Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Reuters

Showing posts with label Reuters. Show all posts

Monday, February 06, 2023

Syria insists it would NEVER accept earthquake aid from Israel. No one thinks this is strange.

The pro-Assad regime Al Watan newspaper on Monday quoted a Syrian official denying reports it relayed a request for Israeli aid in the wake of the massive earthquake that shook the region.
Earlier, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a request from Syria did arrive and that Israel was prepared to send tents and medical supplies and provide treatment for the injured.

Arabic media reports one of the denials:

The source said, "If Netanyahu had received such a request, it was certainly from his allies and friends in ISIS, Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist organizations."

The source added to the Syrian newspaper Al-Watan: "The Israeli occupation entity is the cause of woes, wars and tensions in the region, and it is the last one who has the right to talk about providing aid and assistance. It is disgraceful that Netanyahu exploits the catastrophe of the earthquake that struck Syria to mislead public opinion and cover up the expansionist and aggressive policies of the occupation."

Aid-washing!

The highest priority of any government is to protect its citizens. If Syria is telling the truth now, it is saying quite clearly that hating Israel is a more fundamental tenet than saving people's lives.

That's about as good a definition of antisemitism as there is.

It is exactly the philosophy of BDS, who claim to want to boycott Israel at any cost (for anyone but themselves.)

And just like BDS, the insistence that human lives are less important than having nothing to do with the Jewish state is couched in terms of - morality!

Isn't it strange that the rest of the world doesn't think this is strange? Syria and other Muslim nations having an obsessive hate of Israel is accepted as a law of nature.

And, in some ways, that's also a good definition of antisemitism.

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!

What's Mondoweiss afraid of?

Mondoweiss is very upset:

Last week, the Thomas Reuters Foundation announced that award-winning Palestinian journalist Shatha Hammad would be the recipient of the prestigious Kurt Schork Local Reporter Award for 2022. Not 48 hours later, Zionist watchdog group Honest Reporting unleashed a vicious smear campaign against Hammad to pressure Reuters and the Kurt Schork Fund to revoke the award. The campaign succeeded.

Hammad is just the latest Palestinian journalist to be targeted by such groups. Earlier this month, the New York Times fired Palestinian photojournalist Hosam Salem for expressing support for Palestinian resistance, after Honest Reporting dug through Salem’s facebook posts to “expose” him to the Times. Honest Reporting is one of many Zionist watchdog organizations whose mission is to rush to the defense of one of the last colonial regimes in the world, effectively functioning as an international arm of Israeli “Hasbara” and providing a smokescreen for the continuous colonization and ongoing ethnic cleansing of Palestine.

As pointed out by a letter signed by hundreds of Palestinian and Arab journalists condemning these recent online attacks, these watchdog groups function similarly to Israeli intelligence agencies, digging “deep into journalists’ social media accounts, chasing after any expressions, statements, or even jokes said in childhood, taking them out of context and weaponizing them.”

This is what Honest Reporting did to Hammad, distorting several of her old facebook posts from 2014 in an attempt to paint her as an antisemite and “Hitler fan.” Hammad emphatically denies these outrageous claims, and even contends that one of the alleged facebook posts was outright fabrication.

The Kurt Schork Memorial Fund buckled under the pressure and promptly revoked Hammad’s award. This alone is concerning, as it shows a willingness to accept the accusations of a clearly partisan organization that uses questionable methods in producing “proof” of wrongdoing.

The article goes on to say that Honest Reporting is Zionist and partisan, that there are double standards being applied, that the social media posts being quoted are false out of context or old - a litany of excuses and accusations about the unfairness of reporters being fired for being "pro-Palestinian."

Yet somehow, this fearless media outlet doesn't once mention what these reporters actually wrote that got them fired.

Seems like a curious detail to leave out of a story, doesn't it? According to the terror supporting Mondoweiss, these innocent lambs are accused of doing something they don't want to reveal, but you should trust them - the journalists are innocent and the accusers are horrible people.

As HR reports, Salem has posted multiple times clear and unambiguous support for terror attacks, including the murder of four rabbis at prayer in Jerusalem.

In 2011, Salem took to Facebook to praise the Jerusalem bus bombing in which British Christian evangelical student Mary Jane Gardner was murdered, and 67 others were injured. Members of the Hamas cell had reportedly planned an additional attack but were stopped by Israeli security forces.

On November 18, 2014, Hosam Salem again used Facebook to express his joy over the massacre of four rabbis and an Israeli-Druze police officer in a synagogue in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof.

Citing the Quran, he encouraged his followers to “smite the necks” of unbelievers, adding: “[This is the] summary of the Jerusalem operation [sic] today.”

There’s more. In 2015, Salem applauded two acts of terror (see here and here); a shooting at the Gush Etzion Junction that killed an American teenager, an Israeli man, and a Palestinian bystander; and a Jerusalem stabbing that killed three.

Some three years later, after being hired by The New York Times, Salem called for more violence following an attack that killed two IDF recruits in the West Bank. “Shoot, kill, withdraw: three quick operational steps…to bring peace to the hearts of sad people like us,” the inciting post read.

Finally, he has repeatedly eulogized Mohammed Salem and Nabil Masoud. The two were responsible for a 2004 suicide bombing that killed ten workers at the Ashdod port, Israel’s second-busiest harbor.

What about Shatha Hammad?

The posts that HonestReporting uncovered included dozens of violent and antisemitic clarion calls, such as one in which she eulogized the “martyrs” who killed five “settlers” during the 2014 Jerusalem synagogue massacre where two Palestinian terrorists attacked worshipers with axes, knives and a gun.
In several posts in 2014, Hammad, who currently works for Middle East Eye and Al Jazeera, signed off her comments using the nickname “Hitler” and joked that she was “in agreement” with the Nazi leader who oversaw the mass extermination of six million Jews during the Holocaust.
In another post — originally written in Arabic but translated into English by HonestReporting — she described herself as “friends” and “one” with Hitler, adding they have the “same mentality, like, for example, the extermination of the Jews” alongside a smiley face emoji.

Honest Reporting has screenshots, so Hammad's claim of "fabrication" is ridiculous.

Mondoweiss wants its readers to be angry - but it sure doesn't want them to know the posts it is defending as mere "criticism of Israel." The article is filled with hyperlinks - but not one to Honest Reporting's articles that show the screenshots of these journalists promoting the murders of Jews.

In fact, they are so upset at these revelations that they say, with a straight face, that "Zionist watchdogs are a danger to journalism." Not journalists who support murdering Jews - but the people who expose them.

Mondoweiss is afraid of the truth. It tries to hide the truth. Which proves that the truth is not on their side.

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!

Morningstar still leans on anti-Israel sources for "Environmental, Social, and Governance" (ESG) ratings

Earlier this month, Reuters reported:

A unit of Morningstar Inc (MORN.O) that rates companies on environmental, social and governance criteria will no longer sell a human rights research product to investors after an independent review found it "focuses disproportionately on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict" relative to other high-risk regions, executives said on Thursday.

In addition to eliminating the Human Rights Radar product, Morningstar's Sustainalytics unit will take other steps recommended by law firm White & Case LLP, such as making its research more transparent and adding an ombudsperson. In a note on Chicago-based Morningstar's website, CEO Kunal Kapoor said that the company previously was "overly dismissive" when Jewish groups and others raised concerns about bias in its research.

While removing Human Rights Radar as a source is important, the issues with Morningstar's Sustainalytics unit goes much deeper.

The report from White & Case shows that the unit has a close relationship with the Who Profits NGO, which lists only Jewish-owned companies even though there are Israeli Arab-owned companies that would fit its own criteria of what to place on a blacklist. Which means that one of Morningstar's main sources for information is, by definition, antisemitic.

Several Sustainalytics employees provided information about the use of the NGO Who Profits as a source relied upon by the Controversies Research, GSS, GSE, and HRR teams in the context of research involving the Israeli/Palestinian conflict areas. Who Profits describes itself as “an independent research center dedicated to exposing the commercial involvement of Israeli and international corporations in the ongoing Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Syrian lands.”164 Sustainalytics employees expressed contrasting views on the use of Who Profits by the research teams. Some employees indicated that Who Profits was used primarily for background information, and was consistently balanced against other sources. Other Sustainalytics employees explained that research analysts often rely upon Who Profits for what they view as unique, bootson-the-ground research regarding corporate involvement in the region, in part because Who Profits is one of the few organizations that actually operates on the ground in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict areas. One Sustainalytics employee described the relationship with Who Profits as being somewhat distinct from other NGO sources, as Sustainalytics is familiar with Who Profits’ research approach, and thus analysts will sometimes contact Who Profits directly to ask clarifying questions or obtain additional information.

Communications between Sustainalytics employees and representatives of Who Profits suggest that the relationship between the entities is close, relative to Sustainalytics’ relationships with other organizations. For example, in at least two instances Who Profits raised complaints to Sustainalytics (and GES, prior to its 2019 acquisition by Sustainalytics) about certain business practices, specifically once when Sustainalytics sent a representative to an ESG conference in Israel, and, as noted above, once when Sustainalytics published a bespoke research report that cited Who Profits and ultimately concluded the issuers in question had not violated international norms. On both occasions, GES and Sustainalytics sought to meet with representatives of Who Profits and address their concerns. In neither case, however, did Sustainalytics alter its ratings based on Who Profits’ complaints.

This excerpt shows that Who Profits subscribes to BDS, and complained to their good friends at Morningstar's ESG unit because they violated BDS rules by attending a conference in Israel. It is hard to see how any source can be more biased against Israel than that. Yet Morningstar still has a close relationship with Who Profits and seeks out their "research."

This is the most egregious example of anti-Israel bias at Morningstar but not the only one. Some is far more subtle:

With respect to GSS and ratings involving alleged human rights violations in particular, Sustainalytics employees acknowledged the unique challenges that such research presents, and explained that, in order to meet those challenges, GSS analysts substantiate all allegations with multiple, credible sources. GSS researchers explained that in addition to NGO sources like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, the sources that are used most often are the United Nations, international governmental organizations like the European Union, The Washington Post, and The New York Times.

While those sources are considered reliable and objective in the international community, all of them have shown marked anti-Israel bias. The report mentions that the Jerusalem Post has been used as well, but that is hardly a counterbalance. Media sources should be checked to see if their assertions have been disproved by CAMERA or Honest Reporting, NGO sources should be checked to see if NGO Monitor had critiqued the source, and UN Watch should be consulted whenever the UN is used as a source.

Only after looking at both these sources and their critics could Morningstar make a reasonable decision.

While the report shows serious effort to be objective, there are many levels to anti-Israel activity, and there are very few people who are attuned to the nuances of how seemingly objective, respected sources can in fact have a serious pattern of one-sided criticisms of Israel based on their own biased sources. We cannot expect Morningstar to be expert in those biases, but if they want to be truly objective themselves, they need to seek out those who specialize in documenting the bias of their sources.

(h/t FDD)

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!

05/14 Links Pt2: PragerU: Lies About Israel Lead to Lies About Everything; Top 10 reasons Israel has (so far) survived coronavirus; Reuters Whitewashes Suicide Bombers, Murderers as ‘Killed in Unrest’

From Ian:

David Collier: An evening with Zoom. Delusion, propaganda and defeat

I sat through two events last night on Zoom. One was hard-core anti-Zionist, featuring several of the anti-Israel camps big names. It was all about how antisemitism doesn’t exist. The other was a much more mundane affair, with Yachad hosting Husam Zomlot, the ‘Palestinian Ambassador’ to the UK. I came away feeling depressed. The level of discussion was so weak. If this is the best that both camps can do, then they are extremely lucky that some people can be so easily fooled.
The defeated conspiracy theorists on Zoom

The first event was hosted by the anti-Zionist Miko Peled. Peled should need little introduction to readers of this blog. Having been to several of his events, and read much of what he has written, I think the time I called him a deflated, lying buffoon sums him up best.

The others on the panel were
- Asa Winstanley the Electronic Intifada writer and ex Labour Party member. Despite his antisemitism, officially Winstanley wasn’t expelled, just suspended – and he quit rather than face the music.
- Estee Chandler founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. When an American Jew, hangs a US flag upside down, you just know she isn’t operating with a full deck.
- Anya Parampil a hard-left correspondent for Russia Today in the US. She writes on Max Blumenthal’s GreyZone about all the things you would expect – Venezuela, Cuba, China, Assange and anything else that can help to attack the US and the West.

During the Q&A, a fifth face appeared, Jamil Mazen to pick out which questions to put to the table.

The event was titled ‘From Corbyn to Sanders‘, looking at whether ‘Zionists’ are targeting ‘progressive politicians’. To be honest, these speakers came across as defeated and dejected. The conversation was dull and each of the speakers in turn played their part. Miko Peled was the buffoon. Chandlers role was to keep quiet and simply nod in agreement when everyone else was talking. When Parampil was on she kept talking for ages, throwing in keywords without making a point. And poor Winstanley could not string two coherent sentences together. ‘Our Asa’ was beyond awful.

Lost they certainly have, and it showed. The thing is, because they are so convinced they are right, the more they get beaten, the more insidious and hidden they believe the enemy they face. The entire conversation was a conspiracy theory. These four used the word ‘they’ to describe the invisible forces against them at least 100 times. Each of these people seem to believe in a Zionist monster that probably even reads their private emails. They are so lost in conspiratorial nonsense, not a single concrete argument was made. I couldn’t help myself, in the end I even felt sorry for them (kidding).

PragerU: Lies About Israel Lead to Lies About Everything

Why would someone like Sebastian Cevallos, a university student in Ecuador, care about Israel? You'd think this tiny country on the other side of the globe from where he lives would have no bearing on his life. But it does. Here’s why.

Daphne Anson: An Interesting Facet of the History of Zionism

It's almost 15 minutes long, but is fast paced, this talk by a British academic who specialises in the history of British-Israel relations.

The speaker is Dr James Vaughan, of the Department of International Relations at the University of Aberystwyth in Wales, the first and arguably still the best such department in the world, which had as its inaugural head Professor Alfred Zimmern, who was of Jewish extraction.

Dr Vaughan is the author of Unconquerable Minds. The Failure of American and British Propaganda in the Arab Middle East, 1945-1957 (Palgrave, 2005), and while he continues to publish on British propaganda policy towards the Arab Middle East and Iran he is currently researching the changing attitudes and policies of Britain's main political parties towards Zionism, Israel, Palestinian nationalism and the Arab-Israel dispute.

The talk is entitled '"From Aberystwyth to San Remo" - The Birth of International Politics and the Jewish National Home' To quote the page of the original uploader, UK Lawyers for Israel Charitable Trust, it explains how scholars such as Zimmern and Sir Charles Webster

"combined idealistic internationalism and a ‘Wilsonian’ belief in the rights of small nations to self-determination with an ability to bridge the worlds of academia and politics, both through their connections to Chaim Weizmann and the Zionist Organization, and in their role as participants in the making of the post-war settlement."

Reuters calls Jews who peacefully visit Temple Mount "ultra-nationalists" and "provocative"

Another textbook example of media bias, courtesy of Reuters:

Hundreds of ultra-nationalist Jews guarded by riot police streamed their way into the Jerusalem compound revered both in Judaism and Islam on Sunday, resulting in violence between police and outraged Muslim worshippers.

The Jews who visited didn't sing songs, chant nationalist slogans, pray or do anything besides walk and talk quietly. But to Reuters they are "ultra-nationalist," and "ultra-" anything is pejorative in journalism.

The Muslims who were "outraged" are not ultra-anything. They are just peaceful worshipers. Of course, the Jews never come during prayer times, so the Muslims weren't worshiping. In order to build the contrast between evil Jews and peaceful Muslims, Reuters must employ the language of "ultra-nationalist" vs. "worshippers."

The highly provocative visit came during the final days of the holy month of Ramadan when Muslims flock to pray at the compound’s al-Aqsa mosque, the third-holiest site in Islam where non-Muslim prayer has been banned since 1187.

Jews visit almost every day, but to Reuters their quiet touring of the area is "highly provocative." We learn that the area is the third holiest site in Islam but not that it is the first-holiest site in Judaism. The ban on non-Muslim prayer, rather than being framed as Muslim intolerance, is written as a basic status-quo that is being violated - even though no Jew (as far as I can tell) prayed.

Police fired tear gas and rubber-coated bullets to disperse worshippers, some of whom threw stones and chairs as the Jewish groups walked across the esplanade in front of the al-Aqsa to angry calls of ‘Allahu Akbar’ (God is great).

Which came first - the tear gas or the throwing stones and chairs? Reuters is implying that the police attacked "worshippers" (prayer only happens indoors, the police did not attack any worshippers) for no reason and the Muslims responded with throwing things - the exact opposite of what happened!

This is not reporting. This is propaganda.

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Norway falsely says that evicting TIPH from Hebron may violate Oslo

From Reuters:

OSLO (Reuters) - Israel’s decision to eject observers in Hebron may be a breach of the implementation of the Oslo accords, the Norwegian foreign minister said on Tuesday.

“The one-sided Israeli decision can mean that the implementation of an important part of the Oslo accords is discontinued,” Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said in a statement to Reuters.

while Oslo II does call for the re-establishment of TIPH (after the first one was created in the wake of the Cave of the Patriarchs massacre) the mandate for the current TIPH, #3, is not from Oslo but from a separate 1997 agreement between Israel and the PLO.

The last paragraph of that agreement says:

The TIPH may commence its operation immediately upon the approval of its modalities of operation by the two sides, and shall continue to function for a period of three months renewable for an additional period of three months unless otherwise agreed between the two sides. With the consent of the two sides, the TIPH may extend the period or change the scope of its operation, as agreed.

So Israel (and the PLO) always had the right to not renew the agreement.

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Gaza exports clothes to British retailer. Who will boycott them?

From Reuters:

Israel allowed on Monday the export of Palestinian-made clothes from the Gaza Strip for the first time in at least five years, a Palestinian official said.

Raed Fattouh, who coordinates supplies into Gaza, said a truck carrying 2,000 pieces of mainly woolen garments were exported through the Israeli-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing towards an Israeli seaport en route to Britain.

Gaza's Ashour knitwear company, which was rebuilt with UK aid after it closed in 2007, will export the goods to Britain's J.D. Williams clothes outlet, a UK official said.

Since Hamas is systematically repressing Palestinian Arabs - unjustly jailing them, evicting them from their homes, and so forth - and since Hamas controls Gaza and collects taxes from these exports, I'm sure that the "pro-Palestinian" crowd will want to boycott these clothes - and the entire JD Williams company - to help bring down the Hamas government.

That is the logic of the "pro-Palestinian" boycotters, isn't it?