Showing posts with label 2000. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2000. Show all posts

Thursday, August 31, 2023


Akiva Bigman in Mida writes that Ehud Barak had been planning to bring Benjamin Netanyahu down via mass protests long before the judicial reform issue was brought up.
Ehud Barak is a central figure in the protest movement against judicial reform. If you have been following the media, you may get the impression that although he is adamantly against Netanyahu and judicial reform, he is merely providing commentary and interpreting events. The reality is the opposite. Do not be deceived by his age or because he is a former prime minister and supposed elder statesman. At 81 years old, Barak is one of the main architects behind the current mass demonstrations. Yet, his involvement goes deeper. Barak is not only orchestrating today’s mass demonstrations, he has been integral in forming the anti-Bibi movement over the past seven years.

Recently, a chilling video of a Zoom conversation was circulated in which Barak describes a scenario of how he will return to power. He mentions that he has a friend, a historian, who told to him that he will become Prime Minister again when there are “bodies floating in the Yarkon river” of Jews murdered in a civil war. Barak immediately said that this should never happen. Yet, that he would mention such a grotesque idea, a truly horrifying scenario is disturbing. Moreover, this comment was made to a forum whose whole raison d’être is to get rid of Netanyahu and explore ideas on how to implement such a plan. Perhaps this was a slip of the tongue, or maybe it was said by someone whose purpose in orchestrating these protests is about his own return to power.

Nonetheless, the Zoom conversation video containing the “bodies in the Yarkon river” comment actually occurred in 2020 during the Corona pandemic, years before judicial reform became a legislative issue. Meaning, the notion that it is specifically judicial reform that is bothering Barak, or the people he is guiding, is bogus. And the fact that Barak was having conversations with those who raised the idea of mass civil disobedience only serves to reinforce Barak’s role in guiding these protests.  

Barak's words in the 2020 video sure sounds like a blueprint for the protests happening today, especially using the word "democracy" as a slogan. 

But he had been saying the same thing since 2016:

These are Barak’s words at the Herzliya conference, pay attention to the recurring motifs that he still talks about today:

“We have been led for more than a year by a prime minister and a government that is weak, limp and all talk, even according to senior members of its coalition, deceitful and extremist, that fails repeatedly, in guaranteeing security, undermining the fabric of democracy in Israel, failing in managing diplomatic relations with the United States and in stabilizing Israel’s position in the world… Here, I call on the government to come to its senses and immediately get back on track. If you don’t do that, we will all have to get up from our comfortable and less comfortable seats – and overthrow it, through a popular protest and through the voter’s ballot – before it’s too late.”

These are the components of Ehud Barak’s second political comeback: de-legitimization of the government, a deep animus towards Bibi and therefore the slogan ‘anything-but-Bibi’, and mass demonstrations.

Bigman's article goes on to bring  other evidence to bolster this thesis.

Could this be true?

I am reading a pre-release edition of "(In)sighrs: Thirty Year of Peacemaking in the Oslo Process" by Gidi Grinstein. Grinstein was the secretary and youngest member of the Israeli delegation at Camp David in 2000 and his book is an account of the negotiations at the time. He worked for the Barak government during his premiership and famously used the Heimlich maneuver when Barak was choking at Camp David. 

 Grinstein loves Ehud Barak. He was "blown away" by Barak's speeches. He describes him as "the smartest man in the room" who manages to break down complex problems into a "matrix" of small tasks. He describes Barak's political brilliance in building a coalition as well as in his ambitious attempts to accomplish three things in a short time period - a peace deal with Syria, withdrawal from Lebanon whether negotiated or unilateral, and then peace with the PLO, all before Clinton would leave office. 

But, whether Grinstein realizes it or not, Barak comes off as a jerk in this book. His "matrix" of things to be done were all in his head and he wouldn't share his strategy or plans with anyone. On the contrary, Barak would instruct his PLO negotiating team to continue their work even as he sabotaged their progress because he wanted to work on the other tracks first. Grinstein admits this: chief negotiator Dr. Oded Eran was a serious expert who led the team, but he was a "pawn in Barak's masterplan" whose hands were politically tied by Barak, and Barak then built his own secret negotiating team, completely leaving Eran out of the loop.

This was hardly the only example where Barak would throw people under the bus because he thought he was the only one brilliant enough to see the big picture - and to maintain his power. There was no chain of command in Barak's government, and the only possible result in such a system is chaos. Grinstein himself admits that one day Barak asked him to leak information to the New York Times, bypassing his boss, and leaving him in an uncomfortable position. Official positions were circumvented by Barak's personal backchannels. No one knew their real roles.  Everyone working for Barak was a chess piece for his ambition, not a human being. Barak comes off as a paranoid, power-mad Machiavellian far more than the wise peacemaker Grinstein tries to position him as. 

The theory that Ehud Barak is the force behind the protests today in a bid to regain power, when he cannot hope to do so by democratic means, is entirely consistent with the Ehud Barak described in a book that adores him. 




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Monday, August 14, 2023




Here's an interesting coincidence.


An estimate made by Abu Lughod indicated that the average number of indigenous Palestinians was about 420,000 in the West Bank and about 80,000 in the Gaza Strip by the end of 1948.   
Schools and virtually every shop were closed in this city {Gaza City], where 420,000 people live. 

Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, 2007:

Estimates of IDPs in Israel vary widely. There is no government or United Nations estimate. Sources for estimates are accademics, Palestinian NGOs and Israeli papers. The lowest estimate is 150,000 and the highest is 420,000, which includes the children and grandchildren of Arab villagers displaced in 1948, as well as Bedouin communities displaced later on.    

Israel’s differential treatment in law, regulations, and administrative practice directly affect the roughly 490,000 Jewish settlers and 420,000 Palestinians in areas under its exclusive control in the West Bank (including in Area C and East Jerusalem). 

The 420,000 Palestinians who currently reside in East Jerusalem possess permanent residency ID cards and are treated as foreign immigrants by the Israeli government.     (The article predicted that Israel would take away the residency permits of all those Palestinians, a prediction that, like all of them, never came close to being true.)
What’s Behind The ‘Disappearance’ Of 420,000 Palestinians In Lebanon? 

WASH Cluster, State of Palestine, 2020:

 WEST BANK: 482,509 of people suffering limited access to water; 420,000 persons consume less than 50 l/c/d.

OpenDemocracy, April 2020:

 Palestinians in East Jerusalem: living under a deadly virus and a violent occupation: "There is inescapable and particular on-going acute anxiety about the future of these 420,000 Palestinians."  

World Food Programme, August 2020:

In support of the MoSD’s response plan, which estimated that 70,000 families (420,000 people) have been affected by the spike in COVID-19 in Gaza...

UNRWA, 2021:

UNRWA is a lifeline to nearly 420,000 of the most vulnerable Palestine refugees in Syria.   

Jeff Halper in Arena, June 2021:

 Of the 150,000 Palestinians who remained in the country, the war displaced 30,000 to 40,000. Not allowed to return to their homes (which were either demolished or turned over to Jewish Israelis) and wanting to remain sumud (steadfast) near their lands, this population of internally displaced Palestinians has today grown to 420,000.   

Middle East Monitor, July 2022:

 The Nakba resulted in 750,000 Palestinians being driven from their homes; the 1967 Naksa saw another 420,000 forced to leave.

Since the attack, Israeli forces have imposed a continuing blockade on the area around Nablus, restricting the movement of about 420,000 Palestinians, including patients, elderly people and children, who must wait for hours before being able to cross.  
“This year, actually over, since the beginning of my mandate [May 1, 2022], I have borne witness to a series of deeply distressing events. 420,000 Palestinians, including 91 children, and 56 Israelis, including five children, have been killed. ”
(She later walked this back, saying the number was 426.)

That's 14 separate times, in different contexts, that "expert" quoted a figure of 420,000 Palestinians. 

I am not saying this is a conspiracy or anything like that. It is just a very strange coincidence for that number to pop up in such disparate ways.

420,000 seems like a more realistic, solid estimate than "400,000" or "450,000." 

(h/t Irene)




Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Friday, July 14, 2023

The UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of the Palestinian territories comes out with a report every month about imports, exports, entrances and exits from Gaza. 

In its report on June, it says:

In June, the Israeli authorities allowed 42,220 exits of people from Gaza (in most cases, travelers exited multiple times). This is 13 per cent higher than the exits in May, and 19 per cent higher than the monthly average in 2022. However, it is 92 per cent lower than the monthly average in 2000, before the imposition of category-based restrictions by the Israeli authorities. 
They are comparing the number of exits with 2000 - when thousands of Israelis still lived in Gaza and traveled freely in and out every day? Before the second intifada when checkpoints needed to be enforced? Of course the number of exits will never be nearly as high as in 2000; the borders were porous then. 

If they were to compare with any previous year, they should - and normally do - compare it to the time between Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005, and when Israel started restrictions on Gaza after Hamas violently took over the territory in 2007. Otherwise it is comparing apples to oranges. 

So let's look at previous UN charts.

Here's a UN chart from 2016 that was already deceptive: starting in 2004 when Israelis left Gaza so part of the year there were many, many more exits; and showing that in March 2006 Israel started its restrictions on Gaza workers. So if there is any year that the UN should compare against, it is 2005. 


In 2005, the monthly average of exits was 31,424. Today, it is significantly higher - as mentioned, over 42,000 last month, and in fact earlier this year it surpassed 50,000 some months.

The headline should be that Israel now allows more freedom of movement for Gazans than at any time since Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. But the UN cannot have a headline that makes Israel look good, can it? So instead of comparing to 2004 or 2005, as it always did before now, it makes up a new benchmark: 2000, a completely artificial and irrelevant date.

Here is UN-OCHA's new chart where they, for the first time, added the year 2000 with its "0.5 million" figure  - just to minimize how much Israel is doing to make Gazan's lives easier.


This is lying with statistics. 

(correction on years h/t Irene)



Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Sunday, December 18, 2022

From Ian:

Is The New York Times a ‘Strong Supporter’ of Israel?
However, by focusing solely on Israel’s actions as the determining factor regarding the future of the two-state solution, the New York Times is effectively removing any responsibility from the Palestinian Authority.

Indeed, aside from a passing remark about Palestinian corruption dimming the hopes of a Palestinian state, this opinion piece makes no mention of the Palestinian Authority’s financial support for terrorists and their families, its twice rebuffing American attempts at peace negotiations over the past 10 years or its continued incitement against Israelis and Jews within its official media organs and schools.

The only mention of the word “terror” in the editorial is in reference to past convictions by incoming National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir.

All of these factors, which directly imperil the chance for a successful two-state solution, existed long before the incoming Israeli government was ever formed.

And yet, in the eyes of The New York Times, these factors do not warrant the same concern or admonishment as do the anticipated actions of Benjamin Netanyahu and his coalition partners.

Related Reading: Top Israeli Daily’s Exposé Paints Troubling Picture of New York Times’ Israel Coverage

Lastly, throughout this opinion piece, the editorial board seems to enjoin the current American administration to take an active role in opposing the actions of the incoming Israeli government.

The editorial board calls upon the American government to more vocally oppose Netanyahu’s coalition partners (as opposed to the administration’s current wait-and-see approach) and to also support Israeli civil society organizations in their fight against this new government’s legislation.

Thus, in extolling democratic principles, The New York Times editorial board is essentially calling on the American government to intervene in the political life of a stalwart ally and to actively support domestic organizations in their opposition to that country’s democratically elected government.

While it is common for the American government to comment on individual actions taken by foreign governments, it is quite another thing to endorse the active intervention of the United States in an ally’s domestic politics.

Tom Friedman’s Look at Israel
Two days before The New York Times editorial board published its opinion piece, longtime New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman published an essay entitled “What in the World Is Happening in Israel?”

Even though it is seemingly more balanced and nuanced than the editorial board’s piece (one critic of the New York Times’ Israel coverage referred to it as “more accurate and profound than anything I’ve read in NYT about Israel all year”), there are a number of concerning passages within Friedman’s work.

Similar to the editorial board, Friedman seemingly points his finger at Netanyahu and his allies for what he perceives to be the eventual failure of the two-state solution, discounting the above-mentioned actions taken by the Palestinian Authority that play a major role in the two-state solution’s demise.

Further on in his piece, Friedman is doubtful about a future Israel-Saudi Arabia peace deal under the incoming Israeli government as well as Netanyahu’s proposed role as a bridge-builder between the United States and Saudi Arabia, portraying the presumptive Israeli prime minister as someone who focuses solely on the political right and deeply religious at the expense of centrists and those who hold liberal values.

However, contrary to what Friedman suggests, Netanyahu has proven himself able to work with a wide variety of political actors, including Middle Eastern leaders (with whom he signed the initial Abraham Accords agreements), President Joe Biden and others who do not necessarily share his viewpoints on all Israel-related matters.
"NY Times Editorial Rant: Why Must Israel’s Right Wing Reject 2-State?"
All of the above rejections of the two-state solution are wasted on the NY Times editorial board that insists the Netanyahu “government’s posture could make it militarily and politically impossible for a two-state solution to ever emerge.”

It will also make it close to impossible for human beings to grow wings and fly from flower to flower suckling on nutritious nectar, but, thankfully, the Times board skipped that one rant.

Of course, now comes the part the Times board could have lifted from its affiliate, Ha’aretz, copy and paste fashion: “Ministers in the new government are set to include figures such as Itamar Ben-Gvir, who was convicted in Israel in 2007 for incitement to racism and supporting a Jewish terrorist organization. He will probably be minister of national security. Bezalel Smotrich, who has long supported outright annexation of the West Bank, is expected to be named the next finance minister, with additional authority over the administration of the West Bank. For the deputy in the prime minister’s office in charge of Jewish identity, Mr. Netanyahu is expected to name Avi Maoz, who once described himself as a ‘proud homophobe.’”

It’s the newspaper of record’s right to voice its objections to the decision of a majority of Israeli voters who were easily as familiar with the above accusations and still went with Ben Gvir, Smotrich, and Maoz. They also chose a prime minister who is under three criminal indictments and a former interior minister who has recently been convicted of tax fraud. However, ballot boxes, by and large, don’t read editorials, and newspapers should know better than to attack voters for disagreeing with their world view.

The Times board is also unhappy with Israelis’ reproduction choices, stating: “Demographic change in Israel has also shifted the country’s politics. Religious families in Israel tend to have large families and to vote with the right. A recent analysis by the Israel Democracy Institute found that about 60 percent of Jewish Israelis identify as right-wing today; among people ages 18 to 24, the number rises to 70 percent. In the Nov. 1 election, the old Labor Party, once the liberal face of Israel’s founders, won only four seats, and the left-wing Meretz won none.”

Next, the editorial puts on paper the following sentence which is the culmination of the demise of its self-awareness. They actually wrote: “Moderating forces in Israeli politics and civil society are already planning energetic resistance…” See, when it’s right-wingers exercising their democratic rights, they’re called fascists; when they’re from the left, they’re “moderating forces.”

Finally, the editorial reiterates its archaic and tired mantra about 2-state, warning: “Anything that undermines Israel’s democratic ideals — whether outright annexation of Jewish settlements or legalization of illegal settlements and outposts — would undermine the possibility of a two-state solution.”

Amen?
The Times of London’s Undiplomatic Correspondent
The Times of London’s diplomatic correspondent Catherine Philp’s 15-year career at the newspaper has included postings in Israel and the Middle East. During this time, while HonestReporting critiqued Philp on a number of occasions, her reporting rarely matched that of many of her British colleagues who made little effort to hide their disdain for the Jewish state.

Now, the mask has most definitely slipped.

In response to popular British comedian Joe Lycett highlighting soccer World Cup host Qatar’s record on LGBTQ rights with several headline-grabbing stunts, Philp decided to make it all about Israel. She urged Lycett to do something similar “on the truly cynical pinkwashing Israel is undertaking to hide its real time apartheid.”
Dear @joelycett congratulations on what you do re Qatar and sport washing. I would please urge you to similar on the truly cynical pinkwashing Israel is undertaking to hide its real time apartheid..peace and love.

— Catherine Philp (@scribblercat) December 15, 2022
The so-called “pinkwashing” accusation is one that has been leveled at Israel on numerous occasions.

First coined by Sarah Schulman in an article for The New York Times in 2011, the term suggests Israel’s progressive stance on LGBT+ rights is a component of a “deliberate strategy to conceal the continuing violations of Palestinians’ human rights behind an image of modernity signified by Israeli gay life.”

As HonestReporting has noted previously, the pinkwashing claim evokes historical antisemitic libels, specifically that anything Jews do that is good or beneficial must be a part of some nefarious ulterior motive — in Philp’s case, diverting attention from Israel’s “real time apartheid.”
David Singer: Bibi must move early on Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine plan
A new solution to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian peace authored by Ali Shihabi - a close confidant of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister - Mohammed Bin Salman - was published by Al Arabiya news on 8 June 2022 – but has amazingly received virtually no mention or scrutiny in the international media or at the United Nations in the six months since its release.

The plan recognises:
“Israel is a reality firmly implanted on the ground that has to be accepted ...“

The plan calls for the merger of Jordan, Gaza and part of Judea and Samaria (West Bank) into one territorial entity to be called The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine with unrestricted citizenship being offered to the Arab populations of Jordan, Gaza, the 'West Bank' and the refugee camps located in Syria and Lebanon.

Netanyahu – significantly –told Al Arabiya viewers:
“I think coming to a solution with the Palestinians will require out of the box thinking, will require new thinking.”

The Hashemite Kingdom of Palestine solution is certainly the most creative plan ever proposed to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – its author declaring:

“The Palestinian problem can only be solved today if it is redefined. The issue in this day and age for people should be not so much the ownership of ancestral land but more the critical need to have a legal identity—a globally respected citizenship that allows a person to operate in the modern world.”

Netanyahu is offering his potential coalition partners a choice: Drop demands Bibi cannot accept and back him in as Prime Minister or miss this best opportunity ever to end the unresolved 100 years-old Jewish-Arab conflict.

21 December is Israel’s Judgement Day.

Thursday, October 13, 2022

Amir Tibon writes in Haaretz that the maritime border agreement between Israel and Lebanon are as important as the Abraham Accords:

The Abraham Accords, for all the optimism and economic benefits they created, did not save the life of one Israeli soldier. After all, Israel had never gone to war with Bahrain, the UAE or Morocco. The Lebanon deal mediated by Biden’s point man, Amos Hochstein, on the other hand, has the potential to avert a disastrous confrontation between Israel and Hezbollah.

Such a war would play out very differently than Israel’s periodic clashes with Hamas in Gaza: Conservative estimates include tens of thousands of rockets falling on Israeli cities, hundreds of casualties, and widespread destruction. If the agreement holds, this nightmare scenario will be prevented. It doesn’t mean peace will blossom between Israel and Lebanon, but securing quiet on Israel’s northern border is more important at the moment.
The assumption that the agreement will prevent war is part of an old tradition held by "experts" that I have called the "if-then" fallacy: If Israel does X, then others will do Y.

An early example was Michael Kramer in Time magazine who said, in 1988, that if Israel would give a serious peace offer to Palestinians and the Palestinians reject it, then the world wouldn't blame Israel for there not being peace.

Since then, Israel indeed did offer many serious peace offers, Palestinians rejected them all, and the world keeps blaming Israel.

Another example is ironically listed in Tibon's peace. In 2003, the conventional wisdom was that if Israel would just withdraw from Gaza, then Gaza would no longer be a problem for Israel, because there would be no incentive for Gaza groups to start wars.

Israel withdrew from Gaza - and Gaza groups continue to start wars every year or two.

What about Hezbollah, though? Aren't they a more rational actor than Hamas and Islamic Jihad? Couldn't they be trusted to react logically when Israel does what they want?

Well, in 2000, Israel withdrew from Lebanon - the entire raison d'etre of Hezbollah, it seemed. The UN certified Israel's full withdrawal. Certainly, the experts said, if Israel made a full withdrawal from southern Lebanon, then Hezbollah would have no claim on Israel and there would be peace. Yet Hezbollah continues to claim lands south of the UN-demarcated line, and it violate the Blue Line when kidnapping Israeli soldiers that sparked the 2006 Lebanon war.

Now, we are told that if Israel concedes the entire disputed area with Lebanon at sea, then Hezbollah will not do anything to jeopardize Lebanese sovereignty and will respect the border. Yet Lebanon and Hezbollah created a new "border" during the negotiations. What is stopping Hezbollah from claiming, whether this year or in five years, that Israel is extracting gas in Lebanese territorial waters and that it must "defend" the area? 

Indeed, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah is taking partial credit for the agreement, saying that Israel knuckled under to his threats to attack the Karish gas platform. This was parroted by Hezbollah's deputy, saying it was Hezbollah strength that forced Israel to humiliate itself. They regard the agreement as a capitulation by Israel to Hezbollah threats. 

This is not exactly the same "if-then" formula that the optimists are claiming. 

The Shebaa Farms dispute, over a tiny amount of land, has been enough of an excuse for Hezbollah to continue claiming Israel is the aggressor and that it is protecting Lebanon with an army and arsenal that rivals those of many nations. Why would it act any differently over a maritime border?

Moreover, Hezbollah is not an independent player. It follows what Iran's supreme leader wants. If Iran tells Hezbollah to shoot a thousand rockets into Israel , Hezbollah will not listen to the "experts" about how pragmatic it is. It would do what terror groups always do: create a pretext that will mollify Leftist antisemitic allies ("we are protecting Jerusalem from Judaization!") and shoot the rockets. 

There is no doubt that in the short term, this maritime agreement will cool tensions on the Lebanese border. But the hundreds of square kilometers Israel gave up are not only for the short term, but forever. Giving up something so valuable in exchange for an assumption of how a terror group will act far into the future, without a single Hezbollah pledge or signature, is taking the if-then fallacy to new lengths. 







Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Tuesday, March 08, 2022


By Daled Amos

Everyone knows about fake news.

Some people know it's all Trump's fault, others know that it's all the media's fault.
And now countries are generating it, using bots on social media.

But for anyone who follows how the media reports about Israel, this is kind of old.

How old?

Daniel Rubenstein addresses this question in his first podcast, featuring Prof. Richard Landes.

Daniel Rubenstein is a tour guide and lecturer, who served as an advisor to Naftali Bennett and also as a social media expert to Netanyahu.
Richard Landes is a medieval historian specializing in apocalyptic millennialism and he blogs about lethal journalism (presenting one side's wartime propaganda as news) at Augean Stables.

Daniel Rubenstein and Prof. Richard Landes

One of the topics Prof. Landes explains is tracing the peaking of media opposition to Israel back to Al Dura.

That incident, in brief:

On Sept. 30, 2000, France2 Television ran a story about Muhammad al Durah, a 12-year-old boy who, along with his father, was pinned down in a cross-fire between Israeli and Palestinian forces at Netzarim Junction in the Gaza Strip. “The target of fire from the Israeli position, the boy was killed and the father badly wounded,” veteran French journalist Charles Enderlin reported. Enderlin distributed the footage to all his colleagues for free, and this story ran around the world in hours.

Landes, who coined the word Pallywood to describe media manipulation designed to win the public relations war with Israel, has written about discrepancies in Enderlin's video footage:

The actual evidence, however, posed serious problems for the explosive narrative of deliberate child-murder. The footage, closely examined, contradicted every detail of the claim that Israel had killed the boy “in cold blood,” as a France 2 photographer put it, from the alleged “forty minutes of [Israeli] bullets like rain” (rather, there were only a few bullets one could identify in the brief footage, all from the Palestinian side), to the 20-minute-long death from a fatal stomach wound (no sign of blood on the ground), to the murdered ambulance driver (no evidence), to the dead boy (who moves quite deliberately in the final scene, which Enderlin cut for his broadcast).

But it was Enderlin's version of the story which spread everywhere, and not just in the Arab world. Bin Laden, for example, used Al Dura as a justification for his terrorist attack on the US. Landes notes that in the West, the Europeans and progressives saw this incident as a 'Get-Out-of-Holocaust-Guilt-Free Card'.

The tremendous influence of the Al Dura narrative cannot be underestimated. It appeared everywhere and dominated the media. One journalist, Catherine Nay, claimed on Europe 1 that 

the death of Mohamed [Al Dura] cancels, erases, that of the Jewish child in the hands in the air, shot by an SS man in the Warsaw Ghetto.

Landes points out the enormity of such an idea:

Here you have a woman saying that a dubious picture of a boy most probably -- if killed -- killed in a crossfire, has erased and replaced an image of a boy who symbolizes the deliberate murder of over a million children.

That journalist was not alone in this view. Landes sees this substitution as being at the core of today's Holocaust inversion, the idea that Israel commits genocide against Palestinian Arabs, making Israelis into the new Nazis and Palestinian Arabs into the new Jews.

And the Al Dura effect persists. The original impact has dissipated over time, but the effects continue.

It's hard to get it more wrong than what happened then and we've been paying the price ever since. This is the first massive and still uncorrected wave of fake news -- not fake news coming from bots in Russia, fake news permeating the legacy mainstream media. Disaster. [emphasis added]

This was during the Second Intifada.
And media mendacity at the time was evident.

Less than 2 weeks later, on October 12, two Israeli reservists took a wrong turn and ended up in Ramallah, where a mob of Palestinian reservists lynched them.

Viciously.

In his 2014 book, Israel Since the Six-Day War: Tears of Joy, Tears of Sorrow, Leslie Stein describes how the mob massacred the 2 men:


The mob did not prevent the story from getting out, but they did stop a photographer from taking pictures. Mark Seager wrote a personal account of what the mob did to the bodies of the 2 Israeli reservists -- and what they almost did to him:

They were just a few feet in front of me and I could see everything. Instinctively, I reached for my camera. I was composing the picture when I was punched in the face by a Palestinian. Another Palestinian pointed right at me shouting "no picture, no picture!", while another guy hit me in the face and said "give me your film!".

I tried to get the film out but they were all grabbing me and one guy just pulled the camera off me and smashed it to the floor. I knew I had lost the chance to take the photograph that would have made me famous and I had lost my favourite lens that I'd used all over the world, but I didn't care. I was scared for my life.

In a Wall Street Journal article in 2001, Alex Safian of CAMERA wrote about just how effective Palestinian intimidation was:

But it is not just British reporters who have joined Mr. Arafat's journalistic brigades. Riccardo Christiano, bureau chief of the Italian state network RAI, put it plainly in a letter to the Palestinian Authority in October. After two Israeli reservists were lynched by a Palestinian mob in Ramallah, most journalists at the scene had their film and cameras confiscated. But one crew from the private Italian network Mediaset got out with the videotape, which was then shown around the world. Mr. Christiano was determined to let the Palestinian Authority know that, contrary to rumors, his network was not involved. So he wrote this letter, which unhappily for him found its way into a Palestinian newspaper:
"My Dear Friends in Palestine: We congratulate you and think it is our duty to explain to you what happened on Oct. 12 in Ramallah. One of the private Italian television stations which competes with us . . . filmed the events . . . Afterwards Israeli television broadcast the pictures as taken from one of the Italian stations, and thus the public impression was created as if we took these pictures.

"We emphasize to all of you that the events did not happen this way, because we always respect the journalistic rules of the Palestinian Authority for work in Palestine . . . We thank you for your trust and you can be sure that this is not our way of acting, and we would never do such a thing.

"Please accept our dear blessings."

As Safian observes, "in plain terms, respecting these 'rules' means ignoring stories that would anger Mr. Arafat, and reporting on stories that would please him."

The Ramallah lynching was on October 12.

On the very next day, Dr. Ahmad Abu Halabiya, a member of the PA's Fatwa Council and a former acting Rector of the Islamic University in Gaza gave a Friday sermon at a mosque in Gaza. Among other things, Sheikh Halabiya stressed the importance of killing Jews:

"...None of the Jews refrain from committing any possible evil. If the Labor party commits the evil and the crime, the Likud party stands by it; and if the Likud party commits the evil and the crime, the Labor party stands by it.... The Jews are Jews, whether Labor or Likud... They do not have any moderates or any advocates of peace. They are all liars. They all want to distort truth, but we are in possesion of the truth...They are the terrorists. They are the ones who must be butchered and killed, as Allah the Almighty said: 'Fight them: Allah will torture them at your hands, and will humiliate them and will help you to overcome them, and will relieve the minds of the believers...." (emphasis added)

How did The New York Times report this?

William A. Orme Jr. wrote an article, A Parallel Mideast Battle: Is It News or Incitement? where he dealt with the Israeli claim of Palestinian incitement by helpfully summarizing for his readers what Halabiya had actually said:

Israelis cite as one egregious example [of Palestinian incitement], a televised sermon that defended the killing of the two soldiers. ''Whether Likud or Labor, Jews are Jews,'' proclaimed Sheik Ahmad Abu Halabaya in a live broadcast from a Gaza City mosque the day after the killings. [emphasis added]

Incitement?
What incitement?

This partisan self-censorship continues today. As Landes comments:

To this day, readers of The New York Times, listeners of NPR, viewers of the BBC and CNN do not know what kind of unbelievably vicious nazi-like genocidal hatred is aired in the Palestinian public sphere, constantly.

And of course, social media has only made matters worse -- making it easier to spread propaganda without regard for the source (assuming it is even known), let alone viewing it critically. Social media enables the channeling of moral outrage that makes canceling of people as pariahs so effective.

Today we find ourselves in a situation where, as Prof. Landes notes, you cannot defend Zionism -- neither in journalism nor in academia. It has become a taboo subject --

In 2021, when you had the latest outbreak of violence between Israel and Gaza, you had hundreds of journalists insisting that the media adopt the Palestinian narrative -- adopt their language, adopt their "Israel occupation army" and stuff and you had academics, including Jewish academics in Jewish studies, coming out with statements in support of the Palestinians in which the role of Hamas and the role of terror is completely expunged from the record. And all sorts of claims are made about what Israel has done that are empirically inaccurate.

We are looking at an anti-intellectual movement that has taken over and literally a collapse of the information professions in terms of their ability to give the public accurate and relevant information.

And to a large degree, this all goes back to 2000, and Al Dura.








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