10/28 Links Pt2: Jonathan Tobin: The painful truth about media bias: Some journalists lie; Mark Regev: Israel, the Suez Crisis and accusations of colonialist collusion

From Ian:

Jonathan Tobin: The painful truth about media bias: Some journalists lie

It also contributes to a situation in which people on both sides of the political aisle ignore arguments from their opponents, and—as another Times article pointed out—leads to Democrats and Republicans thinking that democracy is in peril. They just disagree about who is at fault.

There are lots of reasons for this landscape. But to deny the responsibility of the media, and the way so many journalists lie for partisan reasons, is not only to fly in the face of the facts; it exhibits a failure to understand how and why our politics and our society are so broken.

This atmosphere helps explain, at least in part, the rise of anti-Semitism and how it is being tolerated on both ends of the political spectrum. It reflects an over-the-top partisanship in a society in which few are willing to condemn political allies, even when they are guilty of blatant hate-speech.

The same pattern applies to coverage of Israel and the Middle East. Though ignorance of the history of the region might seem to be at the root of the slant—since many editors and reporters simply don’t know, for instance, that peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs might have been possible had the latter not consistently rejected any and all compromises throughout the century of the conflict—even relatively recent events are often ignored, buttressing a narrative about oppression of the Palestinians.

Furthermore, many reporters, influenced by Palestinian propaganda and anti-Semitic talking points, deliberately distort the way the conflict is depicted. This helps create fertile ground for prejudice. It also paves the way for developments like the recent U.N. Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry report, which traffics in blatant anti-Semitism and falsely accuses Israel of being an “apartheid state.”

The consequences, both in the United States and abroad, of a broken media that can’t be trusted do not merely affect the world of journalism. When members of the press lie to advance a cause, they are not simply spreading misinformation; they are also creating an environment in which democracy fails and anti-Semitism advances.

Mark Regev: Israel, the Suez Crisis and accusations of colonialist collusion

Even before the arrival of the new Soviet arms, Egypt had turned Israel’s Red Sea port of Eilat into a white elephant by blockading the Straits of Tiran to shipping to and from Israel. At the same time, the Egyptian military was orchestrating repeated Palestinian Fedayeen terror attacks, all while beefing up its threatening presence in northern Sinai. Israel felt it had to preempt before Soviet weapons dramatically changed the balance of power.

For London and Paris, the Suez War was an unmitigated disaster. The US opposed their attack, viewing it as anachronistic colonial-type gunboat diplomacy, detrimental to western interests in the Cold War. Washington unabashedly compelled France and Britain to withdraw – applying harsh economic pressure that threatened the solvency of its European allies.

The British and French, who earlier in the century had carved up the Middle East into respective spheres of influence, were now exposed as second-rate world powers. Their Suez defeat was the harbinger of the loss of French Algeria and the demise of Britain’s leadership role in the region, which was transferred to the Americans. In the end, it was not Nasser who was forced from office, but Eden and Mollet.

For Israel, the 1956 military victory failed to advance peace, or, in the absence of Arab recognition, any changes to the territorial status-quo: Washington insisted on a full pullback to the 1949 lines.

Nonetheless, the war lifted the blockade of Eilat, and Israeli deterrence was enhanced, inaugurating a decade of relative quiet on the southern frontier.

In addition, Israel’s adept handling of American demands in the months following the crisis led to an improvement in US-Israel ties. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, who in 1956 had been critical of Israel’s behavior, in 1960 became the first American leader to host an Israeli prime minister, Ben-Gurion, at the White House.

If there was a downside for Israel, it was foreseen during the cabinet deliberations on the authorization of the offensive. The ministers from the left-wing Ahdut Haavoda (Unity of Labor) party expressed concern about Israel’s “unholy” collaboration with European colonial powers (though they still voted, together with Ben-Gurion’s Mapai ministers, for the attack).

Soviet premier Nikolai Bulganin pressed this theme in an angry letter to Ben-Gurion dated November 5, 1956, charging that Israel had acted “as a tool of foreign imperialist powers.”

Israel was born in a struggle against British colonialism and should have enjoyed a natural affinity from countries that had similarly battled European empires for their freedom. But the Sinai Campaign injured Israel’s standing among the growing number of newly independent African and Asian nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, where Nasser remained a hero.

Regrettably, the 1956 depiction of Israel as a colonialist power has had remarkable longevity. Some seven decades later, this erroneous accusation is still being actively propagated by those seeking to undermine Israel’s legitimacy – just ask Jewish students studying at Western universities.

David Collier: Twitter silences me (twice) (again) – siding with the antisemites And then there is the Scottish scam

But it doesn’t end there. I received a second simultaneous suspension. Now this – even more than the first- is patently absurd. I recently exposed a fundraising scam in Scotland – and I wrote a tweet to publish the article. That tweet apparently also broke the rules for ‘hateful conduct’:

Trying my hardest I fail to understand just what could possibly be wrong with this one. An antisemite did create a partnership with a scammer in Gaza who does have family links to both Hamas and Islamic Jihad. They are currently taking £1000s from people in Scotland and their campaigns are getting increasingly absurd. Each of my points is factually accuate and thanks to this expose I believe Police Scotland have now got involved.

But as it stands, I have been no-platformed again – for doing nothing but fighting antisemitism. And again, it is easy to find the malicious intent and coordination behind those reporting me:

Twitter and minority groups
This is undoubtedly malicious. It is also clearly coordinated. And above all it is a blatant attempt from Islamists and the hard left – to have me completely silenced. The question therefore becomes – why does Twitter – who can protect me from this – *CHOOSE* to side with them and silence my voice?

Is it numbers? Jews are always outnumbered. If Twitter by default sides with the majority then Twitter actively helps bully minority groups. For the Jewish people – the quintessential minority group – this is really bad news.

Twitter also refuses to grant me the basic cover it could provide – (by giving my account a blue tick). Twitter is actively paving the way for antisemites to attack Jews who fight antisemitism and refusing to give them protection they can easily give. Haven’t they kind of got this all the wrong way round?

For now – I am appealing the suspensions. If you do not know me already – I will always fight my corner because I am speaking up for Jews everywhere. This refusal to back down so easily means I cannot currently post this on Twitter. If you have an account – please help me share it there.

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When Jenin terrorists thought they shot an IDF soldier, and other Abu Akleh updates

One piece of evidence that I had not noted previously was that Jenin militants had claimed that they had injured an Israeli soldier. 

Here's video of where militants to the south got the news with translation from Palestinian Media Watch:

What makes this more compelling is the timeframe. The false news that a soldier was down spread quickly throughout Jenin, as this screenshot from the (pro-terrorist) Jenin camp Telegram channel shows.

The second message is the same video shown above.

This was minutes after Abu Akleh was shot, so she is the only person who the militants could have been referring to. (It takes a couple of minutes to upload the video and type in the caption. Abu Akleh was shot between 6:30 and 6:35.)

This is a strong indication that the Jenin terrorists thought that the crowd of journalists (with helmets) were IDF soldiers, and shot in their usual wild manner without verifying what they were doing, and then celebrated their "successful" hit before realizing that the hit one of their own heroines.

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Meanwhile, very, very slowly, the idea that Palestinians killed Shireen Abu Akleh has started to percolate into the media.

CAMERA's Karen Bekker noted at JNS that the two main journalist witnesses to her death initially said that the gunfire came from a building, when the IDF was in their vehicles.

Fox News reports that Shurat HaDin filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court saying that the Palestinians were responsible for Abu Akleh's death, although they do not cite any of my evidence.

I made a new poster with all the latest evidence in one place:

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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!

 

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The Pallywood lies of "eyewitness" Ali Samoudi

As the US has finally pressured the Palestinian Authority to hand over the bullet that they claim killed Shireen Abu Akleh (and Israel is handing over the only weapon that they say could have shot in her direction on May 11,) it is worth looking a little more at how the main "eyewitness" to her death is a pathological liar.

We've already discussed how Jenin journalist Ali Samoudi was known decades ago to prompt "witnesses" to say whatever lies would be most dramatic in accusing Israel of crimes. There is no reason to think he would act any differently himself when he is the witness himself. 

On May 11, Samoudi said that this is what happened (CAMERA's translation:)

’After several minutes we heard the sound of bullets pouring on us from the direction where the occupation’s soldiers were concentrated, they were on the rooftops of the buildings in front of us. [This was] amidst the shouts of Palestinian citizens, calling us: get down to the ground, the snipers are targeting you.’

“Samoudi says: ‘I was hit by a bullet at the lower back, and Shireen shouted: ‘Ali was hit, Ali was hit.’ Not even a few seconds went by before Shireen fell on the ground after blood covered her face, and one of the colleagues carried us to the graveyard’s fence to protect us from the soldiers’ bullets, which went on for 10 minutes nonstop.’

“He said: ‘I was miraculously spared from certain death after a bullet hit me in the lower back, but the doctors described my condition as moderate. However the diagnosis requires hospitalization for several days, to make sure there are no complications in the coming hours.’

This is a series of lies.

There were two volleys of bullets. Ali Samoudi can be seen in this screenshot (7:06) right before the first volley, as one of the journalists with light colored sleeves in the background less than a second before the shooting:

Here is a video showing the above scene, and then a synced video showing Samoudi rushing to a car before the second round of shots.

Samoudi didn't witness Abu Akleh get shot. She was killed in the second round of gunfire, after trying to take cover. Samoudi wasn't helped by anyone. He wasn't pinned down for ten minutes of gunfire. 

And he wasn't hit in the lower back. He was grazed in the shoulder, as his own video at the hospital shows quite clearly, rushing from that same car to the emergency room where he videos everything.

Here you can see his wound on his left shoulder:

But AP reported weeks later, based on his "testimony:" 

Samoudi said the soldiers fired a warning shot, causing him to duck and run backwards. The second shot hit him in the back. Abu Akleh was shot in the head and appears to have died instantly, 

.... Samoudi says the bullet that struck him shattered, leaving some fragments inside his back. 

Sounds dramatic. And provably false.

The New York Times was somewhat more accurate in what his injury was, but still exaggerating it:

“They’re shooting at us,” Mr. Samoudi shouted. He turned around, he said, and felt his back explode as a bullet pierced his protective vest and tore through his left shoulder.

“‘Ali’s been hit, Ali’s been hit!’” Ms. Abu Akleh shouted, Mr. Samoudi recalled. It was the last time he would hear her voice.

No female voice can be heard in the video.

It appears likely that Samoudi was hit from the front in the first volley - he made up the story of a warning shot, turning around and being hit from behind because that makes Israeli soldiers look worse. (Later he said there were no warning shots.) 

He said that the soldiers were on rooftops of buildings before he knew that there were no soldiers in buildings - so that part of his "testimony" disappeared after May 11. 

And AP shows him, absurdly, in a wheelchair eight days later in the same spot. He clearly never needed a wheelchair - he ran quite quickly about 20 meters in ten seconds to the car after supposedly being "shot in the lower back."

His posing in a wheelchair is pure Pallywood.

By the time the New York Times interviewed him, it was already clear that he was an accomplished liar. Yet they still quote him as if he is a credible witness.

But here's the thing: Ali Samoudi is not an anomaly. Most Palestinian witnesses to events, when they give their names, will say what the Palestinian Authority or Hamas want them to say. They are conditioned to always blame Israel no matter what, even when evidence points to Palestinian terrorist culpability.  After all these years, one would think that reporters would treat Palestinian "eyewitness" testimony with the knowledge that they are often either enthusiastic accomplices in trying to make up stories about Israel (as Samoudi has been) or frightened of saying something that their leaders do not want to be said.

(h/t Gail)

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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!

 

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03/14 Links Pt2: Amnesty International admits – it wants the destruction of Israel; Netanyahu says it’s ‘absurd’ Iran nuclear talks ongoing after Erbil attack

From Ian:

David Collier: Amnesty International admits – it wants the destruction of Israel

Tokenising Jews, silencing their voice
We are left with O’Brien sitting in his ivory tower talking about Jews. He says he knows what Jews think. He disagrees with surveys that suggest he may be wrong. O’Brien clearly thinks he knows Jews better than they know themselves. British Jews know this antisemitic feature of the hard-left all too well. We dealt with it as it ran rampant through the Labour Party. People telling Jews that they knew better than the Jews, what being Jewish was about.

Since when was it in Amnesty’s remit to cast aside surveys of American Jews and suggest that Amnesty know better?

Like many, O’Brien does not understand ‘Jews’ at all. I am sure he has one or two Jewish friends. People, with one foot already outside of the community who have turned their ‘Jewishness’ into something abstract and meaningless. Just as the Corbynites hid behind fringe hate groups like Jewish Voice for Labour, Amnesty have found their ‘acceptable’ Jews now too.

But Jews won’t be told by naive fools such as O’Brien what they do or do not want. We will reject Amnesty’s blatant antisemitism. The Jewish people were stateless for long enough. We know all too well how high the price can be for political impotence. And as we look at Ukraine – it is worth reminding ourselves of the reality of the world that we live in. The world needs a Jewish state that is independent and capable of defending itself. We need Israel. This is not up for debate.

Seeking the destruction of Israel
So now we know for sure. Amnesty International is seeking the destruction of Israel. O’Brien has his vision. He calls it a ‘Jewish safe space’. He says Israel should not exist as ‘a Jewish state’. We recognise this terminology. It is the same language that BDS uses. With Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran all making genocidal threats, O’Brien is trying to convince Jews they live in ‘Switzerland’.

He has the same problem many on the left do. He sees Jews as white and privileged and he sees Palestinians as ‘brown’ and gives them no agency. Rather than viewing the Islamist need for imperial domination as the problem, he sees the tiny Jewish safe haven as being the cause of the conflict. There is no point looking for logic, truth or consistency in this. It is the same incoherent modern leftist swamp in which antisemitism thrives.

The bottom line is this. Amnesty seeks the destruction of Israel. They want a world without an independent state for the Jewish people. They have clearly placed this at the top of their ideological wish list. There is no argument anymore. Amnesty International are as antisemitic as they come.

JPost Editorial: Amnesty International's report on Israel is full of distortions and lies

In the US, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Maryland) called the report “a gross mischaracterization of Israel, its history and its values.” State Department spokesperson Ned Price warned against applying double standards to Israel.

Most Jewish organizations also rejected the report. But O’Brien, who is not Jewish, obviously trusts his gut instinct more. He also seems to be hoping that by “changing the conversation” and repeating the apartheid lie enough times, he can create new facts.

The event is the first in a series hosted by the WNDC that will explore “Palestine past, present and future.” Israel’s own ancient past, its successful present and its future as the Jewish state is of less importance to the group.

In a separate story published over the weekend, JTA revealed that the environmental Sierra Club NGO has canceled its scheduled trips to Israel in response to pressure from progressive and anti-Zionist groups after activists alleged the organization was “greenwashing the conflict” and “providing legitimacy to the Israeli state, which is engaged in apartheid against the Palestinian people,” according to an email seen by the news agency.

This is another example of what happens when the apartheid libel is deliberately spread.

Such efforts don’t only harm Israel’s image, they cause once respected organizations to lose their credibility and standing. Above all, they do absolutely nothing to promote peace or help the Palestinians.

By criminalizing Israel and ignoring Palestinian anti-normalization and terrorism, these organizations and the progressive activists are encouraging more rejectionism and more terror.

The Palestinian Authority will see no reason to make even basic moves to peace as long as it believes it can erase Israel with progressive, Western support. The lies themselves fuel further attacks, both on Israelis and on Jews and Jewish targets around the world. The apartheid libel is not only a lie, it is a dangerous one.

Because it’s not like there’s an unprecedented humanitarian crisis in Ukraine or anything, so @hrw is back to their favorite topic - Jew bashing. Of course taking everything out of context, to engage in some not-so-mild misinformation and bigotry. https://t.co/5iPbRpQYPN

— Arsen Ostrovsky (@Ostrov_A) March 14, 2022

Netanyahu: New Nuclear Agreement Will Give the Ayatollahs a Nuclear Arsenal

Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu launched a scathing attack on world powers who are continuing to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran — even after the Islamic Republic fired missiles toward the US consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan.

In video messages posted to social media in both Hebrew and English on Sunday evening — addressed to Israeli and American citizens, respectively — the former prime minister said it was “absurd” for world powers to continue to negotiate in Vienna with Tehran.

“The desperate rush to sign this flawed nuclear agreement with Iran is not only absurd, it’s downright dangerous,” Netanyahu stated in his English video, posted with the caption: “Every American family should watch this video.”

“Yesterday, Iran fired missiles in the vicinity of the American consulate in Iraq, and the US continues to charge ahead, along with the other powers, to sign a nuclear agreement that will give the ayatollahs a nuclear arsenal,” Netanyahu charged.

“It would also relieve sanctions and give them hundreds of billions of dollars in order to continue the terror that they waged yesterday and wage every day throughout the Middle East and the world,” he said. “This agreement is even worse than its predecessor, because in three years’ time, under this agreement, Iran will be a threshold nuclear state. It will have enough enriched uranium to create dozens and dozens of nuclear bombs and it will have the ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] to deliver them to any place in the United States.”

The final details of the burgeoning nuclear deal between Iran and world powers have yet to be revealed, and diplomats involved have said that some remaining elements are still being negotiated. It was not immediately clear which documents or intelligence Netanyahu was basing his claims on.

Every American family should watch this video. pic.twitter.com/BVo5ZFJwKk

— Benjamin Netanyahu (@netanyahu) March 13, 2022

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For Jews, Fake News Doesn't Go Back To Trump -- It Goes Back To Al Dura (Daled Amos)

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

Read all about it here!

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HRW and the Goldstone Report authors both claimed, falsely, "no substantive criticism" to their falsehoods [Daled Amos]

By Daled Amos

With the ongoing talk about apartheid, I was reminded of a report that targeted Israel for war crimes.
Not the B'tselem report.
Not the HRW report.
Not even the Amnesty International report.

Instead, I was reminded of the 2009 Goldstone Report.

Of all the issues and topics that were going back and forth back then, one thing that stood out in my mind was the denial -- the denial from one of the judges on the Goldstone commission.

Desmond Travers, a retired Irish Army colonel, was part of the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict. Whatever else Travers may have contributed to the group, one thing he seemed to make it his job to do was offer implausible deniability.

Yes, implausible deniability

In  an interview at the time with the Middle East Monitor, Desmond Travers came up with the following response to Hanan Chehata:

So far, no substantive critique of the report has been received?

Well, one of the easiest ways to rebut a criticism is to deny that it was ever made (this was back in the day, before it was fashionable to rebut criticism by accusing the other person of being a racist).

Among the papers and articles that came out rebutting the Goldstone Report on issues of law, fact and bias were those from:

o  The Israeli government
o  Alan Dershowitz
o  David Matas (international human rights lawyer)
o  Richard Landes (historian and author)
o  Yaacov Lozowick (historian)
o  CAMERA
o  Intelligence and Terrorism Resource Center 

[As well as EoZ.]

But you would never know it from Travers, who made it his business to assure everyone that there was nothing to see -- no criticism, no errors of fact and no controversy in the definition and application of the law.

Fast forward to 2021.

When the HRW report came out, the group apparently adopted the same strategy of denying that anyone could come up with a credible critique of what they wrote. On July 9, 2021, Omar Shakir, HRW's Israel and Palestine Director, tweeted:

One week later, Shakir repeated his claim in an interview with Al Jazeera:

Strawmen?

Anne Herzberg, a legal advisor for NGO Monitor, notes the irony in Shakir's use of the term:

Moreover, the invocation of “strawmen” is ironic, given that neither Shakir nor Roth provided any identification of who or what those strawmen might be, in order to avoid having to refute the substantive arguments.

More to the point, Shakir claims that he did not receive "almost any" counter-arguments on questions of law or definitions.

He is ignoring Eugene Kontorovich's paper, which oddly enough does address the issues of both law and definitions that Shakir claims are lacking -- as well as addressing errors of fact. Kontorovich has a shorter post as well.

CAMERA is apparently guilty of the kind of ad hominem attacks that Shakir condemns. They note that Joe Stork, HRW's Deputy Director for Middle East and North Africa who joined the group in 1996:

Before being hired by HRW, Stork openly supported Palestinian terror attacks against Jewish civilians, and opposed any and all peace treaties between Israel and Arab states.

But pointing out the anti-Israel bias of Stork is done as the context for the factual errors in the HRW report that follow in CAMERA's analysis.

Joshua Kern, a lawyer in international law who has defended clients at the ICC, also wrote one of those posts criticizing the HRW report that Shakir missed. One of the points he makes is that the report appears to water down the concept of "domination" in the context of apartheid from outright "supremacy" down to an Israeli policy designed “to engineer and maintain a Jewish majority in Israel” and to “maximize Jewish Israeli control over land in Israel and the OPT” (A Threshold Crossed, p. 49). Kern notes

With respect to Israel, a policy intended to safeguard the Jewish character of the State and to protect its citizens’ security scarcely reflects the racism of baasskaap [an Afrikaans term for "supremacy"]. On the contrary, recognition of Israel as a Jewish State has been integral to how the international community has addressed issues arising from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict since 1947 at the latest (when the General Assembly recommended partition between the “Jewish” and “Arab” States). [emphasis ]

Will Human Rights Watch now condemn the UN General Assembly as encouraging apartheid?

So how is it Shakir can claim that he is not aware of challenges to the HRW report?

Herzberg may have the answer.

She notes that in the actual report, Shakir's role in creating the report is mentioned:

Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine Director at Human Rights Watch, was the lead researcher and author of this report. [emphasis added]

Yet in a symposium last year designed to allow for HRW and critics of its report to confront each other -- Shakir was not to be found. Instead, Clive Baldwin and Emilie Max provided HRW's response. 

According to the report, Baldwin is a senior legal advisor at HRW who provided program and legal review, while Max is a consultant who contributed research. 

So Shakir is the lead person responsible for the report -- yet did not show up to actually answer for it. Lawyers who had a secondary role in creating the report were there instead.

No wonder Shakir has no idea of the challenges to his report.

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

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Antisemitic CAIR defines all pro-Israel Jews as "Islamophobic"

The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which recently defended one of its officials who labeled virtually every organized synagogue in America "enemies," just issued a report on "Islamophobia in the mainstream."

The main point of the report is identifying "26 Islamophobia Network groups (that) spread misinformation and conspiracy theories about Muslims and Islam."

The members of this supposed "Islamophobia network" include Americans for Peace and Tolerance, CAMERA, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Gatestone Institute, Investigative Project on Terrorism, Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) and The Lawfare Project.

The idea that this is an "Islamophobia Network" is insane. 

But then they go into actual antisemitism. They identify some of the funders of these supposedly Islamophobic groups, and - surprise, surprise - they find Jews!

The Adelson Family Foundation, Arie and Ida Crown Memorial, Combined Jewish Philanthropies

of Greater Boston, Hochberg Family Foundation, Irving I Moskowitz Foundation, Jewish Communal

Fund, Jewish Community Federation of SF, the Peninsula, Marin and Sonoma Counties, Jewish Community Foundation of the Jewish Fed. Council of Greater L.A., Kovner Foundation, Mirowski Family Foundation, Mitzi and Warren Eisenberg Family Foundation, and the The Jewish Community Foundation, plus others. All major Jewish charities or charities that give heavily to Jewish causes are..."Funders of Anti-Muslim Bigotry!"

Those irresponsible, bigoted Jews!

CAIR defines Islamophobia as "closed-minded prejudice against or hatred of Islam and Muslims." So it should be simple for them to identify how, exactly, these organizations are Islamophobic, right?

Not one of the organizations I am familiar with fits their own definition of Islamophobic.

Here's how they describe CAMERA, the watchdog organization that points out anti-Israel bias in the news media: "This organization serves as a lobbying and media-monitoring group that spreads misinformation pertaining to Muslim Americans. Its overall mission is to undermine the credibility of Muslim American individuals and organizations. "

Good to know that CAIR knows CAMERA's mission better than CAMERA does!

They say the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a "neoconservative lobbying group [that] encourages the Islamophobic “war on terror” narrative and policies." They say the phrase "war on terror" is Islamophobic. George W. Bush, who coined the term, must be an Islamophobe too.

Gatestone Institute is "an anti-Muslim hate group." 

Investigative Project on Terrorism is a "hate group." 

The Middle East Forum is "an anti-Muslim policy center that produces and perpetuates hate speech, propaganda, and misinformation." 

The Lawfare Project is an  "anti-Muslim hate group."

In none of these cases can they find evidence that supports their definition of Islamophobia. In a couple of cases they dig up old contextless quotes from members of these organizations that they claim are Islamophobic, but even those do not fit their own definition. 

Their description of MEMRI is particularly absurd: "MEMRI is a pseudo-research organization that carefully selects and purposefully inaccurately translates news from Muslim-majority organizations to

provide justification for anti-Muslim propaganda. The organization’s translations have been widely criticized for inaccuracy and inflammatory representation. "

MEMRI's translations are accurate, full stop. I couldn't find a single criticism of the thousands of MEMRI translations that is less than ten years old. This academic paper criticizing MEMRI from a native Arabic speaker at a UAE university admits MEMRI's "accurate translations on a linguistic level." 

The only thing these organizations have in common is that they do not support CAIR's antisemitism and its historic support for terror groups. That is CAIR's real definition of "Islamophobia."

The ADL - which somehow is not on CAIR's list - describes the organization and its founders:

Some of CAIR’s current leadership had early connections with organizations that are or were affiliated with Hamas. Hamas is designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO) by the United States and is also viewed by the EU as a global terrorist organization.

In addition, some of CAIR’s leadership have used inflammatory anti-Zionist rhetoric that on a number of occasions has veered into antisemitic tropes related to Jewish influence over the media or political affairs.

Key CAIR leaders have frequently expressed vociferous opposition to Israel and Zionism, claiming at times that Zionism and Zionists are fundamentally racist. (See below: Key CAIR Staff on Israel and Zionism).

Antipathy towards Israel has been a CAIR staple since the group was founded in 1994 by several leaders of the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a now defunct organization that was once described by the U.S. government as part of “Hamas’ propaganda apparatus.” Nihad Awad, who was IAP’s Public Relations Director, became CAIR’s first Executive Director, a position he retains today. IAP was active in the U.S. from 1981 until about 2004, and categorically rejected a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, writing in a December 1989 communique: “The only way to liberate Palestine, all of Palestine, is the path of Jihad…Hamas is the conscience of the Palestinian Mujahid people.”  In 1987, immediately following the establishment of Hamas, IAP began to print and distribute Hamas literature, including Hamas communiqués and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

 In response to CAIR’s involvement with the Holy Land Foundation, the Federal Bureau of Investigation distanced itself from the organization. In the past, the FBI had interacted with CAIR representatives regarding community outreach activities, civil rights complaints and criminal investigations. However, in 2008, the FBI issued an instruction to its field offices that they should sharply curtail “non-investigative interactions” with CAIR.This instruction was elucidated in an April 2009 letter to the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology, and Homeland Security, in which the FBI explained that it would cease to liaise with CAIR “until [they] resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas.” To our knowledge as of this writing, the FBI has not retracted this protocol.

 CAIR has supported and advocated for Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted by an Israeli court in 1970 for her role in a 1969 bombing of a supermarket that killed two Israeli students, and who was later released as part of a prisoner exchange. 

Israel-haters love to say that Zionists falsely accuse critics of Israel of antisemitism. As usual, this is projection. This report proves conclusively that CAIR falsely accuses critics of Islamic terrorist organizations of being "Islamophobic."

 

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06/23 Links Pt2: Lumish: The Jewish Ghetto in Hebron; Flotilla of illusions

From Ian:

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Michael Lumish: The Jewish Ghetto in Hebron

The city of Hebron (or Hevron) is among the most ancient of Jewish cities and is the home of the Tomb of the Patriarchs where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are said to be buried.
Today Jews inhabit about 3 percent of this old Jewish town and the Arab residents very definitely do not want them there.
My friend Yosef, of Love of the Land, alerted us to this:
Jews peacefully confronted this racial and religious persecution, showing their objection by leaving their ghetto which comprises approximately 3-percent of the city to walk quietly through the marketplace. They were faced with threats, physical and verbal intimidation, followed by stones -- for no other reason than that they dared to cross the line in protest of apartheid. Israeli residents then left the market as the hostile population chanted Allah Hu Akbar, pushing against the gate which protects the Jewish population from their neighbors. Stun grenades afterward were necessary to scatter the threatening mob.
The video below is a production of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and therefore in its opening blurb suggests that Jews walking through Hebron represent some sort-of assault on the great Arab majority in that city. Those Jews were protected by Jewish soldiers, which is why the video focuses on soldiers.
At about the 40 second mark the Arabs start chanting "Alahu Akbar! Alahu Akbar!" which, given recent history - if not ancient history - is essentially a call for violence.

Establishing a Palestinian Islamist State

The United Nations' verdict of guilty to Israel, in its "Schabas Report," issued yesterday, was written even before the trial began.
Only the wide-eyed West still does not believe that Mahmoud Abbas is telling the truth when he assures the Palestinians of his intent to destroy Israel.
All public opinion polls in the Palestinian Authority (PA) indicate that if elections were held today, Hamas -- whose only openly-stated reason for existing is to destroy Israel -- would win in a landslide, as in 2006. Gaza has already been lost to Hamas and perhaps soon to ISIS. All evidence reveals that to establish a Palestinian state now would turn it into an Islamist terrorist entity.
Abbas thought that forming a Unity Government with Hamas would give the PA a unified front with which to harvest more money and diplomatic concessions from Europe. But last summer, Abbas was informed of a Hamas murder plot against him.

Jewish Home revives bill limiting foreign funds for left-wing groups

Knesset member Yinon Magal (Jewish Home) on Tuesday presented a new version of a controversial bill aiming to limit foreign funding for organizations that support the prosecution of IDF officers in international courts or campaign for boycotts of Israeli institutions or products.
The proposed legislation stipulates that Israeli non-government organizations receiving funding from foreign governments of over $50,000 will pay a 37 percent tax on the contribution, the Walla news site reported. The bill also adds that Israeli government ministries and the army must avoid collaboration with such NGOs.
“It is important to remember that the law is supposed to maintain our identity as a sovereign state that acts according to the will of the majority and not the agendas of foreign governments or on behalf of organizations that spend tens of millions in order to tarnish our reputation,” Magal said, according to Walla.
The bill, Magel continued, aimed to “make it difficult for those organizations that voluntarily serve the perceptions of foreign governments, those organizations that submit information to the haters of Israel, who make a fortune from tattling on settlers and IDF soldiers and slander Israel’s name in the world.”

Uri Ariel Cancels National Service Volunteers for Leftwing NGOs

It’s turning into a banner day for Bayit Yehudi in the Knesset as they take on the leftwing NGOs.
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development Uri Ariel (Bayit Yehudi), who is also in charge of Sherut Leumi (National Service), instructed the managing director of the Sherut Leumi Authority Sar-Shalom Gerbi to cancel all national service programs for NGOs who acted against IDF soldiers, according to a report in Srugim.
Ariel’s decision came in response to the UN’s Schabes anti-Israel report that relied on reports and testimony from dozens of leftwing NGOs.
Ariel explained that the whole point of National Service is to serve the state of Israel and its citizens. He explained he will not allow a situation where Israel finances programs that act against Israel’s own soldiers.

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Flood libel, part 2

Yesterday, I pointed out a false Ma'an story claiming that Israel deliberately opened up "dams" to flood Gaza with excess rainwater. As I pointed out, there are no dams near Gaza; there are some reservoirs but no evidence that they released any water.

This is one of those obvious lies that start getting believed by being repeated year after year, and even AFP ended up reporting that Israel opened up dams without doing a modicum of fact checking. ("Journalist" Max Blumenthal repeated the lie as well, as did Radio France International.)

Today, the claims were proven to be lies, as CAMERA reports:

Regarding the claim that Israel opened dams, thereby flooding Gaza, a spokesman for the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) told CAMERA:

The claim is entirely false, and southern Israel does not have any dams. Due to the recent rain, streams were flooded throughout the region with no connection to actions taken by the State of Israel.

Prior to the storm, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories allowed the transfer of four water pumps belonging to the Palestinian Water Authority from Israel into Gaza to supplement the 13 pumps already in the Gaza Strip in dealing with any potential flooding throughout the area.

In addition, Nechemia Shahaf, the head of the Drainage Authority for the Shakma-Besor Region, confirmed to CAMERA that there are no dams which can be opened and closed in southern Israel. Shahaf said, "There is a diverting dam one meter high which directs water to reservoirs. This is a low dam which cannot be opened or closed." He also noted that the singular dam, which cannot be opened, is next to Kibbutz Gvulot, and approximately 20 kilometers away from Gaza.

But that was only one of the false stories claiming that Israel floods Palestinians.

IMEMC and Palestine News Network claimed that somehow Israel managed to flood a "refugee" camp by opening "barrages":

Aida refugee camp north Bethlehem city has drowned after Gilo Israeli settlement opened its barrages, throwing all excess rain and melted snow water onto the camp.

Aida camp is adjacent to the Israeli apartheid wall, which is backed by the Gilo settlement northwest, that opened the barrages to flood the homes of refugees.

The head of water pumps in the camp, Sami Hmedan, said that Israeli occupation authorities opens the barrage water with disregard to the Palestinians and without any official concerns.

Gilo as seen from Aida. Where are the "barrages"?

The only "barrage" between Gilo and Aida is the security barrier. If anything, that protected Aida from excessive flooding.

Or are they saying that those devious Israelis removed the "apartheid wall" to flood Arabs and then quickly put it back?

Who knows what crazy slander they will come up with next. But we do know that a percentage of those lies will end up in AFP and other mainstream media, because if there is something that Palestinian Arabs have learned over the years, it is that repeating their lies gets results.

(h/t Gidon Shaviv, Judge Dan, Bob Knot, Nurit Baytch, Rudi Roth)

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Now, Arabs claim the Magna Carta provides the "right to return"

In the UN on Wednesday:

The Palestine refugees would not disappear into thin air, the representative of Lebanon stated, urging that they be given the right to return. That right was acknowledged in the Magna Carta in 1215 and codified in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, implementing international humanitarian law and resolutions seemed to be inconvenient for Israel, but acting according to law and normality was not a matter subject to convenience.

The Magna Carta? This was a new one on me.

Since Lebanese representatives to the UN tend to simply parrot talking points, I found the likely source for this idea that the Magna Carta discusses a "right to return" all the way back from 1979.

It was mentioned in a document prepared for the UN's "Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People." And the text there shows that duplicity by the "pro-Palestinian" crowd is hardly a recent phenomenon.

The document, called "An international law analysis of the major United Nations resolutions concerning the Palestine question" by William Thomas Mallison and Sally V. Mallison, states:

Historically, the right of return was so universally accepted and practiced that it was not deemed necessary to prescribe or codify it in a formal manner. In 1215, at a time when rights were being questioned in England, the Magna Carta was agreed to by King John. It provided that: "It shall be lawful in the future for anyone... to leave our kingdom and to return, safe and secure by land and water..."

So let's look at the Magna Carta, and see what is hidden behind the ellipses.

42. In the future it shall be lawful for any man to leave and return to our kingdom unharmed and without fear, by land or water, preserving his allegiance to us, except in time of war, for some short period, for the common benefit of the realm. People that have been imprisoned or outlawed in accordance with the law of the land, people from a country that is at war with us, and merchants - who shall be dealt with as stated above - are excepted from this provision.

Ah, so it only applies to people who are citizens of the country they left! And it clearly does not apply to members of a entity that is hostile to the country.This is hardly a universal "right of return," and the authors of this paper knowingly quoted only a small excerpt to promote a ridiculous assertion - one that is now confidently shouted at the UN.

It also obviously doesn't apply to descendants.

1979 anti-Israel writers were no less deceptive than their more modern counterparts.

What about the Universal Declaration of Human Rights?

It says

Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.

But this also only applies to citizens or nationals of that country. The text was meant primarily to stop nations from preventing nationals from leaving, and the "return" clause was only added to strengthen the right of citizens to leave. See CAMERA's analysis. Regrettably, the 1963 UN document that is the source for this is not online as far as I can tell.

(UPDATE: Ian found it online, with free registration from Calameo. Ingles' entire monograph is suffused with references to the right of return of nationals. Several times during his discussion he refers to "the right of a national to return to his country." In addition he discusses the matter of how countries may strip nationality from those who leave their country over a long period of time; again the point being that he is only speaking of nationals of the country in the context of return. Beyond that, the language added to the UDHR for "return" being only to strengthen the right to leave was added by Lebanon:

The Lebanese amendment was to add, at the end of paragraph 2, the words
"and to return to his country".

In submitting his amendment, the representative of Lebanon pointed out that
the text under discussion:

"... was intended to cover all movements inside and outside of a given
State. According to that article, any person had the right to leave any
country, including his own. The ideal would be that any person should be
able to enter any country he might choose, but account had to be taken of
actual facts. The minimum requirement was that any person should be able
to return to his country. If that right were recognized, the right to leave a
country, already sanctioned in the article, would be strengthened by the
assurance of the right to return. Such was the object of his amendment."

And, again, it clearly does not include descendants of those who left. That is an innovation that is uniquely applied to Palestinian Arabs, with legal arguments that are at least as specious as these are.

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I'm part of the anti-NGO conspiracy!

The Guardian reports on HRW's whining about being criticized by people like me:

America's leading human rights organisation has accused Israel and its supporters of an "organised campaign" of false allegations and misinformation, including "extremely personal attacks" on its staff, in an attempt to discredit the group over its reports of war crimes in Gaza. Iain Levine, HRW's programme director, said that while the organisation had long attracted criticism, in recent months there had been significant attempts to intimidate and discredit it. "I really hesitate to use words like conspiracy, but there is a feeling that there is an organised campaign, and we're seeing from different places what would appear to be co-ordinated attacks ... from some of the language and arguments used it would seem as if there has been discussion," he said."We are having to spend a lot of time repudiating the lies, the falsehoods, the misinformation."

Isn't it a shame that HRW has to spend time defending its positions rather than being believed uncritically? All together now....Awwww! Although I was tragically not mentioned by name, I am an integral part of the nefarious anti-NGO conspiracy. After all, I was the one who noticed Marc Garlasco's interesting hobby of collecting Nazi memorabilia, information that I shared with other bloggers in an illegal secret Zionist underground information channel known as "email." I didn't have the time to exhaustively research it all, and Omri Ceren of Mere Rhetoric took the story and ran with it (with my full support.) My later contributions to the story included the sock-puppets that HRW sent out to defend themselves and the picture of Garlasco wearing the Iron Cross sweatshirt (which I believe someone else found first and alerted me to.) [And now Omri has a radio show, where such information can be shared with even more people! See how deep our Zio-connections are?] Notably, even then the Guardian quoted HRW implying some sort of blog conspiracy when the story broke. One has to wonder if, say, HRW and Amnesty and the UNHRC and the PCHR and Al Mezan and Al Addameer share information with each other - and whether this is a terrible conspiracy as well? (The answer to the first question is, of course, "yes.") The difference is that the NGOs have multi-million dollar budgets, and will often repeat the claims of other NGOs - even clearly biased ones - without any of their own fact checking. For example, Al Addameer's absurd claim of 750,000 Palestinian Arab prisoners since 1967 has been accepted as fact. Would HRW say that this story is above criticism as well? In interests of full disclosure, a Zio Blog conspiracy member list has been published. You can see us in the About Us page on the Understanding the Goldstone Report site. It includes NGO Monitor, CAMERA and Honest Reporting as well as some well-known writers and bloggers. We share information and build on other posts and articles. We do this precisely because it is more effective and focused. In fact, I'm going to now link to another, far more detailed critique of the Guardian article, from Richard Landes and Augean Stables. See how we all conspire together? Booga booga!

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