01/09 Links Pt1: Netanyahu: Israel thwarted 'major' terror attacks in Europe involving planes; Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017

From Ian:

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Netanyahu: Israel thwarted 'major' terror attacks in Europe involving planes

Israeli intelligence has thwarted mass terrorist attacks in Europe that “involve civil aviation,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday, in a possible reference to September 11-type attacks planned against European targets using hijacked aircraft.

Netanyahu, speaking in Jerusalem to ambassadors of NATO countries, said that the world is threatened by radical Sunni groups, initially led by al-Qaeda, but now by Islamic State, and radical Shi'ites led by Iran.

“When we talk about ISIS, it's important to understand that Israel helps Europe in two fundamental ways,” Netanyahu said.

“The first is that we have, through our intelligence services, provided information that has stopped several dozen major terrorist attacks, many of them in European countries. Some of these could have been mass attacks, of the worst kind that you have experienced on the soil of Europe and even worse, because they involve civil aviation. Israel has prevented that, and thereby helped save many European lives.”

He did not elaborate. Netanyahu has said numerous times in the past that Israeli intelligence has helped thwart numerous terrorist attacks in Europe.

JPost Editorial: Shut down UNRWA

The US under the leadership of President Donald Trump is rightly reconsidering the logic of funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine – at least as it operates presently.

Some $125 million, which makes up about a third of the United States’ annual support for the organization, has already been frozen.

Judging from a tweet by Trump that preceded the decision to freeze aid, it seems the US president wants to make funding conditional upon Palestinian cooperation in helping to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump’s concern is legitimate. UNRWA, which has been around since 1949, was supposed to be a temporary solution, until the “Palestinian refugee problem” was sorted out. But with the Palestinian Authority refusing to cooperate with the US in solving the problem, there is little reason for the US to continue footing the bill for the agency indefinitely.

We can think of a few additional reasons why UNRWA – which employs 11,500 employees in Gaza alone – should be radically revamped, if not disbanded altogether.

The first problem is that UNRWA perpetuates the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. While the original Palestinian refugees from 1948 – both those who left their homes willingly and those who were forced – might legitimately have deserved refugee status, why should their grandchildren or great-grandchildren share that status? Most other refugees are cared for by the UN’s High Commissioner for Refugees, and their status is not passed on to grandchildren or great-grandchildren. The Palestinians, on the other hand, have their own agency.

This leaves millions of Palestinians in a state of limbo. Instead of getting on with their lives, the Palestinians in places like Gaza continue to grasp a false dream of one day returning to Jaffa, Haifa or Jerusalem. This also allows the kind of apartheid that takes place in Lebanon, where more than one million Palestinians live without official status. They do not have Lebanese citizenship and are confined to dismal refugee camps where terrorism and crime thrive. But because they are refugees, the Lebanese government can wash its hands of having to integrate them into society.

All this can change if UNRWA is reformed or shut down. While UNRWA is an organization that nominally is dedicated to transforming refugees into fully self-sufficient individuals, it has allowed the myth of the “right of return” to persist. Within UNRWA it is heretical to say that repatriation to Israel is unrealistic.

Palestinian Authority paid terrorists nearly $350 million in 2017

The Palestinian Authority paid terrorists and their families over $347 million last year, according to its own records, the Defense Ministry reported to the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Tuesday.

The average income of a Palestinian is $580 per month, which is what the PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to three to five years in prison.

The PA pays terrorists who are sentenced to 20 years or more in prison – in other words, those who committed more severe crimes, and likely were involved in killing Israelis – five times that each month for the rest of their lives.

Terrorists who are Israeli citizens receive a $145 bonus, which, when added to the amount PA pays for the most severe crimes, comes to over $2,900, more than the average Israeli income of around $2,700 per month. There are also increases in pay for being married and for each child a terrorist has.

Palestinian terrorists' income per month. (JPOST STAFF)Palestinian terrorists' income per month. (JPOST STAFF)

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said, “The PA pays over a billion shekels a year to terrorists and their families, thus encouraging and perpetuating terror.”

“The minute the amount of the payment is decided according to the severity of the crime and the length of the sentence – in other words, whoever murders and is sentenced to life in prison gets much more – that is funding terrorist attacks against Israeli citizens. There is nothing that better illustrates the PA’s support for terror. We must stop this,” Liberman said.

Defense Ministry drafts bill to cut PA funds over terrorist stipends

The Defense Ministry on Tuesday publicized a draft bill that would deduct welfare payments paid out by the Palestinian Authority to Palestinian prisoners and their families from the tax revenues Israel transfers annually to the PA.

“The Palestinian Authority pays over a billion shekels a year to terrorists and their relatives, thereby encouraging and perpetuating terrorism,” Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman said in a statement. “The moment the payments are set based on the severity of the crime and the prison sentence, namely that those who murder and are sentenced to life receive a lot more, this is [tantamount to] funding terror attacks against Israelis.”

The bill, which targets cash payments by the PA to jailed or injured terrorists and their relatives, will also apply to Palestinians who committed other crimes for which they are being compensated by the PA, the ministry said in a statement.

The Palestine Liberation Organization gives monthly payments to all Palestinian prisoners jailed in Israel, no matter the reason for their incarceration, and also to families of so-called “martyrs” — a term used by the PLO to refer to anyone killed by an Israeli, whether the person was killed attacking Israelis or an innocent bystander.

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Seven decades of fake NYT news about reforms in Saudi Arabia (Petra Marquardt-Bigman)

By Petra Marquardt-Bigman

A few weeks ago, the NYT published a widely criticized article by Thomas L. Friedman, who excitedly reported that the “most significant reform process underway anywhere in the Middle East today is in Saudi Arabia.”

I think it would be really wonderful if things turned out as glowingly rosy as Friedman presented them. But as countless critics have pointed out, that’s not very likely.

One of the most widely noted critiques came from Abdullah Al-Arian, who is not only an assistant professor of History at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Qatar, but also a regular Al Jazeera contributor – which is to say that he’s not exactly unbiased. 

Take for example a column from last June, where Al-Arian complained bitterly: “For its perceived role in promoting the Muslim Brotherhood, hosting members of Hamas' political bureau, and taking a softer line on Iran, Qatar became a central target of the Saudi-Emirati-Israeli joint lobbying efforts.”

Another truly sickening example is a column Al-Arian penned just a few days after the murderous terrorist attack on Charlie Hebdo’s staff in January 2015, where he blames the West for “Islamophobia” and a long list of other evils that all but explain Islamist terrorism.

And unsurprisingly, when it comes to Israel, it can’t be biased enough for Al-Arian: veteran Israel-haters and Hamas fans like Ali Abunimah and Max Blumenthal deliver the kind of news the Georgetown professor and Al Jazeera columnist wants everyone to read.

So while there’s no reason to trust Al-Arian, his response to Friedman’s NYT column is still worthwhile noting because he provided screenshots to support his claim that for almost 70 years, the NYT has been “describing #Saudi royals in the language of #reform.” Or, to put it differently: for about seven decades, the NYT has been getting the Saudis wrong.

The thread is long and a bit difficult to read because it also includes some responses to Al-Arian. He starts out quoting an article from 1953 that “describes King Saud as ‘more progressive and international-minded than his autocratic father.’” An article in 1960 asserted that “King Saud has increasingly assumed the role of liberal champion of constitutional reform.” In December 1963, the NYT reported on “Crown Prince Faisal’s ‘burst of social reform and economic development.’” A year later, the NYT described Faisal as “a man who has gained nearly absolute power without really wanting it.” Another article from the same year is entitled “Saudi Arabia: Major Changes Due;” Faisal was “described as ‘ascetic, with only one wife, who lives on grilled meat and boiled vegetables and makes a fetish of moderation.’” An obituary from 1975 presented Faisal as having “Led Saudis Into 20th Century,“ and a subsequent article described Faisal’s successor, King Khalid, as a “moderating force.”

After all this reform and moderation, NYT readers learned in 1982 that the new Saudi King Fahd “has been depicted as the leading figure in a progressive, modernizing faction within the tradition-minded monarchy.” A decade later, NYT readers were told that “King Fahd is following previous generations of Saudi rulers who had also moved toward modernization since King Abdelaziz united a vast territory populated by feuding tribal leaders into the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 60 years ago.”

In 2000, the NYT described Crown Prince Abdullah as “an advocate of domestic reform;” five years later, the NYT  wrote: “For Abdullah, who has fashioned himself as a reformer in a land where conforming to tradition is a virtue, the challenge now is to make good on longstanding promises for change.” In 2007, there was a piece entitled “Saudi King Tries to Grow Modern Ideas in Desert;” two years later, a NYT editorial saw “A Promise of Reform in Saudi Arabia.” Maureen Dowd opined in 2010 that “by the Saudi’s premodern standards, the 85 year-old King Abdullah, with a harem of wives, is a social revolutionary.”

In November 2013 – i.e. exactly four years before his recent column on Saudi reforms – Thomas Friedman asserted that Saudi King Abdullah was “in Gulf Arab terms … a real progressive;” Abdullah’s 2015 obituary describes him as “a cautious reformer amid great changes in the Middle East,” and by April 2016 the NYT editorial board saw “A Promising New Path for Saudi Arabia.”

At the end of his thread, Al-Arian denounced Friedman’s recent column as “a hagiographic ode to royal reform that represents seven decades of strategic policy objectives barely concealed beneath recycled cultural tropes.”

That’s of course rich coming from a regular contributor to a media company funded by the government of Qatar, but perhaps Al-Arian has never heard the proverbial warning that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

Yet, while his quotes are obviously cherry-picked from articles that, in their entirety, may give a more nuanced picture, it is still unsettling to see that the NYT has felt for some seven decades that reform, moderation and modernization were somehow in the hot Saudi air.

It is interesting to note in this context that Friedman acknowledges in his column that “this virus of an antipluralistic, misogynistic Islam … came out of Saudi Arabia in 1979,” prompted by “the three big events of that year: the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Saudi puritanical extremists — who denounced the Saudi ruling family as corrupt, impious sellouts to Western values; the Iranian Islamic revolution; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.” The result was according to Friedman “a worldwide competition” between the Saudis and Iran’s ayatollahs “over who could export more fundamentalist Islam.”

You’ll note that none of these events has anything to do with Israel, which has been blamed so often for Muslim extremism and fanaticism.

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At the @NYTimes, car rammings in New York and Barcelona and London are terror - but not in Jerusalem

The New York Times immediately described the Manhattan truck attack as "terror" multiple times:

Readers complained about why this attack was considered "terror" and not the attacks in Las Vegas and elsewhere. The response pointed readers to an "Interpreter" column on that topic, where he doesn't specifically talk about the NYT editorial standards but a more general definition of terrorism:

On the surface, this could be considered a straightforward question of motive. Terrorism is defined as an attack on civilians meant to frighten a larger community for political purposes.
But the new generation of Islamist terrorism, conducted by individuals citing far-off inspiration, has blurred the distinctions between terrorist and disturbed loner. So have recent mass shooters who show signs of both mental illness and an attachment to vague ideological causes.

In tacitly defending the use of the word "terror" to describe the truck attack, the Times defines terror - accurately - as "an attack on civilians meant to frighten a larger community for political purposes." the Las Vegas attack does not neatly fit into that definition.

Attacks in Israel that are virtually identical to the vehicle attack in New York definitely fit exactly into the definition of terror that the Times gives. Yet - they were never called terror by that newspaper:

Two separate 2008 attacks by Palestinians plowing a construction vehicle into civilians was not called terror, except when quoting Israeli police.

A 2014 car ramming attack killing a baby in Jerusalem was not described as terror.

A 2015 car ramming attack at a Jerusalem bus stop was not described as terror.

Even an analysis of the string of car ramming attacks in Israel, with Palestinian social media being quoted as encouraging it, did not use the word "terror:"

One cartoon circulating on social networks on Thursday depicted a car as the barrel of an automatic weapon, captioned in Arabic, “Revolt and resist, even by your car.” Another showed an odometer with the slogan, “Oh, revolutionary, use more gasoline, so we can have Palestine back.” A third simply had a vehicle in the red, white and green of the Palestinian flag hitting two men with Jewish stars on their black hats.

These cartoons prove that the car ramming attacks in Israel were "meant to frighten a larger community for political purposes."

Yet the New York Times studiously avoided the word "terror" in reporting these attacks.

Was it only because the ramming was in New York and therefore closer to home? Not at all. The New York Times described the Barcelona attack as terror. It described the ramming attack in London as terror.

Only in Israel are vehicle ramming attacks dismissed as mere "attacks."

There is only one reason that this is the case. When there are Islamist terror attacks around the world, the editors of the New York Times are perplexed. The attacks are "senseless." The goals are nebulous - destroying the US or Europe? That's crazy!

But Palestinian attacks on Israel, they can understand. After all, they have reported extensively on Israeli actions that make Palestinians uncomfortable, like blockading a territory from where thousands of rockets have been fired. To them, these attacks aren't "senseless" - there is some justification that they can understand. Killing Israeli Jews is normalized, understandable, routine. But killing British or American citizens is outrageous.

The attacks are identical. The motives - to destroy the host country - are identical. The underlying religious justifications of martyrdom are identical. But in Israel's case, the Jewish victims have an amount of culpability that European and American victims do not.

This is clear, direct anti-Israel bias. And while the NYT bends over backwards to explain the difference between attacks Las Vegas and New York, they don't want to tell the world why they see a difference between attacks in Jerusalem and New York, It would reveal their hypocrisy.virtu

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NYT doesn't put scare quotes around Hamas' aim to "liberate Palestine"

From The New York Times:

This time around, Hamas has so far refused to consider disarming its fighters and has insisted that it remains dedicated to liberating Palestine, not embracing Mr. Abbas’s project of a two-state solution — despite a new document of principles it released in the spring that accepted the idea of a provisional Palestinian state, without renouncing future claims to the land that is now Israel.

While the newspaper will often put scare quotes around the word "terrorist," claiming that the definition of that term may be interpreted differently by different parties, it has no problem saying that Hamas' goal is "liberating Palestine."

The implication that the Times is giving by not choosing to use those scare quotes is that "Palestine" is  a land that deserves to be liberated - from Jewish rule.

Of course, Hamas' goal is destroying Israel and expelling its Jewish residents, not "liberating Palestine.". It says this explicitly; one example comes from a press release last month:

Palestine is a holy land that can not be bargained for, and only its people and its martyrs will live there.

The NYT use of "liberating Palestine" without scare quotes is not a one-off. In 2011 the NYT published an op-ed that used that phrase in reference to Hezbollah's aims, as well as an article about an anti-Israel Facebook page taken down:

Facebook began closely monitoring the page after numerous complaints in the last couple of weeks, including a letter last week from Israeli Cabinet Minister Yuli Edelstein to the chief executive officer, Mark Zuckerberg. Mr. Edelstein asked for the page to be removed because of concern that it was calling for the killing of Jews and of “liberating” Jerusalem through violence.
The managers of the page could not be reached for comment. In the information box, they described the purpose of the page as liberating Palestine. “After the Tunisian intifada and the Egyptian intifada and the Libyan intifada comes the Palestinian intifada.”

In this example, by not using the scare quotes, The New York Times is explaining the meaning of a "Palestinian intifada" as being the liberation of Palestine.

But in 2010, referring to Hamas, the newspaper did put the word "liberating" in quotes, noting accurately that it meant destroying Israel, an explanation that was not made clear in this latest case.

Newspapers, especially prominent papers like The New York Times, have style sheets and guides on consistent use of phrases. It seems unlikely that this phrase has been mistakenly kept in its reporting without an editor having made a clear decision to allow it is be used without the scare quotes.

By using the term "liberating Palestine" as a matter of fact phrase and not a quote by Israel's enemies, the NYT is telling the world that a nation that never existed is in need of being "liberated" from Israel, meaning the destruction of Israel.

That is about as anti-Israel as it gets.

(h/t Gary Weiss)

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Roger Waters isn't like Rosa Parks. He's like the KKK.

The New York Times decided to give yet more oxygen to BDSers like Roger Waters.

Waters wrote an op-ed that is so absurd and filled with lies and half-truths that it brings up, yet again, the late Senator Patrick Moynihan's dictum, " Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

Waters claims that the Israel Anti-Boycott Act violates free speech:

Members of Congress are currently considering a bill that threatens to silence the growing support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement for Palestinian freedom and human rights, known as B.D.S. This draconian bill, the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, threatens individuals and businesses who actively participate in boycott campaigns in support of Palestinian rights conducted by international governmental organizations with up to 20 years in prison and a $1,000,000 fine.

By endorsing this McCarthyite bill, senators would take away Americans’ First Amendment rights in order to protect Israel from nonviolent pressure to end its 50-year-old occupation of Palestinian territory and other abuses of Palestinian rights.

It doesn't. The act is a mere extension of existing US law against adhering to the Arab League call to boycott Israel to include the calls by the UN to boycott a "blacklist" of companies that do business in Israel. The existing law has withstood challenges on free speech grounds.

Waters goes on:

Criminalizing boycotts is un-American and anti-democratic. Boycotts have always been accepted as a legitimate form of nonviolent protest in the United States. In 1955 and 1956, a bus boycott in Montgomery, Ala., incited by the protest of Rosa Parks and others, became one of the foremost civil rights struggles against segregation in the South.

Boycotting Israeli products is not similar to the bus boycott. The bus boycott was against the bus companies directly discriminating against blacks.

Boycotting companies that do business in Israel is more similar to KKK members boycotting black-owned businesses. It has nothing to do with the companies' actions; like KKK boycotts, it is motivated by hate, not human rights.

Waters' arguing that this is a free speech issue exactly mirrors the neo-Nazis who have been marching in America under the same guise of "free speech." In both cases, hate is being advocated under the pretense of caring for "free speech." One only has to look at how anti-Israel activists have shut down Israeli speakers on college campuses to see how little they care about free speech.

But Waters' op-ed is more insidious than its mere disregard for facts. Waters continuously pretends that BDSers are motivated by their concern for Palestinian human rights, and that they are civil rights activists.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Over 3,400 Palestinians have been killed during the Syrian civil war. Egypt has enforced a near-total blockade on Gaza for years. Lebanon places thousands of Palestinians in what can only be described as open-air prisons complete with watchtowers where their own police will not enter and where they are denied a slew of rights including what jobs they can hold and bans of building houses. Jordan has a history of taking away citizenship of thousands of Palestinians. The Arab League specifically takes away Palestinian rights to become citizens in their member countries. There are plenty of other examples of Arab discrimination and abuse of Palestinians.

BDSers, including Roger Waters, don't say a word about these.

Because their motivation has nothing at all to do with civil rights. Like the KKK, they are motivated by hate for the world's only Jewish state, not by their love of Palestinians or concern for universal human rights. They don't give a damn about Palestinians - only about punishing Jewish Israelis. (They don't want to boycott Arab Israeli businesses.)

Meaning that their fundamental driving factor really is antisemitism.

And Roger Waters' hate is a perfect topic to be pushed in the New York Times.

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NYT says Kurds aren't ready for independence - but Palestinians are

Today's New York Times has an editorial about the Kurdish non-binding referendum on independence, and it urges that the Kurds should be much more patient than they already have been:

After yearning for independence for generations, Kurds in Iraq are scheduled to take a major step in that direction with a nonbinding referendum set for Sept. 25. The vote, expected to endorse a separate state, would be a mistake, increasing turmoil in a part of the world roiled by the fight against the Islamic State and further threatening Iraq’s territorial integrity. Postponement makes better sense.

What are the reasons? Among them:

Two families, the Barzanis and the Talabanis, control politics; corruption is widespread. Because of political infighting, Kurdistan’s parliament has not met since October 2015; the region’s president, Masoud Barzani, remains in office four years after his term ended. Declining oil prices and disputes with Iraq’s central government have left the Kurdistan government in debt. Kurdish authorities are accused of discriminating against minorities. Could Kurdistan make it as an independent state if Iraq and neighboring states stayed hostile to the idea?

...The referendum would heighten tensions, make it harder to stabilize Iraq and divert attention as the United States, Iraq and their partners work to defeat ISIS and rebuild Iraqi communities.

...[L]eaders in Turkey and Iran see a greater Kurdistan as a territorial threat. Turkey’s deputy prime minister recently warned that the Iraq vote would “contribute to instability.” Iraq’s prime minister said the vote would be “illegal” because it conflicts with Kurdistan’s constitutional commitments as part of Iraq’s federal government.

...A Kurdish breakaway is risky; without sufficient preparation, it would further marginalize Iraq’s Sunni minority, already disenfranchised by the Shiite majority and prey to Sunni extremists like ISIS.

Self-determination is an understandable goal. But just voting for independence is no guarantee that whatever state emerges will govern fairly or well. It does the Kurdish people little good if their leaders do not make a strong effort to first ensure that Kurdistan’s democratic institutions are functioning, the economy is strong and they have support from Iraq and other countries before striking out alone.

So the reasons to stop a non-binding referendum are:

* Corruption in the Kurdish government
* Infighting in the Kurdish government
* Kurdish president in office long after his term ended
* Kurdish authorities discriminate against minorities
* Neighboring states are hostile to the idea
* Tensions would be heightened. Neighbors say such a state would "contribute to instability."
* Such a decision needs much more preparation
* An independent Kurdistan may not govern fairly or well.
* First, Kurds need to ensure democratic institutions are functioning, the economy is strong and they have support from their stronger neighbors.

Every single one of these reasons to be against an independent Kurdish state applies, to a far greater degree, to a Palestinian state.

But the New York Times for years has fully supported an independent Palestinian state, with its corrupt leaders, its political infighting, its terrible record at building democratic institutions, its disregard for human rights. Oh, and also its explicit support for terrorists and terrorism.

The New York Times cheered every step of the way for Palestinian independence, even through the second intifada and the Hamas/Fatah split. It never told Palestinians that they weren't ready, or to wait some more until things get more peaceful, or anything like that. It never gave Israel veto power over a Palestinian state the way it gives Iraq and Turkey that power over Kurdistan.

And by any sane measure, the Kurds deserve a state more than Palestinians do.

Hypocricy doesn't even begin to describe this editorial.

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Tom Friedman's fact-free column includes an antisemitic trope

Yesterday we were treated to another Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times where he repeats his fact-free memes, ignoring reality in the face of his world class expertise in fantasy:

Netanyahu is setting himself up to be a pivotal figure in Jewish history — the leader who burned the bridges to a two-state solution and to the Jewish diaspora at the same time.

... It worked perfectly to deflect the U.S. president from pressing the relevant questions: “Bibi, you win every debate, but meanwhile every day the separation of Israel from the Palestinians grows less likely, putting Israel on a ‘slippery slope toward apartheid,’ as former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak recently warned. Where is your map? What are you going to do with 420,000 Jewish settlers in the West Bank? Where is your imagination for how to reverse this trend that will inevitably lead to the end of Israel as a Jewish democratic state?”

 Friedman's favorite newspaper, Haaretz, only last month revealed exactly how far Netanyahu was willing to go for a two-state solution. It answered every question Friedman asks, in detail. It was Abbas who refused both the Israeli and American draft peace frameworks.

But that contradicts what Friedman knows in his heart. So he must ignore evidence and facts.

Note also that Friedman knows that he cannot actually argue with Netanyahu by saying Bibi wins every debate. Obviously, what Friedman knows in his heart is more important than actually being able to argue it effectively.

It gets worse:

I won’t waste much time on Bibi’s deft manipulation of President Trump to shift all the blame onto the Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas for the absence of progress in the peace process. Bibi masterfully distracted Trump with a shiny object — a video of extreme statements by Abbas (with no mention of extremist actions by Israeli settlers).

Let's assume that some "settlers" really do perform extreme actions. Friedman is postulating two things that are, simply, stupid:

1) The actual antisemitic and pro-terror statements of the political head of the Palestinians are not as important than the actions of people who are acting against the laws of the State of Israel.

2) Israel must provide a balanced view of itself to the world, showing both its good and bad sides when engaging in diplomacy. This is a unique requirement not demanded of any other nation on the planet.

It's even worse.  Friedman, although obviously not an antisemite, is engaging in antisemitic tropes. This paragraph comes very close to saying that the Jews control the White House. Undoubtedly that was not his intention but there is very little difference between him saying Netanyahu is manipulating Trump and antisemites saying Jews control Washington.

Jews are very sensitive to antisemitism. Yet no one seems to be upset at Friedman's statement here. The ADL is never going to issue a statement against someone they agree with so often. This statement of Friedman's in the most prestigious US newspaper  is arguably far worse than the many topics that engage people's time (like websites that fail to list Israel in their list of countries or retailers that resell anti-Israel T-shirts.)

He gets a pass because he is a superstar  to liberal American Jews and because his statement is as much about Bibi's diplomatic skill as it is about Trump's supposed naivete.

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Why does the @NYTimes consider Borough Market "terror" while Sarona Market isn't?

From the New York Times:

Declaring “enough is enough,” Prime Minister Theresa May vowed on Sunday to conduct a sweeping review of Britain’s counterterrorism strategy after three knife-wielding assailants unleashed an assault late Saturday night, the third major terrorist attack in the country in three months.

At least seven people were killed and dozens more wounded, including 21 who remained in critical condition, as the men sped across London Bridge in a white van, ramming numerous pedestrians before emerging with large hunting knives for a rampage in the capital’s Borough Market, a crowded nightspot.

It is a terrorist attack. Even the NYT video accompanying the story calls it that.

Almost exactly a year ago, there was a very similar attack at a Tel Aviv cafe in the Sarona Market.that, like Borough Market, also was the latest in a series of deadly attacks. Here's how the NYT reported that:

Two Palestinian gunmen posing as restaurant patrons opened fire on civilians in a popular Tel Aviv cafe on Wednesday night, killing four people and reigniting fears of terrorism in Israel just as a recent wave of Palestinian attacks had seemed to be waning.

Dressed in black suits, the two men sat down and ordered food, according to witnesses, before embarking on a shooting rampage. They did not seem to have aroused much suspicion at first, despite the warm spring weather: An Arab bartender at the restaurant, Yusuf Jabarin, told Israel’s Channel 2 television network that they looked “like lawyers.”

Then the men pulled assault rifles out of their bags and aimed at the patrons, causing mayhem. Video footage showed customers fleeing in panic and a security officer repeatedly firing at one of the gunmen in a nearby street.

 Tel Aviv has suffered a number of deadly attacks since a wave of Palestinian assaults began last October in Jerusalem and the West Bank and spread to cities around Israel. More than two dozen Israelis and two American visitors have been killed in those attacks. Most were killed in stabbings, though there have also been several shootings.

They are "gunmen" and "attackers" - but the New York Times does not call them terrorists nor does it refer to Sarona as a terrorist attack, part of a wave of terror attacks, as it clearly calls the Lomdon attacks without scare quotes. In fact, the terror attack in Tel Aviv only was only "reigniting fears of terrorism" - but was not considered terrorism itself.

The New York Times does not consider Palestinian attackers whose methods are mimicked by pro-ISIS terrorists  to be - terrorists.

Now, why might that be?

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New York Times bias in a photo caption: Israel haters are "peace activists", Israeli flag flyers "far right" (UPDATE)

This caption of a Getty Images/AFP photo in the New York Times site seems to have been written by the NYT, not Getty":

Israeli police removed a peace activist from outside the Damascus Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City on Wednesday during a demonstration by far-right Israelis. Credit Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The "peace activists" were members of far-left, anti-Israel groups like IfNotNow and one literally called "All That's Left."

These groups, in order to accommodate the most extreme anti-Israel voices while pretending to be Jewish, explicitly say that they have no position on whether Israel has a right to exist to begin with. .

The "demonstration by far-right Israelis" was the annual Jerusalem Flag March, attended by tens of thousands of normal Israelis every year.

Here they are at Damascus Gate, where the "peace protesters" were trying to stop them by linking arms across the gate, the reason the police removed them..

There sure are a lot of "right wing Israelis":

The New York Times is saying that people who oppose Jerusalem being a united city are "peace activists" while those who march with Israeli flags in its capital are "far right Israelis."

That, my friends, is the type of bias that the mainstream media has against Israel.

UPDATE: Tamar Sternthal of CAMERA tells me that the caption came from AFP:

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The Holocaust in the New York Times, 1942-43

The news this week that the Allies knew about the Holocaust two years before they liberated the camps hardly seems like news.

The New York Times did report on the Holocaust in 1942 and 1943 - just they buried the very few reports they had deep inside the paper, sometimes barely mentioning Jews among the victims.

July 2, 1942, page 6:

February 28, 1943, page 12:

April 20, 1943, page 11:

August 8, 1943, page 11:

August 27, 1943, page 7:

Anyone who cared to know, knew, well before the war ended. Even though this is only a fraction of what was discovered about the Holocaust after the war, already in 1943 it was known that millions of Jews were murdered.

They knew. They chose not to do anything about it.

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NYT Easter bias against Israel, 1954

The New York Times, April 16, 1954, reported that Israel barred a priest from visiting holy places on Easter!

Then, way down the article, in parenthesis, it reports on a possible reason why:

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NYT lies about Israeli anti-BDS law

The New York Times editorial page says:

A new Israeli law, approved Monday, will bar entry to any foreigner who supports the B.D.S. movement (boycott, divestment and sanctions) against Israel for its occupation of the West Bank. It’s a strong statement by the Israeli right wing, intended to characterize supporters of the movement as enemies of Israel.

No doubt there are haters of Israel among B.D.S. supporters. But there are also many strong supporters of the Israeli state, including many American Jews, who ardently oppose the occupation of the West Bank and who boycott products of the Israeli settlements in occupied territories. 

[The law] should be condemned by all who value Israel’s tradition of debate and dissent and who support the search for a lasting peace.

From reading the editorial, one would think that Israel is banning any critics of Israeli settlement policy.

But the actual text says it may ban anyone “who knowingly issues a public call for boycotting Israel that, given the content of the call and the circumstances in which it was issued, has a reasonable possibility of leading to the imposition of a boycott – if the issuer was aware of this possibility.”

In other words, the law would apply to those who are prominent advocates of boycotting Israel and whose calls to boycott Israel can influence others, not anyone who decides on their own to stop using settlement products or who is a critic of Israeli policy as the Times pretends.

The editorial also says "The United States, Israel’s strongest military supporter, has consistently held that settlement building in the occupied territories is illegal and detrimental to seeking a lasting peace." This is also false, The public position of the US, both the White House and the State Department between the 1980s and the UN vote last December, was that the settlements were an obstacle to peace - but the language of legality was studiously avoided.

It is Orwellian that the New York Times has been advertising how important the "truth" is yet it so easily twists the truth for its readers.

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Hey Thomas Friedman, who is dividing world Jewry?

Thomas Friedman has yet another self-righteous piece of stupidity in the New York Times.

 [President Trump,] you may be the last man standing between Israel and a complete, self-inflicted disaster for the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

Let me explain it in terms you’ll appreciate: golf.

Did you happen to follow the story involving Barack Obama and Woodmont Country Club? Woodmont is the mostly Jewish golf club in Maryland, just outside D.C., where Obama played as a guest several times during his presidency. Near the end of his term it was rumored that Obama would seek membership there.

Then he clashed with Netanyahu over Obama’s refusal to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israel’s relentless expansion of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Shortly thereafter, The Washington Post reported that a Woodmont member, Faith Goldstein, had sent a private email to the club’s president declaring that Obama “is not welcome at Woodmont” because of his U.N. vote.

It was appalling to think that Jews, who for so many years were themselves excluded from joining certain country clubs, would consider excluding our first black president, especially for his acting on the basis of what half of Israel believes — that continued expansion of Jewish settlements into Palestinian-populated zones of the West Bank will eventually make the separation of Israelis and Palestinians in a two-state solution impossible, and thereby threaten Israel’s character as a Jewish and democratic state.

Fortunately, in the end, the decent members of Woodmont prevailed. As The Washington Post reported, the club’s president, Barry Forman, invited the Obamas to join, declaring that “it is all the more important that Woodmont be a place where people of varying views and beliefs can enjoy fellowship.”

Why am I telling you this story? Because Israel is getting closer every day to wiping out any possibility of a two-state solution. Just last week, Netanyahu’s government pushed through the Knesset a shameful new law declaring that wildcat Jewish settlers who had illegally set up caravans on private West Bank Palestinian land, and erected their own settlement there, will have their settlements legalized, although the Palestinian landowners have to be compensated.

First Friedman essentially calls Jews racist, even though President Obama's race had zero to do with the country club story. (He also completely misrepresents the "Regulation Law" pretending that Israel now allows "wildcat Jewish settlers" to just grab land without checking if it is privately owned.) And calling Jews racist seems to be the only reason for Friedman to tell over this story, because the only tie he brings between the country club story and his usual anti-settlement screed is this:

I don’t expect Israel to just up and leave the West Bank without a Palestinian partner for a secure peace, which Israel doesn’t now have. But legalizing this land grab by settlers deep in Palestinian areas is not an act of security — it will actually create security problems. It is an act of moral turpitude that will make it even harder to ever find that Palestinian partner and will undermine the moral foundations of the state. This is about right versus wrong.

And if that is where the debate goes, what happened at Woodmont golf club will happen everywhere. That debate will tear apart virtually every synagogue, Jewish organization and Jewish group on every campus in America, and around the world. Israel will divide world Jewry.

It isn't Israel that is dividing world Jewry, it is the Thomas Friedmans of the world who claim that Israel has no rights in its homeland to begin with. That's why he equates his fake Jewish racists with Jews who believe that there are actual legal and moral reasons why Judea and Samaria should not be Judenfrei.

Who is more divisive  than a smug columnist who declares every Jew who disagrees with him to be the morally equivalent to racists? How much can Tom Friedman care about Jewish unity when he makes such a claim?

While Friedman pays lip service to the fact that Palestinians aren't a peace partner, he lays the blame on Israel by saying that only Israel is killing the two state solution - despite the fact that Israel has lready accepted and offered the Palestinians a state multiple times.

Let's put this in terms Friedman might be able to understand.

Here is the top of the PLO official webpage, today:

I'll increase the size of the logo in case your reading glasses aren't on:

Where, exactly, is Israel on this PLO map of their ersatz state?

If Friedman wants to unite Jews, he should write about how the "moderate" Palestinians have never budged from their position that the "peace process" is a Trojan horse to destroy Israel. That's something all Jews should be aware of, but they certainly wouldn't know it from reading Friedman's columns.

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Does the New York Times report the "truth"?

From MEMRI:

The Birzeit University "Shabiba" student movement marked the 52nd anniversary of the establishment of Fatah with military parades and festivities. Armed and masked men in fatigues marched and shouted slogans, such as "Blow up the head of the settler!" 

The New York Times has an advertising campaign built around the word "truth,"

Why can none of the 1000+ journalists report on this public rally supporting terror in a major Palestinian university? Is it not the truth?

Is it not newsworthy that an organization that Mahmoud Abbas heads has scores of its members dress up, in public, as masked terrorists, and the Abbas- led organization explicitly calls to murder Jews?

Is it not newsworthy that a university allows students, apparently with weapons, to march on campus with the purpose of glorifying violence?

Why are Abbas and Fatah given a free pass by the media and NGOs who all claim that they speak "truth to power"?

Why is this not considered the "truth" by the New York Times?

Or is it not the version of the truth that the New York Times and other media deem that its readers should know?

Because when you select your own truth and deliberately choose to hide the rest of the story, it is not
"truth."  It is propaganda.

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You can tell a lot from @NYTimes reporter tweets

A tweet the New York Times' outgoing Jerusalem bureau chief Peter Baker:

By next year, there will be as many Palestinians living between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River as Jews. https://t.co/VAhFNfFnBh

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) December 29, 2016

The link is to a Times of Israel piece whose headline is "6.58 million each: Palestinians claim they’ll be as numerous as Jews in ‘historic Palestine’ in 2017."

The TOI headline notes that this is a claim, not fact. The New York Times reporter does not.

Would have have been able to add that and stay within 140 characters? Of course. He could have tweeted "Palestinians claim by next year, there will be as many Arabs as Jews between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River https://t.co/VAhFNfFnBh" in 139.

Indeed, this would have been more accurate in another way, because many Arab Israelis who he describes as "Palestinians" do not identify themselves that way. The PA is counting Arab Israelis as "Palestinian."

The TOI article also quotes demographers who are skeptical about Palestinian claims:

Experts have in the past disputed Palestinian officials’ population numbers.

In June 2016 demographics expert Prof. Sergio DellaPergola told a subcommittee of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee that his research showed 2.4 million Palestinians lived in the West Bank as of the end of 2015. Former Israeli diplomat Yoram Ettinger, who has in the past accused the PA of immensely inflating its population in order to receive more foreign aid, placed the number at 1.75 million Palestinians in the West Bank at 2015’s end.

Baker must have read that, and still decided to tweet a false PA claim as fact without any reservation.

Moreover, counting Gaza as if Israel occupies it is another 2 million is dishonest as well.

Admittedly, there is only so much that can be placed in a tweet, but by characterizing false Palestinian claims as fact, Baker reveals his own sloppiness - and bias.

I tweeted him in response

.@peterbakernyt Isn't it a little irresponsible to report claims as fact? The article notes demographers say PCBS exaggerates by 500K-1M.

— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) December 29, 2016

But he didn't acknowledge his deceptive description even after it was pointed out to him. After all, he is a New York Times reporter and I am merely a fact checking blogger. Why open up a Pandora's box of admitting that he might not be perfect?

Who knows what else could be discovered?

For example:  Baker was similarly sloppy in this earlier tweet made during Kerry's speech:

Kerry’s principles largely follow longtime US orthodoxy — two state solution, Jerusalem as capital for both, security, normalized relations.

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) December 28, 2016

Never before, as far as I can tell, has a US government official said that Jerusalem would be the capital of a Palestinian state. Certainly it was assumed, as various peace plans had proposed it, but it was a huge break in policy for Kerry to endorse it as an official US stance.

One wonders how much New York Times reporters really know and how much gets cleaned up by the editors.

Either way, Twitter is a great way to see, unfiltered, the bias and ignorance that many reporters have but try to hide in their articles.

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A "philosopher" in the NYT essentially calls Zionism racism. His argument is propaganda, not philosophy.

The New York Times has a feature called "The Stone" which is supposed to be "a forum for contemporary philosophers and other thinkers on issues both timely and timeless. "

Its latest installment bashes Zionism. Philosophically, of course.

Omri Boehm,  an assistant professor of philosophy at the New School for Social Research, starts off the way any good propagandist does, by defining his terms initially in order to come to his foregone conclusion:

Zionism [is] a political agenda rooted in the denial of liberal politics.

How so?

To appreciate this inherent tension, consider Hillary Clinton’s words from the second presidential debate: “It is important for us as a policy not to say, as Donald has said, we’re going to ban people based on a religion. How do you do that? We are a country founded on religious freedom and liberty.” Here Clinton establishes a minimum standard of liberal decency that few American Jews would be inclined to deny. But she is not the incoming president. Trump’s willingness to reject this standard is now a cause for alarm among Jewish communities, along with those of other American minorities.

Yet insofar as Israel is concerned, every liberal Zionist has not just tolerated the denial of this minimum liberal standard, but avowed this denial as core to their innermost convictions. Whereas liberalism depends on the idea that states must remain neutral on matters of religion and race, Zionism consists in the idea that the State of Israel is not Israeli, but Jewish. As such, the country belongs first and foremost not to its citizens, but to the Jewish people — a group that’s defined by ethnic affiliation or religious conversion.

Boehm, knowing his audience is American, purposefully defines American values as the "minimum standard of liberal decency." Which means that any country that favors one religion or national group over another is, if you buy Boehm's  definition of liberalism, indecent.

Yet Denmark, England, Monaco, Lichtenstein, and many other countries have, to varying degrees, state religions.

Many European nations have citizenship laws that favor descendants of those who originally came from their countries over all others. Germany, Hungary and Italy allow people to become citizens after many generations.

Very few nations pass Boehm's test of the "minimum standard of liberal decency."

Moreover, Israel's laws protecting freedom of religion are no less liberal than those of any other nation. While France bans burkinis and Switzerland bans minarets, Israel does neither.

Worse, Boehm's essay at no point acknowledges that Jews are not just a religion - but a nation. And the Jewish people have the same right to self-determination as any other nation.

Of course there is a tension between Zionism and liberalism, but that doesn't mean that a Zionist state must be by definition illiberal, as Boehm claims. Zionism is not by any means "rooted in the denial of liberal politics." It is an obvious lie. Zionism from the outset recognized the rights of all citizens in the Jewish state.

There is a tension between democracy and liberalism as well  - because people can vote for leaders and laws that are not liberal. There is tension between liberalism and patriotism. There is a lot of tension between classical liberalism that emphasizes liberty above all and the type of big-government liberalism espoused by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. You can find tension between liberalism and the actual practices of every nation on Earth if you bother to look. But tension does not mean that any of these other situations are the antithesis of liberalism.  A real philosopher would know that.

In fact, Boehm does know this, but he creates a false definition of Zionism as illiberal at the outset because he wants to claim that US Jews who support Israel must be betraying their liberalism by definition. And Boehm has an agenda that is more akin to propaganda than education.

Boehm, the supposed philosopher, asserts that Zionists are now flocking to support antisemites and racists and bigots, using a startling lack of logic for a philosopher, pretending that any commonality between some Israelis and European nationalist parties or Christian Zionists is proof of Zionism's inherent illiberalism.   Boehm's simplistic proofs could be summarized as "A member of Israel's ruling coalition says good things about someone whose party's origins originally included antisemitic ideas - therefore Israel itself is embracing antisemitism." His flat statements that today's evangelical Zionists are antisemitic, or that people like Geert Wilders are antisemites, are simply wrong, and yet that is a core part of his argument.

Boehm says:

 Opposition to the Palestinians’ “right of return” is a matter of consensus among left and right Zionists because also liberal Zionists insist that Israel has the right to ensure that Jews constitute the ethnic majority in their country. But if you reject Zionism because you reject the double standard, organizations such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee or the Jewish Federations of North America would denounce you as anti-Semitic.

In plain English, this means that Boehm holds that his concept of liberalism clashes with the Jewish people's right to self-determination. Since Jews aren't a nation, in Boehm's estimation, they only have religious rights, not national rights. This is arguably far more antisemitic than  anything that today's Right (not the alt-right, that Boehm takes pains to conflate with Zionism) espouses.

Yet is it Boehm's example of what he regards as the "original sin" of illiberal Zionism that proves something a little different than he intends:

[It] is Friedman’s own politics — and the politics of the government that he supports — that’s continuous with anti-Semitic principles and collaborates with anti-Semitic politics.

The “original sin” of such alliances may be traced back to 1941, in a letter to high Nazi officials, drafted in 1941 by Avraham Stern, known as Yair, a leading early Zionist fighter and member in the 1930s of the paramilitary group Irgun, and later, the founder of another such group, Lehi. In the letter, Stern proposes to collaborate with “Herr Hitler” on “solving the Jewish question” by achieving a “Jewish free Europe.” The solution can be achieved, Stern continues, only through the “settlement of these masses in the home of the Jewish people, Palestine.” To that end, he suggests collaborate with the German’s “war efforts,” and establish a Jewish state on a “national and totalitarian basis,” which will be “bound by treaty with the German Reich.”

It has been convenient to ignore the existence of this letter, just as it has been convenient to mitigate the conceptual conditions making it possible. But such tendencies must be rejected. They reinforce the same logic by which the letter itself was written: the sanctification of Zionism to the point of tolerating anti-Semitism. 

When this letter was written, Stern's assumption was that Hitler did not want to systematically exterminate the Jews, but wanted to encourage them to leave Europe.

It is truly obscene to describe Stern's desperate effort to save the lives of hundreds of thousands of Jews from the clutches of the Nazis as an inherent Zionist affinity with Nazism. In fact, Stern was known to explicitly compare Hitler to Haman.

But  Boehm is even worse than misrepresenting Stern. Stern's offer to collaborate with Germany to save thousands of Jews was anomalous. From the right to the left, the Zionist movement opposed Nazi Germany from the beginning. Ze'ev Jabotinsky wrote strident anti-German articles. Mainstream Labor Zionists equally abhorred the Nazis. And, of course, the Zionist  Jews of Palestine actually did join the war effort against Germany, and none of them fought for Germany - unlike some other people in the region.

It is instructive that Boehm digs up this little-known episode as the paradigm of Zionism's supposed affinity with anti-semitism.

What do you call a man who generalizes about an entire group of people based on problematic anecdotes about a single member of that group?

You would call him a bigot.

You would certainly not call him liberal.

Boehm doesn't compare Israel's liberalism against that of Western Europe. He doesn't mention the undeniably liberal social policies in Israel. He doesn't mention that Israel, even while being the Jewish state, cannot discriminate against its non-Jewish citizens by law. He doesn't mention that in many ways, the "indecent" Zionist state is more liberal than the US.

Because Boehm is not a liberal. He is a bigot who is using the language of liberalism to attack and insult a specific group of people he finds distasteful, and he justifies his hate after the fact by cherry-picking examples that do not represent the group at all. And his agenda is to shame American Jews into hating the only liberal state in the Middle East and sympathize with Israel's very, very illiberal enemies.

This isn't the first time he has written for the New York Times philosophy column. By sheer coincidence, out of the four columns he has written, all four included anti-Zionist components.

This climactic essay of the series shows that Omri Boehm is projecting his own irrational and pathological hatred of Zionism onto Zionist Jews themselves.

Maybe the New York Times should start a psychology column to evaluate the underlying biases of its columnists. This sort of analysis is needed a lot more than bigotry pretending to be philosophy.

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