Tuesday, December 02, 2014
Missing Peace: Respected journalists expose media bias against Israel
Let’s move to Abeer Ayyoub, who (NYT correspondent Judy) Rudoren also praised (in November 2012, during Israel’s Operation Pillar of Defense in Gaza) as her “wonderful fixer/journalist.” At that time, Ayyoub was getting reporting credit on stories written by Rudoren, even as she (like Akram) served as a consultant at the Israel-viperous Human Rights Watch.Blacklisting of pro-Israel watchdog organization NGO Monitor by the Associated Press
Ayyoub no longer reports for the Times, but earlier this year she stated publicly that she has been boycotting all Israeli products for three years, which would cover her period at the Times.
In a Facebook post on July 29th, Ayyoub parroted the Hamas line. She said she was asked in an interview “why Palestinians in Gaza are not feeling angry because of Hamas using the building materials for their tunnels and not for building houses and schools.” Her response was straight-up Hamas propaganda. “My answer was: why people in Israel [sic] won’t feel angry about Israeli government spending more money on enhancing its army instead of raising the level of education and health there? More importantly, why the U.S. wouldn’t save the money it supports the Israeli army with for sheltering its [America’s] thousands of homeless there in the U.S.” It went on like this. She never really answered the question, but it was plain: Hamas diverting cement from kindergartens to terror tunnels was fine with her.
It gets worse.
In a particularly vile Facebook post on August 3rd, she attacked “so-called journalists” who “posted stuff and gave interviews that they left because they were threatened by Hamas to be kicked outta [sic] country if they don’t report what Hamas wants.” While excoriating those brave journalists, she defended Hamas. But she went beyond that. Using the term “we,” she actually implied that she was complicit in the cover-up of Hamas launching sites:
Long-time readers will recall that I’ve relied on NGO Monitor’s work in the past. Indeed, one of the most consequential “scoops” I’ve had as a blogger, that Human Rights Watch Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson fundraised among rich Saudi Arabians with a pledge to use the money to counter pro-Israel forces in the West, came from NGO Monitor. My blog post on this, reprinted at the Wall Street Journal’s website, set off a controversy about HRW’s anti-Israel bias that has yet to fully recede (and assuredly won’t until someone less maniacally anti-Israel than Whitson and her boss Kenneth Roth is in charge).Jon Stewart’s Betrayal of Israel
More generally, Steinberg and NGO Monitor are huge players in the debate over the role NGOs play in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and has been particularly effective in revealing how many NGOs in both Israel and the territories that are hostile to Israel’s existence receive the bulk of their funding from European governments, creating significant controversy in Israel and Europe. I’ve been following NGO Monitor for years, and have yet to see the organization tell any lies or make any significant errors, which is much more than one can say for, e.g., Human Rights Watch and other anti-Israel organizations routinely relied upon by the media as objective sources. I’ve also met Steinberg and worked with his staff; they are professional, dedicated, and, based on my conversations with them, quite moderate in terms of the Israeli political spectrum.
Given all this, it’s hard to come up with an innocent explanation for the AP banning its reporters from talking to Steinberg, assuming Friedman is correct. There are many possible non-innocent explanations, and none of them reflect well on the AP and how it covers the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
As for Israel and Gaza, “Stewart”‘s position has crystallized long ago, and it is a one of studied moral equivalence. For each Palestinian atrocity (upon which “Stewart” usually glosses over anyway) he finds a reason to apportion equal blame to Israel, and since Israel is stronger and enjoys this “great American leeway,” Israel usually comes out as the guilty party.
“Stewart”‘s moral failure to condemn Hamas and defend Israel has nothing to do with his fickle Judaism and everything to do with his liberal dogma, which simply cannot stomach the fact that people in the Middle East can be guilty of anything. It is always the white man’s fault, and in this case – Israel’s. During one of his previous interviews, “Stewart” had no problem with his host Jonathan Dekel, another specimen of the same sort, denigrating Israeli democracy. Stewart never uttered a bad word about the Palestinians.
“Stewart” is correct on one thing. The Jews who “helped” the Nazis did so because, in their mortal peril, they’d abandoned their moral principles for the glimmer of hope of personal survival. “Stewart” – a pampered, self-centered, deluded king of his world – is nothing like those wretches in his attacks on the Jewish state and its defenders.
He is incomparably worse.
Karen Armstrong is wrong, wrong, wrong on Bill Maher
Salon asked, "How direct is the link between colonial policies in the Middle East and a terrorist attack in New York or London?" And Armstrong answered, "When I saw the towers fall on September 11, one of the many, many thoughts that went through my head was, 'We helped to do this.'"AP Accused of Bias Against Israel
Salon asked Armstrong about the October 3 episode of "Real Time with Bill Maher." Armstrong responded "It fills me with despair, because this is the sort of talk that led to the concentration camps in Europe."
Salon asked "Is Islamophobia today comparable to anti-Semitism?" and Armstrong answered that Islamophobia is "deeply enshrined in Western culture. It goes right back to the Crusades … We've recoiled, quite rightly, from our anti-Semitism, but we still have not recoiled from our Islamophobia."
I fear that casual readers – if there are any left – might stumble across Armstrong's words and think, "Wow. This lady is a scholar. There must be something to what she just said. Bill Maher and Sam Harris are comparable to Nazis, and if we don't suppress criticism of Islam, we'll have another Holocaust on our hands, with Muslims as victims."
The Associated Press is pushing back against charges leveled by one of its former Israel-based reporters that the global news agency is systematically biased against Israel and specifically makes editorial choices meant to portray the Jewish state in negative terms.Quartet envoy Blair: Overcoming differences of faith key to resolving Mideast political issues
The AP on Monday vehemently denied these charges when approached by the Washington Free Beacon and claimed that Friedman has been promulgating “distortions, half-truths, and inaccuracies” about the news outlet.
Friedman’s “suggestion of AP bias against Israel is false,” Paul Colford, the AP’s director of media relations, told the Free Beacon in a statement.
“It is misleading and disingenuous to selectively pick examples of our work to promote narrow viewpoints,” Colford said. “The AP is proud of its staff on both sides of the border for producing a broad, independent, and comprehensive report in such adverse conditions.”
Asked specifically to address the charge that AP reporters were ordered not to speak to NGO Monitor or Steinberg, Colford called the claim “demonstrably false.”
Blair said that he believed that crossing the boundaries of faith is the central question of the region and that if this can be achieved the political problems will also be resolved.Shmuley Boteach: The Fierce Battle for Israel on Western College Campuses
In welcoming Blair to the Presidential Residence, Rivlin said “you are a good friend despite some differences of opinion from time to time.”
It was Rivlin who initially raised the faith issue, saying that although Israel has no war against Islam, there are unfortunately extremists on both sides who think that there is a war between Jews and Muslims.
“This is the homeland of the Jewish people and everyone born here,” said Rivlin indicating the inclusiveness of all minority groups whose members are Israeli by birth. “We are destined to live together and you are doing so much to bring us to a reasonable way of thinking of how to find a way to live together in peace and with open borders,” he told Blair in reference to finding a solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.
Rivlin said that he wanted to emphasize appreciation Blair’s efforts for the people of Gaza “who are being held hostage by Hamas.”
Islam is disgraced not only by those who murder in its name but by educated and lost souls who dignify terror with grievance.How to fight the academic boycott more effectively
The Dalai Lama has been under brutal Chinese occupation since 1950 and he has never become a monster.
As to the charges that the Palestinians live under Israeli occupation, the West Bank was illegally occupied by Jordan in 1948 yet no one ever complained of an occupation. Israel has tried since its creation to make peace with Arab states and has endangered its security with repeated territorial concessions that were met with nothing but terror attacks.
What we learned from Israel’s unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 is that should Israel withdraw from Judea and Samaria – which is not occupied but disputed – it would lead immediately to the creation of another terrorist state run by Hamas. Israel would be sandwiched between two terror launching pads intent on its total destruction.
The boycott is yet another derivative of the successful Arab propaganda to push the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the center of the international stage. This debate distracts attention from the huge and ever-increasing criminality in many parts of the Arab world.Honest Reporting: Attacking Israel with Images from the Holocaust
Arab academics may play a role in the anti-Israeli boycott on some campuses, but it is the Left, however – including sometimes Jews or Israelis – who provide its main power. There are other factors at play, though. This was explained by Curtis Marez, the former president of the American Studies Association (ASA), which supports the anti-Israel boycott. He was reported to have said that many other countries, including some in the Middle East, have a human rights record comparable or worse than that of Israel. Marez added that, “One has to start somewhere.” He mentioned that Palestinian civil-society groups had asked his organization to boycott Israel and no similar requests had been made by groups in other countries.
So far, the boycott battle has been run according to classic lines. The anti-Israeli boycotters attack, and afterward, some pro-Israeli professors oppose the move.
Depending on the local situation and on the support often given by Jewish grassroots bodies, one of the sides wins. The majority of scholars often does not participate in the vote. This was the case with the ASA boycott vote.
BDS Supporters will stop at nothing.The Great Jewish American Liberal Academic Anti-Anti-Zionist Freak-Out
On Voice of Israel Radio, HR’s Yarden Frankl blasts the photo of Auschwitz victims holding superimposed BDS signs. Enemies of Israel have no problem misusing images from the Holocaust to demonize the country.
But the media are supposed to be impartial and do a better job portraying Israel. So why is anti-Israel media bias so prevalent? What can be done to combat it?
The weaknesses of the boycott campaign are, in fact, so glaring that it has had little success in imposing its agenda on universities. Notably, the Modern Language Association, a much bigger and more influential group than the American Studies Association, declined to pursue an anti-Israel resolution this summer. Samuel and Carol Edelman offer some statistics in their contribution to the book: “In the 2013-14 academic year, 15 divestment resolutions were introduced in universities in the U.S. Of these, only two passed.” Where such resolutions are adopted, it is usually by student governments with no power to affect university policy; of the six campuses where BDS resolutions passed in 2012-13, “not one … boycotted, divested, or sanctioned Israel.”UK Parliamentarians Push for Sanctions Against Israel
If this is so, the question then becomes, why are the contributors to The Case Against Academic Boycotts of Israel so concerned about the issue? The answer is suggested by the Edelmans’ title, “When Failure Succeeds”: Even when BDS resolutions are inconsequential, they can succeed in changing the parameters of discussion about Israel and Zionism. “What BDS did not fail at,” the Edelmans write, “was weeks, months, and even years of constant attacks against Israel, portraying it as a pariah nation, an occupier, a human rights violator, a racist nation, and a denier of Palestinian rights. That is significant.”
George Galloway, an MP from the far left Respect Party and a committed supporter of both Hamas and Hezbollah, said the situation in Jerusalem was turning to crisis and would overshadow the “erupting sore” of Gaza.Dudley Council drops motion to boycott Israel
Former Middle East Minister Alistair Burt called on Mr Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas to meet and “physically stand together and say ‘no more’” in order to stop the spiral of violence. He said it was a time for “bravery and courage” from the men.
He said Israel needed to realize the “reality” of the fall-out from the conflict in Gaza in the summer and acknowledge the changing view of world opinion.
His fellow Conservative MPs Robert Halfon and Matthew Offord were among those who defended Israel.
Interestingly, the seven UK Independence Party councillors on Dudley Council, its third-largest grouping, also planned to oppose the motion.Campus Radicals Defeated
Its leader, Paul Brothwood, described the motion as “an affront to good community relations” that goes far beyond even what the PA has called for.
He added: “The local Labor Party seem to be caring more about the West Bank then the West Midlands. They are being narrow and divisive. In reality this motion is unworkable, as the council would need to throw out most computers, most modern phones, a quarter of NHS generic drugs and all their latest scanners.”
Brothwood also claimed that the move was “almost certainly illegal,” suggesting it “transgresses the council’s legal responsibility to seek best value in its procurement policies and introduces discriminatory conditions which may result in the borough receiving poorer value for money than it might otherwise receive. Also, it is highly likely that it breaches equal opportunities legislation because it discriminates against suppliers on the grounds of nationality.”
Last week Islamic radicals on Campus, successfully lobbied Facebook to pull down the Hamas on Campus Facebook Page. This new organization has succinctly made the connection between the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Hamas / The Muslim Brotherhood.A South African Christian Journalist Talks Up Israel Down Under
The Hamas On Campus video has being doing well on both Facebook and YouTube. The video provides numerous examples of Jewish students being intimidated by SJP and MSA radicals on US and Canadian campuses.
On what basis was it pulled down? Facebook did not say. There was no email explaining why it was removed, nor was there a suggested method of redress. It looked like the radicals had successfully silenced one of their critics – all the more ironic when so many radical or racist Facebook pages are allowed to gain support and promote hate.
South African journalist Stan Goodenough, a committed Christian Zionist who tweets here, told a congregation at Queensland's Sunshine Coast yesterday thatBDS Destroys Everything it Touches – The Case of UAW 2865
'....Christians should be writing to Mr Abbott and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to applaud their pro-Israeli stance....
Mr Goodenough said Australia was right in arguing that Jewish settlements were not illegal under international law and that it should not formally recognise Palestine.
He was speaking on the Sunshine Coast as part of a tour of Australian churches where he is rallying support for Australian not to fold to international pressure. He has also spoken at Toowoomba.
History had shown those countries who has supported Israel had prospered while those who opposed it had been cursed, he said.
Mr Goodenough said the US' recent decline was evidence of the fact that it had waned in its support of the Jewish people, especially under President Barack Obama.
The long-time journalist in Israel said giving land to Palestine was akin to 'giving Czechoslovakia to Adolf Hitler'.
As long-time trackers of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions phenomenon know, BDS is an opportunistic virus ready to use whatever it learned the last time it infected (or was rejected) by a host organism when moving to a new target of opportunity.Students Refuse to be Singled Out by BDS at Concordia University
Most recently, these new tactics are being followed to the letter by the BDSers who purport to represent the membership of United Automobile Workers (UAW) 2865 which, despite its name, is actually a union of 12,000 graduate student employees within the California education system.
Like many unions, UAW 2865 has been getting the short end of the stick in negotiations with the state and college administrations over the last couple of years. Partly, this reflects the weakening of unions generally (especially those that include very few active members – like a union of grad students). But another reason why they’ve been force to accept crappy contracts recently is that the union’s leadership seems to have priorities that have nothing to do with bettering the lot of the membership.
Most notably, they have been pushing, participating in and spending union money on BDS activities, even before they receive the answer they’re hoping for from the rigged vote they’ve scheduled for December 4th. And, not satisfied with the damage they have caused to date, they have done everything in their power to ensure a “Yes” vote will permanently wreck the organization by:
As a university student, I believe that we are all fully entitled to enjoy our university experience to its fullest extent. As free and equal individuals, I believe that we are all fully entitled to not feel singled out and essentially discriminated by the student body at our own university. We are all entitled to feel safe, welcomed, respected and represented. On behalf of the Jewish students who stand against the BDS movement, I want to say that we refuse to witness anti-semitism on our own campuses and we refuse to be singled out.Richard Silverstein Caught In Yet Another Lie
If the “yes” campaign wishes to make a difference, why not engage in positive dialogue with the different communities and clubs on campus, such as Israel on Campus? Instead of investing their resources and their attention into an international issue that the top leaders of the world have difficulty solving, why doesn’t the CSU focus on enriching the lives and solving the problems of their own community at Concordia University? How about investing their precious time in building a functional website for their union?
For the reasons mentioned above, I ask all Concordians to stand against the BDS motion. Let’s stay united and not divided.
In a comment to one of his latest rants against Israel, DouchebloggerTM Richard Silverstein states categorically in the comments that an Israeli Jewish bus driver killed a palestinian boy.NPR Continues Its Anti-Israel Bias
Silverstein links to this report, which mentions only an Israeli bus driver, and nothing about him being Jewish (as the bottom commenter points out).
This is not a trivial point, considering the driver was an Israeli Arab!
For the past several years, National Public Radio earned a reputation for anti-Israel bias--so much so that even some liberal supporters began mocking it as "National Palestinian Radio." That sad tradition continued Monday on NPR's Morning Edition, in a report about a debate in Israel over defining the country as a "Jewish state."Oprah Targeted in Foiled Terror Bomb Plot
According to the short report, Israel's Arab minority, representing about 20% of the population "faces frequent discrimination." No further explanation or evidence was provided.
The fact is that Arabs in Israel face no legal discrimination at all--though NPR listeners with no specific knowledge of Israeli law would infer otherwise.
The Chicago studios of talk-show superstar Oprah Winfrey and the iconic “Sears Tower” (renamed Willis Tower) were the targets of a terrorist truck-bomb plot in 2009. But initially unbeknownst to federal authorities, two of the conspirators recently were arrested for unrelated state crimes in different parts of the country. The alleged bombers targeted Ms. Winfrey’s Harpo Studios because they resented her popularity and power, while the tower was selected because of its obvious landmark status. The bomb plot itself, planned in 2009, was inspired by militant Islamist hatred of American military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to law enforcement and other sources interviewed by Judicial Watch.Lee Rigby Killer Says He's 'No Longer a Soldier of Allah' in Bid to Overturn Life Sentence
Sources requested anonymity for fear of reprisal by terrorist bomb-plotter associates, as well as retaliation from embarrassed federal law enforcement agents who apparently mismanaged the subsequent counterterrorism case.
The alleged bomb plotters were based in El Paso, Texas and included two longtime friends and associates currently jailed for recent state crimes.
One of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, who murdered the soldier on the streets of London, is trying to wriggle out of his whole life sentence.Liverpool star apologizes for apparent anti-Semitic social media post
Michael Adebolajo was filmed ranting into a camera, the blood of his victim on his hands, saying:
"The only reason we have killed this man today is because Muslims are dying daily by British soldiers. And this British soldier is one … By Allah, we swear by the almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. So what if we want to live by the Sharia in Muslim lands?”
But on Wednesday he is expected to renounce violence in order to lower the number of years he must spend behind bars, and claim he is ‘no longer a Soldier of Allah’.
Italian-born Liverpool striker Mario Balotelli apologized on Tuesday after uploading, and quickly deleting, a social media post, which contained potentially racist and anti-Semitic references.Eichmann’s final barb: ‘I hope that all of you will follow me’
The original post published on Monday features an image of the well-known Nintendo character Super Mario, which referenced Balotelli’s on-pitch nickname, along with the words “Be like Mario, he's an Italian plumber, created by Japanese people, who speaks English and looks like a Mexican.”
The soccer star said the Internet meme was initially created to spread a message of anti-racism, but garnered more attention especially for two extra lines at the bottom of the post: “jumps like a black man and grabs coins like a Jew.”
On Tuesday, Balotelli took to Twitter to apologize, writing “I apologize if I’ve offended anyone. The post was meant to be anti-racist with humour. I now understand that out of context may have the opposite effect.”
Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann’s last words, before he was hanged by Israel for war crimes, crimes against humanity and crimes against the Jewish people, were “I hope that all of you will follow me,” the Israeli intelligence officer who accompanied him to the gallows said.Paris Jewish Community in Shock Over Rape, Home Invasion ‘Because You Are Jews’
Rafi Eitan, who had commanded the operation to capture Eichmann in Argentina in 1960, told an Israeli TV documentary broadcast on Monday night that he was standing behind Eichmann at the gallows, at Ramle jail in 1962. “I accompanied him to the hanging. I saw him from the back. I did not speak with him at that moment,” Eitan said.
Did Ecihmann say anything? the interviewer asked. “What he said was, ‘I hope that all of you will follow me’,” said Eitan.
Three unknown assailants invaded the home of a Jewish couple in the Paris suburb of Créteil on Monday, raped the 19-year-old woman, and robbed the home, saying it was “because you are Jewish,” local French media reported on Tuesday.51% of Israeli teens report facing anti-Semitic attacks online
“The Jewish community is in shock over this,” a journalist who covered the story told The Algemeiner. Noting the concern about the case, he said, “When I posted the story on my social networks – they went crazy from reshares,” pointing out that “The article was read 16,207 times from 3PM to 8 PM… it’s 36% of the total amount of page view for the last 20 hours.”
The number of young Israelis attacked online for their nationality has risen sharply, a poll conducted by the Geocartographic Institute for the Anti-Defamation League shows. The poll questioned 500 Internet users aged 15 to 18.World Bank training deal could bring Israeli tech to – Iran?
More than half (51 percent) of respondents reported that they had been the targets of anti-Israeli attacks online in the past year, compared to 36 percent who said the same in 2013. Nearly two-thirds (61 percent) said that during and after Operation Protective Edge this summer, they experienced more anti-Semitic attacks than usual.
An overwhelming majority (83 percent) said they had been exposed to various types of anti-Semitism on social media, compared to 69 percent who said the same last year, and 20 percent said that they had been personally targeted by anti-Semitic attacks, compared to 13 percent who said the same in 2013.
Israeli technology could end up in many countries the Jewish state doesn’t currently have diplomatic relations with, as the World Bank adopts Israeli expertise in areas like cyber-security and agricultural technology.Alec Baldwin gives nod to YES in ad
Israel over the weekend signed a deal to become part of the World Bank’s “Global Practices” program, which seeks to provide client countries with skills and resources to improve their economies – making it easier for them to address poverty and to pay off their loans.
As such, the Israeli technology could end up in some odd places. Currently, most countries in Africa, the Middle East, and many in Asia, are World Bank clients. Iran also has several outstanding loans, all made before 2005, when sanctions were placed on Tehran and new loans were denied. Iran suspended repayment of its loans at the time, but in 2013 decided to renew those repayments.
Actor Alec Baldwin was paid $500,000 to star in a new commercial for Israel’s YES satellite television, according to celebrity watcher Guy Pines.Wine Spectator selects Israeli wine in ‘Best of 2014′
The former “30 Rock” star shot the feature film-styled commercial in New York City as part of the company’s advertising campaign promoting its new, video-streaming content to be launched soon.
Baldwin told the “Good Evening with Guy Pines” reporter that he was annoyed he didn’t get brought to Israel to shoot the commercial.
“Why wasn’t this shot in Israel?” asked Baldwin. “I want to come to Israel and I want to stay in a beautiful hotel.”
The Israeli wine community raised a glass to the Recanati Winery in the Hefer Valley for its placing on this year’s prestigious list of Top 100 Wines in Wine Spectator magazine. The relatively inexpensive Cabernet Sauvignon ($17) from Israel could be found in the same list as $150 wines.
“A rich red, showing good power to the mineral-infused dried blackberry, dark plum and currant flavors. Engaging dried herbal notes emerge on the focused finish,” the magazine’s managing editor Kim Marcus wrote about the kosher bottle of Recanati Cabernet Sauvignon Galilee 2012.
“Each year, Wine Spectator editors survey the wines reviewed over the previous 12 months and select our Top 100, based on quality, value, availability and excitement. This annual list honors successful wineries, regions and vintages around the world,” writes the magazine. Editors say they tasted 18,000 wines from across the globe before choosing this year’s winners.
The red Israeli wine scored 90 and placed 93rd on the list. Recanati Winery is the second Israeli winery to break the high-status end-of-year list, following Yarden’s achievement in 2008. (h/t Yoel)
