Showing posts with label CNN. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CNN. Show all posts

Tuesday, June 13, 2023

From The New Arab, May 26:

Residents in the Egyptian town of Al-Arish have expressed anger over security forces demolishing their homes to make way for a new port in the Suez Canal.

In videos shared by activists online, men, women and children can be seen visibly distressed while protesting against the destruction of their homes in the city's Al-Mina district.

The Sinai Foundation for Human Rights NGO said that Egyptian security forces launched a campaign to demolish homes in Arish in March this year despite residents' protests, according to Al-Jazeera Mubasher.

The group's director, Ahmed Salem, also stated that at least 20,000 people are impacted by the ongoing home demolitions.

Many residents who gave up their homes had complained that they were not adequately compensated despite promises, while others were at risk of homelessness due to insufficient funds to rent other properties, the NGO added.

Additionally, many handed over ownership of their homes due to pressure from security forces, while a number of homes were destroyed before compensation was even offered, leaving many homeless.
It is truly a shame that these people don't have the fortune of having their homes bulldozed by Israel. If they had, there would be crowds of reporters, dozens of NGOs interviewing them, and UN resolutions condemning the destruction.

But their homes are being destroyed by Egypt, so the world doesn't really care.


Egypt has been  destroying thousands of homes for years - and given lots of different reasons. 

These are said to be so Egypt can build new ports. In 2022, the reason was for Egypt to build new shopping malls and entertainment centers. From 2013-2021 the official reason was for security in the North Sinai. 

No one is questioning those reasons. After all.....the Egyptian government isn't Jewish.

(h/t Andrew)




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, May 22, 2023

By Daled Amos

Why haven't CNN and Christiane Amanpour apologized for their obvious misstatement of fact from May 11?

A mother and her 2 daughters were gunned down by Palestinian terrorists on April 7. Even granted the squeamishness of the media when it comes to calling out Palestinian terrorism by name, Amanpour's report was outright shocking when she referred to the attack on unarmed women as a "shootout" --

This takes blaming both sides to a whole new level.

And it is even more cringe-worthy considering the pat on the back that Amanpour gave herself in 2016:

I learned that as a journalist I could not be morally equivalent and nor could I present false factual equivalence. I insist on being truthful, not neutral.

The odd thing is that despite this boast, Amanpour did in fact publicly apologize for her bias in November 2020, after she used a reference to the Holocaust to attack Donald Trump. She started off with a reference to the anniversary of Kristallnacht:

It was the Nazis’ warning shot across the bow of our human civilization that led to genocide against a whole identity and, in that tower of burning books, it led to an attack on fact, knowledge, history and proof.

After four years of a modern-day assault on those same values by Donald Trump, the Biden-Harris team pledges a return to norms, including the truth.

But, in this case, the reaction against Amanpour's outrageous comparison led to a public retraction: 

 We can only hope that the pressure applied again by these organizations and by the Israeli government will again produce an apology by Amanpour.

Why is it taking so long, especially considering the obvious inaccuracy in calling the murder of unarmed women a shootout?

One reason might be that CNN themselves compounded the error and face the possibility of having to retract a second biased report on the cable network.

On April 10, CNN correspondent Frederik Pleitgen described the attack during Isa Soares Tonight in an even more convoluted way :

But earlier in the West Bank, there was a shooting incident where a car received a bullet shot, or gunshots, with the family in it. It was a mother and her two daughters, and the two daughters were killed in that crash. [emphasis added]

Journalism at CNN has deteriorated so badly that beyond blaming guns instead of the terrorists who fire them, now the bullets are blamed. Or perhaps the car that "received" the bullets is at fault? Then the death of the mother and her 2 daughters is blamed on the crash, despite the fact that the terrorists fired into the car after the crash in order to make sure their victims were dead. And of course, there is no mention of Palestinian terrorists.

Still, this would be a good opportunity for CNN to follow through on their declared goal to be less partisan, as reported in June of last year:

CNN's new boss, Chris Licht, is evaluating whether personalities and programming that grew polarizing during the Trump era can adapt to the network's new priority to be less partisan...

Details: Licht wants to give personalities that may appear polarizing a chance to prove they're willing to uphold the network's values so that they don't tarnish CNN's journalism brand.

 Of course, Licht has in mind drawing Republicans back to the network. He is not overly concerned with how Israel views CNN. But if the pressure on CNN to fix an undeniable error can be maintained, CNN may see it to its advantage to have Amanpour apologize.





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, February 05, 2023



Since the Jenin "massacre" story started fading from the headlines, CNN has a story about the family whose apartment was used by the IDF as a firing position against the group of Jenin terrorists planning a major attack.

No doubt the family was severely affected by being invaded by IDF troops. But the story says this:
Representatives of the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) visited Jenin in the days after the incident and spoke to al-Hayja and his family. "Their children were noticeably traumatized," Adam Bouloukos, director of UNRWA Affairs in the West Bank told CNN. "This kind of invasion violates not only international law but common decency."
The UNRWA official is lying about international law and, as usual, the media doesn't bother to fact check.

The main relevant section of the Fourth Geneva Conventions, Article 53, says:
Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.    

 The occupying forces may ...undertake the total or partial destruction of certain private or public property in the occupied territory when imperative military requirements so demand.

Furthermore, it will be for the Occupying Power to judge the importance of such military requirements. It is therefore to be feared that bad faith in the application of the reservation may render the proposed safeguard valueless; for unscrupulous recourse to the clause concerning military necessity would allow the Occupying Power to circumvent the prohibition set forth in the Convention. The Occupying Power must therefore try to interpret the clause in a reasonable manner: whenever it is felt essential to resort to destruction, the occupying authorities must try to keep a sense of proportion in comparing the military advantages to be gained with the damage done. 

Israel's right to attack military targets under international law is undisputed. It must minimize damage to civilian property as much as possible while protecting its own troops. And, in this case, it did: the only alternative would have been to bomb the targeted building from the air, which would have killed far more civilians. 

What about the IDF forcing the family who lived there to stay sheltered in one room while the bullets were flying? At first glance, it appears to be a violation of Article 31 of the Conventions:
No physical or moral coercion shall be exercised against protected persons, in particular to obtain information from them or from third parties.
The ICRC commentary shows that it is not a blanket prohibition, because otherwise it contradicts other articles of the Convention:
[T]here is no question of absolute prohibition, as might be thought at first sight. The prohibition only applies in so far as the other provisions of the Convention do not implicitly or explicitly authorize a resort to coercion. Thus, Article 31 is subject to the unspoken reservation that force is permitted whenever it is necessary to use it in the application of measures taken under the Convention. ....Thus, a party to the conflict would be entitled to use coercion with regard to protected persons in order to compel respect for his right to requisition services Articles 40 , 51 ), to ensure the supply of foodstuffs, etc. to which he is entitled (Article 55, para. 2 , Article 57 ), to carry out the necessary evacuation measures (Article 49, para. 2 ), to remove public officials in occupied territories from their posts (Article 54, para. 2 ) and in regard to everything connected with internment (Articles 79 et sqq.).

Occupying powers can force civilians to do far more than stay in one place for several hours if needed for military purposes. And whie most articles about the Jenin operation try to airbrush the facts, no one has seriously argued that there was no military necessity behind it. 

CNN has every right to report on how Palestinians feel about their homes being invaded. But it does not have the right to report that Israel violated international law in doing so when it didn't.



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!

 

 

Thursday, November 24, 2022

From Ian:

JPost Editorial: Terror is still here, Israel needs secure government to stop it - editorial
Attacks that are carried out by lone attackers are usually more difficult to thwart. They can be perpetrated by people who wake up one morning and decide to try and kill some Jews without any prior warning. An attack like the one that took place on Wednesday is something else.

This was an attack that required the involvement of a number of people – to assemble the bombs and obtain the necessary ingredients, smuggle the bombs into Israel and plant them next to their targets.

This is already what is called “terrorist infrastructure,” the kind that likely is affiliated with a known organization, which should have been on the Israeli intelligence community’s watch list.

What this also shows is the need to focus now on establishing a government. The sooner there is a stable government in Jerusalem the sooner Israel will be able to create a clear strategy for how to stop the terrorist wave that is not going away. Fights about ministries and portfolios

Fights about ministries and portfolios might interest the politicians who are supposed to occupy those offices, but they are not of real interest to Israelis, who want to see safe streets and to know that their children – like Shechopek – are safe when they stand at a bus stop waiting to go to school.

Comments like the one made by an Army Radio reporter on Wednesday – that the attack was connected to the pending appointment of Itamar Ben-Gvir as the next public security minister – do not do any good. Neither are appearances at the scene soon after the crime by Ben-Gvir, who promised as presumptive internal security minister to wield an iron fist against terrorism.

After 75 years of statehood that has been marred by wars and terrorist attacks, we do not need to look for excuses for why Arab terrorists want to try and kill Israeli Jews. This has been part of the Israeli story since it was created as an independent state and will, sadly, likely continue as long as some of our neighbors refuse to come to terms with our existence here.

There was terrorism when there were left-wing governments in power and there was terrorism when there were right-wing governments. Israelis have not forgotten, for example, how Benjamin Netanyahu promised to topple Hamas in the Gaza Strip during an election campaign in 2009 and how through 12 consecutive years as prime minister he refrained from ordering the IDF to do so.

Netanyahu was quick to respond to Wednesday’s attack, saying his administration would once again make the country safe. What Israelis need right now is security, not boasting of how the incoming government is going to do things differently. Let’s hope they can put their actions where their mouths are.
David Singer: Ending Jew-bashing at the UN
The United Nations favourite sport – Jew bashing - was on full display this past week at the 77th Session of the United Nations Fourth Committee (Special Political and Decolonization) - which approved six draft resolutions - all highly critical of Israel.

One of these draft resolutions - approved by 98 voting in favour to 17 against, with 52 abstentions - was titled “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem” (document A/C.4/77/L.12/Rev.1).

By its terms, the UN General Assembly would demand that Israel cease:
all measures that violate the human rights of the Palestinian people, including the killing and injuring of civilians,
the arbitrary detention and imprisonment of civilians,
the forced displacement of civilians
the transfer of its own population into the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem”
and that:
“the General Assembly should request the International Court of Justice to render urgently an advisory opinion on the legal consequences arising from the ongoing violation by Israel of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, from its prolonged occupation, settlement and annexation of the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967”.

Vituperative verbal attacks on the Jewish State made by Bangladesh, Venezuela, South Africa, Iran, Libya, Niger, Türkiye, Algeria, Brunei Darussalam, Namibia, Indonesia, Kuwait, Japan, Qatar, Lebanon, Sudan, Malaysia and Yemen, all bastions of civil liberties, ensured Jew-bashing would continue at the United Nations whilst the 100 years-old Arab-Jewish conflict remains unresolved.
It is unacceptable for the ICJ to deliver opinion on Israel, West Bank
THE HISTORICAL, political and legal issues are extremely complex. An Israeli take on them was set out in convincing detail in a recent study by Professor Abraham Sion, which he called, “To whom was the promised land promised?” Sion is a former deputy state attorney of Israel and is a professor emeritus of law at Ariel University. If the world were governed by reason, logic and conscientious adherence to the rule of law, Sion’s book would be a game changer.

He submitted the entire legal process leading to the establishment of Israel to meticulous forensic examination and he demonstrates beyond any doubt that judicial rulings from the UN, the EU, the ICJ and elsewhere have often been at odds with a scrupulous interpretation of their legal basis. Over the past few decades, international bodies have reached a consensus that the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem are Palestinian territories, and that Israeli towns and cities in Judea and Samaria are illegal. Sion uncovers the solid legal building blocks that have been ignored or overlooked and that prove different.

In short, he demonstrates with chapter and verse that the almost universally accepted consensus on Israel’s legal position regarding the West Bank, settlements and Jerusalem is legally flawed.

In undertaking his scrupulous legal analysis, Sion’s original purpose was to ascertain who owned the legal right to the territory of Mandatory Palestine under international law. He identified the two competitors as the Arab nation on the one hand and the Jewish people on the other. Concerned solely with the legal position and not with political or related issues, he set out to establish the legal rights under the international law of both parties.

Sion demonstrates that in concluding that Israel is illegally occupying territory, international bodies never refer to the treaties that shaped the legal structure of the Middle East. He shows that the rights derived from those binding international commitments were still valid when Israel occupied the West Bank.

Sion is not alone in reaching conclusions like these, but of course, they have never been tested openly in any international judicial forum. If in due course the UN General Assembly asks the ICJ for an opinion, how could the court possibly render a valid legal determination without having the issues raised by Sion and many others argued before it?

On the very day that the UN committee voted to appeal to the ICJ for an opinion – November 11 – the ICJ began public hearings in The Hague in a long-running dispute between Venezuela and the former British colony of Guyana on the issue of the border between them. Each party is presenting its case to the court in preliminary hearings scheduled to last until November 22. The proceedings are not only open to the public but they are being videoed and publicized widely on social media.

Monday, November 14, 2022

From Ian:

Braving bigotry and enemy fire, Jews served the Union valiantly during the Civil War
Sgt. Leopold Karpeles had a dangerous job. Serving in the 57th Massachusetts Infantry’s E Company during the American Civil War, he was a color bearer, which meant carrying a flag that identified his unit’s position — a necessary role, but one that invariably drew attention from the enemy. In May 1864, his actions won him the Medal of Honor — a decoration created during the conflict. His citation credited him with encouraging fleeing men to reform ranks and drive back the Confederates during the Battle of the Wilderness in northern Virginia.

Karpeles’s story was one of the more prominent accounts of Jews in the US Army during the Civil War. A new book, “Jewish Soldiers in the Civil War: The Union Army,” by Adam D. Mendelsohn, director of the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Cape Town, explores the wider narrative around Jews serving in America’s bloodiest conflict. Its release is scheduled for November 15, just a few days after Veterans Day.

“Individual cases obviously gave life and color,” Mendelsohn told The Times of Israel, including when it came to “their decision to enlist, their experience in the army — which was not an easy one, particularly for Jews.”

On the battlefield, there was deadly combat and fear, including the terror Karpeles experienced in Virginia. Jews in uniform also faced ignorance, antisemitism or both from fellow servicemembers and higher-ups. Notoriously, in General Orders No. 11, Gen. Ulysses S. Grant expelled Jews as a class from the war department he commanded in the American South in December 1862.

“Clearly, in the senior ranks of the army, we see in [William T.] Sherman, Grant, [Benjamin] Butler, others, echoing views current in American society at the time of Jewish speculators and shirkers, profiting at the expense of the Union,” Mendelsohn said. “All these things ultimately came to a head in Grant’s order.”

Yet there were also interfaith friendships formed through mutual dependence during wartime.

“What I sensed in the data was the nature of comradeship,” Mendelsohn said. “Serving alongside each other, the experience of fighting together, does bring down the barriers.”

After the war, many Jews joined a nationwide veterans movement called the Grand Army of the Republic, with some even taking leadership roles. While the book states that Jewish veterans were largely unrecognized immediately after the war out of a national desire to move on, this changed several decades later. In the 1890s, the Hebrew Union Veterans Association was established amid a wave of antisemitism sweeping the nation.
The antisemitic history of the Union Army and the US civil war - opinion
The contractor, smuggler, speculator and shirker, however, were more than just figures of scorn. Jews and other “shoddy aristocrats” came to be seen as the creators and beneficiaries of the new economic and social order produced by the war. This “shoddy aristocracy” — whose morals and manners marked them as undesirable, whose profits were ill gained, and whose power derived from money alone — was imagined to lord it over a new and unjust social heap summoned into being by the chaos and disruption of war.

Even as the heated rhetoric of the war years receded after 1865, these ideas remained primed for action. They were returned to service in the Gilded Age.

It was no coincidence that the episode traditionally identified as initiating modern antisemitism in America — the exclusion of Joseph Seligman by Henry Hilton from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga Springs on May 31, 1877 — had at its center a man who had made a fortune as a contractor and banker during the Civil War. Seligman, a friend of President Grant, was viewed as an exemplar of the new capitalism that was remaking America.

Henry Hilton slandered Seligman as “shoddy—false—squeezing—unmanly,” a social climber who “has to push himself upon the polite.” Hilton drew upon themes familiar from wartime antisemitism: the Jew as speculator who trafficked in credit and debt; the Jew as obsequious ingratiator who attached himself to the powerful; the Jew as profiteer who advanced by improper means; the Jew as vulgarian who flaunted his (and her) obscene wealth and did not know his (or her) place; and the Jew as overlord whose money allowed him (or her) to displace others. In short, the “Seligman Jew” was the “shoddy aristocrat” by another name.

In an age of inequality and excess, the antisemite imagined the Jew as embodying all that was wrong with American capitalism. And during an age of mass immigration from Romania and the Russian Empire, they soon added another theme familiar from General Butler’s wartime diatribe: The Jew could not be trusted to become fully American.

Sadly, even as Louis Gratz, Max Glass and many other Jewish soldiers became American by serving in the Union army, the Civil War produced a range of pernicious ideas about Jews that have proven remarkably durable. We have escaped the everyday torments that afflicted Max Glass, but are still haunted in the present by the fantasies of Benjamin Butler and Henry Hilton.
A review of 'Woke Antisemitism', by David Bernstein
The American linguist and political commentator John McWhorter coined the term Woke Racism to refer to the latest wave of elite, radical, ‘anti-racist’ campaigners who posit that racism is so deeply embedded in the fabric of American life that it’s impervious to traditional civil rights and anti-racist legislation.

In order to level the playing field, liberal democratic systems of government – which aren’t up to the Utopian task of achieving perfect racial parity – must be radically re-constituted to allow for what Ibram X. Kendi, author of “How To Be An Anti-Racist”, refers to un-ironically as “anti-racist discrimination” against groups who are ‘disproportionately successful’.

The only thing that matters to such campaigners is the racial disparity in economic and social outcomes, which is viewed as sufficient evidence to demonstrate racism. Not only are all other possible factors for unequal results ignored, but it’s considered racist to even consider other explanations.

Thus, “privileged” whites and those labeled as “white adjacent” must accept a future where they will face ‘progressive bigotry’ until there’s complete racial parity in all areas of life.

Though the proponents of this Woke Racism typically focus only on the Black-White paradigm, the question of where Jews (and other successful, yet historically disadvantaged minorities) stand within this racial binary is rarely prominent within the public discourse.
Jason D. Greenblatt: Israel Deserves Better than the New York Times' Prophet of Doom
New York Times columnist Thomas L. Friedman wrote last week that in the new Israeli government coalition, Benjamin Netanyahu will soon preside over a parade of right-wing horribles whose very existence dooms Israel itself. Friedman then makes a giant leap of logic to suggest that if Jews in America share his distaste for two members of the new Israeli government, they will turn their backs on Israel once and for all. Apparently, these days, members of the Israeli government must pass muster not just with Israeli voters but also with newspaper columnists like Friedman - when in fact Israel, like the U.S., gets to choose its own leaders through free and fair elections.

Friedman claims that Arab countries entered the Abraham Accords only because "they wanted to trade with Israel." First, there's nothing wrong with that. And second, the Arab nations made peace with Israel because they're tired of pointless, expensive hostilities and because they recognize a common enemy in Iran. Friedman ought to have more respect for the courageous Arab governments that normalized their relations with Israel, and for those who may have quietly supported it from behind closed doors.

I abhor Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas' anti-American comments, his payments to Palestinians to reward them for harming and murdering Israelis, and his comments about the Holocaust - yet I would still work with Palestinians and their leaders to try to improve their lives and seek peace between them and Israel. We don't burn everything down just because we disagree, however strongly, with the views of some of those in power.

Wednesday, October 26, 2022

From Ian:

Dave Sharma: After West Jerusalem shift, will Labor also turn on Israel at the UN?
The government’s signalling that it no longer considers Israel to be sovereign over West Jerusalem leads to some odd conclusions.

Far from advancing the cause of peace, which Labor professes to support, this reversal only sets peace back. The only states and entities that assert Israel has no claim to West Jerusalem are the same ones that assert Israel has no entitlement to a sovereign state whatsoever: Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It is very odd company for the Labor government to be keeping.

Will Anthony Albanese and Penny Wong now refuse to meet Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as countless of their Labor predecessors have done, and as the UAE Foreign Minister did just in September? If Labor considers West Jerusalem to now be disputed territory, this is the only feasible conclusion.

Of equal importance, does this presage a larger shift in Labor’s attitude towards Israel in international forums?

The Howard government in 2004 altered Australia’s voting position on a number of annual, one-sided UN General Assembly Resolutions that single out Israel as the obstacle to peace, whilst remaining silent on the obligations of other parties. Under the Rudd/Gillard governments, many of these positions were reversed, before being reversed again under subsequent Coalition governments. It appears likely that the Albanese government will once again shift these votes.

The bigger question though is whether the government will follow through on the commitment in the ALP’s official platform to unilaterally recognise a state of Palestine, absent the usual criteria for statehood. In 2021, in a motion introduced by Wong, Labor’s national conference adopted this as official policy.

If the Albanese government goes through with this, it would separate Australia from some of its closest allies and partners, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, New Zealand, France, Germany and Canada.

A profound shift such as this would not make the emergence of a future Palestinian state any more likely. But it would break a strong Labor tradition of support for the state of Israel, and harm one of Australia’s closest and most valuable relationships in the Middle East.

Foreign policy should proceed on the basis of established facts and national interests. Labor’s approach risks ignoring both.
Sky News corrects claim that Australia 'recognised Tel Aviv' as capital
We tweeted several Sky News [UK] editors and journalsts before one responded, upholding our complaint regarding an Oct. 19 Sky News article, written by Amarachi Orie, falsely claiming that Australia recognised Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital. The article in question focused on news that officials in Canberra had rescinded the previous government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

However, the country’s decision to no longer recognise Jerusalem didn’t mean that it therefore recognised Tel Aviv as the capital – as the official government statement on the matter from the foreign ministry shows.


David Collier: What Explains Ireland's Extreme Antisemitism?
Collier said there are different causes behind the virulent anti-Zionist/anti-Israel atmosphere in Ireland. The first is the "distinct anticolonial strand going through the whole of Irish politics" which is evident in the rise of Sinn Fein, "historically the Republican Independence Movement" political party. Many Irish people, who "hate England," mistakenly believe "Britain gave the Jews Israel" and are convinced that the Jewish State epitomizes "settler colonialism." Ironically, as Israel was being established post-1945, the Zionists fought to oust the British from its mandate in Palestine.

The second cause of rampant antisemitism in Ireland is found in the country's "strand" of "classic antisemitism," now seen coming from both the "far left and the far right." Collier pointed out that even though the Irish were "officially independent" during World War II, "many of the Irish Republicans sided with the Nazis." The third cause of Irish antisemitism is rooted in the second — particular "ideologies within Christianity", which are "very strong in the Irish Catholic Church." The church is replete with belief in "replacement ideology, supersessionism, or the idea ... the Christians are the new Jews."

That the Jews have returned to their ancient homeland in Israel creates a "major ideological problem" for the Catholic Church, driving it to align with the Palestinians. Collier said that Christian charities will donate to anti-Israel non-governmental organizations (NGO's), some of which are affiliated with Palestinian terrorist groups. He said an exception in Ireland to the widespread antisemitism is that Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, and whose predominantly Protestant citizens identify with the British, tend to be pro-Israel.

The fourth and final issue driving Irish antisemitism, Collier said, is attributable to "Islamist extremism." Whereas the U.S. and England experienced Islamist attacks after mistakenly, over the past three decades, "placing the bar for extremism far ... too high," he said Europe is "paying a deep price for it now." In Ireland, which has not experienced a large influx of Muslim migration, the antisemites there share the same "anti-colonial, anti-imperial" messages with Islamists, whom "they've accepted ... wholesale." The Islamists, essentially, are "coming in speaking the same anti-colonial, anti-imperial messaging, that the Irish do." Collier said, "anti-Zionist rhetoric," unabashedly rife on Irish streets, also creates a "hostile environment" for Jewish students on campuses. He said there are mosques preaching hate, Irish universities with Islamist academics, and the local church, all in league "bashing the state of Israel."

Collier believes that Sinn Fein's growing popularity will be accompanied by an "escalation" of antisemitism in Ireland, which he tracks through social media. He is dismayed at the trends because he said Hitler and the Holocaust "didn't just happen." Rather, their emergence can be traced back to "European antisemitism and beyond it, Christian antisemitism."

Sunday, August 07, 2022

By Daled Amos

In the midst of Operation Breaking Dawn, on Saturday night, at about 9pm, a rocket explosion in Jabaliya in Gaza killed 4 children.

As expected, Israel was blamed.

But this time, unexpectedly, Israel was able not only to present its case that it was not responsible, but also to get the media to present a balanced report that presented Israel's contention that the explosion was the result of a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).

Israel Gets The Media To Notice

The results were media reports that actually were balanced. The Times of Israel had a survey of some of the reporting:

CNN reported:

In one incident Saturday, four children were among seven people killed in an explosion in Jabaliya. The Palestinian Health Ministry initially said the blast was caused by an Israeli airstrike. Israel rejected the claim and said it was the result of errant rocket fire, and released a video showing what it said was the Islamic Jihad rocket sharply changing course in the air and hitting the building.

The New York Times referred to the incident twice. First, on Saturday:

Three children were also killed on Saturday, though it was not immediately clear whether they were hit by an Israeli strike or a misfired Palestinian rocket. The Israeli military said they were killed by a failed Islamic Jihad rocket launch.

Then on Sunday:

Israel said some of those children were killed on Saturday night when an Islamic Jihad rocket misfired and fell short in the northern Gaza Strip. The Israeli military said it had not been operating in that area at the time. Islamic Jihad has not commented on the Israeli claim.

France's AFP quoted Israeli sources that  “it had ‘irrefutable’ evidence that a stray rocket fired by Islamic Jihad was responsible for the deaths of several children in Jabalia, northern Gaza, on Saturday.”

Al Jazeera reported:

At least four children were killed in a blast close to the Jabaliya refugee camp on Saturday, according to Hamas, the group that governs the Gaza Strip. It blamed Israel for the deaths, but the military denied any responsibility, saying the explosion was caused by a failed rocket launched by Islamic Jihad. Al Jazeera could not verify the claims immediately.

On Saturday, The Associated Press reported 

The Israeli military said an errant rocket fired by Palestinian militants killed civilians late Saturday, including children, in the town of Jabaliya, in northern Gaza. The military said it investigated the incident and concluded ‘without a doubt’ that it was caused by a misfire on the part of Islamic Jihad. There was no official Palestinian comment on the incident.

However, by Sunday the AP apparently decided that in the interests of balance, instead of presenting the two sides as to who was responsible, it would not address the question of responsibility at all and merely reported “among the dead were six children and four women” -- without any mention the possibility that some of them may have been killed by misfired PIJ rockets.

On the other hand, is the German news site Bild, whose headline was straightforward without hedging, "Palestinian missile kills civilians in Gaza."


What Did Israel Do Differently This Time?

One of the criticisms of Israel when it comes to getting its side of the story out to the world is that it is just too slow, allowing the terrorists and Israel-haters plenty of time to get their version of things out and presented before the world audience. Israel just does not react quickly enough.

Not this time.

Lahav Harkov addresses this in her article How Israel shot down false reports on Jabaliya explosion. Israel already started responding on the same day -- Saturday.

“We identified the potential for damage from this incident very quickly,” Head of the Public Diplomacy Directorate Lior Haiat said on Sunday. “We understood it could be a public diplomacy catastrophe that could lead to diplomatic harm that could change the direction of the campaign.”

Within minutes, Haiat, IDF Spokesperson Ran Kohav, representatives of the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry discussed the incident. Defense officials were quickly able to determine not only that the IDF was not responsible, but that Islamic Jihad very clearly was.

Haiat was able to coordinate a media plan with the others within an hour. [emphasis added]

Here is Israel's statement that came out the very same day, via Twitter:



And that was only the beginning.

The statement was translated into multiple languages and delivered to Israeli embassies worldwide, which then passed the statement on to local media.

The IDF posted a statement as well:


Keren Hajioff, PM Lapid's International Spokeswoman made a video for TV and social media, where she made a similar statement:

Another welcome step, considering Israel's reputation of not dealing well with the media, was Culture and Sports Minister Chilli Tropper being released from an ongoing Security Cabinet meeting so that he could speak to Israeli media on behalf of the government.

Of course, it helped that Israel was able to provide videos to support its claim:



Now that Israel has demonstrated the ability to get its message across and reported in the media, what Israel needs is the ability to do this consistently.

Maybe it can even do a better job in presenting its side in the death of Abu Akleh.





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!

 

 

Wednesday, June 01, 2022

More evidence keeps pouring in that Shireen Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinian terrorists, not by the IDF, as my comprehensive video showed. The latest ones confirm what I have been saying and showing, that she was killed by Palestinian snipers on and in buildings to her southeast. More interestingly, they come from eyewitnesses - which Ap and CNN consider credible as to explain what happened.

This video from Abu Akleh's colleague, Shatha Hanaysha, who was next to her as she died, says it all:



Reporter: "Did you see the sniper who was shooting at you?"
Shatha Hanaysha: "We saw the crowd pointing at the building where the snipers were. What happened is that we were standing across from a building with snipers."

There were no IDF troops shooting from buildings. But as we have seen, some of the witnesses on the scene pointed out "shebab" snipers on and in buildings to the southeast of where Shireen was shot. The only buildings "across" from Shireen and Shatha are to the east and southeast.

In the full interview, she makes other references to the snipers/"soldiers" being opposite her, saying that "the soldiers were right across from us, they could see us" - not down the street but "across" - and "we were between a wall and the sniper" - the wall was  parallel to the IDF convoy, the Islamist snipers were in the buildings across the street to the southeast.

Hanaysha was widely quoted after the killing as saying that Israel was responsible. She probably thought that there were Israeli snipers in buildings on the other side of the cemetery, between a hundred and two hundred meters away.

The second witness to see snipers in buildings is none other than Ali al-Samoudi, the first person shot, who was widely interviewed from his hospital bed:

We, the crew of Al-Jazeera TV, went to Jenin on May 6, 2022 [sic], after receiving news of the intention of the Israeli army to storm the camp. ...As soon as we reached the place of the event, we got out of the car after we took security and safety precautions, put the [flak jackets] and helmets bearing the word "PRESS" in Arabic and English.  After a few minutes, we heard the sound of bullets raining down on us from the side of the occupation soldiers who were on the roofs of the buildings opposite us , amid the screams of Palestinian citizens who call out to us: Get down on the ground, snipers are targeting you. . I was hit in the lower back, and Shireen screamed: Ali was wounded, Ali was wounded.

I believe both of these interviews were on the same day as the shootings. 

The next day, both of these eyewitnesses stopped talking about snipers in buildings. 

These are actual witnesses seeing the Palestinian snipers in the buildings shooting directly at them - but they thought the snipers were Israeli so they told the truth.  When they found out that there were no Israelis there, they changed their stories to being shot from the armored vehicles to the south. 

The snipers they saw were, by definition, in line of sight to the reporters. Some easily could have beene the distance away from Shireen that the bullet acoustic analysis suggest the killers would be. 

The fact that CNN and AP have ignored this evidence is damning to them. And they still refuse to correct their reports that say there were no militants in the area, let alone that they are the likely killers.

Keep in mind that if the snipers were far enough from the reporters not be be easily identified as Jenin militants, the helmet-wearing reporters may have been far enough from the snipers not to be easily identified as press. They were nearly two football fields away from each other.

If I had to guess which buildings the sniper who killed Abu Akleh was in, I think it would be one of these two, probably the more southern one. Both are tall enough, both roughly the right distance from Abu Akleh, and both "across" from the reporters.



(h/t DigFind)





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, May 29, 2022

Here's a tweet from Gianluca Mezzofiore, investigative journalist at CNN, on the morning of the death of Shireen Abu Akleh:



He had seen the TikTok video that showed Jenin militants near where Abu Akleh was shot to the southeast. He says it explicitly: "near where the Al-Jazeera journalist was shot." 

Mezzofiore is one of the authors of the CNN hit piece saying Israel deliberately killed her. 



The main evidence that Israel was responsible for her death is seen in this CNN graphic:



The militants to the southeast, who were exactly the correct distance to have shot her  are simply airbrushed out of history. It isn't like CNN mentioned them and dismissed them as possible shooters - they don't even mention them as existing, saying that the only recorded positions of any Palestinian militants were due south of Abu Akleh.

That is a provable lie.

The article reiterates this:

[A]n investigation by CNN offers new evidence — including two videos of the scene of the shooting — that there was no active combat, nor any Palestinian militants, near Abu Akleh in the moments leading up to her death.
We can no longer assume that CNN was not aware of the video showing other militants. It was aware and actively decided not to mention them.

And then claim that they never existed. 

CNN cannot credibly claim to have discounted the video based on a calculation of the time of day it was taken. The video of the militants is difficult to check for the time, but if I'm using SunCalc correctly, it was clearly within 15 minutes of Shireen's being shot. This is a comparison of the angle of the sun's shadow in the video (a wall parallel to the street) with what SunCalc says would be the shadow at 6:25 AM:


Is CNN actively withholding facts that undermine its predetermined conclusion that Israel is the only possible party that could have shot Shireen? Because this claim that there were no other militants in the area is a blatant lie on the part of the writers, not an oversight.

I tweeted Mezzifiore asking him why this was not mentioned in the article. No response as of this writing.

(h/t Jonah B)



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, May 27, 2022

This is mostly a Twitter thread I wrote earlier today.
Here is a summary of what @bellingcat and @CNN got wrong with Shireen Abu Akleh's death:

The only way they have any clue of the distance of the gunshots that killed her came from is the audio study. It is accurate. But they assume that fire can ONLY have come from due south.
They make the basic error (and I did too!) that since the only videos they had seen showed only the IDF at (roughly) that distance, that the fire MUST have come from the IDF.

And since it appeared that it was directed at the reporters, they assumed it was purposeful.
It didn't QUITE add up - the IDF was further away than their estimate (and their estimates were about 20 meters off) but since there was no other possible gunmen in that area south, it MUST have been the IDF. Everyone else made LESS sense. So, assume it is the party whose guilt requires the least amount of twisting facts - even though facts still needed to be twisted.
The fact that the IDF is a professional army, with great disincentive to fire on reporters, did not enter their thinking. This could be because of subconscious bias, or assuming that evidence at hand is all the evidence.
IDF professionalism and the fact that Jenin fighters are trigger-happy amateurs did not enter their parameters. Find the best fit, gloss over the inconsistencies, and voila! We solved it!
So they fit the conclusions with what they knew, not with what was possible. This is a basic error Sherlock Holmes would call out in an instant.
But they didn't know about the group of 15 Jenin gunmen to the southeast.
So they didn't consider that a possibility.


Image

That changes EVERYTHING. Suddenly, when we KNOW there was another group, a whole new range of ideas that were not considered make MUCH more sense than the IDF acting like a spoiled teen or despot who wants to get rid of critics.
What do we know about these gunmen?

1) They WERE walking within the range of the audio estimate of distance to Shireen.
2) They AREN'T professionals. They love to shoot guns. They don't learn military discipline.
3) They can EASILY make mistakes in shooting at people from a distance.
Also, the firing patterns of the shots that killed Shireen did not sound like the IDF's way of doing things, but they sounded - undisciplined.

Did the militants shoot Shireen?
If I am seeing this video accurately, showing reporters dodging a bullet minutes before Shireen was killed, and then pointing to a building while saying that there were Palestinian militants there, it sure seems possible or likely.
And if they could see a gunman in a building from where they point, that indicates a line of sight from the gunman to Shireen.
This brings up the possibility of gunmen on upper floors in buildings, which definitely solves the line of sight problem. This building would be ideal:


It would have a straight shot west if the IDF convoy went one block north, it is camouflaged with trees, - and it happens to be the exact distance that the bullet traveled to kill Shireen Abu Akleh.
It also fits the bullet patterns of the tree perfectly.
It's just a theory. There might be sections of the wall on the ground that provide line of sight. This is something CNN could have checked and it wasn't interested. 
A militant could have hopped on top of a wall, too.
The IDF wasn't in the southeast so any bullet that came from there was from a militant. And we have evidence of at least one that reporters seemed to think did, in fact, come from the southeast.
Does everything add up perfectly yet? No, of course not. But they didn't add up perfectly to indict the IDF, either. We need the bullet. We need Shireen's helmet. We need the bullet that hit the other reporter. But there is enough evidence that there was another group, who were undisciplined, and who were not at all excluded as suspects by the evidence we have.
Perhaps Bellingcat will have the intellectual honesty to look at these other possibilities - they fit in better with the tree bullet holes, they fit better with the reporters in the video, and they fit better with basic logic if you know anything about the IDF beyond BDS lies
And you KNOW CNN will never admit they are wrong unless the evidence becomes overwhelming. They care more about reputation and ratings than the truth.

That's where we are at. There is a compelling alternate theory that was NEVER considered. When you compare the chances of an IDF mistake (or assassination, in the middle of a street battlem turning their backs on the terrorist to their south in order to kill a reporter that would backfire spectacularly) with the chances of a Jenin terrorist making a mistake, there is really no comparison - unless you think the IDF is a bloodthirsty, vindictive army before you start looking at the evidence.
Not considering alternate theories, and thinking that the open source media gives a complete picture of the facts, is a recipe for failure.




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!

 

 

AddToAny

EoZ Book:"Protocols: Exposing Modern Antisemitism"

Printfriendly

EoZTV Podcast

Podcast URL

Subscribe in podnovaSubscribe with FeedlyAdd to netvibes
addtomyyahoo4Subscribe with SubToMe

search eoz

comments

Speaking

translate

E-Book

For $18 donation








Sample Text

EoZ's Most Popular Posts in recent years

Hasbys!

Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For over 19 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

Donate!

Donate to fight for Israel!

Monthly subscription:
Payment options


One time donation:

subscribe via email

Follow EoZ on Twitter!

Interesting Blogs

Blog Archive