Showing posts with label Freedom of the Press. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Freedom of the Press. Show all posts

Friday, October 20, 2023

By Daled Amos

These days, along with the rush to condemn Israel in its war to eliminate the Hamas terrorist threat, there are instances of retractions and deletions of hasty anti-Israel posts. One of the more unusual and unexpected examples is Ilhan Omar backtracking on her accusation that Israel bombed a hospital:


While Omar has reacted to pressure, Tlaib is still at it.

Another example of backtracking comes from Secretary of State Blinken. It's not that Blinken condemned any particular action of Israel, but rather that he came out with a suggestion that was so insulting and ill-timed that he soon deleted it. Just one day after the Hamas massacre of Israeli civilians, Blinken publicly recommended a cease-fire:
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken deleted a social media post Monday morning that expressed support for a "cease-fire" in Israel after Palestinian militants invaded the nation late last week.

The now-deleted post, which appeared on Blinken's X account late Sunday, described a conversation Blinken reportedly had with Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan.
While the tweet was deleted, it did not go unnoticed -- and was saved for posterity:


Fernandez is a former US diplomat and vice-president of MEMRI. 

Keep in mind that it is unlikely that Blinken would publicly suggest this and try to set the idea for a cease-fire in motion without Biden's approval. A friend suggested to me that this was a trial balloon, which was soon shot down.

But there is another example of deletion, one not intended to save face but intended instead to save the Hamas terrorists and save their own skin.









There was a time when the UN openly confirmed that Hamas violated international law.

John Ging, Director of the Operational Division at the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), in 2014 admitted that Hamas was using both UN facilities and residential areas to fire rockets at Israel.


At the time, in 2014, there were a number of journalists who reported on Hamas using human shields. Maybe because Hamas was using them as the shields.








Shifa has indeed “become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders, who can be seen in the hallways and offices,” the Washington Post reported on July 15. The Wall Street Journal‘s Middle East correspondent, Nick Casey, wrote on Twitter that Hamas uses Shifa “as a safe place to see media,” but removed the post afterwards.
Some journalists even tweeted about it -- even if they did delete those tweets later.


Here is a journalist tweeting about 9 children killed by Hamas -- once he was safely out of Gaza.
Italian journalist Gabriele Barbati said he was able to speak freely about witnessing a Hamas misfire that killed nine children at the Shati camp, confirming the Israel Defense Forces version of events, but only after leaving Gaza, “far from Hamas retaliation.”

Why did Barbati wait until after he was out of Gaza?
The answer has implications for the reporting by the journalists who stay in Gaza.

In 2021, when Israel destroyed a 12-story building in Gaza used by Hamas military intelligence and AP denied knowing that it shared a building with the terrorist group, a former AP journalist refuted their claim:
As to whether AP was aware of Hamas involvement with the building, Matti Friedman wrote in his 2014 Atlantic piece: “When Hamas’ leaders surveyed their assets before this summer’s round of fighting, they knew that among those assets was the international press. The AP staff in Gaza City would witness a rocket launch right beside their office, endangering reporters and other civilians nearby — and the AP wouldn’t report it.”

Friedman claimed the Hamas militants would regularly “burst into the AP’s Gaza bureau and threaten the staff — and the AP wouldn’t report it.”
UNRWA's deletion and subsequent "clarification" shows that the same fear exists. And the history of Hamas's massive violations of international law makes the indications of Hamas stealing humanitarian supplies from their own people very believable.




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Tuesday, August 08, 2023

Here is a list of attacks on journalists by Hamas, the PA and Palestinian protesters in just the past two weeks by the Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA).

August 1:

The Palestinian General Intelligence Service had kidnapped the freelance journalist SAMI SAEED ALSAAI (43 years old) at around 12:00PM yesterday, Monday, in Nablus, and took him to an unknown place. According to the journalist’s wife, four masked men dressed in black came to the journalist’s workplace in two cars, one of which had yellow license plates, and kidnapped him at gunpoint.

MADA also strongly condemns the attack by members of the internal security of Hamas government in Gaza Strip against journalists in Gaza Strip while covering the peaceful demonstrations that took place therein, calling for an improvement in the living conditions of citizens. Individuals in civilian clothes - identifying themselves as members of the Internal Security Service - assaulted Palestine TV and Abu Dhabi TV reporter, journalist WALID ABDEL RAHMAN, while covering the peaceful event in Jabalia Camp, in the northern Gaza Strip, last Sunday. They insulted him and forced him to stop the coverage.

In the same context, the freelance journalist EHAB AL-FASFOUS was threatened by the investigation and internal security members while covering the same event in Khan Younes, southern Gaza Strip.

The security services of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, and the Internal Security Forces in Gaza Strip, have increased their aggression against journalists in a violent manner that threatens the professional work of journalists, which is a bad indicator of the reality of media freedoms that is witnessing bloody violations. For instance, the reporter, ALI AL-SAMOUDI, was injured by shrapnel in the head as a result of the shooting in Jenin camp yard, while the citizens were celebrating the shooting attack that took place in "Tel Aviv" yesterday, Saturday. The security personnel also targeted the reporter of "Quds News Network" MOHAMMED ABED with a gas bomb directly at the event.

This was preceded by a group of Al-Shabibah members assaulting a group of journalists at Hebron University a few days ago, during which journalist NIDAL AL-NATSHEH was flagrantly assaulted.

The situation in Gaza Strip is not any better than this, as the attacks of the Internal Security Service affected many journalists yesterday, Saturday, as the security services of Hamas Authority arrested a number of journalists, namely, MOHAMMED AL-BABA, the cameraman of the French Agency, and the journalist, BASHAR TALIB, for about 45 minutes inside Jabalia police station, north of Gaza City, before they were released after their cameras and mobile phones were searched.

The security members also arrested journalist MOHAMMED FAYEZ ABU AOUN, journalist YAHYA HASSOUNA, journalist MOHAMMED AL-HADDAD, and journalist IHAB AL-FASFOUS, who was attacked, and his phone was confiscated before it was returned to him. As for the journalist, MOHAMMED ISMAIL AL-HADDAD, he was threatened by a person in civilian clothes who identified himself as a member of the Investigation Department, as soon as he was filming, and informed him that "there is a decision to ban filming and asked him to stay away from the place”.

Meanwhile, journalist FOUAD JARADA and his colleague MUAMMAR ABU TABIKH were threatened via phone of a special number “not to engage in any journalistic work on the "We Want to Live" movement in Gaza”.
At least two of these journalists have received major media coverage when they were injured by Israeli forces.

Ali al-Samoudi was injured last year in the incident that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, and he was interviewed extensively at the time. This time, Palestinian and world media have not written a word about his being injured in the head by a bullet.

AFP cameraman Mohammed al-Baba was injured at a Gaza rally in 2018 by a gunshot blamed on Israel and that story was covered by wire services.  But when Hamas arrests the same AFP journalist and confiscates his equipment, even AFP doesn't report it.

Perhaps even more shocking is that even though all these attacks and far more are documented by MADA, including in their monthly reports, the Committee to Protect Journalists has not said a word about Palestinian repression of press freedoms since February 2022. In that same time period they have issued dozens of alerts against Israel.

 CPJ routinely reports on journalists injured and arrested worldwide - but ignores when it is done by Palestinian authorities. This means that even the major international NGO whose mission is to protect press freedoms is actively suppressing news of Palestinian violations of those freedoms.


(h/t GnasherJew)



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

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Thursday, July 27, 2023




The Al Quds Brigades of Islamic Jihad - Jenin Brigade today issued a warning, and a not so veiled threat, to any media that reports things it doesn't like:

In the name of God, the most gracious, the most merciful

* Notice issued by the Jenin Battalion - Military Media *

Media brothers, institutions and individuals,

We note to you that it is forbidden to carry out any media activity such as photographing people or places or otherwise inside the camp, specifically with regard to the capabilities and connections of resistance work, without permission from concerned brothers. Whoever disobeys bears responsibility for that. We note that the capabilities of the resistance and the sacrifices of the mujahideen are not a place for a press scoop.

I think they make themselves quite clear.

And it is almost a certainty that the international media will adhere to these rules. 

Which is why you won't see photos of terrorists burying IEDs in their own streets, or booby-trapping houses of Jenin residents, or any of the other gross violations of human rights that the terror groups do daily in Jenin. And without photos, there will be no reporting. And without reporting, the only aggression being reported on is from the Israeli side.

Remember how reporters used to be brave and fearless in their commitment to telling the entire story no matter what the consequences? 

Those days are long gone. Now we have reporters who stay in hotels in Tel Aviv and drive over to Ramallah and Jenin to parrot the terrorist talking points about how awful the Israelis are - and justify the lies by calling it a "narrative," before returning to their bars in Israel where they can boast about their "speaking truth to power."




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, June 12, 2023


There was uproar in Lebanon on Thursday after Kuwaiti media writer and producer Fajer Al-Saeed was prevented from entering the country.
Al-Saeed was stopped at Beirut’s Rafic Hariri International Airport on Wednesday evening, with Lebanon’s General Security rejecting a request from Kuwaiti Embassy officials to allow her to spend the night there before leaving on the first flight to Kuwait.

Instead, she was deported back to her country on Thursday morning after spending the night at the airport.

Joseph Al-Kosseifi, head of the Lebanese Press Editors’ Syndicate, told Arab News: “We are against obstructing the work of any journalist in Lebanon — whether Lebanese or visiting from abroad.

“What happened requires clarification. Some claim that Al-Saeed was prevented from entering Lebanon due to an Israeli stamp on her passport, while others argue that her bold stance against Hezbollah was the reason...."

Ya Libnan also blamed Hezbollah:

 One analyst who did not want to be named for fear on his life told Ya Libnan, "There is always a Hezbollah official at the airport who decides if a person can enter Lebanon or not , because the General Security is controlled by Hezbollah." 

Hezbollah itself (via Al Akhbar)  claimed that the reason she was barred was because there was an Israeli stamp on her passport. 

But Fajer Al-Saeed herself said that was a lie - she has visited the West Bank more than once at the invitation of the PA, but she doesn't have an Israeli stamp. Which is almost certainly true since Israel doesn't generally stamp passports but inserts a piece of paper to allow visitors avoid exactly these sorts of situations.

Al Saeed has also been a guest on Israeli social media and has publicly called for peace between Arab states and Israel. 

So there were plenty of reasons that Hezbollah would not want Al-Saeed to enter the country. And apparently they make the real decisions in some aspects of Lebanese life. 




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, May 03, 2023

Palestinian prisoner rights NGOs are using today's World Press Freedom Day to call for Israel to release 16 "journalists' who are in prison. They claim that these journalists were arrested to curtail freedom of speech:  "The occupation authorities are pursuing a number of policies to restrict freedom of opinion and expression and impose more censorship and control on the Palestinians, as part of the tools of the apartheid regime, most notably the policy of arrest, threats, house arrest, and repeated assaults in the field of work; This is in a continuous attempt to undermine their societal, cultural, and political role, and to prevent them from exposing the ongoing crimes against the Palestinians."

They pointedly don't mention that these "journalists" were arrested because they engaged in terror. And many were never journalists to begin with.

People like Ahmed Adeeb Ahmed Al-Saifi, a member of Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades sentenced to 17 years in 2011 for his involvement in a shooting attack. He became a "journalist" during his time in prison.

Or Bassem Khandakji, a PFLP member who drove a 16 year old to blow himself up at the Carmel Market in 2004, killing 3 civilians. He also started writing after he was in prison.

Or Mahmoud Musa Issa (right), a Hamas Al Qassam member who kidnapped and killed an Israeli soldier in 1992. H is another "journalist" who started writing while in prison. 

Or Islamic Jihad's Haitham Jamal Ali Jaber, sentenced to 28 years in 2002 for terror attacks, who completed his degrees while in prison and also only became a writer afterwards. 

Of course, people who do have press credentials and use them to help terrorism are even more reprehensible and should not be held up as 

One photojournalist, Yazan Abu Salah, is a PFLP member who was sentenced to four years for his involvement in setting up terror cells an Iranian-funded plot to kidnap soldiers.

This is just more cynicism from Palestinian NGOs who know that most people will not bother to check their claims. Their track record of telling the truth is exceedingly poor, but they keep getting funded and respected. They know that years of lying propaganda pay off over time.




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, March 01, 2023



This morning, ahead of a planned press conference at the Watan Media Network in Ramallah, Palestinian security services in plainclothes stormed in and shut it down.

According to Watan,  the security forces, some of whom were armed, tried to expel a number of journalists who were present to cover the press conference. They also attacked Watan employees when they objected to the intrusion, which they say was done without a written order.

The press conference was going to include criticism of the Palestinian Authority for working with the US in trying to calm down tensions, as well as for not working to hold elections.

Since this is a dog-bites-man story, don't expect to see any op-eds decrying the lack of freedoms under Palestinian rule. 







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, November 21, 2022


Palestinian media is very happy at videos of football fans in Qatar who insult Israeli reporters.

But one writer sees that Qatar and the other Gulf countries only pretend to support Palestinians. This article shows that Palestinians see the difference between real support for Palestinians and the Arab version of virtue signaling.

Hosting the World Cup Qatar cost the Gulf states 220-240 billion dollars. Housing projects for two million Palestinians in the Palestinian territories and two additional power plants would cost $10 billion...

The splendor of the World Cup marks the demise of what little concern other Arab and Muslim countries had for the fate of the Palestinians over the past two decades. This attention will go down in the history of the Middle East as a clear sign of the oil-rich Arab states turning their backs on their Palestinian brethren.

They justify their unwarranted self-interest with the absurd pretext that such aid to the Palestinians amounts to interference in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on behalf of the Jewish state. The hypocrisy in this statement stinks to the high heavens.

These wasteful people should go to the refugee camps in Gaza and tell their inhabitants that they are not ready to help them because their poverty, neglect and suffering are the best card in the Arab world against the “occupying Zionists”.

Try to say that the lack of aid is part of a clever political plan to help the Palestinian people politically. Try to explain to them how you build museums, malls, and stadiums in your countries at a cost of billions of dollars each year. 
There was a lot of bitterness in Palestinian media after the Abraham Accords, but I have only rarely seen something this caustic towards the Gulf countries. 

The ironic part if that Qatar has shown more genuine interest in giving aid to Gazans than any other country. 



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

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Read all about it here!

 

 

Thursday, August 11, 2022

From Ian:

Honest Reporting: The ‘Fix’ Is In: How Hitler-Praising Palestinians Are Warping Gaza Conflict Coverage
New York Times’ Fady Hanona Urges Missile Attacks on Israel
Out of the eight articles produced by The New York Times during the three-day PIJ-initiated conflict, six credit Fady Hanona as having contributed from Gaza City (see here, here, here, here, here, and here).

Hanona, a freelance producer and fixer who has also been hired by the BBC, The Guardian, and VICE News, appears to be working to further the anti-Israel narrative promoted by Palestinian terror organizations that seek the destruction of the world’s only Jewish state.

For one, he supports arch-terrorist Marwan Barghouti, having backed him repeatedly on Facebook (here, here, and here). Prior to his incarceration, Barghouti co-founded and headed the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade, an organization that murdered dozens of Israelis in suicide bombings and shooting attacks during the Second Intifada (2000-2005).

Hanona moreover made light of the escape from prison of members of the Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and Palestinian Islamic Jihad in September of last year (see here and here). Most of the escapees were serving life sentences for their roles in attacks on Israeli citizens. Ayham Kamamji, for example, was convicted of kidnapping and murdering teenager Eliyahu Asheri.

Indeed, Hanona makes no attempt to hide his desire that Israel be removed from the map, referring to the country’s sovereign territory as the “[19]48 lands,” while putting “Israel” in scare quotes.

During 2014’s Operation Protective Edge against Hamas in Gaza, the New York Times freelancer took to social media to threaten the murder of Ghassan Alian, an Israeli Druze who commanded the IDF’s Golani Brigade at the time.

Then, on August 18, 2014 — days before a ceasefire took effect between Israel and Hamas — Hanona urged the Palestinian “resistance” to reject a truce and continue its missile attacks on Tel Aviv, which had at that point already cost the lives of five civilians.

In another online post from the same month, he went as far as invoking Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to support his point about the strength of Gazan fighters. “As Hitler said, give me a Palestinian soldier and a German weapon, and I will make Europe crawl on its fingertips,” Hanona’s post read, citing an unconfirmed quote attributed to the man responsible for the murder of six million Jews.

Furthermore, the NYT fixer shared a now-deleted propaganda video of terrorist groups in Jenin on Facebook, telling his followers that Palestinians should return to “the culture of fighting and killing Israelis.”

“I don’t accept a Jew, Israeli or Zionist, or anyone else who speaks Hebrew. I’m with killing them wherever they are: children, elderly people, and soldiers,” Hanona asserted, adding: “The Jews are sons of the dogs… I am in favor of killing them and burning them like Hitler did. I will be so happy.” According to his Twitter feed, Israel’s security services subsequently flagged his name when he applied for a permit to travel to Jerusalem.
Brendan O'Neill: Progressives for jihad
Remember when progressives were opposed to hardline religious movements that use violence to try to destroy democratic states? Islamic Jihad is a thoroughly regressive movement that says it will settle for nothing less than the obliteration of Israel. It wants to create an Islamic State of Palestine in which Sharia would rule and all who fall foul of it - uppity women, homosexuals, atheists - would suffer.

Islamic Jihad is not a national liberation movement. It is a violent and extremist religious organization generously funded by Iran's Revolutionary Guards. It rejects the political process and has executed numerous acts of indiscriminate slaughter in Israel in recent years, massacring hundreds of Israeli citizens in restaurants, at supermarkets, on buses.

Name me one nation on Earth that would turn a blind eye to such existential threats? If there was a well-armed group of religious fundamentalists a few miles from Britain that had sent suicide bombers to slaughter British men, women and children, we would act, no? And yet Israel is always condemned for acting.

Islamic Jihad is not good for the Palestinian people. Its activities in recent years have in part been designed to weaken the Palestinian Authority (PA), the Mahmoud Abbas-led government of the West Bank. It wants to dislodge the PA. That will help the Palestinian people, will it?
A look back at the first disastrous ‘Two-State Solution
To fully understand its origins, we must go back to the early years of the 20th century.

In 1920, Great Britain was given the responsibility by the League of Nations to oversee the Palestine Mandate after the ending of the 400-year-old Ottoman Turkish Empire’s occupation of much of the Middle East. Britain was to uphold the League’s express intention of reconstituting within the Mandatory territory a reborn Jewish national home.

The League of Nations created several articles in line with the original intent of the Balfour Declaration of November 29, 1917. At the last minute, however, a new article was introduced by the British Colonial Office: Article 25.

It became apparent that its inclusion directly enabled Great Britain in 1921-22 to tear away all the vast Mandatory territory east of the river Jordan and give it away to the Arab Hashemite tribe: The territory to become Trans-Jordan, led by the emir Abdullah.

British officials claimed that the gift of Mandatory Palestine east of the Jordan River was in gratitude to the Hashemites for their contribution in helping defeat the Turks. However, T.S. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) described in derisory terms the Hashemite role as “a side show of a side show.”

Ironically, Britain was aided far more by the Nili underground movement in defeating the Ottoman Turkish Empire, which had ruled geographical Palestine for 400 years.

This was the first partition of the non-state geographical territory known as Palestine and the first two-state solution. It created a new Arab entity some 100 years ago called Trans-Jordan, covering some 35,000 square miles, or nearly four fifths of the erstwhile Palestine Mandate. Immediately,

Jewish residence in this new Arab territory was forbidden in an act of Islamic apartheid (which no one protested on US college campuses...), and it is thus historically correct to state that Jordan is Palestine. Note too that Jordan’s population is comprised of well over 75% Arabs who call themselves Palestinians.

In 1923, the British and French colonial powers also divided up the northern part of the Palestine Mandate. Britain stripped away the Golan Heights (with its ancient Biblical Jewish roots) and gave it to French-occupied Syria.

The Balfour Declaration issued by Lord Balfour, British foreign secretary, never envisaged that the Jordan River would be the eastern boundary of the reconstituted Jewish homeland.

As early as September 19, 1919, the London Times newspaper had thundered in an editorial: “The Jordan will not do as the eastern frontier of Palestine … Palestine must have a good military frontier east of the river Jordan … Our duty as Mandatory is to make Jewish Palestine not a struggling state but one that is capable of vigorous and independent life.”

During its administration of the remaining Palestine Mandate’s tiny territory, between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, (a mere forty miles in width) Britain severely restricted Jewish immigration and purchases of land while turning a blind eye to massive illegal Arab immigration into the territory from neighboring stagnant Arab territories. This had been Britain’s policy since it was given the Mandate from 1921/22 up until 1947 and Israel’s subsequent independence in 1948.

Britain’s sorry record of appeasement of the Arabs, at the expense of Jewish destiny in the remaining tiny territory, culminated in the infamous 1939 White Paper, which limited Jewish immigration to a total of just 75,000 souls over the next five years. This draconian policy, coming as it did on the eve of the outbreak of World War 2 and the Holocaust, was a deathblow to millions of Jews attempting to flee extermination by Nazi Germany.

Sunday, July 03, 2022

Here is the text of Yair Lapid's first speech as new Israeli prime minister. It is a good one.





I want to start by thanking the 13th Prime Minister of the State of Israel, Naftali Bennett. For your decency, for your friendship and for leading the government this past year to economic and security achievements not seen here for years. A special thank you for allowing the citizens of Israel to see this week an orderly transition between people who keep agreements and believe in one another.

The State of Israel is bigger than all of us. More important than any of us. It was here before us, and will be here long after us. It doesn’t belong only to us. It belongs to those who dreamed of it for thousands of years in the Diaspora, and also to those yet to be born, to future generations.

For them and for us, we must choose the common good; that which unites us. There will always be disagreements, the question is how we manage them, and how we make sure they don’t manage us.

Disagreement isn’t necessarily a bad thing so long as it doesn’t undermine the stability of the government and damage our internal resilience. So long as we remember that we all have the same goal: a Jewish, democratic, liberal, big, strong, advanced, and prosperous Israel.

The deep Israeli truth is that on most of the truly important topics – we believe in the same things.

We believe that Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people. Its establishment didn’t begin in 1948, but rather on the day Yehoshua Bin Nun crossed the Jordan and forever connected the people of Israel with the land of Israel, between the Jewish nation and its Israeli homeland.

We believe that Israel must be a liberal democracy in which every citizen has the right to change the government and set the course of their life. Nobody can be denied their fundamental rights: respect, liberty, freedom of employment, and the right to personal security.

We believe we must always preserve our military might. Without it, there’s no security. I am the son of a Holocaust survivor — a 13-year-old Jewish boy who they wanted to kill and who had no one to protect him. We will defend ourselves, by ourselves. We will make sure we always have the Israel Defense Forces, an army with undeniable strength, that our enemies fear.

One night in the winter of 1944, in the Budapest Ghetto, my grandmother called out to my father, and told him: “My child, you don’t know it, but today is your Bar Mitzvah. I can’t bake a cake, your father won’t return.” My grandfather perished in the Mauthausen Concentration Camp.

“But there’s one thing I can do.” And she took out a small bottle of perfume, Chanel 5, which was the perfume of elegant ladies before the war. We’ll never know how she kept it all that time. She shattered it on the floor and said “at least it won’t stink at my son’s bar mitzvah.”

We believe that Israel is a Jewish state. Its character is Jewish. Its identity is Jewish. Its relations with its non-Jewish citizens are also Jewish. The book of Leviticus says, “But the stranger who dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself.”

We believe that so long as Israel’s security needs are met, Israel is a country that seeks peace. Israel stretches out its hand to all the peoples of the Middle East, including the Palestinians, and says: The time has come for you to recognize that we’ll never move from here, let’s learn to live together.

We believe there is a great blessing in the Abraham Accords, a great blessing in the security and economic momentum created at the Negev Summit with the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, and Morocco, and that there will be a great blessing in the agreements yet to come.

The people of Israel won’t dwell alone. It is our job to continue to strengthen our position in the world, our relations with our greatest friend and ally, the United States, and to harness the international community in the struggle against antisemitism and the delegitimization of Israel.

We believe that it’s the job of the government to uphold the law, and the job of the law to uphold the standards of government. The law is what protects us from corruption and violence. A court is what protects the weak from the strong. The law is the basis for our lives together.

We believe that the Israeli economy must be based on free-market principles, on the creativity and dynamism of Israeli technology, and that our job is to protect those who have nothing. To provide a fair opportunity for every child, everywhere.

We believe that the Iranian threat is the gravest threat facing Israel. We’ll do whatever we must to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear capability, or entrenching itself on our borders.

I stand before you at this moment and say to everyone seeking our demise, from Gaza to Tehran, from the shores of Lebanon to Syria: don’t test us. Israel knows how to use its strength against every threat, against every enemy.

We believe in, and pray for the well-being of our soldiers and police officers, in the air, at sea, and on land. As it’s written in the prayer for the well-being of IDF soldiers, “May the Almighty cause the enemies who rise up against us to be struck down before them.” We won’t be quiet and won’t rest until our sons are returned: Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul of blessed memory, Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed.

There’s something else that we believe in: that we’re allowed to disagree. Freedom of expression is a fundamental principle. Freedom of the press is a component without which democracy cannot survive. It’s incumbent upon us to put effort into revealing the facts and understanding the truth.

The great Israeli question is actually why in a period in which we have wide national agreement on all the important topics, the levels of hate and anxiety within Israeli society are so high? Why is polarization more threatening than ever?

The answer is – politics. In Israel, extremism doesn’t come from the streets to politics. It’s the opposite. It flows like lava from politics to the streets. The political sphere has become more and more extreme, violent and vicious, and it’s dragging Israeli society along with it. This we must stop. This is our challenge.

The State of Israel — Israelis — are better than this. Here, there’s brainpower, imagination, and strength that can’t be found anywhere else. The Israeli economy is a pilgrimage destination for the entire world. Precisely in a time of global crisis, our potential grew. We know how to change, to improve — we just need to do it together.

There are two photos hanging in my office in the Knesset, one alongside the other: David Ben-Gurion and Menachem Begin. Two political rivals, but also the two most important prime ministers we’ve had. They often argued, but they also always remembered they had the same goal: building the strength and moral character of the State of Israel.

This goal is greater than all that divides us. Our test is not whether or not we win the argument, but rather, if we learned to find a way to work together with those who don’t agree with us.

Many people who didn’t vote for this government are listening to this speech, many people who don’t and won’t support it. I thank you for your willingness to listen. I ask to work together with you for the good of our country. I’m committed to serving you as well. I embrace the words of my predecessor, and want to repeat them: we are brothers.

The challenges before us are immense. The struggle against Iran, terror at home, the Israeli education crisis, the cost of living, strengthening personal security. When the challenges are so great, we can’t let disagreements consume all our strength. In order to create a common good here, we need one another.

Our children are watching us. What do we want them to see? We want our children to see that we did everything to build a Jewish and democratic, strong and advanced, benevolent and good Israel.

Only together will we prevail.

Thank you.



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

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424. 

Read all about it here!

 

 

Friday, July 01, 2022



Human Rights Watch issued a press release describing how Hamas and the Palestinian Authority engage in torturing prisoners that haven't been charged with any crime.

As of this writing, I cannot find a single Palestinian news site covering this story.

Israeli Arab sites have the story. Pan Arab news sites have it. But Palestinian media - nothing.

Usually, Hamas media would highlight any report against the PA, but since they are named too, they'd rather not create an opening for people to get upset at them. And the same goes for the media linked to the Palestinian Authority. 

This sort of censorship is the every day reality in the Palestinian territories. News that makes leaders look bad is hidden from the news-consuming public. Of course, they can see the story at Al Jazeera - one of the most popular news sources for Palestinians - and then the people grumble on social media about how they have to look elsewhere to read the news. 

HRW also felt obligated to claim that Israel tortures Palestinians, too. Because they literally never can release any report or research about Palestinians without mentioning that Israel is really the biggest problem.





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 30, 2022



On May 3, Reporters Without Borders released their annual rankings of World Press Freedom.

No one seems to have noticed that the abysmal record of the freedom of media in the Palestinian territories plummeted even further.

In the 2021 rankings, "Palestine" came in as #132 out of 180 with a score of 56.82.

In 2022, it fell to #170 with a score of 28.98.

Here are the countries that it is comparable to:

166 Saudi Arabia 33.71
167 Bahrain 30.97
168 Egypt 30.23
169 Yemen 29.14
170 Palestine 28.98
171 Syria 28.94
172 Iraq 28.59
173 Cuba 27.32
174 Vietnam 26.11
175 China 25.17

The media generally regards any news that comes out from China or Yemen or Syria or Saudi Arabia as being automatically suspect because everyone knows that those countries have heavy control of the media, both direct and indirect. Their official statements are treated like the propaganda it is.

Yet statements from the Palestinian Authority - the organization that controls and limits the media - are still treated respectfully. Their media is quoted as if they are Western-style liberal outlets when in fact they are suppressed and threatened if they say the wrong thing. And the readers of these Western articles that quote Palestinian sources are never told that the media is suspect.

Even worse, the prevailing atmosphere under both Palestinian Authority and Hamas rule is that everyone knows there are certain things they simply cannot say, as a reporter or to a reporter. In recent days I showed that Palestinian journalists and eyewitnesses are well aware that there were other militants in Jenin near where Shireen Abu Akleh was - but they will never say that to CNN or AP. Once the official narrative is established, you won't find anyone to publicly contradict it. I've documented dozens of cases of "eyewitnesses" who know what they are allowed to say and what they are not. 

Also not mentioned in the report is that even foreign media is threatened to toe the government line, especially but not only in Gaza.

Perhaps the most absurd part is that the EU and UNESCO marked World Press Freedom Day with the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate in Ramallah this year, barely mentioning how terrible the situation is - but quick to blame Israel for the majority of issues with Palestinian press freedom.

The Palestinians have a narrative of blaming everything on Israel and downplaying the complete lack of freedoms under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas  - and the world happily plays along, even when they know the truth. 




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 19, 2009

Tonight, Dr. Richard Landes spoke at Rutgers University. He is the author of The Augean Stables blog, The Second Draft blog documenting media manipulation by Palestinian Arabs and their supporters, and the driving force behind the Understanding the Goldstone Report blog. Somehow, he also manages to be a professor of history at Boston University and the author of numerous books and articles on topics I cannot begin to understand. 

 His topics tonight were wide-ranging but centered on the media and the Middle East conflict. He brought up numerous videos showing how the media reported on Gaza and how they purposefully ignored facts that would make Hamas look bad. Landes also spent a bit of time on the Goldstone report and on the Mohammed al-Dura Pallywood case. I hadn't told him one way or the other whether I would attend, and tried to keep a low profile, but when he mentioned my blog I admitted who I was. (I am not utterly without ego, but I am working on it.) 

So this was a rare public appearance by The Elder. Landes ascribes much of the anti-Israel bias of the media to the media's fear of Hamas (and Hezbollah.) There is no doubt that this is a strong contributor - terrorists make no secret of the fact that if they are displeased with you, they will make your life unpleasant. And they watch the news. We saw it happen in Lebanon with Hezbollah, and we saw it in Gaza with Hamas and the other terror groups, especially a few years ago when journalists were regularly kidnapped. 

 After Western reporters all fled Gaza, all that were left were Palestinian reporters who have an inherent anti-Israel bias. But more importantly, they are scared witless of Hamas. Hamas has attacked press agencies numerous times. Here is an incident last year when Hamas attacked a mosque, beat people there and trashed it before taking it over. Not one mainstream media outlet published this story. The reason is clearly because of Hamas' threats against Gaza reporters. (Hezbollah also carefully managed news media access to the Lebanon war in 2006, a lot more subtly than Hamas but very effectively.) The New York Times did run a story once on how Gaza reporters censor themselves out of fear. One can pinpoint the exact date that Gaza journalism died. It was mid-June, 2007, and it is detailed in this article from Ma'an - possibly the last objective article Ma'an has ever written about Hamas:
Local Palestinian radio stations in the Gaza Strip were launched in quick succession over recent years. As many as eleven radio stations were counted operating in Gaza Strip in a short space of time. Many of the stations had been closed and looted during the recent conflict in the strip. Ash Sha'b station, affiliated to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, was looted, whilst Al Hurriya and Ash Shabab, affiliated to Fatah, chose to cease transmission. The spokesperson of the military wing of Hamas, the Qassam Brigades, Abu Ubayda, vehemently denied that the brigades had threatened any of the local stations. Abu Ubayda told Ma'an that the radio stations halted transmission willingly because they were working within a certain framework and their coverage of events in Gaza was partial, rather than objective. He added that the employees and owners of the radio stations closed them out of fear, rather than any direct threats from the Qassam Brigades. Abu Ubayda also said that some of the radio stations were affiliated to well-known Fatah figures, or directly owned by Fatah. Palestine radio stopped transmission from the Gaza Strip during the recent events. A statement was issued accusing the Al Qassam Brigades of torching the station's headquarters and a local transmission tower in Khan Younis. Palestine satellite and terrestrial TV stopped transmission last Friday in Gaza City and began transmitting from Ramallah, in the central West Bank. The director of the Palestinian Broadcasting Corporation, Basim Abu Sumayya, ascribed the stoppage to Hamas' seizure of the Gaza Strip, which prevented employees from accessing the company's buildings in order to work. Abu Sumayya accused Hamas of taking control of every property that belongs to the PBC, in addition to the live transmission vehicle and the satellite frequency, which the PBC changed immediately. ...As for the radio stations, which stopped their transmission, Abu Zuhri said they did so voluntarily because they were involved in inciting and they committed criminal acts when they were fuelling disputes in the Palestinian arena. He asserted that the Al-Qassam Brigades and Executive Force never attacked or robbed any radio station. The Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa satellite TV station, which many accuse of lacking professionalism and fuelling dispute, was the sole TV station that continued broadcasting during the conflict in the Gaza Strip. They transmitted special photos of the Al-Qassam Brigades and the Executive Force, while they were storming the security HQs. They also conducted exclusive interviews with Hamas leaders. The most criticism-provoking act of Al-Aqsa TV was the transmission of the execution of Samih Al-Madhoun. The chief editor of Ma'an News Agency threatened to close the agency's Gaza office as a result of the pressure exerted on him and the agency's correspondents and photojournalists. The Al-Qassam Brigades visited the office, but did not harm any employee or property. Meanwhile, Hamas and their Fatah allies criticised Ma'an's reports and some issued threats.
Things only got worse after that. I agree with Richard that fear is a factor in the loss of objectivity in journalism. He mentioned other factors as well, such as the fact that liberal reporters are (perhaps subconsciously) advocates of the simplistic idea that the absence of war is always a desirable objective and that their role is to help that to happen. Therefore you will see a large number of stories about Israel's use of "disproportionate" force and of Arab civilian victims, but very few giving context of everything Israel tried to do over eight years to stop rocket attacks before resorting to the battlefield. I think that a lot can be ascribed to ignorance. Arabs have hammered the West with consistent, simple-minded memes ("occupation," "intransigence," "illegal settlements," "Likud=far right hawks," "Fatah is moderate") that have become ingrained in the very psyche of the media personalities themselves. This is how we see situations like I mentioned today of Fox misrepresenting their own interview with Obama, after it was colored through the glass of Middle East conventional wisdom. 

 Another factor that I mentioned in the Q&A, and that Dr. Landes expanded on, is that Israeli self-criticism, which is part of what makes it strong, is perceived by the media as proof of its being immoral. As Richard noted, when the media interviews 100% of Arabs who say that Israel is completely wrong, and 50% of Israelis interviewed agree with the Arabs, then the impression one gets is that Israel is 75% wrong. All in all, it was an interesting evening, and as you can imagine, Richard is a really nice fellow. The turnout might have been better had this not also been the night that Rutgers held a meeting to discuss contributing leftover meal-plan money to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund, a charity that has uncomfortably close connections to terrorism.

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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.

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