Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, February 18, 2016

Palestinian national football team is named "Fedayeen" - after terrorists who murdered hundreds

Yesterday, the Palestinian national soccer team defeated the Algerian team, 1-0, in front of a reported 75,000 fans. For those who are interested, here was the winning goal:

The name of the Palestinian team?

The Fedayeen.

The fedayeen were the terrorists who murdered hundreds of Jews in the 1950s and 1960s, and some groups under that category continued to kill Israelis through the second intifada.

Effectively, the PLO has named its national soccer team "the terrorists."

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EoZTV Livecast

Here's a video of the live broadcast of EoZTV. You can skip the first minute as I get things up and running.

This is the chatroom we used. I might keep it for next time.

Chat Software

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02/17 Link Pt2: Israel’s Legitimacy is not dependent on a Palestinian State, or NY Times

From Ian:

Israel’s Legitimacy is not dependent on a Palestinian State, or The NY Times

We hear from critics of Israel that Israel needs a two-state solution to be legitimate.
Without a Palestinian state, the argument goes, Israel will rule over millions of resentful Palestinians to whom it will have to deny their basic rights in order to maintain its Jewish nature. Or if Israel enfranchises the Palestinians, they could overwhelm the Jews with their votes and then Israel would cease to be a Jewish state. So the reasoning goes, without a separate Palestinian state, Israel will either cease being Jewish or democratic.
But there was already a separation achieved in 1993, with the signing of the Oslo Accords.
By the end of 1995 Israel had withdrawn from the major population areas in the West Bank, leaving over 90% of Palestinians under the political control of the Palestinian Authority. In 2005, Israel “disengaged” from Gaza ending the occupation of that territory.
On the political front, Yasser Arafat rejected a two state solution from then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. In 2008 Arafat’s successor, Mahmoud Abbas rejected a peace deal from then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Two years ago, Abbas rejected a framework agreement that current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had reluctantly agreed to.
So the problem isn’t the occupation but what the Palestinians have done or haven’t done with the opportunity.
By focusing strictly on Israel, the peace processors have absolved the Palestinians of any responsibility for their own plight. Worse, by making Israel responsible, they give the Palestinians the ability to determine Israel’s legitimacy.

Jewish star of Scandinavian BBC crime drama The Bridge reveals he quit the show because he was fed up with filming in 'anti-Semitic' Malmo

Danish actor Kim Bodnia has revealed that one of the reasons why he quit hit show The Bridge was because as a Jew he did not feel safe working in Sweden.
Bodnia played detective Martin Rohde in two seasons of the Scandi-crime show, but after first signing up for a third, he later dropped out.
The 50-year-old had previously cited issues with the script, but has now said his departure was also caused by of the rise of anti-Semitism in Sweden.
The Bridge is filmed on both sides of the Oresund - in Denmark and Sweden - and its first two seasons starred Bodnia as Rodhe, and Sofia Helin as the socially awkward Swedish detective Saga Noren.
Despite initially signing up to return as Rohde in season three, Bodnia later announced he was quitting the show in 2014.
Bodnia made the controversial comments during an interview for Israeli TV where he spoke about why he left The Bridge.
After initially explaining that the changes made to the script and lack of influence on it as an actor was the main reason, he is then asked about anti-Semitism in Scandinvia.
‘It [anti-Semitism] is growing, especially in Malmo where we shot the Bridge in Sweden,' he told Channel 10. (h/t Zvi)

The Ambassador From Hell?

Yet there were—and are—clearly other options. In A Problem From Hell, Power suggests that the United States “should set up safe areas to house refugees and civilians, and protect them with well-armed and robustly mandated peacekeepers, airpower, or both.” Lots of people did argue for a no-fly zone or buffer zone to protect Syrians fleeing from Assad’s killing machine. But the White House said no. Mighty Syrian air defenses were too much for the U.S. air force, said former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey.
There was a time when virtually all of Obama’s national security staff advocated arming the rebels to take down Assad. The president was against it. He derided the opposition. As he told Thomas Friedman in August 2014, “This idea that we could provide some light arms or even more sophisticated arms to what was essentially an opposition made up of former doctors, farmers, pharmacists and so forth, and that they were going to be able to battle not only a well-armed state but also a well-armed state backed by Russia, backed by Iran, a battle-hardened Hezbollah, that was never in the cards.” But the reality is that those doctors, farmers, and pharmacists are still out in the field, and might already have stopped the genocide against them on their own, if the president of the United States had been moved to help them help themselves.
Last week John Kerry blamed members of the anti-Assad opposition for walking away from the negotiating table at Geneva, even as Aleppo was being bombed by Russian planes. He told them to expect another three months of bombing, which, he said, would “decimate” them. When the opposition petitioned Kerry to do more, he replied: “Don’t blame me, go and blame your opposition.” Then he continued: “What do you want me to do? Go to war with Russia?” This represents something new in the history of American acquiescence to genocide, and something not even Power documented in her handbook—a U.S. official demanding pity from the victims of a genocide whose suffering he thinks can be alleviated by surrendering to the people who are killing them.
The entire White House, from the president on down, is complicit in the crimes that Power tweets about. As the person who quite literally wrote the book on how the American superpower must stop genocides when it has the power to do so, why hasn’t she resigned? Maybe genocide isn’t actually that important after all, when measured against things like a trade deal with Asia. Perhaps, like the predecessors she describes in her book, she “assumed that U.S. policy was immutable, that their concerns were already understood by their superiors, and that speaking (or walking) out would only reduce their capacity to improve the policy.” Power’s book was taken at the time of its publication as a powerful warning against the moral price that our country pays for such delusional rationalizations. It will be hard to read it the same way again.

Clifford D. May: Bystanders to genocide

One must wonder: Is Ambassador Power asking herself that question now that she's a key figure in an administration that for five years has been choosing to look away from the carnage in Syria and hardly mentioning -- much less taking steps to "mitigate and prevent" -- what history is likely to record as the genocide of Middle Easter Christians?
On the same day last week that the Syrian Center for Policy Research released its report on the death toll, American, Russian and other diplomats meeting in Munich agreed to a "cessation of hostilities" that is to begin within a week. Critics say it will allow Assad and his allies to consolidate their recent gains and prepare for further advances.
We should hope the critics are wrong. But by now we also should have learned that the Russians and Iranians do not see diplomacy as does Obama. They are not trying to "get to yes," find "win-win" compromises or achieve "conflict resolution." Sparing innocent lives is certainly not a priority. To them, diplomacy is war by other means, and wars are for winning.
As they see it, Americans in recent years have been defeated in one diplomatic battle after another -- by North Koreans, by Cubans, by Iran's revolutionary jihadis. They expect to build on this trend. A convincing argument that they're wrong would be challenging to mount.

"Apartheid?"poster - Makram Khoury

Latest in the series:

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"Got A Shoehorn? I Gotta Fit A Story Into The Anti-Israel Narrative" (PreOccupied Territory)

Our weekly column from the humor site PreOccupied Territory.

Check out their Facebook page.

Got A Shoehorn? I Gotta Fit A Story Into The Anti-Israel Narrative

By Luke Baker, Reuters

I seem to have misplaced my shoehorn. That’s going to make it more difficult to force the story I have to report to fit the familiar assumptions of Israel-bad, Palestinians-good. Not impossible, mind you, but more difficult. Do you happen to have a shoehorn you can spare, just for an hour or so? I'll give it right back.

An eraser might do for some types of adjustment to fit the narrative, yes, but that risks leaving too many gaping holes in the story, and that would be simply unprofessional. A reporter of my credentials knows better than to make glaring omissions that only make the reader wonder whether more than meets the eye is going on, instead of accepting the framing of the event as yet another iteration of Israeli brutality and noble Palestinian victimhood. We cannot have that. It would undermine decades of careful adherence to that line. So please, have you got maybe a crowbar?

A chisel might do, as well, or a reasonably firm spatula. Just something to help wedge the facts into the comfortable confines of Israeli repression and honorable Palestinian resistance. Of Israeli censorship and beleaguered journalists putting up a brave fight to report the truth. Of sinister Israeli racism and liberal Palestinian values. Perhaps a hammer? I suppose it’s not strictly necessary to wedge the facts into the narrative – it might be possible to just keep smashing them into the form I want them. Crude, but effective.

Another possibility would be to use the right kind of industrial lubricant, and have the story slide more easily into the preconceived anti-Israel pattern. Some of the more reputable agencies do that, but with deadline pressures it's not always possible to achieve the proper results in time. With longer feature pieces, for example, a dose of fragrant essential oils, and you can massage that baby until it slides right into the existing prejudices.

Still, I prefer the simple elegance of a shoehorn, be it of the standard or longer variety. It makes the bias so much more subtle and deniable than the brute force of a hammer, but still provides a reasonable way to accomplish the distortion quickly enough to meet the pressures of a minute-to-minute breaking news cycle. So have you got one?

Oh, just a butcher's knife? No worries, Muhammad. That will do just fine. I'll give it right back to you when I'm finished. Then you can go on your way toward Damascus Gate.

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02/17 Link Pt1: Why the Palestinians Say Never; Nasrallah Threatens Haifa Chemical Facility

From Ian:

Khaled Abu Toameh: Palestinian Leaders: Who Are They Fooling?

For Abbas and the Palestinian leadership, the death of more than 170 Palestinians and 26 Israelis in the past five months occurred in the context of a "popular and peaceful uprising." One can only imagine what the uprising would have looked like had it not been "peaceful."
Abbas assured his people that those who die defending their holy sites would go straight to heaven. "Every drop of blood that is spilled in Jerusalem is pure blood," he stressed.
According to the Palestinian Authority, these youths are acting out of despair -- over settlements, checkpoints and lack of progress in the peace process. The attackers are in fact targeting Jews because they have been incited and brainwashed by the same leaders who are now denouncing Israel for protecting itself.
Not a single senior Palestinian official has condemned the targeting of innocent civilians in this "peaceful" uprising. They are too busy glorifying the assailants and naming streets after them.
The blood of the Palestinians who are being shot and killed while attacking Jews is on the hands of Abbas and his senior officials.

Why the Palestinians Say Never

While the PA has at times spoken of being willing to make peace but its leader Mahmoud Abbas has always made it clear that he will never recognize the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn. Moreover, the PA is locked in a deadly competition with Hamas, which is more open about its true intentions. Hamas regards all of Israel as “occupied territory” that must be liberated. As studies have illustrated, that is more in line with the opinions of the overwhelming majority of Palestinians. Most Palestinians share Hamas’s belief that the Jews have no right to a single inch of the country and believe all acts of terror against Jews — even the most heinous crimes against helpless innocents — are praiseworthy. For over 100 years, Palestinian nationalism has been inextricably linked to conflict with the Jews and, until a critical mass of them adopts some other approach to identity, peace isn’t possible.
What this adds up to is a situation that puts Abbas and any potential successor (he is currently serving the 11th year of the four-year-term to which he was elected in 2005) in the same boat that his predecessor Arafat claimed to be in Camp David in 2000. Neither Arafat nor Abbas believed they could ever sell a peace deal to their people — let alone their Hamas foes — if it meant ending the century-long war against Zionism.
So while the Palestinians say they will “never” go back to negotiations because they believe they can’t get a good deal, their real reason is just the opposite. If, as happened in 2000, 2001 and 2008, they engage in talks, their greatest fear is getting a very good deal that will give them statehood and independence. Their goal is to avoid negotiating because getting to yes with Israel would actually mean peace. And that is something they cannot do until a sea change in their political culture happens. Though when most people say the word never, they mean something very different, in this case, the Palestinian never may very well mean never.

Defiant Israeli Owner of Ohio Restaurant Attacked by Machete-Wielding Assailant Says He Will Now Wear Star of David

The owner of the Columbus, Ohio restaurant in which four people were wounded in a machete attack last week said he will not let the incident deter his support for Israel, The Washington Post reported.
Hany Baransi, a Christian Arab from Haifa, displays an Israeli flag in the window of his restaurant, Nazareth Mediterranean Cuisine, which has been open for 27 years. When asked if he would consider removing the flag as a precaution, Baransi rejected the idea.
“Actually I have another flag, and I am going to get a bigger flag, and I am going to get a Star of David necklace and put it on my chest, and I am going to get a tattoo,” he said. “Honest to God, I am not kidding. They don’t scare me. We are Israelis. We are Israelis. We are resilient, we fight back.”
Though authorities initially said they believed that the attacker, Somali immigrant Mohamed Barry, terrorized the restaurant randomly, new information has surfaced making it seem likely that it was targeted because of Baransi’s being Israeli, according to The Washington Post.
Baransi said that half an hour before the attack, the assailant asked a waiter where the owner was from, and she told him he was from Israel. The attacker, 30, then left the eatery after learning that Baransi was not on the premises. He returned 30 minutes later wielding a machete and slashing diners.

Google Knowledge Graph says Israeli journalist born in "State of Palestine"

A few years ago, Google started putting automated summary responses to queries on the margin of the search page, so for example autobiographical details of the person being searched for would appear without an additional click. Google calls these "Knowledge Graphs."

Google relies a lot on Wikipedia and similar sources to generate these Knowledge Graphs. But it looks like someone is gaming the system.

Look at the Google result for Israeli TV personality Yonit Levi:

Even if you believe that there is a "State of Palestine," and even if you believe that the French Hill neighborhood is part of it - which is absurd - there is no way you can say that she was born in the "State of Palestine" in 1977!

But her Wikipedia entry does not say this. None of the web pages about her refer to the "State of Palestine." So how did Google's algorithms decide this?

Either someone in Google is politicizing the results of search queries, or anti-Israel activists had a secret campaign to click on the "feedback" button and issue a fake "correction."

It appears that Google can be less reliable than Wikipedia itself in providing facts for researchers.

(h/t Russell)

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PA foreign ministry calls on the world to ban Jews from Temple Mount

The hate rhetoric continues, as the PA's foreign ministry has called on the international community and Arab world to go beyond condemnations and work to ban Jews from the Temple Mount.

In a statement released by the ministry, it says that "The foreign ministry condemns in the strongest terms incursions by Jewish extremists to the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

"It is required more than ever for an Arab, Islamic and international position beyond condemnation and denunciation to establish a real and effective international protection for the Palestinian people and their sanctities, and included in their rights to freedom of movement and access to places of worship."

Which means the complete denial of Jewish rights to access places of worship in Jerusalem. Banning Jews from visiting the site, the PA says, is mandatory under "international law, international humanitarian law, and the Geneva Conventions."

Of course, not too many international "human rights" organizations are defending the right of Jews to worship on the Temple Mount.

Every day there are news articles in Arabic complaining about Jews visiting the holy site. On Sunday, as most days, Jews were accused of performing those famous "Talmudic rituals".

Here is the video of that horror:

Richard Landes has an interesting post tying the relatively new Muslim obsession with the Temple Mount with Bart Simpson using this 1954 photo of the weed-strewn site.

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"The Truth the Palestinians are Afraid to Tell You" (video) plus Bassam Eid speech (update)

This remarkable video was released by an organization called "Palestine Informer."

Here is how this organization describes itself on Facebook:

Our mission is to bring you accurate and uncensored information about the Palestinian Authority. Due to the suppression of freedom of expression in Palestine, which is frequently enforced by police brutality and summary executions, most Palestinians are reticent to talk about the truth. The painful truth is that the Palestinian leaders who are purporting to represent that interests of the Palestinian people, many times act with ulterior motives. We offer a forum whereby anyone can submit articles, video clips and news feeds, with complete anonymity for the protection of their lives and wellbeing. Our hope is that the freedom of expression guarantied on this site will ensure that accurate information reaches supporters of the Palestinian people both inside and outside of Palestine, until truth and justice prevails on their behalf.

They also have a website with very interesting articles about women's rights and torture under PA and Hamas controlled areas.

Human rights activist Bassem Eid was asked via email about whether they are legitimate, and he said that it rings true although it doesn't seem that he had heard of them before.

(UPDATE: A number of readers pointed out that the photo of the person on the right is Yahya Hassan, who is not likely to have been involved in this project. I don't know if the photo was meant to be illustrative or if this is a little less than honest.)

A speech by Eid with similar points was synopsized in Times of Israel yesterday. Excerpts:

We Palestinians still deserve a state through a two-state solution, but it now looks as if the Palestinians are demanding a three-state solution for two peoples. Hamas is fighting for its own Islamic Emirate in the Gaza Strip, and Fatah, including President Mahmoud Abbas, is fighting for its own empire in the West Bank. The Israelis and the Palestinian people are upset about the status quo, but the Palestinian leaders seem satisfied.

I do not believe that Fatah or Hamas really want reconciliation or unity. Disunity keeps Palestinian society weak in the face of any future peace talks or peace initiatives. If Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu met Abbas tomorrow, the first question from Netanyahu would be, “Whom are you representing Mr. President? The Gaza Strip? The West Bank? The Palestinian diaspora?” In my opinion, Abbas right now represents only his two sons and his wife.

Palestinians do not support Abbas’ fight at the UN or at the International Criminal Court. If you ask ordinary Palestinians, “What are the three priorities you are seeking?” they would say, “a job to survive, an education system, and a health system for my children”. Nobody mentions the settlements, the security fence, or even the Palestinian State.

Most Palestinians are seeking dignity rather than identity. I have no problem with my identity, wherever I go, I say I am a Palestinian, and people understand that. But if I say I come from Abu Dhabi, people ask, “Is it far away from Turkey? Is that where the President is killing his people? Is it in Asia or in Africa?” Nobody knows where Abu Dhabi is, but everybody knows what it means to be Palestinian. So I do not have a problem with my identity. I have a problem with dignity.

Palestinians are anxious about their future. In my opinion, dignity can come only via economic prosperity. The international community should put aside political issues and peace negotiations. Ordinary Palestinians are fed up with that. It is time to start focussing much more on economic prosperity in the drive towards peace.

Economic prosperity can pave the way towards a lasting resolution for Israelis and Palestinians. Economic prosperity should not involve only Israelis and Palestinians. I would love to see Jordanians, Egyptians, and Saudis involved. They should all be involved in joint projects with the Palestinians and the Israelis. This could help us Palestinians reach a resolution with Israel within a few years.

..Both the international community and the Palestinians know that the Palestinian leadership is corrupt. Abbas is the Robert Mugabe of the Middle East. This is my fight right now. The Palestinians do not want an exit from the occupation. What they want is to get rid of their own leadership.

When I say to my fellow Palestinians, imagine that tomorrow morning you woke up and the IDF had left the West Bank, what would happen? People say, “Oh, my God, we would starve.” No one wants that.

Palestinians feel that they are alone. Nobody supports them. There is no benefit for Palestinians in a boycott of Israel. There are 92,000 Palestinian workers in the West Bank who carry Israeli work permits. Every day, in the early morning, they cross the checkpoints, going to work inside Israel. So when I see the 92,000 Palestinian workers entering Israel every day, it is clear why there is no Palestinian boycott of Israel. In the markets of Palestinian towns, the thousands of boxes and cartons of vegetables and fruits come from Israel.

Palestinian people want to survive. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS movement) benefits from the suffering of the Palestinians. Who authorised the BDS movement to speak on my behalf? I want to know. These people are trying to kill our economy.

(h/t Elchanan, Richard)

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Hasby Awards 2016 - Best Own Goal

The winner for Best Own Goal Hasby Award goes to...

02/16 Links Pt2: The Middle East's Conflicts Are About Religion; BDS is a moral failure

From Ian:

Vic Rosenthal: A world without Jews (2012)

Thanks to Facebook’s ‘memories’ feature, I was reminded of this post from four years ago. I liked it so much I am re-running it. No need to change a word.
Thought experiment time:
Perhaps one day, the Jews of the world will finally become fed up. Maybe they will build an enormous spaceship and take their arguments to another planet (we know Jews are smart, so they could do this).
What would happen on that planet might be interesting, but I won’t speculate, although it’s tempting to wonder what a Jewish planet would be like. Like Israel without the foreign workers, terrorism and reserve duty?
I’m more interested in what the Earth would be like. Imagine a Middle East without Jews (the Iranian regime does this all the time). Pity the ‘Palestinians’, whose culture would suddenly lose its raison d’être. After a few days of enjoying the nice cars and buildings the Jews left behind, they would have to create a real identity for themselves.
Suddenly there would be very little interest in supporting the ‘refugees’. Who would care about them? Not the Arab countries, who treat them like garbage now. I expect there would be fighting between various factions, some Islamist and some secular. Hizballah would take control of the North, Hamas the South, and Fatah the East. The UN would feed them, at least for a while. Turkey, Egypt, Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. would each supply its favored faction with weapons, and they would fight until most of the land was swallowed up by its neighbors or under control of various militias.

Anti-Israel activists hating on Bernie Sanders

Bernie must know about this potential problem on his far-left flank. From the get-go, Bernie has been targeted by far-left wing and anti-Zionist websites. In early May 2015, the anti-Zionist Mondoweiss website wrote:
Sanders is also getting points for opposing the Iraq War, which Hillary Clinton supported, and he supports the Iran deal. But I’ve seen no one apart from Juan Cole, in this excellent summary of Sanders’s Middle East views, point out his yeoman defense of Israel during its assault on Gaza last summer. In July Sanders formed part of the “unanimous consent” to a resolution to support Israel in its attack, a resolution Salon’s David Palumbo-Liu said at the time “does more than confirm U.S. Senate support for Israel. It pushes that statement beyond any rational or ethical or moral framework imaginable.”
In a famous encounter at a town hall meeting in Vermont near the end of the onslaught– video below–, Sanders got so angry at pro-Palestinian constituents who were obviously deeply upset by an assault that had killed 500 Palestinian children that he told them to “shut up.”
Similarly, recently a write at the anti-Israel Middle East Monitor framed the left-wing objection to Sanders as progressivism being incompatible with Zionism, Is Bernie Sanders a civil rights campaigner or a loyal supporter of Israel?
But it hasn’t only attacks from authors. Remember the woman who, in early August 2015, took over the stage at a Bernie rally in Seattle, then shouted at the top of her lungs just inches from the face of the person introducing Bernie?
It was a defining moment in the campaign, and it signaled the aggressive tactics that Black Lives Matter protesters would take at other events. While Hillary Clinton and some Republican candidates faced hecklers or mild disruption, that initial Bernie event was the most aggressive.
The woman who yelled at Bernie and took over the stage was anti-Israel Block The Boat activist Mara Willaford [who claims to be a palestinian and black].

Britain to prevent publicly funded bodies from boycotting Israeli goods

Publicly funded authorities in Britain will be prevented from boycotting Israeli goods under new government procurement guidelines.
The new regulations will be announced by Cabinet Office minister Matthew Hancock during an upcoming visit to Israel, the Guardian reported Monday.
According to the guidelines, such boycotts are considered by the government ministers to be “inappropriate, outside where formal legal sanctions, embargoes and restrictions have been put in place by the government,” the Guardian reported.
Plans for the guidelines were first announced in October.
“We need to challenge and prevent these divisive town hall boycotts,” Hancock said, adding that the guidelines “will help prevent damaging and counterproductive local foreign policies undermining our national security.”
A spokesman for Labor Party leader Jeremy Corbyn told the Jewish Chronicle that the guideline plan is “an attack on local democracy.”

From the uber-left Channel 4: BDS: councils could face penalties over Israeli boycotts

NY Times compares Israel's brief detention of reporter with Iranian abduction

This morning, a Washington Post reporter was briefly detained in Jerusalem.

Times of Israel reports:

Booth and his cameraman were interviewing locals near the Damascus Gate next to the Old City of Jerusalem. An Arab woman told him that she could get some of the bystanders to demonstrate against the police if he paid them, police spokesperson Asi Aharoni tells The Times of Israel.

Someone who saw the scene unfolding contacted nearby Border Police officers. The officers approached Booth and his photographer and asked that they come with them, Aharoni says.

They were taken to a nearby police station to be briefly questioned and have already been released, the spokesperson says.

Here is how the original report about the incident was reported in the New York Times in the first minutes when reporters were tweeting that Booth was "arrested" (it has since changed):

The Israeli authorities briefly detained The Washington Post’s Jerusalem bureau chief, William Booth, on Tuesday while he was conducting interviews near the Damascus Gate, one of the entrances to the Old City, the newspaper Haaretz reported.

Mr. Booth and an employee of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel were reportedly accused of “incitement,” according to Haaretz, but were released after a brief detention.

Mr. Booth is a veteran correspondent for The Post, having served as a bureau chief in Mexico, Miami and Los Angeles, as a pop culture correspondent, and as a reporter covering conflicts on several continents.

Last month, The Post’s Tehran bureau chief, Jason Rezaian, was freed after being detained for nearly 18 months by the Iranian authorities.

Mr. Rezaian and three other Americans of Iranian ancestry were freed as part of a delicately negotiated swap with the United States, which released seven Iranians who had been held for sanctions violations.

What exactly is the relationship between a misunderstanding where a reporter is briefly detained and an 18 month abduction on trumped-up charges?

Four American journalists were arrested in Bahrain this past weekend. No one compared them to Jason Rezaian - certainly not the New York Times. Or the Washington Post.

A reporter was arrested in Turkey for alleged terror activities. No one compared him to Jason Rezaian.

Reporters have been arrested in Yemen in the past month. Again, no comparisons in the media to Rezaian.

So what relevance does Iran's abduction of a Jason Rezaian have to this story?

The NYT wants its readers to associate what Israeli police did with what Iranian dictators did. And that is not news that is fit to print.

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