Tuesday, November 24, 2015
Douglas Murray: In Sex and War, the Left Is in Denial about Some Obvious Facts of Life
I mention this because we should recall that this is what the modern Left in the modern West has reduced us to: a twittering, gibbering puddle of competing neuroses — some sincere, most not.Sam Harris PodCast: On the Maintenance of Civilization - A Conversation with Douglas Murray
Then some real triggering went off in Paris. And instead of students falling over themselves to pretend to be more wounded than the next, people the same age as they and younger were being gunned down in Paris by the score for having a drink or going to a concert or football match. Of course, the major tragedy was that so many lives had been lost or destroyed so un-mendably. But one follow-on grief was that once again the people who should be in positions of power decided to check out.
The American president’s cursory remarks on the tragedy sounded like someone not merely phoning it in but visibly yearning for the post-presidential speaking and golf circuit. His secretary of state, meanwhile, used the aftermath of the slaughter of 130 people in a European capital to vow “resolve.” Perhaps the average French memory can still stretch back ten months.
If so, they will be suitably cool about the promise. For that was the last time Secretary John Kerry had to respond to a brutal massacre in Paris. On that occasion he turned up late with the guitarist James Taylor. To a visibly pained audience, James Taylor sang, on behalf of Kerry and the whole American people, “You’ve got a friend.” It is hard to think of a more mawkishly insulting diplomatic offering. The French foreign minister turning up in New York a week after 9/11 and hauling along a Gallic crooner to sing “Que sera sera”? Of course John Kerry made it worse, as he always does, by saying that he had turned up in the wake of the slaughter of twelve journalists and four Jews to “share a hug with Paris.”
This time Kerry made things worse still by implying that, whereas January’s attacks had some “legitimacy” or “rationale,” these were indiscriminate. The only thing that linked them, in Secretary Kerry’s eyes, was of course that they had “nothing to do with Islam.” Here in Britain and across Europe, politicians are conspicuously uttering this lie less and less because the public finds it less and less believable. But Kerry plods earnestly along. This latest attack, he said, “has nothing to do with Islam; it has everything to do with criminality, with terror, with abuse, with psychopathism — I mean, you name it.” Sure, so long as you don’t name it “Islam.”
In this episode of the Waking Up podcast, Sam Harris speaks with author Douglas Murray about Islamism, liberalism, civil society, and the migrant crisis in Europe. (~2 hours)Clip: Douglas Murray W/ Sam Harris - The Refugee Crisis
Caroline Glick: Obama’s new counter-terrorism guru
This debate is clearly uncomfortable for liberal US media outlets. So they have sought to change the subject.Richard Kemp: Western kindness is killing democracy
As the Democratic Party adopted Bush as its new counterterrorism guru, the liberal media sought to end discussion of radical Islam by castigating as bigots Republicans who speak of it. The media attempt over the weekend to claim falsely that Republican frontrunner Donald Trump called for requiring American Muslims to be registered in a national Muslim database marked such an attempt to change the subject.
The common denominator between Bush’s strategic decision to lie about the nature of the enemy, Obama’s apologetics for IS and the media’s attempt to claim that Republicans are anti-Islamic racists is that in all cases, an attempt is being made to assert that there is no pluralism in Islam – it’s either entirely good or entirely evil.
This absolutist position is counterproductive for two reasons. First, it gets you nowhere good in the war against radical Islam. The fact is that Islam per se is none of the US president’s business. His business is to defeat those who attack the US and to stand with America’s allies against their common foes.
Radical Islam may be a small component of Islam or a large one. But it certainly is a component of Islam. Its adherents believe they are good Muslims and they base their actions on their Islamic beliefs.
American politicians, warfighters and policymakers need to identify that form of Islam, study it and base their strategies for fighting the radical Islamic forces on its teachings.
Bush was wrong to lie about the Islamic roots of radical Islam. And his mistake had devastating strategic consequences for the world as a whole. It is fortuitous that the Clinton and the Democratic Party have embraced Bush’s failed strategy of ignoring the enemy for justifying their even more extreme position. Now that they have, they have given a green light to Republicans as well as Democrats who are appalled by Obama’s apologetics for radical Islam to learn from Bush’s mistakes and craft an honest and effective strategic approach to the challenge of radical Islam.
The horrific attacks in Paris ignited a potent demonstration of solidarity throughout the Western world. Global landmarks have been bathed in illuminated Tricolor flags, social media has been awash with tributes and moments of silence have been observed in major capitals. This determined sense of unity in the face of terrorism is entirely admirable, yet useless if it remains the sum total of the West’s response. The time has come to truly comprehend that Western democracy faces nothing less than a bitter and bloody fight to shape the future of the world. The battle against jihadist Islamism cannot be fought with demonstrations of goodwill.
Kindness and compromise is simply no match for suicide bombers. The West can no longer afford to play the compassionate democrat when it faces an enemy which respects no ethical rulebook whatsoever.
The latest Paris atrocities have conclusively demonstrated the utter folly of any attempt to appease, accommodate or “understand” the demands of Islamism. The murder of Charlie Hebdo staff in January was foolishly portrayed by some as a response to religious defamation.
In fact, the Western requirement for logical cause and effect has long insisted that terrorist attacks are a cry for justice at perceived wrongdoing.But the murderous assault on Paris’ restaurants, bars, sports and leisure venues show that the jihadists’ only goal is death.
There is no discussion, no conversation to be had, because Islamists quite simply have no grievance. Their target is Western existence.
'Israeli blood is no cheaper than French blood,' Danon tells UN
Israel's envoy to the United Nations on Monday called on the international community to "rip off the Palestinian mask of lies" and condemn what he called "the lies and incitement" which fuel violence against Israelis.Israel's Statement on the Question of Palestine
Danny Danon addressed the UN General Assembly as it marked International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People.
"Israeli blood is no less valuable than French blood," the ambassador said as he held up a collage of photographs of Israelis killed by Palestinians in recent weeks.
“It is not logical to waste time in negotiations for the sake of negotiations; it is urgent to act now to salvage the prospects for peace,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas told the United Nations on the occasion of the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, marked on Monday.
In his speech to the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of Palestinian People, Abbas accused Israel of using many rounds of negotiations to gain more time in order to build more settlements, perpetuate apartheid on Palestinian land and steal Palestinian’s natural resources.
PMW report on PA education presented in Israeli Parliament by PMW director Itamar Marcus (Hebrew)
HEBREW VIDEO (no English subs)
Palestinian Media Watch's director Itamar Marcus appeared before the Education Committee of the Knesset (Israeli parliament) to present PMW's report on Palestinian Authority Education. The committee convened the meeting to discuss the problem of incitement in Palestinian Authority education.
How to honor Ezra Schwartz
A memorial ceremony was held at Ben Gurion Airport just before the body of 18 year-old Ezra Schwartz was flown to the United States for burial last Saturday night. William Grant, deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, was in attendance. Yet if the ceremony had taken place at the site of the attack in which Ezra was murdered, U.S. diplomats would have boycotted the event.IDF soldier’s video implores gap year students to stay in Israel, despite terror
That’s because the attack took place in Gush Etzion, and believe it or not, the policy of the U.S. government is to boycott the funerals of American victims of Arab terror if the funerals take place beyond the pre-1967 armistice line.
On top of all the pain that an American family suffers when a loved one is cruelly torn from this world by Palestinian terrorists, our own government adds to their pain and suffering with this pointless insult.
This incredibly insensitive policy first came to public attention in May 2001, after a Long Island woman, Sarah Blaustein, was murdered by Arab terrorists. The funeral was held in Efrat, a large Israeli city that is all of thirteen miles south of Jerusalem. But that is past the 1967 line, which for no logical reason is treated as if it is sacrosanct, when in fact it is nothing more than an old and irrelevant armistice line. And so Martin Indyk, who was the U.S. ambassador to Israel at the time, boycotted Sarah’s funeral.
The presence of an American diplomat at such a funeral is only symbolic. But in this world, symbols are important.
When American representatives stand shoulder to shoulder with the families of terror victims, it sends a message to the terrorists that America has Israel’s back.
A video message made and uploaded to Facebook by an IDF soldier and addressed to overseas students in Israel on gap year programs and their parents is going viral.Kerry in Jerusalem: Israel has right, obligation to defend itself
The video was posted in the wake of the murder of Ezra Schwartz by Palestinian terrorists on November 19. Schwartz was an 18-year-old American citizen from Boston participating in a gap year program of study and volunteering at a yeshiva in Beit Shemesh.
In the three-minute video, which was posted on Sunday and had garnered more than 53,000 shares by Monday, the soldier identifies himself as “Elisha” and says that he is “currently fighting in the IDF.”
He is Elisha Levy, a 21-year-old new immigrant to Israel who enlisted into a combat unit less than a year ago.
US Secretary John Kerry met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem Tuesday to discuss steps to stem the current wave of violence sweeping Israel and the West Bank.Abbas: Israel changing Temple Mount status quo, executing Palestinians
“I am here today to talk with the prime minister about ways how we can work together — all of us, the international community — to push back against terrorism, to push back against senseless violence and to find a way forward to restore calm and begin to provide the opportunities that most reasonable people in every part of the world are seeking for themselves and for their families,” Kerry said at the beginning of the meeting.
It was Kerry’s first visit in Jerusalem in over a year. He is scheduled to meet with President Reuven Rivlin later on Tuesday before heading to Ramallah for a sit-down with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. According to a report in the Haaretz daily, Netanyahu was expected to demand of Kerry that the US accept Israeli construction in the settlement blocs in exchange for a series of measures in the West Bank to calm recent tensions with the Palestinians.
In their public statements, however, Kerry and Netanyahu did not address the issue, focusing on general condemnations of terrorism and vows to fight it wherever it occurs.
Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas on Monday repeated two of his accusations against Israel that have drawn a furious response over the past few months — that the Jewish state is seeking to alter the status quo on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and that it is carrying out “extrajudicial killings” of those Palestinians perpetrating terror attacks against Israelis.PMW: Terrorists who butchered 5 rabbis exemplified the meaning of heroism
Abbas was reiterating these claims a day before US Secretary of State John Kerry was due in Israel and the West Bank for talks on calming the situation. Kerry is set to meet with Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu separately on Tuesday.
In a statement marking the United Nations’ International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People, Abbas said he had cautioned against “violations committed by the settlers and extremists under the protection of the Israeli occupying forces against the sanctity of Christian and Muslim holy places in Jerusalem, particularly aimed at changing the historic status quo at Al-Haram Al-Sharif [the Temple Mount] and Al-Aqsa Mosque that existed before the year 1967 and thereafter.”
Celebrating "the first anniversary" of the Har Nof synagogue massacre, the independent Palestinian news agency Wattan dedicated a full article to praising the two terrorists who with guns and butcher's knives slaughtered 5 Israeli worshippers, and killed a policeman last year. The article referred to the horrific killings as "the heroic operation" and an "epos written by the heroes."Father of Ziv Mizrahi: Even with a knife in his heart, he shot the terrorists
"Today is the first anniversary of the Martyrdom of... the heroes Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal, who carried out the heroic Dir Yassin operation (i.e., Har Nof neighborhood of Jerusalem), which led to the death of 6 settlers... Ghassan and Uday Abu Jamal exemplified the meaning of heroism for the homeland... They set out to protect it from the defilement of the thieving occupation, and died as Martyrs on the path of honor. Today is the first anniversary of the epos written by the heroes."
[Wattan, Nov. 18, 2015]
Thousands of mourners on Tuesday attended the funeral of Ziv Mizrahi, the 18-year-old soldier stabbed to death at a gas station on Route 443 in the West Bank on Monday.IDF colonel, 3 others injured in West Bank car-ramming
Mizrahi, an IDF private in the Nitzan Battalion of the Combat Intelligence Corps, was promoted to corporal after his death. He is the 22nd casualty killed by Palestinian assailants since the wave of terror and violence broke out in October.
“How beautiful you were the day you were born,” his mother reportedly cried at the funeral, according to NRG. “I don’t want to be here.”
“Twelve years ago I mourned my brother and thought I was done with this. Now I am a grieving father, but they won’t break our spirit,” Mizrahi’s father, Doron Mizrahi, said.
Ziv was the nephew of Alon Mizrahi, murdered in a terrorist attack at Jerusalem’s Cafe Hillel in September 2003.
A teary-eyed Doron Mizrahi then praised his late son for saving his officer during the attack. “He shot the terrorists with a knife in his heart,” Mizrahi said. “That’s Ziv, a hero of Israel.”
“It’s a huge tragedy and it’s impossible to digest this thing,” Roi Mizrahi, the soldier’s uncle, said in an interview with Army Radio on Tuesday. “He was someone innocent who didn’t do anything.”
Three IDF soldiers and a Border Police officer were hurt in a car ramming attack shortly after 8 a.m. Tuesday morning at the Tapuah Junction in the northern West Bank, army officials said.'I saw elderly people in the back of the bus and began shooting'
One was moderately wounded, with injuries to the abdomen and head. The other three were lightly injured, with wounds to the arms and legs. All four were evacuated to Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.
One of the soldiers injured held the rank of colonel while another was a lieutenant colonel. The border guard also held an officer’s rank, an army spokeswoman said.
The other injured soldier was an enlisted man, the spokeswoman added.
A group of Border Police officers on the scene saw the events unfold and fired at the driver, wounding him. He received medical care on the scene and will be questioned once his condition improves, a police spokesperson said.
The terrorists behind the heinous terror attack on a Jerusalem bus on October 13 planned their killing spree the night before, new details released Tuesday reveal.IAF hits Hamas compound following rocket attack
The Jerusalem District Attorney filed charges several weeks ago against Balal Abu Ghanem, 21, of Jabal Mukabar, who carried out the attack with accomplice Bahaa Alian.
The indictment revealed that Alian approached Ghanem to plan the attack on October 12, but Walla! News published full recordings from the investigation Tuesday which showed a higher degree of coordination between the two than the short preparation would suggest.
"Baha came to me in the store where I worked on the night of the attack," he told investigators. "He told me that he had 20,000 shekels, and he wanted to get a gun. I asked him: 'Why a gun?' He replied that he wanted to kill Jews."
"I told him that if he managed to get a gun, I would go through with the attack."
The two launched the attack "for the sake of Al-Aqsa Mosque" - located on the Temple Mount, Judaism's holiest site - and because "settlers murdered little children," he added, apparently referring to both the Palestinian Authority (PA)'s incitement over the Mount and an arson attack by as yet unidentified assailants on a family in Duma earlier this year.
Israeli Air Force (IAF) aircraft on Monday night a military compound belonging to the Hamas terrorist organization in central Gaza, the IDF said in a statement.Bill: Close mosques which host anti-Israel speeches
According to the statement, the airstrike was in retaliation for a rocket attack on the Eshkol Regional Council of southern Israel on Monday morning.
“The IDF holds the Hamas terrorist organization solely responsible for Gaza and will continue to operate firmly to maintain the peace in the southern localities,” the IDF statement said.
In Monday morning’s attack, which took place shortly before 7:00 a.m., a rocket fired by Gazan terrorists hit an open area in the Eshkol regional, causing no physical injuries or damages.
MK Bezalel Smotrich (Jewish Home) submitted a bill Tuesday that would allow the State of Israel to close mosques which incite terror attacks against Jews and Israelis.After attack, soldiers and Arab woman unite in peace dance
Smotrich's bill follows similar anti-incitement initiatives in France and the US, and the draft already has widespread support, with signatories from Jewish Home, Likud, and Kulanu.
"We will use every tool at our disposal," Smotrich said. "With terrorism, we must deal with the roots and not just the endpoints."
"Arab incitement is a well-oiled machine, and the platform upon which terrorism grows - and it's time to take care of it," he continued. "We will not allow the use of mosques as a fertile ground for incitement and terrorism."
"Today we say enough," he added. "Enough to incitement in the name of religion, to stop killing in the name of religion. It is time to restore deterrence to Israel, and this bill sends a clear message: we will be where incitement is."
A Channel 2 reporter covering the Jerusalem stabbing attack on Monday afternoon stumbled on an unusual sight, even for unpredictable Jerusalem: An Arab woman dancing to a Hebrew song with several IDF soldiers, embracing them, and preaching coexistence.Israel plans series of restrictions on Palestinians in bid to quell terror surge
Hawala Jaber, a resident of Umm al-Fahm in her 50s, has been working in Jewish homes for many years, said veteran Channel 2 reporter Moshe Nussbaum, calling the incident “one of the most surreal scenes I have seen.”
Jaber, who was passing close to the scene of Monday’s terror attack in Jerusalem when she broke out into dance, told the TV station she is “very angry at the bullshit they do here to the Jews.”
Two Palestinian girls, aged 14 and 16, stabbed a Palestinian man in his 70s with a pair of scissors, thinking he was an Israeli Jew.
Amid an escalation of Palestinian terror attacks, Israel is reportedly set to introduce a series of dramatic new security measures — including barring the extended family of terrorist assailants from entering Israel, conducting mass arrests of Hamas activists in the West Bank, and deploying large numbers of reserve troops to safeguard terror hot spots.IDF sets up more checkpoints, makes arrests, as bid to quell terror gathers steam
Legal preparations for some of the measures are now being finalized, Israel’s Channel 2 news reported Monday, hours after an Israeli soldier was stabbed to death at a gas station, and a 21-year-old Israeli woman murdered on Sunday was laid to rest.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, visiting the Gush Etzion Junction in the West Bank, south of Jerusalem, where Hadar Buchris was stabbed to death on Sunday, said the Israel Defense Forces was stepping up its operations in the West Bank and had been given free rein in the area to preempt terror attacks. He urged Israelis to be resilient in the fight against terror.
New measures are being introduced in the West Bank to tackle the wave of Palestinian terror attacks that has swept Israel over the past two months.Report: Waqf wants to ban ‘extremist’ Jews from Temple Mount
A wave of stabbings, shootings and vehicular rammings have killed at least 22 victims since the beginning of October, including seven in the last week alone. Over 80 percent of the perpetrators have come from the West Bank.
Overnight Monday, IDF soldiers set up checkpoints surrounding Hebron, Hawara and Nablus, as well as around villages adjacent to the Etzion settlement bloc, according to Channel 10 news.
Security forces were reportedly checking all Palestinian vehicles leaving the Hebron area, with hundreds of troops added to the IDF forces deployed to the area to secure the new checkpoints.
The television report said that in the letter, the Waqf maintained that Muslims view the entire Temple Mount compound as their own, not just the mosque and the Dome of the Rock, and were therefore seeking to administer all entry to the compound as a whole.Full 17% of Israeli-Arabs support Islamic State
Jerusalem Police chief Moshe Edri told Channel 10 he was not aware of the letter.
Israel and Jordan agreed last month to install cameras on the Temple Mount to monitor activities by Jewish and Muslim visitors to the holy site in a bid to calm tensions that have driven the recent escalation in Palestinian attacks on Israeli civilians and soldiers.
As per the 1994 peace treaty between Israel and Jordan, Amman acts as the custodian of the Muslim shrines on the Temple Mount.
According to an expert on Arab opinion, 17% of Israeli-Arabs support ISIS, while 57% believe that the Islamic Movement represents them, the Jerusalem Post reported.Bedouin Mistaken for Palestinian Terrorist: I Understand Why I was Attacked
The study, due to be released on Monday, was conducted by Professor Sammy Smooha from the University of Haifa. It compiles the findings of an opinion survey of the adult Israeli-Arab population conducted from May to July. Druze and Christian Arabs were included in the poll. Smooha has been tracking Israeli-Arab opinion since 1976.
The majority of Israeli-Arabs agreed that ISIS is an extremist terrorist organization and, as Arabs, they felt ashamed of it. The number of respondents disagreeing with this statement was 17%, but among those with higher education the number rose to 20%.
Twenty-eight percent disagreed with the statement that the Islamic Movement – and in particular its more extreme Northern Branch – represents them. The Northern Branch, which rejects the Oslo Peace Accords and favors the implementation of Sharia law in Israel, was recently outlawed by the Israeli security cabinet.
Following a stabbing attack on Saturday, a group of Israeli bystanders assaulted a Bedouin Arab, mistaking him for a Palestinian terrorist who stabbed five people, Israeli website Ynet reported. Yet the 40-year-old man did not condemn his attackers. “I wouldn’t want those who hurt me to be punished. The terrorist did something bad to them.”Despite terror surge, Mourinho says Chelsea had no fears about Israel trip
The victim, Salem, endured a harrowing stabbing attack in the southern town of Kiryat Gat in a violent case of mistaken identity. It lasted almost five minutes before a policeman and another civilian managed to stop the assault. “Civilians who saw me stabbed me in the back. I told them ‘I’m not the terrorist,’ but they kept stabbing again and again for a long while,” said Salem. “I told the people who hit me that I was an Israeli, but they didn’t listen, they went on and on.”
The victim, who is being treated in a hospital in nearby Ashkelon, was due to begin working as a security guard at Intel. “They know me in Kiryat Gat. There’s a shop in town that I always come to and have coffee with the shopkeeper. I also have a lot of Jewish friends in town,” Salem said.
Salem said his family is unaware that he was attacked. “I have small children and they don’t know about what happened.”
Despite his injuries, Salem remains magnanimous. “The terrorist did something bad to them, you can understand them,” he said. However, he added that he is now scared to walk down the street and barely leaves his home.
Chelsea soccer coach Jose Mourinho said none of his players was concerned about coming to Israel for Tuesday’s European Champions League game with Maccabi Tel Aviv, despite British Home Office warnings about the current surge in Palestinian terror attacks.The Middle East in One Bad Article
Everybody “just wanted to come” and nobody had any fears, Mourinho told a pre-match press conference on Monday.
“I had even a player who maybe tomorrow or after tomorrow, his wife is having a baby. And he’s here to play, because he knows how important it is for us.”
The presence of the full squad contrasted with a visit to Israel by Chelsea in 2011, for a game with Hapoel Tel Aviv, in which six players — Marcel Desailly, Emmanuel Petit, William Gallas, Albert Ferrer, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Graeme Le Saux — stayed away. “I didn’t have one single problem inside of the squad. I didn’t have a Graeme Le Saux,” Mourinho said Monday.
It was telling that the Times chose to highlight the death of one of the assailants, 16-year-old Ashrakat Quattanami. She is the daughter of an active member of Islamic Jihad, and Islamist terrorist organization that thinks Hamas is too moderate and is dedicated to the elimination of Israel and its Jewish population. However, the Times merely describe it as “militant group.”Every Picture Tells a Story: Arab Injuries over Jewish Deaths
The Times quoted her father at length:
“My daughter went to the Hawara checkpoint today to seek revenge in her own hands against the Israelis who have stolen our land and continue to kill innocent Palestinian people,” Mr. Qattanani, an imam at a neighborhood mosque, said in an interview. “Last night, she was very upset, and said, ‘If I become a martyr, give my organs to a Palestinian who needs them.’”
Mind you, there is no talk of statehood or of the West Bank. Rather merely a generic description of all Israelis as living on “stolen land.”
Yet the author of the piece, Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren, told us nothing about 20-year-old Hadar Buchris, the one Israeli fatality of the day, other than her name, her age and the fact that she was from Safed, a city inside the 1967 lines. Nor did we learn anything about the person Qattanani tried to kill.
But what was of interest was the fact that not just her father’s radical group is lionizing as a martyr and the slain stabber. The Palestinian Authority officially declared her death “a war crime.” She died when an Israeli in a car spotted her chasing an Israeli girl with a knife knocked her down. A soldier then shot her. But both PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah Party and Hamas now mark the quick-witted driver for death.
In other words, after rejecting peace, even the Palestinian moderates think it’s okay for Palestinians to try to slaughter any Jew they meet and believe Israelis have no right to defend themselves against terror. The reasoning behind this stems from the Palestinians sense of identity that is inextricably tied to their century-long war against Zionism and not some complaints about the borders offered by the Israelis or the existence of Jewish settlements. As Daniel Polisar wrote in Mosaic magazine about his study of Palestinian public opinion, their glorification of violence and opposition to peace on any terms but Israel’s destruction is what continues to fuel the conflict.
On November 19, 2015, a Palestinian Arab murderer shot up cars in the Gush Etzion district of Judea and Samaria. Among the three Jews that were killed in that incident, was an American citizen who was studying in Israel for the year.ITV obfuscates reason why Palestinian girls were shot by Israeli police in Jerusalem
Ezra Schwartz was an 18 year old from Sharon, MA. He went with some friends to bring food and candies to Israeli soldiers who were guarding an intersection where three Israeli boys were abducted and killed in July 2014. On his way back to school, he was shot and killed along with others while sitting in traffic.
The New York Times did not think much of this Jewish American teenager.
The story of the murder was placed at the very bottom of page A6. There was no accompanying picture. No caption. No one saw this American victim of Palestinian Arab barbarity. As a matter of fact, if you wanted to know the name of this American victim, you would have to wait until the tenth paragraph of the article.
This was in sharp contrast to how the New York Times covered the story of an American Arab who was beaten up while engaged in a riot in Israel.
On July 7, 2014, the New York Times placed a large color picture on the front page of an Arab youth surrounded by policemen. The caption read “Tariq Abu Kheidar, 15, arrested in the unrest, is a cousin of the victim and was shown on a video being beaten by Israeli officers.” Tariq led the world news, on a day when over 100 people were slaughtered in various attacks.
The video then pivots to an extremely short statement by Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld – an incomplete addition to the opening of the video, and one which still fails to make clear that the police shooting of the teens took place after the girls had stabbed a 70-year-old (Palestinian) man.PreOccupiedTerritory: For Diversity, NY Times To Attribute Muslim Terrorism To Other Religions (satire)
The report, by ITV’s Middle East correspondent Geraint Vincent, then focuses on broader Palestinian complaints that Israeli police have been using excessive force – an argument given more legitimacy to viewers in the context of the serious omission regarding the sequence of events in Jerusalem presented in the beginning of their clip.
The report then claims that many Palestinian attacks have been carried out in response to ‘excessive force’ by police, and concludes by weaving in these ‘attacks and counter-attacks’ in a context which suggests the latest wave of Palestinian terror represents merely another ‘cycle of violence’.
In addition to the misleading video, the accompanying text on their website (which accompanies the video) similarly misleads as it notes the number of Palestinians killed in the latest wave of attacks, while failing to note the Israelis have been killed during this time.
Worried that the perpetrators of terrorist acts in recent years have been disproportionately Muslim, the editorial board of The New York Times decided today to correct the consequent popular perception that terrorists are more likely to be Muslim by assigning a different religion to some of the attackers.IDF Reservist Breaks Silence About ‘Breaking the Silence’ in New Viral Video Clip
Ongoing wars or insurgencies in Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Nigeria, Mali, Afghanistan, Yemen, Israel, Lebanon, Egypt, Kenya, Libya, Somalia, and elsewhere have seen thousands of terrorist attacks by Muslims, far outstripping such acts by members of other faiths, or of no faith at all. To forestall the notion that in order to be a terrorist one must follow Islam, the editorial board at the Times devised a quota system under which no more than one third of attacks on civilians in a given week may be attributed to Muslims. The remainder will be assigned a random religious ideology, including Buddhist, Hindu, Shinto, Jainist, Animist, Wiccan, Jehovah’s Witness, Quaker, Roma, Jewish, and other denominations the board deemed under-represented in the perpetration of terrorism.
“As a news organization first and foremost we have a responsibility to bring our readers the most pertinent factual information,” said Executive Editor Dean Baquet. “But as an institution suffused with liberal Western values, we must also do our part for social responsibility, and that involves combating the perception that certain people just can’t be terrorists. While heretofore we avoided that problem by not using the term ‘terrorist’ because of its baggage, from now on the Times will tackle this issue head-on. Gone are the days when a youngster reading about suicide bombers in Beirut thinks that he will never be able to follow suit simply because he wasn’t raised Sunni Muslim.”
A reservist IDF officer has launched a new kind of battle, this one on the Internet, Israeli news site nrg reported on Monday.
Major (ret.) Amit Deri has spearheaded a video campaign against “Breaking the Silence,” a group of Israeli veterans whose call to “end the Occupation” is often criticized for its exaggerated criticism of the Jewish state.
The video-gone-viral that was released last week, called “The Collection of Lies,” depicts a tour of Breaking the Silence activists in Hebron.
It shows one of the organization’s leaders, Avner Gvaryahu, telling a small group of British tourists about Israeli “soldiers using machine guns and hitting civilian centers in Hebron.”
Turkish F-16 jets shoot down Russian warplane near Syrian border
Turkey shot down a Russian warplane near the Syrian border on Tuesday, saying it had repeatedly violated its air space, one of the most serious publicly acknowledged clashes between a NATO member country and Russia for half a century.Putin: Turkey stabbed Russia in back by downing jet
Russian President Vladimir Putin said the plane had been attacked when it was 1 km (0.62 mile) inside Syria and warned of "serious consequences" for what he termed a "stab in the back." Russian and Turkish shares fell on fears of an escalation between the former Cold War enemies.
Each country summoned a diplomatic representative of the other and NATO called a meeting of its ambassadors for Tuesday afternoon.
Footage from private Turkish broadcaster Haberturk TV showed the warplane going down in flames in a woodland area, a long plume of smoke trailing behind it. The plane went down in area known by Turks as "Turkmen Mountain," it said.
Separate footage from Turkey's Anadolu Agency showed two pilots parachuting out of the jet before it crashed. A Syrian rebel group sent a video to Reuters that appeared to show one of the pilots immobile and badly wounded on the ground and an official from the group said he was dead.
President Vladimir Putin lashed out furiously at Turkey on Tuesday for downing a Russian warplane along the Syrian border, calling the action a betrayal.EU cautions Russia, Turkey to stay 'calm'
The shooting down of the fighter plane was “a stab in the back committed by accomplices of terrorists,” Putin said at a meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah II in Moscow. “I cannot call what happened today anything else.”
The North Atlantic Council, NATO’s governing body, called a meeting requested by alliance member Turkey. “The aim of this extraordinary NAC meeting is for Turkey to inform allies about the downing of a Russian airplane,” said Carmen Romero, NATO’s deputy spokesperson.
Turkey shot down the warplane earlier Tuesday, claiming it had violated Turkish airspace and ignored repeated warnings. Russia denied that the plane crossed the Syrian border into Turkish skies.
European Union (EU) president Donald Tusk called for calm on Tuesday after Turkey, a candidate for membership of the bloc, shot down a Russian war plane on the Syrian border.
"In this dangerous moment after downing of Russian jet, all should remain cool headed and calm," tweeted Tusk, the former Polish prime minister.
Tusk is due to host a difficult EU summit with Turkey in Brussels on Sunday which was supposed to focus on a deal to stem Europe's migrant crisis.
EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini meanwhile said she had spoken to Jens Stoltenberg, the head of the NATO military alliance of which Turkey is a member.
"Need to avoid escalation #Turkey #Russia," the former Italian foreign minister tweeted.
