Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Haaretz

Showing posts with label Haaretz. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 11, 2019

Elder gets results, sort of (Haaretz edition)

In September, Haaretz' Gideon Levy and Alex Levac wrote an article saying that Israel was uprooting "hundreds" of olive trees, right before harvest!

Levac took a photo of one of them. Note the caption.

Regavim told me the entire story was bogus, and the trees that were uprooted were acacia saligna (coojong.)The acacias are a pest plant, hat spread quickly, planted by Palestinians for a land grab.

Who was telling the truth?

I asked Twitter what kind of tree was in the photo - taken by one of the authors. Everyone agreed it wasn't an olive tree, and some agreed it was acacia. I wrote up how Haaretz appears to be lying.

I just noticed that Haaretz corrected the caption, and even added a correction for the photo caption. But the article still claims that hundreds of olive trees were destroyed by Israel.

If one of the authors doesn't know what an olive tree looks like, why should we believe them about the other trees destroyed? No Palestinian news site showed photos of hundreds of destroyed olive trees.

Haaretz was caught in a lie, but only admitted the bare minimum it could.

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A textbook case of media bias that most people would miss

Haaretz reports:

Over 50 Christian and Muslim sites have been vandalized in Israel and the West Bank since 2009, but only nine indictments have been filed and only seven convictions handed down, according to Public Security Ministry data. Moreover, only eight of the 53 cases are still under investigation, with the other 45 all closed.

Because of this story, Haaretz wrote a lead editorial with the title "Israel's Public Security Minister Is Soft on Crimes Against Christian and Muslim Sites."

The bias:

At no time does Haaretz investigate how many times arson of Jewish sites results in indictments or convictions.

Haaretz is trying to say that Israeli police do not prioritize hate crimes against Muslims and Christians, but the implication is that this is not the case for Jews.

Haaretz is also trying to say that the 53 incidents over 8 years is a huge number, but it doesn't give a comparable accounting of how many anti-Jewish incidents there were.

I don't know the answer. Perhaps there is bias. Certainly more resources could be used to find the criminals. But without knowing how many Jewish sites were attacked and how many attackers were caught, this story is innuendo - not news.

In 2007, I visited the burial place of Samuel the Prophet - right after it was vandalized by Arabs. Torahs were desecrated, books destroyed, the Ark badly damaged. The story was barely reported in Arutz-7 and ignored by all other Israeli English language media. Haaretz certainly didn't report it. The people at the site described it to me as a "pogrom" and told me this wasn't the only time it happened.

Were the vandals caught? I have no idea. But I doubt it.

There are plenty of arson and vandalism attacks against Jewish sites in Israel, from the desecration of graves on the Mount of Olives by Arabs to attacks by bored teens to attacks by atheists against synagogues and intra-Jewish attacks as well. I don't know how many are done by Arabs and how many by Jews. I don't know how many were only graffiti and how many were actual damage to holy objects on either side.

But this is what is needed to know exactly how bad the problem is.

A real newspaper would compile all these statistics. A newspaper with an anti-Jewish bias, however, would do exactly what Haaretz did.

(Not surprisingly, Arab media is republishing the Haaretz report as gleeful proof that Jews are constantly attacking Muslim holy sites - using this photo as representative of "Jews."While any attack is too many, 53 attacks over 8 years is about one every two months, which is hardly an epidemic.)

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Haaretz columnist Rogel Alpher compares fallen IDF soldiers to suicide bombers

Rogel Alpher continues to troll Jews. There is no way he actually believes this stuff; he just wants to get people outraged at him so he can keep his job at Haaretz.

The version of “El Maleh Rahamim” sung in official state ceremonies on Memorial Day is a jihadist text that turns fallen Israeli soldiers into shahids. The prayer begins: “God full of mercy, who dwells on high” and continues: “among the holy, the pure and the heroes ... the souls of the soldiers ... who gave their lives for the sanctification of [God] and who with the help of the God of Israel’s wars brought about the rebirth of the nation and the redemption of the land. God is their heritage, may they find rest in the Garden of Eden.”
According to the prayer, Israeli soldiers die in the sanctification of the name God. And thus in fighting and dying, they carried out the commandment that requires them as Jews to give their lives for God. This jihadism is clearly declared in the prayer commemorating the souls of the departed in state ceremonies on Memorial Day. As a result of being holy, the fallen soldiers’ place in the Garden of Eden is assured, and there they will rest. How is this different from the culture of the shahids? A shahid is also someone whose place in Paradise is assured, according to the verse in the Koran: “Think not of those who are slain for the sake of Allah as dead. Nay, they live, finding their sustenance in the presence of their Lord.”
According to “El Maleh Rahamim,” a shahid and a fallen soldier are the same. They both gave their lives for the sake of God, and in exchange, they are both in Paradise. The mentality is identical.

This is a modified version of a prayer that has been around for about a thousand years, changed to apply specifically to fallen IDF soldiers. There are versions for Holocaust victims as well as a group. It was first composed, apparently, to commemorate victims of the Crusades and of the Chmielnicki massacres

The IDF version is very close to the traditional version. It is blindingly obvious that in no way does the prayer encourage people to become martyrs.

Alpher, in his depravity, is pretending that the jihadist idea of martyrdom is the legitimate and original version, and the Jewish use of the term is simply an application of the Muslim jihadist suicide bomber version. No, Rogel, Jews don't want to die as martyrs, but too often there is no choice.

Muslim Shahids willingly die while trying to kill the infidel. Jews become martyrs while trying to save themselves and their people and their faith. To call these two mentalities "identical" is, as I said, trolling.

Alpher isn't that stupid. He just gets his jollies on making people angry. He is not worth hating - he is simply too pathetic a human being.

(h/t Yoel)

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Haaretz publisher suggests settler children should be forcibly removed

In late November, Haaretz (Hebrew) published a somewhat satirical letter making an analogy between the bonfires of the Bar Kochba revolt and the arson fires in Israel:

Some 2,000 years ago an event attributed to the Bar Kokhva Revolt and marked by lighting fires accrued in the history of our people. Some 50 years ago Israel conquered the West Bank and since then, via the "Settlements Project", Israeli governments continue to deprive the Palestinians of their lands. This historic move has an existential significance for the fate and future of the Palestinians as a nation. It seems that some Palestinians what to mark this 50th anniversary by lighting fires.

We don't like it, but we can understand them.

Dov Sitton, Omer

Tweeter Amir asked Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken if he thinks it's appropriate to publish such a letter. Here's the full exchange:

Amos: Amusing letter. Certainly worth publishing (even if it agrees with the Right's claim that there was an organized Palestinian arson attack which I totally reject).

Amir: Amusing?! Everything is publishable?

Amos: Read it with a grain of salt. Certainly amusing (but that's just my opinion which you asked for).

Amos: I'll explain: the letter is amusing in it's wording but says what you've already heard: it's the right and duty of the conquered and dispossessed to throw stones (and light fires). [link]

Yonatan Yahav: What about his "right" to blow up buses and shoot babies in the head (Shalhevet Pass)?

Amos: He has no right, but colonialism has shown that the conquered and dispossessed can only achieve freedom via terror, because without that the colonizer will not give up his privileges. I oppose terror but I know it won't be eradicated until Apartheid is eradicated. In a normal country the Ministry of Welfare removes kids from the possession of their parents if they pose a threat to them. If I'd say that this how Shalhevet Pass should have been treated you'd say I'm insane, but at least she would be alive today.

Could you imagine that Schocken would ever suggest that the authorities take away children of Arab terrorists because of the danger that the IDF might bomb their houses?

Moreover, Schocken's pretense that he opposes terror rings hollow. It is difficult to believe that Schocken is against Palestinian terror if he believes that it is the only way to achieve a laudable goal. Obviously if he considers what he calls "apartheid" to be a worse crime than terror, he believes terror is justified, and the victims of terror are the ones who are guilty of being victims.

This is not merely insane. It is criminal.

(h/t Yoel)

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Haaretz proves yet again how irrelevant it is (update)

Haaretz had exactly two articles about the election for the head of the Union of Jewish Students in the UK.

Both of them featured a pro-BDS, anti-Zionist nominee, Eran Cohen, whom Haaretz called a "top candidate" and featured in a fawning 1300 word article and interview.

You would not have even known the name of the other two nominees if you use Haaretz are your only source for Jewish news around the world.

The election results came out today.

The winner was Joshua Holt.

Cohen received mere 89 votes out of the 1049 votes cast.

(h/t Jonathan Hoffman)

UPDATE: Here's how Haaretz reported the story:

It included a video of the loser. Even with a crushing defeat, Haaretz cannot help but promote the candidate who is explicitly against the existence of Israel.

It did not mention that Cohen received only 89 votes against Josh Holt's 682.

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Haaretz anti-Zionist historian seems surprisingly ignorant of history - but has lots of hate

Haaretz keeps digging to new lows.

It published an essay by two anti-Zionist historians why they decided to become anti-Zionist.

The first few paragraphs from Hasia Diner, professor of American Jewish history at NYU, is nothing short of astonishing.

When I was asked to run as a delegate on the progressive Hatikva platform to the 2010 World Zionist Congress, I encountered my personal rubicon, the line I could not cross. I was required to sign the "Jerusalem Program." This statement of principles asked me to affirm that I believed in “the centrality of the State of Israel and Jerusalem as capital” for the Jewish people. It encouraged “Aliyah to Israel,” that is, the classic negation of the diaspora and as such the ending of Jewish life outside a homeland in Israel.

Maybe I'm not as smart as an NYU professor, but I don't read "encouraging Aliyah" as "ending Jewish life everywhere outside Israel." I don't think Israel is placing a gun to the head of Jews in Long Island to move to Tel Aviv, or else.

So the entire argument is a straw-man. But that's the least of the problems with Professor Diner's essay.

The death of vast numbers of Jewish communities as a result of Zionist activity has impoverished the Jewish people, robbing us of these many cultures that have fallen into the maw of Israeli homogenization. The ideal of a religiously neutral state worked amazingly well for the millions of Jews who came to America.

I wonder what vibrant Jewish communities Israel is responsible for destroying.

Could it be the Jewish communities of Egypt? Iraq? Syria? Yemen? Morocco? Maybe Sweden? Or perhaps she is blaming Zionism for the destruction of Polish and Hungarian Jewry? What happened to them, anyway?

The answers, which every schoolchild knows, call into question the credentials of a history professor who has seemingly no clue why all those Jewish communities don't exist or are nearly extinct, and who blames Israel for their disappearance. In fact, practically the only place that they are preserved is in Israel. (And if she blames Israel for the antisemitism that drove the Jews out of Arab countries, then she is truly hateful - and shallow.)

Diner doesn't give a crap about the survival of the Jewish people or about the "homogenization" of Jews into an Israeli melting pot. These remnants of these communities are here today largely because of Israel. Those Jews no longer have to suffer with massacres, with dhimmitude, with being humiliated daily. What a terrible loss.

On the other hand, gefilte fish may have never existed if there was no Diaspora. Yay, pogroms!

In fact, Diner herself, in one of her books, exploded the myth of the Lower East Side as a romantic incubator of the American Jewish experience. "Though largely populated by Jews from Eastern Europe, it was not ethnically or even religiously homogenous. The tenements, grinding poverty, sweatshops, and packs of roaming children were considered the stuff of social work, not nostalgia and romance," say a blurb from her book "Lower East Side Memories: A Jewish Place in America." Yet she apparently holds on to her own personal myths of a flourishing, romantic Diaspora in Europe and the Arab world - but only when she can blame Israel for its disappearance.

I was struck in Israel last month by synagogues that now mix customs of Ashkenazic Jews and those from Arab countries. On Shabbat, I went to a shul that prayed according to the Eastern European custom but used a Torah from Edot Hamizrach which affected how that part of the service was done. Another one I went to took on the custom of whoever happened to be the prayer leader for that particular service - Ashkenaz for mincha, Nusach Sefard for maariv, and some people saying kaddish in the Mizrahi Jewish manner. All at the same minyan.

This "homogenization" is not something to be scorned but to be celebrated - unless you are a clueless NYU professor for whom the Diaspora is the ultimate symbolism of what it means to be Jewish.

The entire reason Jews have different customs is because they were in an unnatural disapora state for so long. While some customs are quaint and beautiful, the diaspora itself was not. The good customs will remain, others will start, some will disappear. That's what happens in a dynamic, living society. But Professor Diner does not want a dynamic Judaism that has returned to its historic homeland. She wants the museum, fictional Judaism of Fiddler on the Roof.

To Diner, Zionism must be fought because it wants to create a world where Jews are united again and Jews have a nation again.

When one looks at it with a real historical perspective, one sees that Diner's whining has nothing to do with reality. She simply hates Israel and proud Jews. Diner is so bigoted, in fact, that she rails against Haredi Jews, whom she despises so much that she literally "abhors" visiting Israel because she doesn't want to see those damned Jews in their black hats and coats.

If Diner was honest, which of course she isn't, she would admit that her hate for Israel is irrational, and she is justifying it after the fact. There is no real difference between Diner and classic antisemites who also justify their hate with pseudo-moral arguments.

She is a bigot pretending to embrace liberal principals. But hate is what animates her, not a true liberal love for all peoples. What little mask she still has falls off when she reveals:

I feel a sense of repulsion when I enter a synagogue in front of which the congregation has planted a sign reading, “We Stand With Israel.”

Irish flags don't bother her on St. Patrick's day. Italians don't bother her when they march down Fifth Avenue on Columbus Day. West Indians and their costumes don't bother her when they dance down Brooklyn streets on their annual festival.

Only the Israeli flag repulses her.

This is not a rational person, This is a bigoted, despicable person who uses her academic standing as a mask to hide her true, ugly face of hatred.

Of course, she is perfect to write for Haaretz.

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Proven liar Gary Spedding resurfaces - and Haaretz publishes him

A couple of years ago I blogged a long Twitter conversation between myself and a "peace activist" named Gary Spedding, as well as exchanges between him and Gilead Ini of CAMERA.

The text proves beyond any doubt that Spedding is a liar who enjoys scrubbing evidence of his hate. (He tried to say the Fogels were murdered by a domestic worker, not an Arab terrorist, for example. He then deleted the post, denied ever writing it, and when confronted with screen-shot evidence kept denying it.)

Later it was shown that Spedding had been involved in a violent anti-Israel demonstration in Belfast. As the Israeli embassy in London said then, “Mr Spedding’s entry into Israel was denied due to his involvement in organising a violent protest in Queens University, Belfast, in which an Israeli representative was attacked, and others were forced to take shelter to prevent being hurt. No country has an obligation to allow foreigners who have been involved in violent activities targeting its nationals to enter its territory.”

Spedding lied about this incident as well, claiming falsely that he was given a "ten year ban" to go to Israel merely for "lying" and being an unspecified "security threat."

You cannot grant Spedding any credibility after reading those posts of mine, or this other series.

But Haaretz can.

Spedding wrote an article about how he witnesses too much antisemitism on the pro-Palestinian side, and he is upset. Not so much because antisemitism is evil, but because the existence of antisemitism gives credence to the idea that most anti-Zionists are, deep down, antisemitic, which Spedding disputes. He says that "Israel advocacy groups weaponize anti-Semitism to stifle and shut down debate and legitimate criticism of Israel" and "activists will sometimes inadvertently share anti-Semitic or deeply offensive posts. This is the product of ignorance as opposed to malicious intent towards Jews."

The most hilarious part is where Spedding, who went to great lengths to delete his offensive writings from the Internet, self-righteously says "Whatever the motivation, it's the words that matter; this is what makes the public record."

The bulk of the op-ed isn't that terrible; Spedding does call out a real problem. But the entire op-ed is a pathetic way for Spedding to try to rehabilitate himself, and Haaretz is all too happy to allow this violent anti-Israel activist to use its platform to try to make him sound like a peacemaker.

Haaretz and Spedding belong together.

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Haaretz repeats lie that Israel pressured Ethiopian women to take Depo-Provera

From an op-ed in Haaretz:

Israel commits racist crimes. A prominent example is the police’s violence during the demonstrations by young Ethiopian men and women a year ago. (Police violence, incidentally, isn’t limited to young Ethiopians; many young Arabs encounter it as well.) Another example is the investigation that revealed the pressure on Ethiopian women to receive shots of the birth control hormone Depo-Provera before immigrating.

There was no pressure whatsoever to tell Ethiopian women that they must receive Depo-Provera before immigrating. The only organization that provides contraceptive counseling to Ethiopian women before coming to Israel was the American Joint Distribution Committee, and they emphatically and specifically denied any such practice. My own investigation showed that many Ethiopian women were volunteering to take the contraceptive because it could more easily be kept secret from their husbands, but Haaretz' libel (then and now) that the State of Israel pressured the women to take Depo-Provera before immigrating is 100% false.

An multi-year investigation by the state comptroller also showed that there was no evidence of requiring Ethiopian women to take Depo-Provera before coming to Israel.

No one is denying that racism exists in Israel, but this article in Haaretz is attempting to prove that there is institutional racism, and that is simply a lie. I spoke with MK Avraham Neguise, the only Ethiopian member of Knesset, yesterday, and he was emphatic about that point. (Full video coming soon.)

If I would have known that Haaretz would be resurrecting the libel, I would have asked him about this specifically.

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