Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: Time Magazine

Monday, December 05, 2022

12/05 Links Pt2: A Blood Libel Against Israel on Netflix; The Navel-Gazing Inanities of MESA; The story of Jewish expulsion from Arab countries must be told

From Ian:

A Blood Libel Against Israel on Netflix

On Dec. 1, Netflix started streaming the Jordanian film "Farha," which depicts fictionalized, heartless Israeli soldiers viciously killing Palestinian men, women and children in cold blood. These events never actually happened and the film admits that it is "dramatized." But that does not mean it will not have an outsized impact on anti-Jewish hate and violence.

The movie offers a fanciful retelling of the 1948 war in which the would-be genocidal Arab armies failed to destroy a newborn Jewish state (and kill all its inhabitants in the process). Those who tried to help them do it are romantically recast as the helpless victims of a horrible catastrophe.

Yet primary sources - from the Arab side - attest to the fact that the vast majority of Arabs who left their homes did so voluntarily, or under orders from the invading Arab armies, not the Israeli armed forces.

This is not a matter of perspective or worldview. A movie that malevolently depicts Israeli forces murdering defenseless Arab children in order to feed the nakba mythology is nothing short of a modern blood libel.

In a world of rising antisemitism, it is dangerous and disgusting for Netflix to feed false and anti-Jewish information to the masses by giving a film like this a platform.

Anger over Netflix film ‘aiming to destroy Israel’

Netflix is under fire for screening a movie depicting Israeli soldiers executing a Palestinian family in cold blood, made by filmmakers who have a track record of inflammatory comments about the Jewish state.

The film, Farha, set in the 1948 Israeli War of Independence, is being launched on Netflix in most countries from 1 December, and is likely to be Jordan’s entry to next year’s Oscars.

Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Centre for Public Affairs, told the JC that the film was intended to “destroy [Israel] by all means possible”.

He said: “I find it deeply troubling that Netflix has apparently failed to do the most basic due diligence before supporting and promoting this project.”

In an investigation into the filmmakers, the JC and activist group GnasherJew discovered that producer Ayah Jardaneh tweeted last year that “Israel is the real terrorist” and posted a “map of Palestine” that erased all trace of Israel.

She also tweeted that Mike Pence was supporting “an apartheid state, an occupier and Zionism”.

Addressing Mr Pence, she wrote: “If you love them so much give them your land and leave your house live as a refugee and let them live there instead”.

In 2014, Ms Jardaneh retweeted a post that said “Hamas or his firecracker rockets is not a problem, but seven decades of Israeli brutality and oppression is”.

She has also used the hashtag #27027KM, described as “the area of all Palestine from the river to the sea”.

Ms Jardaneh, who works at the Amman-based company TaleBox, is not the only member of the team to have made such controversial statements online, the JC found.

The film director Darin J Sallam @DarinSalla and producers Deema Azar @DeemazTweets and Ayah Jardaneh @AyahJardaneh have all shared or made highly controversial posts, and in some cases, antisemitic social media posts. Details at @JewishChron https://t.co/tzlAcOGRzA pic.twitter.com/Bj3noJpyPD
— GnasherJew®????? #JusticeforMalkiRoth (@GnasherJew) December 5, 2022

Netflix blocks controversial Nakba film for Israeli subscribers

The Jordanian movie "Farha" – which shows Israeli soldiers executing a Palestinian family - became available on Netflix several days ago, but it seems not for all the subscribers of the popular streaming service.

Although many Israelis have expressed outrage and terminated their Netflix subscription after the streaming platform announced that it would upload the film, Israelis who chose to keep their subscription would not be able to view it after it was blocked for them.

Many Netflix subscribers in Israel said that when they tried to upload "Farha" in the Netflix search engine, and could not find it, while others received a message saying "this title cannot be viewed in your country." It should be noted that for some subscribers who had an English interface, the film remained available for them, but still many had an error message and couldn't watch it.

Last week, Far-right lawmaker and destined National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir slammed the new Jordanian film.

"The inciteful Jordanian film that will be broadcast on Netflix demonstrates how hypocritical the world could be," Ben-Gvir said.

"Israel has been attacked by murderous terror before it was even established, this consciousness engineering should be handled by the Foreign Ministry with advocacy that shows the real picture, and who the real bloodthirsty murderers are," he said.

Sunday, June 12, 2022

Time magazine continues on its anti-Israel jihad, even saying Jews "storm Al Aqsa mosque" without scare quotes

Time magazine has an Israel problem.

It has managed to publish biased pieces against Israel in each of its last four biweekly print editions. I discussed two of them here and here.

The previous edition, dated June 6/13, included another piece on Shireen Abu Akleh where it emphasizes that Israel has refused to start a criminal investigation on her death. As we have noted, the IDF is performing an operational investigation into her death; a criminal investigation is only to be done if there is evidence of a criminal act on the part of Israelis. By saying that Israel is refusing a criminal investigation, Time is implying that it is trying to cover up a crime - when in fact it is evidence that there has been no crime at all.

Also in that issue was the Time list of most influential people, the Time 100. I looked up the Time 100 for last year, which would have covered the timeframe of the Abraham Accords, and no one involved in the most historic Middle East peace deal since the Israel-Egyptian treaty was mentioned.

Likewise, in the most recent Time edition, dated June 20/27, there is an article that mentions a historic Middle East story - only to downplay it.

Written by Mat Nashed of Al Jazeera, it tries to diminish the importance of a trade deal between Israel and the UAE:

Israel and the United Arab Emirates deepened ties on Tuesday with a historic free trade agreement—the first of its kind between Israel and an Arab country—at a time of growing criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. Both Israel and the UAE are touting the major economic benefits that such a deal could bring. But experts tell TIME that it’s too early to assess the economic impact of the free trade agreement and that the main value of the agreement is political in nature.

Here is a free trade agreement between Israel and an Arab country - and instead of discussing why this is clearly a historic event, the entire article tries to detract from it.

That's bias.

Both Israel and the UAE are already predicting annual bilateral trade will reach $10 billion in five years, more than 10 times the figure recorded in 2021...However, experts are skeptical about the $10 billion figure. According to World Bank data, that amount would make the UAE one of Israel’s largest trading partners. A local Gulf expert, who asked TIME not to disclose his name out of fear that he could lose his livelihood for challenging the information of regional governments, says that the prediction is a stretch. “Look, if the governments are the source, then they usually exaggerate.”

Oh, an anonymous "expert" says $10 billion is unlikely - so is $6 billion not worth even talking about?

Despite the headline news, the UAE’s budding ties with Israel remain deeply controversial across much of the Arab world—particularly as tensions between Palestinians and Israelis mount. Three days ago, the UAE foreign ministry condemned what it called Israel’s “extremist settlers” for storming Jerusalem’s al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest site in Islam.

Tensions between Palestinians and Israelis have been "mounting" for 74 years.

But most of all, here we see the depth of Time's hate of Israel. Only Arab media uses the terminology of Jews "storming Al Aqsa mosque."

No Jews "storm al Aqsa mosque." No Jews even enter Al Aqsa Mosque. Only in recent years have Palestinians started to refer to the entire Temple Mount as "Al Aqsa Mosque" rather than just the silver domed building on the southern side of the Mount, but the actual mosque itself is off limits to Jews. Time is adopting the nomenclature of those who deny any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, and it doesn't even use the normal formulation of "Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount," instead implicitly denying any Jewish connection to the site.

Jews walk peacefully around the perimeter of the Temple Mount, they aren't "storming."

Time also emphasizes that the mosque that the Jews don't enter is the "third holiest site in Islam" but somehow doesn't mention that the Temple Mount is the holiest site in Judaism - not second or third.

The print article is worse than the online version - the print article downplays all Israeli relations with the Arab world and claims that the Palestinian issue is a significant roadblock for the Gulf states, when the online article notes that this really isn't true. But both versions include the bias shown above, and together with the print items in the previous three editions at least, it shows that Time's anti-Israel bias is no accident.

It is an editorial decision.

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