves "progressive," as sharing with the far right and radical Islam an "emphatic dislike" of Israel. Rosenfeld, a professor of English and Jewish studies at Indiana University, was referring specifically to an article by Tony Judt, whose "emphatic dislike" drove him to call for the end to the Jewish state.

It is both shocking and telling that, well before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his infamous call to "wipe Israel off the map," it was Judt and the New York Review encouraging an end to the Jewish state.

But delegitimization of Israel is sometimes less overt and direct. In the current issue of the biweekly magazine, Joseph Lelyveld, the former executive editor of the New York Times, takes a slightly more roundabout route. His review of Jimmy Carter's widely criticized new book, Palestine Peace not Apartheid, emphasized two main problems. One is merely a complaint about style: "The former president's peculiar combination of rectitude and starchy pride can be a little irritating," he says. The other complaint is much more striking, especially coming from someone who was until recently at the helm of one of America's most influential newspapers. According to Lelyveld, Carter's book doesn't go nearly far enough with its apartheid analogy.

It's not easy to establish yourself as more extreme an Israel-basher than Jimmy Carter, but Lelyveld does so by borrowing from the former president his main techniques of argumentation: distortions, lies, and ignoring or minimizing Israel's legitimate security concerns.

Lelyveld writes:

Obviously, apartheid had plenty to do with racism but land was also at the heart of the South African struggle. ... Under the Group Areas Act, for instance, more than two million blacks and other nonwhites were forcibly moved from what were sometimes called "black spots" in areas designated as "white" to remote settlements and tribal reserves that were rebranded as "homelands." In the process, their lands and homes were confiscated. Finally the denizens of the homelands were told they were citizens of sovereign states, that they were no longer South Africans. All this was in service of apartheid's grand design.

With adjustments for the large differences in population size and land mass, it might be argued that land confiscation on the West Bank approaches the scale of these apartheid-era expropriations in South Africa. Jimmy Carter is well aware of the pattern of land confiscation there; he quotes Meron Benvenisti at length on the subject. But since he thinks apartheid in South Africa was all about race and not about land, he fails to see that it's precisely in their systematic and stealthy grabbing of Arab land that the Israeli authorities and settlers most closely emulate the South African ancien regime.

Apparently aware that a straightforward comparison of Israeli policy in the West Bank to the race-centric policies of apartheid South Africa would fail to convince most readers that the two have much in common, Lelyveld instead resorts to a highly misleading juxtaposition. He sets up the comparison by discussing the forcible transfers of blacks into "homelands" and the revoking of these residents' South African citizenship. But why? He makes no such claims about the West Bank, and for good reason-nothing of the sort has happened there. Unable to accuse Israel of these apartheid practices, Lelyveld apparently is trying to attribute to Israel guilt by juxtaposition.

Moreover, if land was "at the heart of the South African struggle," as the article asserts, it was so only to the extent that land and race issues overlapped. Nonetheless, Lelyveld disingenuously unlinks South Africa's apartheid land policies from its racist ideology in order to compare supposed Israeli land confiscation to that of the apartheid regime. (This would be akin to saying that laws of eminent domain in the United States have much in common with apartheid policy because both involve taking land.)

Lelyveld misleads further on the issue of confiscation. Here, from Carter's book, is Lelyveld's evidence that Israeli authorities "closely emulate" the South African regime:

Later I received a briefing from Meron Benvenisti .... With maps and charts, he explained that the Israelis acquired Palestinian lands in a number of different ways: by direct purchase; through seizure "for security purposes for the duration of the occupation"; by claiming state control of areas formerly held by the Jordanian government; by "taking" under some carefully selected Arabic customs or ancient laws; and by claiming as state land all that was not cultivated or specifically registered as owned by a Palestinian family.

So Lelyveld's evidence that Israel "confiscates" land in a manner similar to apartheid South Africa includes the fact that Israelis purchased land and retained Jordanian, British and Ottoman law relating to West Bank land as per Israel's obligations under international law. (See  here for details about the Hague Regulations of 1907 and Ottoman law about state land.)

Details aside, the article has it backward on the most basic of levels. Blacks were forcibly removed from their homes so that a region could be exclusively white. If there is any parallel in the West Bank, it is in the Palestinian insistence that their future state be Judenrein, despite Jewish historic, cultural and religious ties to the land. (Lelyveld apparently has no problem with the ethnic cleansing of Jews from land on which they have lived for millennia.)

Elaborating on "other similarities [to apartheid] of which Carter seems to be unaware," Lelyveld asserts:

Israel has proven that it's not at all dependent on imported cheap labor from the territories, that it can get along just fine with Thais, Filipinos, and Romanians. It has thus gone beyond South Africa's apartheid theorists who dreamed of a day when they could do without black labor but never got close. The argument absurdly conflates race with citizenship, and racism with security. Arab citizens of Israel can, and of course do, work in the country, often alongside Jewish workers. Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, however, are not citizens of Israel but rather residents of an area from which a brutal war against Israeli civilians was launched only a few years ago. It was as a result of this war that the number of Palestinians working inside Israel was reduced. One can call Israelis' apparent preference to hire workers from countries with peaceful relations many things; but a parallel to apartheid it is not.

More evidence of Israel's supposed similarity to apartheid South Africa can be seen, according to Lelyveld, in the fact that "there's a much bigger and more obvious military presence in the occupied territories than normally existed in the black townships and 'homelands' of the apartheid state." By that logic, the U.S. occupations of Germany and Japan after World War II were also like apartheid with their vast armaments, bases and manpower.

Lelyveld repeats the disproved canard about a supposed "network of roads for the exclusive use of the [West Bank Jewish] settlers and the Israel Defense Forces." (See here and here for rebuttals to this common error.)

Lelyveld mischaracterizes United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, saying that it calls for an Israeli withdrawal from "the territories." This a particularly striking error, since he is well aware that the resolution makes no such call. During Lelyveld's tenure at the New York Times, the newspaper on three separate occasions incorrectly described Resolution 242 as calling for an Israeli withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines. Each time, the errors were acknowledged with corrections, such as the one published on September 8, 2000:

An article on Wednesday about the Middle East peace talks referred incorrectly to United Nations resolutions on the Arab-Israeli conflict. While Security Council Resolution 242, passed after the 1967 Middle East War, calls for Israel's armed forces to withdraw "from territories occupied in the recent conflict," no resolution calls for Israeli withdrawal from all territory, including East Jerusalem, occupied in the war. It is precisely because 242's drafters did not believe Israel should withdraw to the precarious 1949 lines that they insisted the resolution call for an Israeli withdrawal "from territories" rather than "from the territories" or from "all the" territories.

Lelyveld clearly understood the content and meaning of Resolution 242, and clearly understood that by repeatedly getting it wrong the New York Times was harming its own credibility. After the third correction, he convened his staff and said to them: "Three times in recent months we've had to run corrections on the actual provisions of UN Resolution 242, providing great cheer and sustenance to those readers who are convinced we are opinionated and not well informed on Middle East issues."

But he apparently realized the New York Review of Books doesn?t hold itself to such journalistic standards. Not only does the former Times editor let Carter's fallacious characterizations of Resolution 242 pass without comment, but himself mis-describes 242 by inserting what the resolution's drafter's intentionally left out -- the definite article "the."

Lelyveld echoes the partisan Palestinian line that the security situation became more dangerous "pretty much as a direct result" of the growth of Israeli settlements, ignoring the fact that anti-Israel violence by Palestinians preceded not only the settlements, but the occupation itself, and ignoring the fact that groups that perpetrate violence against Israelis continuously make clear they are fighting not against settlements, but against Israel's very existence.

Lelyveld minimizes the success of Israel's security barrier (which he, of course, calls a "separation wall"), claiming a Hamas declaration that it would not bomb inside Israel was "as much or even more" responsible for a decline in attacks than the barrier itself.

Even Ramadan Shalah, a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror organization, seems more willing than Lelyveld to unequivocally credit the fence for thwarting attacks. On Hezbollah's al-Manar television station, he admitted the barrier is "an obstacle to the resistance, and if it were not there the situation would be entirely different."

He suggests that U.S. support for Israel's reaction last summer to Hezbollah's attacks is evidence of American "bias" for Israel.

Lelyveld's polemic is extreme, but it is hardly the only example of radical anti-Israel rhetoric in the pages of the New York Review of Books and other supposedly "progressive" magazines -- as if there is anything progressive about closed-minded, distorted and error-filled delegitimization of Israel.

Continued (Permanent Link)

BBC spending 200,000 pounds to muzzle report on anti-Israel bias.

We knew that the BBC is doing its best to cover up the Balen report. If they had nothing to hide, that would not be the case. Muzzle-watchers take note.

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BBC pays £200,000 to 'cover up report on anti-Israel bias'>

by PAUL REVOIR - Last updated at 21:24pm on 22nd March 2007

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=444074&in_page_id=1770

The BBC has been accused of "shameful hypocrisy" over its decision to spend £200,000 blocking a freedom of information request about its reporting in the Middle East.

The corporation, which has itself made extensive use of FOI requests in its journalism, is refusing to release papers about an internal inquiry into whether its reporting has been biased towards Palestine.

BBC chiefs have been accused of wasting thousands of pounds of licence fee payers money trying to cover-up the findings of the so called Balen Report into its journalism in the region, despite the fact that the corporation is funded by the British public.

The corporation is fighting a landmark High Court action, which starts next week, in a bid to prevent the public finding out what is in the review, which is believed to be critical of the BBC's coverage in the region.

BBC bosses have faced repeated claims that is coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict has been skewed by a pro-Palestianian bias.

The corporation famously came under fire after middle-east correspondent Barbara Plett revealed that she had cried at the death of Yasser Arafat in 2004.

The BBC's decision to carry on pursuing the case, despite the fact than the Information Tribunal said it should make the report public, has sparked fury as it flies in the face of claims by BBC chiefs that it is trying to make the corporation more open and transparent.

Politicians have branded the BBC's decision to carry on spending money, hiring the one of the country's top public law barrister in the process, as "absolutely indefensible".

They claim its publication is clearly in the public interest.

The BBC's determination to bury the report has led to speculation that the report was damning in its assessment of the BBC's coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict that the BBC wants to keep it under wraps at all costs.

Others believe that the BBC is using the case to test the law about how much protection it has got from making its editorial activities public and also because it fears that if it loses the case it will create a precedent.

The BBC's action over the case have provoked inevitable charges of hypocrisy as the BBC itself makes frequent used of freedom of information requests to get stories.

The BBC's own website boasts of 69 stories that it says it has broken with the help of the Freedom of Information Act.

If the BBC loses the High Court case next week it could appeal again and again until the case reaches the European Court in Strasbourg.

This would soak further thousands from BBC coffers, which should be spent on making TV programmes.

Conservative MP David Davies said: "An organisation which is funded partly to scrutinise governments and other institutions in Britain appears to be using tax-payers money to prevent its customers from finding out how it is operating. That is absolutely indefensible."

He added: "I think the BBC are guilty of shameful hypocrisy. What could possibly be in this report that could possibly be worth £200,000 to bury. What is it they feel is so awful in this report."

A source close to the case said they believed that the BBC had spend in the region of £200,000 on the case so far, while another legal expert claimed the cost could be as much as £300,000.

The document was put together by BBC editorial advisor Malcolm Balen in 2004 but never released.

The High Court action next week is the latest episode in what has become a lengthy legal battle which has been pursued by London solicitor Steven Sugar, who made the initial FOI request.

Initially Information Commissioner Richard Thomas agreed with the BBC's decision not to release details of the report.

But Sugar appealed the Information Tribunal and they backed his claims in September. This then saw the BBC appeal to the High Court.

The BBC claims public broadcasters do not have to disclose material that is held for the purposes of "journalism, art or literature".

But the BBC is now facing accusations it is using this rule as a smoke-screen.

It claims the measures are there to protect the integrity of its reporting and protects its journalists from interference from the public.

The BBC Believes that this includes the Balen Report.

The BBC also claims that if the court finds in Sugar's favour it could lead to a sudden increase in FOI requests which would require more staff and a further burden on the licence fee.

While the BBC did not reveal the findings of the Balen Report, which was compiled in 2004, the corporation did last year make public the findings of an independent panel report into the BBC's impartiality on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

That report found said that there was "no deliberate or systematic bias" in the BBC's reporting, but said its approach had at times been "inconsistent" and was "not always providing a complete picture" which had been "misleading".

But some claimed that the independent panel report only took a snapshot of the BBC's activities and should have looked more deeply at the reporting of the most troubled moments of the conflict.

Steven Sugar, who said he was prepared to take the case all the way to European court, said: "What I would like to see is the disclosure of an important document which will give us an insight into what the BBC itself thinks of its own performance.

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Sex, Gender and the Middle East: Happy Women's Day - Saudi Woman gets 90 lashes for being raped

Attention all you progressives and women's rights groups out there. There has been a HUMAN RIGHTS VIOLATION in the Middle East. A really gross one. Get John Dugard out here double quick. OOPS false alarm, it happened in Saudi Arabia, not Israel. "A Saudi woman who was kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped and then beaten by her brother has been sentenced to 90 lashes -- for meeting a man who was not a relative."

Is that a sex crime or a gender crime or what? Or are you just going to ignore it because it happened in Saudi Arabia. BBC and New York Times have apparently chosen to ignore it, so that is the politically correct thing to do.  

From Tom Grossmedia:

Today, March 8, marks International Women's Day. The mainstream media, including the New York Times and the BBC, have -- true to form, since they specialize only in skewering the news against Israel and the U.S.-- completely ignored the news that "A Saudi woman who was kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped and then beaten by her brother has been sentenced to 90 lashes -- for meeting a man who was not a relative."

The sentencing earlier this week has been reported by AFP and in Arab media, including the Khaleej Times (published in the United Arab Emirates) and the Saudi Gazette. But as far as I can tell the only Western mainstream media outlets to have covered the story are Fox News and the Scotsman (a Scottish newspaper). This is despite the fact that most Western media subscribe to AFP.

The 19-year-old Saudi woman was abducted by a gang of men wielding kitchen knives who took her to a farm where she was raped 14 times by her captors. Five men were arrested for the rape and given jail terms ranging from 10 months to five years by a panel of judges in the eastern Saudi city of Qatif, near the teenager's hometown.

But the judges also decided to sentence the young woman, identified only as "G," to 90 lashes. "G" was told by one of the judges that she was lucky not to have been given jail time. She said yesterday that she would appeal against her sentence.

The woman told the Saudi Gazette that she tried to commit suicide because of her ordeal and was beaten by her younger brother because the rape had brought shame on their family.

Unrelated men and women are forbidden from interacting in public in Saudi Arabia, which strictly enforces Islamic Sharia law of a kind many European Muslims say they would like to introduce in countries like Britain and France.

* On the official International Women's Day website, there is nothing about Saudi Arabia, just publicity for the "Lighting candles for Women in Palestinian society" event.

From Khaleej Times:

A Saudi woman who was kidnapped at knifepoint, gang-raped and then beaten by her brother has been sentenced to 90 lashes – for a meeting a man who was not a relative, a newspaper reported on Monday.

In an interview with the Saudi Gazette, the 19-year-old said she was blackmailed a year ago into meeting a man who threatened to tell her family they were having a relationship outside wedlock, which is illegal in the ultra-conservative desert kingdom.

After driving off together from a shopping mall near her home, the woman and the man were stopped and abducted by a gang of men wielding kitchen knives who took them to a farm where she was raped 14 times by her captors.

Five men were arrested for the rape and given jail terms ranging from 10 months to five years by a panel of judges in the eastern city of Qatif, near the woman's hometown.

But the judges also decided to sentence the woman, identified by the newspaper only as 'G,' and the man to lashes for being alone together in the car.

Unrelated men and women are forbidden from interacting in public in Saudi Arabia, which strictly enforces Islamic Sharia law.

'G' said one of the judges told she was lucky not to have been given jail time. 'I was shocked at the verdict. I couldn't believe my ears,' said the woman, who has appealed against her sentence.

The woman also told the paper she tried to commit suicide because of her ordeal and was beaten by her younger brother because the rape had brought shame on their family.

Aren't you proud to support progressive causes?

Ami Isseroff

 

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Muslim Lobby Muzzles Documentary about Terror

This is another illustration of why criticism of Islam is impossible in the United States. Any attempt to criticize Islam in any way is subject to censorship by the Muslim/Arab lobby. Nobody stopped Mel Gibson from showing his film, but the least criticism of Islam is censored.

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February 26, 2007
Film’s View of Islam Stirs Anger on Campuses
By KAREN W. ARENSON

When Obsession: "Radical Islam’s War Against the West,” a documentary that shows Muslims urging attacks on the United States and Europe, was screened recently at the University of California, Los Angeles, it drew an audience of more than 300 — and also dozens of protesters.At Pace University in New York, administrators pressured the Jewish student organization Hillel to cancel a showing in November, arguing it could spur hate crimes against Muslim students. A Jewish group at the State University of New York at Stony Brook also canceled the film last semester.

The documentary has become the latest flashpoint in the bitter campus debate over the Middle East, not just because of its clips from Arab television rarely shown in the West, including scenes of suicide bombers being recruited and inducted, but also because of its pro-Israel distribution network.

When a Middle East discussion group organized a showing at New York University recently, it found that the distributors of Obsession” were requiring those in attendance to register at IsraelActivism.com, and that digital pictures of the events be sent to Hasbara Fellowships, a group set up to counter anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses.

If people have to give their names over to Hasbara Fellowships at the door, that doesn’t have the effect of stimulating open dialogue,” said Jordan J. Dunn, president of the Middle East Dialogue Group of New York University, which mixes Jews and Muslims. “Rather, it intimidates people and stifles dissent.”

The documentary’s proponents say it provides an unvarnished look at Islamic militancy. “It’s an urgent issue that is widely avoided by academia,” argued Michael Abdurakhmanov, the Hillel president at Pace.

Its critics call it incendiary. Norah Sarsour, a Palestinian-American student at U.C.L.A., said it was disheartening to see “a film like this that takes the people who have hijacked the religion and focuses on them.”

Certainly it is a new element in the bitter campus battles over the Middle East that have encompassed everything from the content and teaching of Middle East studies to disputes over art exhibitions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to debates over free speech.

“The situation in the Middle East has been a major issue on campus for decades, but the heat has noticeably turned up lately,” said Greg Lukianoff, the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

At San Francisco State University, for example, College Republicans stomped on copies of the Hamas and Hezbollah flags last October at an “antiterrorism” rally. At the University of California, Irvine, the Muslim Student Union drew criticism last year for a “Holocaust in the Holy Land” program about Israel.

Brandeis University officials pulled an exhibition of Palestinian children’s drawings, including some of bloodied Palestinian children, designed to bring the Palestinian viewpoint to the campus, half of whose students are Jewish.

Three years ago a video produced by a pro-Israeli group featuring Jewish students’ complaints of intimidation by Middle East studies professors at Columbia set off a campus-wide debate over freedom of speech and academic freedom, prompting an investigation that found some fault by one professor but “no evidence of any statements made by the faculty that could reasonably be construed as anti-Semitic.”

Into this milieu stepped the producer of “Obsession,” Raphael Shore, a 45-year-old Canadian who lives in Israel, with the documentary. It features scenes like the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Muslim children being encouraged to become suicide bombers, interspersed with those of Nazi rallies.

The film was directed by Wayne Kopping of South Africa, who had worked with Mr. Shore previously on a documentary about the failure of the Oslo peace efforts in the Middle East. Mr. Shore said in a recent interview that they had not set out to make a film for college students but to spur action against Islamic terrorism. “We want to spread this message to all people that will stand up and make a difference in combating this threat,” he said.

When no traditional film distributors picked it up, he said, colleges were an obvious outlet — it was screened on 30 campuses last semester — along with DVD sales on the Internet (ObsessionTheMovie.com), and showings at synagogues and other locales, including conservative ones like the Heritage Foundation in Washington. There were also repeated broadcasts of abbreviated versions or excerpts on Fox News in November and again this month, and on other media outlets like CNN Headline News.

“College students have the power with their energy, resources, time and interest to make a difference, often more than other individuals,” Mr. Shore said.

He hired a campus coordinator, Karyn Leffel, who works out of the New York City office of the Hasbara Fellowships program, which aims to train students “to be effective pro-Israel activists on their campuses.” “ ‘Obsession’ is so important because it shows what’s happening in Israel is not happening in a vacuum,” said Elliot Mathias, director of the Hasbara Fellowships program, “and that it affects all American students on campuses, not just Jewish students.”

Mr. Shore said that despite the collaboration with Hasbara, the goal was to draw a wide audience.

“The evangelical Christians and the Jews tend to be the softest market, the most receptive to the message of the film, so we have done lots with those groups,” he said. “But we are trying very hard to expand beyond those groups, because we specifically don’t want it to be seen as a film that has that connection.”

Mr. Shore describes his film as nonpartisan and balanced, and many viewers agree with him. Traci Ciepiela, who teaches criminal justice at Western Wyoming Community College in Rock Springs and has a screening scheduled this week, says she learned from the film and did not think that it was unfair or inflammatory.

But others see it as biased. Arnold Leder, a political scientist at Texas State University, San Marcos, decided not to use it for his course “The Politics of Extremism” because of what he called “serious flaws,” including that it did not address Islam in general, the history of Islam and the schisms within the faith.

“If it were used in a class,” he said, “it would have to be treated as a polemic and placed in that context.”

Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of U.C.L.A. Hillel, called the documentary propaganda and said it was “a way to transfer the Middle East conflict to the campus, to promote hostility.”
While the film carries cautions at the beginning and end that it is only about Islamist extremists -- and that most Muslims are peaceful and do not support terror -- Muslim students who have protested say they believe the documentary will still fuel prejudice.

“The movie was so well crafted and emotion manipulating that I felt myself thinking poorly of some aspects of Islam,” said Adam Osman, president of Stony Brook’s Muslim Students’ Association, who asked that it not be shown.

While screenings were canceled under pressure at Pace and Stony Brook, Ms. Leffel said that most campus screening, like a recent one at Providence College in Rhode Island, had taken place without incident. Students at New York University decided they wanted to present it, despite misgivings by some Muslim students.

At the screening there late last month, the viewers — many of them Muslims — ganged up on Robert Friedman, a discussion leader who had been sent by the “Obsession” filmmakers. (The event was sponsored by the Middle East Dialogue Group at N.Y.U., the Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life, Arab Students United and the Pakistani Students Association.)

Mr. Friedman told the audience, “You have to understand a problem before you can solve it.”
But most of the viewers, including both a rabbi and a Muslim chaplain on a discussion panel put together by the students, said the film did not foster understanding.

“The question about radical Islam and how do we fight it is unproductive,” said Yehuda Sarna, the New York University rabbi on the panel. “The question is how to break down the stereotypes facing the two religions.”

Steven I. Weiss, editor and publisher of CampusJ.com, an Internet site that covers Jewish news on campuses, said he was surprised by the Jewish skepticism to the film at N.Y.U. “Were a Jewish leader from virtually any significant organization to walk in on that discussion,” he said, “they’d be very surprised and displeased. This is the opposite of the change they’ve been looking for in campus rhetoric.”

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