Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: media bias

Showing posts with label media bias. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 10, 2016

Amnesty and Reuters got me! Which ironically proves their bias....

Twice in the past couple of days I received gloating responses from people I communicated with on Twitter.

One was Amnesty UK:

2600+ civilians killed by police in #Rio since city was awarded #Rio2016 Olympics. Support our calls for justice https://t.co/GpR6A1gSlC
— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) August 5, 2016

I tweaked them, wondering whether they were documenting the deaths with as much tenacity as they pretended to do for Gaza:

I'm looking forward to your #RioPlatform to document every one, @amnestyuk.

What, you mean it is not planned? https://t.co/nahMFI8DDA
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) August 5, 2016

But a few days later, they had a response:

@elderofziyon Hi, do you mean the crossfire app? https://t.co/TkeHsKfsny User-generated documenting of shootings at https://t.co/OY3fr631G8
— Amnesty UK (@AmnestyUK) August 9, 2016

Indeed they created an app for people to report violence in Rio and it allows drilling down into each alleged incident.

So they got me.

But, as I responded, why won't they fix the many mistakes and lies in the Gaza Platform?

They ignored that tweet, as they ignored many others about the propaganda site that they pretend documents Israeli war crimes.

Clearly they read my tweets. And clearly they have no intention to correct themselves when they are found to be wrong - or lying.

A similar thing seems to have happened with my assertion that the West Bank has Olympic-sized pools (which normally means 50 meters, a certain depth and other technical details.)

I am no longer convinced that there are true Olympic sized pools in the West Bank suitable for training (although I think there is one in Gaza.) And I was happy to admit my doubts to Luke Baker from Reuters, who happily gloated that I was not being fair and balanced.

But I responded to him about the story that I wrote that started the entire discussion:

.@LukeReuters Didn't @Reuters do the same when you reported that #Israel wouldn't allow swimmer to train? Didn't see any mea culpas from you
— ElderOfZiyon (@elderofziyon) August 9, 2016

And, of course, as with Amnesty, no response.

This is the difference between those who care about the truth and those who only pretend. I am happy to admit I'm wrong - it does happen, sometimes - because the truth is of supreme importance. But the people at Amnesty and Reuters only pay lip service to the truth. When they are shown to be wrong, they rarely correct themselves unless they would be more embarrassed by their refusal to correct than by the correction itself.

Which means that you cannot rely on Reuters or NGOs like Amnesty to say anything truthful. It is propaganda, adhering to their pre-existing biases, and anything that contradicts their false assumptions is not worthy of being addressed.

These two episodes shows that they read the criticism and they read the proof that they are wrong or lying - and they actively choose not to correct themselves.

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The Olympic-sized swimming pools in the West Bank that Reuters couldn't find (update)

Remember Mary al-Atrash, the Palestinian Olympic swimmer who told Reuters' Mustafa Abu Ganeyeh that she had no Olympic-sized pool to train in, and couldn't make it to Jerusalem "due to the conflict" to train in one there?

I showed that she lied about having no access to swimming pools in Jerusalem - she simply never applied for a permit.

But it turns out that she lied about something more fundamental. After I publicized the story, Tablet magazine showed that there are indeed 50-meter Olympic sized pools in the West Bank.

And there are quite a few.

Here is one in her own home town at the Murad Tourist Resort:

Here is a screenshot from a video about how a Bedouin woman opened up a water resort in Jericho that included an Olympic sized pool - a pool that apparently was funded by the International Olympic Committee specifically to help Palestinian swimmers!

Here's one in Qalqiya:

And an indoor pool also in Qalqiya:

And in Hawara:

For Reuters, the story of evil Israel and poor Palestine was too good to check.

Because, that is what Reuters reporters believe.

UPDATE: Some are not sure that most of the pools here are 50 meters, as opposed to 25 meters.

The Jericho pool, however, certainly seems to be the right size:

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Reuters lies about Palestinian Olympics swimmer (corrected)

From Reuters:

Palestinian swimmer Mary al-Atrash can't wait to make a splash at the Rio Olympics in August...

The 22-year-old university graduate's preparations have been hampered because she does not have an Olympic-sized pool to train in. There are none in the Palestinian territories and she has to settle for a 25-meter pool.

Use of superior Israeli facilities and training partners in nearby Jerusalem where there are several Olympic-sized pools and many swimmers, has not been possible due to the long-standing conflict with Israel.

Unfortunately, Reuters did not bother to do any fact checks.

Israel's COGAT showed that the story was a lie on July 20, using a Mondoweiss version of the story.

FACT CHECK: Mary al-Atrash CAN train for the Olympics in Jerusalem, if she ever applied for a permit.

The Olympic candidate, Mary al-Atrash, claimed she cannot train for the Rio Olympics due to “Israeli Restrictions”. However, we found Mary never applied for a permit to train in Jerusalem in the first place.

Rather than investigate the truth, it's a shame that media outlets such as Mondoweiss use these stories to paint Israel in a negative light.

We wish Mary the best of luck at the 2016 Rio Olympics and hope she will come train in Jerusalem upon her return.

Reuters wrote its story without asking Israel whether it was true, and it didn't correct it. Which pretty much tells you all you need to know about Reuters' lack of objectivity.

(CORRECTION: I originally wrote this thinking that Mondoweiss story was written first and Reuters had copied it, but it was the other way around; the Reuters story was June 28, not July 28 as I had mistakenly thought. H/T Simon.)

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NYT headline says Bibi is "crushing Israel's free press" - article itself proves otherwise

The headline in the New York Times says "How Benjamin Netanyahu Is Crushing Israel’s Free Press."

So how is Israel's free press being "crushed"?

The article gives exactly three examples:

1. The Israel Hayom newspaper is unabashedly (and embarrassingly) pro-Bibi. While it might chill any staffers on the paper from writing anything against the prime minister, that does not "crush" Israel's free press.

2. Walla News became more pro-Netanyahu when its parent company, the Bezeq communications company, benefited from some government legislation.

3. The government has tried to open up TV channels to more competition, which is regarded by the op-ed writer as a cynical ploy to kill networks that Bibi doesn't like.

So how is the Israeli press responding to being "crushed"?

Although for years the most widely read daily, Yediot Ahronot, and its owner took a decidedly anti-Netanyahu line, claims of left-wing bias fall flat these days, when most Israelis are getting their news from Israel Hayom or Walla News, and when the only remaining liberal bastion — Haaretz — struggles to stay afloat. And yet Mr. Netanyahu continues to present himself as a victim of a vindictive press.

But Yediot is still around. Haaretz is still around. No one is pressuring them to change their editorial line. The success of Israel Hayom and the poor performance of Haaretz have nothing to do with governmental policies, and everything to do with Israelis considering Haaretz to be way too far left and Israel Hayom being free.

There must be more evidence for this crushing of free press , right?

The only heartening thing in all this is that news outlets are pushing back to maintain their independence. Investigative “60 Minutes”-type programs like “Uvda” (“Fact”) and “Hamakor” (“The Source”) continue to delve into government corruption and to air in prime-time slots. “Despite the assault on the press, the Israeli media remains very critical, very aggressive, and has a lot of chutzpah. It’s a kind of basic instinct that’s part of our DNA,” Ms. Dayan, who hosts Uvda, told me.

OK. We determined that major TV and newspaper outlets are quite harsh on Bibi even after he's "crushed" the free press. But at least the article proved that Walla is firmly under Bibi's control, right?

Earlier this year, Walla News’ diplomatic correspondent Amir Tibon wrote an article critical of Mr. Netanyahu’s response to the latest wave of Palestinian violence under the headline “Netanyahu’s Promises of Calm Replaced by Cheerleading.” Soon after the piece was published, Mr. Tibon was told that the prime minister’s office was pressuring editors to remove it from the website. Taking to Twitter, Mr. Tibon wrote of the prime minister’s “attempts to silence criticism.” Apparently as a result, his article remained in place. One thing did change, however: The word “Netanyahu” was removed from its headline.

Hold on - Walla published an anti-Netanyahu article? But I thought they were in his pocket! You know, the whole Bezeq thing?

I don't know why the headline was changed, but could it be that it was not accurate? Hell, I've prompted the New York Times to make changes in its articles - does that mean that I am crushing America's free press?

So, there you have it. Free speech is being "crushed" by Bibi while a vibrant, free press continues to attack him with no fear - and that free press is documented in the very article that claims the opposite.

Words have no meaning any more when dealing with Israel.

(h/t Yenta, Leo dam Hofshi)

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The Guardian calls Abbas' threat to sue over Balfour "a cry of despair" (UPDATE: So does Haaretz)

Unreal and totally expected:

No one who follows the Palestinian issue will be very surprised to hear of the call by Mahmoud Abbas to sue the British government over the Balfour declaration of November 1917. That was the famous letter which pledged to support the establishment of a “national home” for the Jewish people in Palestine and is seen as a key milestone for the Zionist movement.

The promise by Arthur Balfour, then foreign secretary, led to the British mandate, mass Jewish immigration and eventually to the creation of Israel in the wake of the second world war and the Holocaust, and to the Palestinian “Nakba” (catastrophe).

All roads lead to 'nakba."

Not that while the Guardian is careful to note that the Holocaust was a factor in the creation of Israel, it wouldn't say that Arab rejectionism, antisemitism and the desire to throw the Jews into the sea along with Arab leaders' using Palestinians as pawns were factors to the "nakba."

Threatening legal action over a 99-year-old document is certainly a stretch, and it attracted more ridicule than serious analysis. It has in any case long been superseded by other decisions including UN resolutions. Still, the statement may be seen as a symptom of desperation about the Palestinian cause at a time when the peace process is non-existent and hopes for an end to occupation and a two-state solution to the conflict appear moribund.

“I regard what Abbas said as as a cry of anger and despair rather than a statement of intent,” said Sir Vincent Fean, former British consul-general in Jerusalem and effectively ambassador to the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. “I don’t see how he can do what he has undertaken to do. But the problem is that the two-state solution that he has advocated and argued for for so long is rapidly drifting away.”

UPDATE: Very similar language from Haaretz:

The Palestinian gambit is clearly a symbolic PR move calculated to remind the world of the plight of the Palestinians. But it is also a cry of despair. It is no surprise that Abbas made his move at the Arab League Summit. The Palestinians are clearly worried about an apparent warming of ties between the moderate Arab states and Israel, and they do not want to be abandoned. Malki called on the Arab states not to normalize relations with Israel before the establishment of a Palestinian State.

Yes, it is despair. Not despair to create a Palestinian state, but despair at finding allies to help destroy Israel using the fiction of wanting a Palestinian state.

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The Independent falsely claims Israel cut off water supply to Arabs

The headline and photo in The Independent:

The first paragraphs of the article by Peter Yeung:

Israel has cut off the water supply to large areas of the West Bank, Palestinian authorities have claimed.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians have reportedly been left without access to safe drinking water during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, a period of fasting, at a time when temperatures can exceed 35C.

The northern city of Jenin, which has a population of more than 40,000, said its water supplies had been cut in half by Mekorot, Israel's national water company. Jenin is home to a refugee camp, established in 1953, which contains 16,000 registered refugees.

Finally, after 13 paragraphs of accusations of Israel deliberately withholding water from Arabs, comes the "balance:"

A spokesperson for the Israeli government told The Indepedent there is "no truth" in the claims, and said the shortages were down to faulty water lines.

They said: "Several hours ago, COGAT's Civil Administration team have repaired a burst pipe line, which disrupted the water supply to the villages of Marda, Biddya, Jamma'in, Salfit and Tapuach. The water flow has been regulated and is currently up and running.

COGAT even shows a short video of the burst pipeline, commenting "COGAT's Water Unit is available around the clock to address any water disruptions throughout Judea & Samaria, and we continue to work diligently to ensure that civilians have access to running water at all times."

Israel has no incentive whatsoever to purposefully withhold water from Arab civilians. The article makes it sound like the army is simply being vindictive and petty, when in fact the COGAT unit tries to help Arab civilians as much as it can - that is its entire purpose.

The International Business Times coverage was even worse.

Israel is reported to have cut the water supply to the West Bank during Ramadan, in a move often dubbed "water apartheid" by critics of Israel. The state-run Israeli water company, Mekorot, shut the valves of the lines leading to areas in the West Bank, reports have stated on Wednesday 15 June.

Israel's step is likely to leave tens of thousands of Palestinians living in the volatile region without water for safe consumption. Israel has sanctioned water available to Palestinians living in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip ever since Israel's occupation of the areas, which started in 1967.

It gets even worse.

UK Media Watch contacted COGAT and Mekorot:

COGAT has informed us (in a series of emails) that... due to increased usage during the summer months, Mekorot (Israel’s water carrier) was forced to reduce the overall supply to ALL areas of the West Bank – including in Jewish communities.

We sent an email to Mekorot, who then confirmed to us the increased demand during the summer months has resulted in shortages in the West Bank “to Israeli settlements and Palestinian areas“. A resident in an Israeli community in Samaria who we spoke to confirmed that the shortages have indeed affected Jewish communities.

COGAT told the Independent reporter this - and he didn't bother to mention it, because the idea of Israel discriminating against Arabs is simply too good to bother contradicting with facts.

UK Media Watch did further investigations that Peter Yeung didn't:

[COGAT] told us that, in order to accommodate Palestinians during Ramadan, when Muslims can’t drink water during the day, “the water supply has been increased during night-time in order to meet the needs of the residents”.

Additionally, COGAT noted that, beginning at the start of Ramadan, on June 6-7, “the water supply to Hebron and Bethlehem [was] expanded [by] 5,000 cubic meters per day in order to meet the needs of the residents“.

This shows another dimension to media bias against Israel. Accusations of mendacity against the Jewish state are treated as facts, as is often the case, but when those lies happen to coincide with the biases of the reporters, there is little or no attempt to find out if there is another side of the story. (In this case, the COGAT quote was only added after complaints to Yeung, he didn't bother to contact COGAT or Mekorot before submitting the article.)

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NYT caves to Israel haters over definition of "occupation"

The New York Times reported on Wednesday:

A bitter divide over the Middle East could threaten Democratic Party unity as representatives of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont vowed to upend what they see as the party’s lopsided support of Israel.

Two of the senator’s appointees to the party’s platform drafting committee, Cornel West and James Zogby, on Wednesday denounced Israel’s "occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza and said they believed that rank-and-file Democrats no longer hewed to the party’s staunch support of the Israeli government.

Israel haters immediately freaked out over the use of scare quotes for the word "occupation." Glenn Greenwald wrote a long article about how American media are so frightened of the mighty Israel lobby, all because of the scare quotes.

Salon picked up on it and found lots of tweeters complaining about the scary scare quotes.

And then the NYT silently took them away.

Yet to say that Israel occupies Gaza as a fact is simply a lie. The definition of occupation always included "boots on the ground" and the only people who still claim that Israel occupies Gaza in the legal definition of the term are liars.

I have a fairly comprehensive post with links that shows that Gaza is not occupied by any standards besides the ones that were made up out of thin air for Israel, and only for Israel. I've shown how Amnesy has one definition for Israel and another for everyone else. I also show that the ICRC changed its definition of "occupation" deliberately for Israel, and only Israel.

The European Court for Human Rights, when not talking about Israel, gives the accurate definition:

The Court notes that under international law (in particular Article 42 of the 1907 Hague Regulations) a territory is considered occupied when it is actually placed under the authority of a hostile army, “actual authority” being widely considered as translating to effective control and requiring such elements as presence of foreign troops, which are in a position to exercise effective control without the consent of the sovereign (see paragraph 94 above). On the basis of all the material before it and having regard to the above establishment of facts, the Court finds that Gulistan is not occupied by or under the effective control of foreign forces as this would require a presence of foreign troops in Gulistan.

Finally, when the UN was asked about why it refers to Gaza as "occupied," it didn't reply with any legal arguments. It simply said that Gaza and the West Bank are considered one territory so, for nomenclature reasons, they refer to both as Occupied Palestinian Territories. This is even though the definition of "occupation" is explicitly not all-or-nothing, if you bother to read the only definition that exists in international law, from the Hague in 1907.

If the legal definition of occupation has been extended the way Israel haters believe, then why didn't the UN answer with a legal argument instead of a semantic one?

Because it is laughable.

Greenwald points to what he regards as an "outstanding two-minute video" as proof that Gaza is still legally occupied. It is a sarcastic video from Al Jazeera that does not quote a single scrap of international law or a single legal scholar for its "proof."

Even if you discount the Israeli position that the West Bank is not occupied, but disputed - for which there is plenty of evidence when you look at the facts and don't try to shoe-horn definitions after the fact - it is inaccurate for the NYT to say flatly that Gaza is occupied. Teh scare quotes were entirely appropriate and necessary in this context.

By caving to the haters, the NYT shows that accuracy is not as important as making its desired audience happy.

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Some subtle media bias from Reuters

Last week I reported that Jordan had greatly reduced the number of permits that it gave to Gazans for travel through its territory.

Reuters caught up with the story four days later. But in a bizarre case of burying the lede, you cannot tell what Jordan did until you are well into reading the story.

The headline doesn't say it. The photo is not of the bridge to Jordan but the crossing to Egypt.

The first and second paragraphs imply that Israel is at fault for Abu Abdallah not being able to leave Gaza. It isn't, since Israel has let him out of Gaza many times before.

The third blames Egypt.

Finally, in the fourth paragraph, we learn what is news about this news story.

It's almost as if Reuters didn't want to say anything bad about Jordan and instead wanted to use the story as just another hook to blame Israel (and, in this case, Egypt.)

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AP cannot resist bashing Israel

Dan Perry

Dan Perry of AP wrote an article about the prospects for Egyptian democracy:

A new-old idea is rattling around the Middle East five years after the Arab Spring stirred democratic ambition: that restoring stability, especially if accompanied by some economic and political improvements, should be reform enough for the moment.

This discourse appears to be taking front and center these days, most obviously in Egypt — the region's most populous country and the one that raised the highest hopes for democracy advocates when the military in 2011 removed longtime ruler Hosni Mubarak as millions rallied against him and his Western support collapsed.

The current government is aggrieved to find itself facing possibly harsher international criticism than Mubarak ever did, mostly over questions of human rights. It argues that democracy does not require tolerance of chaos in the streets, and that unfettered freedoms can destabilize a brittle society facing illiteracy, poverty, weak democratic traditions and a jihadi insurgency.

In meetings with U.S. Congressional delegations this week, President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi argued that "democracy is an ongoing process and cannot be realized overnight," elaborating that Egypt is committed to "striking the balance between enhancing security and stability and upholding rights and freedoms," according to a statement from his office.

There is nothing wrong with this analysis....until the very last paragraph where Perry goes out of his way to insult Israel:

But the government's defenders cast the criticism on human rights as unfair since other countries in the region are worse. In this way Egypt finds itself in an ironically similar situation to neighbor and former enemy Israel. Israel's Declaration of Independence promises full equality and that the Jewish state will be a "light unto the nations." With expectations so high, its supporters now struggle to defend the Jewish state's half-century occupation over millions of stateless Palestinians on the grounds that other situations around the world are even worse.

The linkage to Israel is less than tenuous. Worse, the assertion is a flat out lie.

Israel's supporters don't justify any actions by the state "on the grounds that other situations around the world are even worse." They justify it on legal and security grounds. The reason that they ever compare Israel to its surrounding nations is not to justify abuse but to point out the hypocrisy of people obsessing over supposed Israeli crimes when far worse things are happening in the region - including to Palestinians - and these so-called human rights defenders are silent.

That is not the case for Egypt. Egypt does get criticized by some NGOs for its human rights record but is hardly the target of obsessive, single-issue activists - people who pretend to care about international law or human rights but in fact only want the entire nation to be done away with.

That honor is reserved for Israel. And Dan Perry seems to be leaning towards that camp to throw in an unjustified insult in an unrelated article.

(h/t Ronald)

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Globe and Mail writes pro-BDS screed in news article

Sometimes, news bias is so stunning that even I can't believe it.

Patrick Martin at the Globe and Mail reports on this week's Canadian parliament vote that overwhelmingly rejected attempts to boycott Israel:

Parliament has voted by a wide margin to condemn the growing international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign being waged against Israel for what is alleged to be the Jewish state’s failure to accord equal rights to Arabs in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories.

Even this paragraph is biased - no country in the world accords non-citizens equal rights, and Arab Israeli citizens do indeed have equal rights.

But Martin decides, within the article, to do a pseudo fact check on what supporters of Israel say about BDS. Surprise! He finds them all to be lies!

Is the BDS movement anti-Semitic?

Jason Kenney, a former Conservative cabinet minister, insisted “the BDS movement represents a new wave of anti-Semitism, the most pernicious form of hatred in the history of humanity.”

Some BDS supporters, no doubt, are anti-Semitic, but most people and organizations have signed up in response to the movement’s goals stated in its 2005 manifesto, in which it calls for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel “until it complies with international law and universal principles of human rights.”

Specifically, the non-violent punitive measures are to be maintained until Israel ends “its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands and [dismantles] the Wall” (a reference to the security barrier erected to cut off Palestinian communities from Israel); recognizes “the fundamental rights of the Arab-Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality,” and protects “the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and properties as stipulated in UN resolution 194.”

These goals are not dissimilar from Canada’s official positions on Israeli occupation, settlements and human rights, and are not, on the face of it, what most people would consider anti-Semitic.

So since the official BDS manifesto doesn't mention Jews, it cannot be considered antisemitic? The entire attraction to BDS is because it singles out the Jewish state way out of proportion to what every other nation does!

And Canada's official position does not call for the flooding of Israel with millions of fake refugees as the BDS movement interprets the (non-binding) UN resolution 194.

Does the BDS movement seek to destroy the State of Israel?

Mr. Kenney argued in the House that the new anti-Semitism “often takes the form of a kind of ideological fusion between movements of the extreme left and Islamist movements that seek, together, to obliterate the Jewish democratic State of Israel.”

The BDS movement is supported by many people, including Jews and Israelis who want to see Israeli policies toward Palestinians change and do not want to see the destruction of Israel.

Those who are legitimately concerned about the potential impact on Israel point to the BDS movement’s call for protecting the rights of Palestinian refugees under UN Resolution 194 to return to the homes and properties they left in 1948 in what is now Israel. The concern is that if all these refugees and their descendants (numbering in the millions) were to return, they would overrun the Jewish state, and Israel would cease to exist as we know it. Fair enough.

However, these rights have been understood in formal and informal negotiations between Israel and Palestinians to be ones that would be implemented only gradually and offered alongside alternative compensation, such as settling in the new Palestinian state or in a third country such as Canada.

Everyone in the Arab world as well as most supporters of BDS know very well that they regard UN 194 as a means to destroy Israel. That is the entire reason that the Arab world does not allow Palestinians to become naturalized citizens in their own states, unlike other Arabs. This has been Arab League policy since the 1950s, formalized in Arab League directive #1547 from 1959. BDS leaders know not to publicize that in order to gain wide acceptance, but they admit themselves that the goal is Israel's destruction - over and over again.

The important thing to note about the reference to UN Resolution 194 is that this resolution calls for “negotiations” with Israel over the terms by which the Palestinian rights to return would be implemented. The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative also refers to Resolution 194, even as it offers full recognition of Israel.

But is that what BDS leaders want? No. They explicitly say they want a one-state solution where Jews are the minority and lose their rights to self-determination, and Martin knows this.

“BDS is a non-violent human-rights movement that seeks to end Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid,” said Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian human-rights advocate and co-founder of the BDS movement, stressing the limits of the movement.

"Zionism is intent on killing itself. I, for one, support euthanasia." - Omar Barghouti

"Definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine. No Palestinian, rational Palestinian, not a sell-out Palestinian, will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine." - Omar Barghouti

Yes - Martin quotes the very person whose published words contradict what Martin asserts about the BDS movement. How much more biased can you get?

Is it unfair to single out Israel?

This was another popular refrain in Parliament – that the BDS movement’s singling out Israel from among all nations is proof of its anti-Semitic nature.

Yes, the BDS campaign singles out Israel, quite naturally. It was started by a group of Palestinians, including Mr. Barghouti, to elicit help in dealing with Palestinians’ biggest problems. It was not intended to solve all the problems of the world. Just as the worldwide campaign against apartheid in South Africa did not address the ills of the Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, or the dictatorship in Somalia, this BDS movement is uniquely tailored to safeguarding Palestinian rights.

"Uniquely tailored"? This is an advertisement for BDS, not an objective look.

Martin also apparently makes up facts. He points out:

In 2014, foreign direct investment in Israel dropped 46 per cent from the previous year, in part, a United Nations report said, because of BDS efforts.

The UN report does not say a word about BDS, or indeed about any reasons for the decline. An Israeli economist interviewed by YNet said this as conjecture, pointing out other far more important factors. Martin even twists the basic facts in order to support his love for demonizing Israel.

See also Honest Reporting Canada's thorough fisking of this piece.

(h/t Roseanne)

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New AP boilerplate on "Palestinian frustration over occupation"

Over the past couple of days, AP has created a new two-sentence boilerplate to describe the current wave of attacks on Jews by Arabs:

"Israel says the violence has been fueled by a Palestinian campaign of lies and incitement. The Palestinians say it is rooted in frustrations stemming from nearly 50 years of Israeli occupation."

This is indeed the meme that journalists have been using since the murder of the Henkins last year. But if you look at Palestinian Arabic sources, you know that this isn't true.

According to their own words, these attacks started for one reason only: because of supposed Israeli designs on the Al Aqsa Mosque. After the first month or so, a new reason was given: revenge attacks because Israelis defended themselves by killing would-be murderers.

At no time in Arabic did Palestinians claim that this was some sort of spontaneous uprising because somehow they just hit the tipping point.

Of course, the real reason is exactly as Israel says: it is the result of incitement. Mahmoud Abbas lit the match when he gave his "filthy feet" speech calling on Arabs to defend Al Aqsa from a few people with yarmulkas walking around their holiest spot.

Evidence can be seen by what happened yesterday when two Israeli Arab 13-year old girls - not "oppressed Palestinians" - carried out a stabbing attack:

Immediately after the incident, the suspects’ parents were taken to the police station for questioning. Members of the Abu Amar family were having a hard time processing the events.

“I don’t know what came over her, we’re scared,” said Mona, the sister of one of the suspects. “She’s a good girl. This doesn’t make sense.”

The girl’s uncle, Ahmed Abu Amar, concurred. “I must say that if this happened in this family, it’s totally unacceptable; we have good neighborly relations with the Jews and we are shocked at what happened today. I can’t imagine any reason for her to do such a thing,” he said.

Ali Abu Amar, the girl’s aunt, speculated that the girls had seen videos encouraging attacks on social media and had been influenced by them. “Lots of young people see these things nowadays,” she said. “We know that they were not given that type of education at home or at school, so maybe the videos put ideas in their head.”

13-year old girls decide to stab Jews instead of going to school because of brainwashing, and it works because there is no visible Arabic-language media that countervails the non-stop messages of hate.

But the girls said what the Arab media has been reporting:

The teens told police the attack was “revenge for the situation in the Al-Aqsa Mosque,” and was in protest of Israel’s “killing of Palestinians.”

So where does AP get the idea that the reason for these attacks are the "occupation"? It is mostly laziness - years of reporting that the "occupation" is the worst human rights abuse situation in the world necessitates it becoming the obvious reason for stabbing Jews. But since Ban Ki Moon has legitimized that excuse, the media is running with it.

Accuracy isn't as important as the narrative.

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NYT reveals its racism while attacking Israel for racism

The New York Times had one of their regular Sunday articles slamming Israel for some reason or another. This one was because Israel is accused of not doing enough to help the tens of thousands of African refugees who have been flooding into the country.

As the continuing refugee crisis in Europe demonstrates, Israel is not alone in trying to deter refugees. But according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, it has the distinction of having one of the lowest asylum acceptance rates in the Western world. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once warned that the arrival of African people poses a demographic risk to Israel: “If we don’t stop their entry, the problem that currently stands at 60,000 could grow to 600,000, and that threatens our existence as a Jewish and democratic state.”

For context: Israel now hosts about one tenth of one percent of all worldwide refugees and displaced persons.. And those are the ones that the NYT feels compelled to write a photo essay on.

It is true, Israel accepts far fewer refugees as citizens than Germany or France. But Israel is a tiny country and if it would accept a significant number of immigrants it would not be able to handle the numbers that would follow.

If Denmark and Tunisia would magically switch places, Denmark would be building a fence and putting the refugees in camps as well rather than let the country be overrun with people who would outnumber the Danes if given the chance.

Yet as the Times tries to paint Israel as vaguely racist for not allowing these Africans to stay in the country, it engages in its own racism.

Look at this sentence again: "one of the lowest asylum acceptance rates in the Western world." Why should Israel be compared only to the Western world? Why is it not considered a possibility for the refugees from Darfur and Ethiopia to become refugees in non-Western countries?

I count about 18 countries that are within the radius of distance from Eritrea to Israel.

Why is it so absurd to ask that Saudi Arabia or Oman or the UAE take in some of their fellow Muslim refugees from the Sudan, or for Egypt or Jordan to accept Christians from Eritrea? Other African countries are poor, to be sure, but why is it so absurd to expect some of them to take in more of these refugees who share far more in common with them than most Israelis?

To the New York Times, non-Western nations cannot be expected to act with kindness and mercy and charity. That is something expected from Israel, not from Egypt or Libya. .

No one is happy with how Israel is forced to act to discourage more refugees. But given that Israel is the only Western nation in the area, it cannot be a magnet for millions of people.

The reason the trip to Israel is dangerous is because of the countries in between. Yet how much space has the Times spent on those who were murdered and raped and kidnapped en route and the culpability of the nations in which these occurred?

No, those nations aren't "Western" and therefore are not expected to engage in normal moral codes. No reason for the newspaper of record to bother writing about that - they are savages and expected to act that way.

Of every country within the shaded area in this map, only Israel is expected to treat these people with respect.

There is a story there. But it is not one that the New York Times seems interested in covering.

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Martin Fletcher partly apologizes for MSNBC outrage but doesn't go nearly far enough

MSNBC's Martin Fletcher sort-of partially apologized for the outrageous use of The Map That Lies on the air on Friday. But his comment indicates that he is far from a Middle East expert and really doesn't get what he did - his own words on the air were almost as bad as the map itself.

From Facebook:

I replied on the thread:

The outrage was far more than the first map. The second map is deceptive as the plan wasn't implemented because of Arab hate; the third map calls land that was controlled by Egypt and Jordan "Palestinian" even though no one called it that before 1967; the fourth map doesn't note that it would look almost exactly like the third had they accepted Israeli peace plans.

Moreover, your comments that Israeli settlements are continuously expanding and taking up more and more territory are highly misleading; Israel has approved only a handful of new settlements since Oslo (in response to court rulings) and the amount of actual land the settlements are on has barely budged although far more people live in them.

See here and here.

So no, no excuses for the entire segment and both you and MSNBC must apologize, as well as investigate how notorious anti-Israel propaganda ended up on the air to begin with.

The last point is important; MSNBC staffers grabbed The Map That Lies from an anti-Israel site, edited it to adhere to MSNBC style standards and used it as if it had a shred of legitimacy.

(Edgar Davidson also has a very nice debunking of the map.)

The sweet young terrorist in the Independent and the media's refusal to report on incitement

Fatah poster praising Badran for his act

Sure, he tried to stab some Israelis. But he was such a sweet child!

Disgusting reporting from The Independent (UK):

Ishaq Badran was described simply as a “terrorist” after stabbing an Israeli near the Damascus Gate in occupied East Jerusalem on Saturday.

But in the mourners’ circle at his home in the city’s Kufr Aqab area, a more complex picture emerged of the 16-year-old, and what has caused others to take part in a wave of stabbings that has shaken Israel and threatens to turn into an all-out Palestinian uprising.

Ishaq, a student at an Israeli vocational school who was shot dead by Israeli police, was lauded as a “hero” and “martyr” by the mourners. He was, said those gathered at his home, simply acting to defend Islam’s third holiest site, the Aqsa mosque, situated on an area revered by Jews as the Temple Mount.

As dates, a traditional mourning food, were passed around, Ishaq’s close friends described him as an introverted, polite teen who liked weight-lifting and swimming. The oldest of six children, he prayed regularly and encouraged his friends to join him, friends said. He was not affiliated with any Palestinian faction or organisation, something he had in common with other Palestinians carrying out recent attacks seemingly of their own free will.

“I was surprised. I did not expect it,” said his father, Qassim Badran. “My son always obeyed me. Every time I’d say don’t go to any areas of trouble he would say: ‘Yes.’”

Mr Badran said that his son had been deeply upset by reports that a settler had stripped the hijab off a Muslim woman in the Old City of Jerusalem last Wednesday. The reports, which could not be independently confirmed, soon spread on Palestinian social media. “He spoke to his mother about this and cried,” Mr Badran told The Independent. “He was crying, saying: ‘No one is defending these women’.” The woman was shot as she tried to stab an Israeli man, according to Israeli police.

A friend of Ishaq’s, aged 13, said he was “extremely upset” when he saw him on Thursday and Friday last week. “We were looking at pictures of martyrs. He said that Fadi Aloun was killed in cold blood,” he said, referring to a Palestinian shot by Israeli police on 3 October for what Palestinians believe was no reason. Israeli police say he was killed after he stabbed an Israeli.

They also looked at phone pictures of Mohanad Halabi, a 19-year-old who killed two Israelis in a separate stabbing attack on 3 October. “Both of us were talking of what a heroic act Mohanad did. Ishaq mentioned what happened to the woman with the hijab and said that had we done this to a Jewish lady they would have killed us.”

What is the "more complex picture" that has emerged from this "reporting" that indicates that Badran was not a terrorist?

A young man decided "seemingly of his own free will" to murder Jews.

Which means that, yes, he is a terrorist.

He is a terrorist even though he lifted weights.

He is a terrorist even though he liked to swim.

He is a terrorist even though he liked to pray.

He is a terrorist even though he was respectful to his parents.

None of those other facts makes his actions any less heinous. Every would-be murderer in the world has other interests and hobbies, every serial killer had a mother and father, every depraved criminal had a side of himself that loved children or animals or collecting stamps. It does not excuse their actions - except for Palestinian Arab terrorists whose attempts to murder Jews must be placed into "context."

There is one other thing that we learn from this article - that incitement is deadly.

It wasn't only social media that reported that a woman stabber last week had her hijab removed by a "settler." It was the mainstream Arab press, as I reported at the time.

There are literally no journalistic standards in Palestinian Arab media. Multiply this by the thousands of bigots and haters on social media, the rumors that have swirled after every attack become "facts" in the minds of young people who feel they must avenge the baseless lies.

Arab incitement is what ended up killing Ishaq Badran. And Arab incitement is the least-reported story - one ignored by not only the media but by politicians and so-called "human rights" organizations.

Their refusal to mention the incitement results in more deaths.

Lies about the Temple Mount, lies about Israeli defensive actions, lies about the Jewish communities across the Green Line, antisemitic lies, and hundreds of lies that are promulgated every day in Arab media and Palestinian officials, are the engine of the violence. Combined with the honor/shame dynamic of Arab society and you have a surefire recipe for terror attacks. How can self-respecting people act otherwise when they are brainwashed by a daily avalanche of incitement and hate and lies?

But the Independent will not cover that story. The Independent, and virtually all Western media, will not accept the notion that their compatriots in Arab media are not only willing but anxious to make up facts - like the "ripping off hijab" lie or the "she only had an electrical fire in her car" lie or the ever popular "they opened fire for no reason" lie.

Westerners cannot wrap their heads around an entire society that was built on myths and lies combined with honoring murderers. The media cannot be bothered to research the facts for themselves, thinking that both sides must have some basis for their claims and the truth must be somewhere in between.

Media like The Independent are partially responsible by giving credence to the lies, and by not reporting on the fact that one side's claims are so often spurious that each one should be reported only with a disclaimer. Articles like this feed into the myth of Ishaq Badran's heroism, not his terrorism.

The Arab media lies. The Western media abets the lies by reporting the ones they want to believe and ignoring the ones that are too over the top for any sane person to swallow.

These lies have consequences - and often, the consequences are fatal.

NYT gives credence to Muslim claims of no Temples ever on Temple Mount

The New York Times is now "evenhanded" about historical facts.

Maybe Jewish history that has been continuously accepted for thousands of years and supported by overwhelming evidence is right, maybe the Muslims who are trying to destroy all evidence of Jewish history for political purposes are right.

It is a mystery:

Historical Certainty Proves Elusive at Jerusalem’s Holiest Place

Within Jerusalem’s holiest site, known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims, lies an explosive historical question that cuts to the essence of competing claims to what may be the world’s most contested piece of real estate.

The question, which many books and scholarly treatises have never definitively answered, is whether the 37-acre site, home to Islam’s sacred Dome of the Rock shrine and Al Aqsa Mosque, was also the precise location of two ancient Jewish temples, one built on the remains of the other, and both long since gone.

Those temples are integral to Jewish religious history and to Israel’s disputed assertions of sovereignty over all of Jerusalem. Many Palestinians, suspicious of Israel’s intentions for the site, have increasingly expressed doubt that the temples ever existed — at least in that location. Many Israelis regard such a challenge as false and inflammatory denialism.

The writer, Rick Gladstone, is either dense or knowingly deceptive.

Many archaeologists agree that the religious body of evidence, corroborated by other historical accounts and artifacts that have been recovered from the site or nearby, supports the narrative that the Dome of the Rock was built on or close to the place where the Jewish temples once stood.

No, every archaeologist and historian with a shred of intellectual honesty believes that. What is not 100% certain is the exact location of the Temples on the Mount, as Gladstone reports without understanding the words:

Kent Bramlett, a professor of archaeology and history of antiquity at La Sierra University in Riverside, Calif., said historical records of the destruction committed by the Romans, just by themselves, are “pretty overwhelming” in supporting the existence of the second temple in the immediate vicinity of the Dome of the Rock.

Still, he said, “I think one has to be careful about saying it stood where the Dome of the Rock stood.”

There is a huge difference between saying that we are not certain of the exact physical location and dimensions of the Temple buildings themselves, and saying that they were never built on the Temple Mount altogether, as the Arabs now claim and the New York Times is now saying is possible..

There is literally no doubt that the Second Temple existed on the Temple Mount. There are huge stairs on the southern end leading up to the Mount; there are impressive arches and gates still extant from Herodian times, the Herodian extensions on the Mount itself and retaining walls still exist, and there are many ritual baths outside the complex to ensure purity for those ascending to the Mount. The Old City is not that large, and evidence from the Torah, New Testament, Josephus and even Roman officials testify as to the existence of a huge, impressive Temple in Jerusalem - there is literally nowhere else it could have been.

While there is no archaeological evidence of the location of the First Temple, the idea that Jews returning after exile to rebuild it would not place it on the exact same spot is equally ludicrous.

The New York Times, seizing on the uncertainty of the exact locations, is casting doubt on the existence of the Temples on the Mount altogether - and giving credence to Arab Temple denial. To say that there is a question as to "whether the 37-acre site... was also the precise location of two ancient Jewish temples" is a flat-out lie, and journalistic malpractice.

And giving credibility to those who want to deny Jewish history is antisemitism.

UPDATE: See also here and here.

Vile @NYTimes article minimizes and justifies the stoning murder of a Jew

From the New York Times, reporting on a stoning murder as if it was a natural event:

Rocks, apparently self-propelled, just magically appeared to pelt his car!

The first paragraph is almost as bad:

A Jewish man died early Monday morning after attackers pelted the road he was driving on with rocks as he was returning home from a dinner celebrating Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year, the Israeli authorities said. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called an emergency meeting to discuss rock-throwing, mostly by Palestinian youths.

He just died after some unidentified "attackers" threw stones, not at his car or his head, but merely towards the road he was driving on. He wasn't murdered by stoning or anything like that. The Youths weren't aiming at his car, just casually tossing rocks on a road.

The man was identified in local news reports as Alexander Levlovich, 64. His death was reported as the police and Palestinian youths clashed for a second day at Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, amid tensions over increased visits by Jews for Rosh Hashana. The two-day holiday began at sundown on Sunday.

Is there any indication that the rock throwing is connected to the Arab riots on the Temple Mount?

The writer Diaa Hadid seems to think so, ignoring that these types of rock throwing incidents happen every day. But by juxtaposing the two she minimizes the crime by finding a supposed crime being done by Jews that could anger the youths.

Also - Jews were visiting Al Aqsa Mosque? Really? The New York Times now accepts the Arab lie that the entire Temple Mount is the Al Aqsa Mosque!

By implication, an area that is only holy to Jews - where Palestinian Arabs engage in soccer, volleyball and parkour - has been transformed to a Muslim holy place that Jews are trespassing on.

And somehow Jews attempting to visit their holy place, which the Times doesn't mention as the Temple Mount until much later, justifies Arabs stoning cars with Jewish drivers?

Finally, we learn in paragraph 4:

Ynet, an Israeli news site, quoted a woman who said that she was a passenger in the car and that it crashed after being hit by a thrown object. The site did not identify the woman.

But then we see the justification for the murder later on:

Palestinians frequently argue that rocks and crude incendiary devices are among their only weapons to press for independence, and to defend themselves against Israeli forces during confrontations. For some young Palestinians in areas where there are frequent tensions, their use has become a rite of passage.

See? Throwing boulders - and firebombs - at civilians is just a way to gain independence - independence that Israel has offered numerous times, by the way.

In paragraph 11, we finally learn that Jews also believe they have a claim to the holy site in Jerusalem, but it it much fuzzier than the Muslim claim:

In East Jerusalem, Ms. Samri, the police spokeswoman, said protesters had thrown rocks at officers who had entered the contested holy site of the Al Aqsa Mosque — revered by Jews as the Temple Mount and known to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, one of the three holiest sites in Islam — so they could allow non-Muslims, including Jews, to enter the area.

Why doesn't the article mention that the Temple Mount is undoubtedly the holiest site in Judaism? Because the NYT doesn't quite believe it:

Similar clashes took place in July, as Jews held an annual fast day commemorating the destruction of two ancient temples believed to have once stood at the holy site.

A site is accepted as holy to Muslims because of a legend about a flying horse, but Jewish Temples were only "believed" to have stood at that spot.

What a sick piece of reporting, and headline-writing, in the New York Times.

(h/t DM)

AP lies, reports that Israel restricts stethoscopes to Gaza

The easiest way to push a lie is not to say the lie directly.

It is to say something else, preferably an inspirational story that gets people emotionally involved, and then parenthetically relate it to the lie. When people who are already invested in a story see the ancillary falsehood, they are far more likely to believe the lie because their guard is down.

AP played this role perfectly:

A Palestinian-Canadian doctor has created a low-cost stethoscope using a 3D printer, the first in a series of inventions he hopes will help alleviate medical supply shortages caused by an eight-year blockade on the Gaza Strip.

Dr. Tarek Loubani says his stethoscope can be made for just $2.50 — a fraction of the cost of leading brands — and some doctors say the equipment is just as good.

The shortage of basic medical devices in the isolated Palestinian territory "is something that I think we can translate from a big problem to a big win for us in Gaza," said Loubani, an emergency medicine doctor from London, Ont., whose Glia Project aims to provide medical supplies to impoverished places like Gaza.

Hospitals have been struggling since the militant Hamas group took over the Gaza Strip in 2007 and Israel and Egypt imposed a blockade on the territory. The import restrictions have led to shortages of medicines and basic supplies like medical consumables and IV bags.

Loubani hopes to "produce these devices locally so they meet local need and so that they are not dependent of the political winds of the Israelis and of the donor community."

Only one problem:

There are no Israeli restrictions on stethoscopes to Gaza.

Gaza doctors and hospitals can order all the stethoscopes they want and the devices will be delivered quickly through Israel and the Kerem Shalom crossing.

Now, there is nothing wrong with providing low-cost stethoscopes via 3D plastic printing. The story could have been written from that angle, saying that this innocative Canadian doctor of Palestinian descent had come up with a way to provide cheap but high quality stethoscopes to help out Gaza medical professionals who cannot afford them. 3D printers in Gaza may be problematic - people have built plastic guns with the technology, so they sound like a dual-use item that may be restricted - but apparently there a;ready is at least one is in Gaza already and using it for medical technology is laudable.

But the idea mentioned multiple times in the story that Israeli restrictions are the reason for the shortages is nothing short of slander, and AP must be held to account for pushing this lie.

A lie and a libel in the NYT

This coming Sunday, the New York Times magazine has an article on disappearing Christians in the Middle East.

It includes a lie and a libel.

The lie:

From 1910 to 2010, the number of Christians in the Middle East — in countries like Egypt, Israel, Palestine and Jordan — continued to decline.

The number of Christians in Israel in 1948 was about 34,000. The number today is about 161,000. The percentage has gone down but the actual numbers have gone way up.

The libel:

Eshoo, the Democratic congresswoman, is working to establish priority refugee status for minorities who want to leave Iraq. ‘‘It’s a hair ball,’’ she says. ‘‘The average time for admittance to the United States is more than 16 months, and that’s too long. Many will die.’’ But it can be difficult to rally widespread support. The Middle East’s Christians often favor Palestine over Israel. And because support of Israel is central to the Christian Right — Israel must be occupied by the Jews before Jesus can return — this stance distances Eastern Christians from a powerful lobby that might otherwise champion their cause.

The NYT is insulting all Christian Zionists, claiming that they don't want to save the lives of Middle Eastern Christians because the persecuted are not pro-Israel. This is condescending, libelous - and wrong.

In fact, evangelical Christians have been working hard to help their Christian brethren in Iraq and Syria - and they have been stymied by the lack of coverage of their plight in, you guessed it, the New York Times.

The good news is that we seem to have learned from our mistakes.

One example is the outpouring of concern over the persecution of Coptic Christians in Egypt. People who, a decade or so ago, may not have been familiar with the word “Copt” and unaware of Christianity’s long history in Egypt were expressing their solidarity with this ancient community.

This identification with ancient Christian communities has really taken off in the debate over intervention in Syria. As my good friend Rod Dreher has pointed out, “Somehow, the word is getting out to American Christians that they — we — have a particular stake in Syria, in that our brothers and sisters in the faith are facing mass murder and exile.”

Dreher notes that Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission has come out against U.S. intervention, specifically over concerns of the impact on Syrian Christians. Even more exciting is the fact that 62 percent of evangelical pastors polled by the National Association of Evangelicals oppose intervention. They fear that our involvement could make matters worse.

Evangelical voices have joined those of the Pope and Orthodox bishops in calling our attention to the plight of our Syrian brethren. It took a while, but we’ve finally realized that they are us.

That’s especially important because the mainstream media is doing a terrible job of telling Americans about the possible impact of U.S. intervention on Syrian Christians. As Rod pointed out, the day after Pope Francis addressed a crowd of 100,000 people during a day of fasting and prayer for Syria, the New York Times said nothing about the event. Nor have they mentioned the groundswell of American Christian opposition to intervention.

A similar pattern holds true in the rest of the media. We’re told a great deal about the push for congressional approval and the reasons for intervention. We’re even told that Americans oppose said intervention. But we rarely are told why many Americans oppose this intervention or even of the possible effects on Syrian Christians.

Thankfully, this time American Christians are listening and speaking out. Thankfully, we understand that these are our people — our brothers and sisters in Christ.

(h/t EBoZ)

UPDATE: I originally misstated the number of Christians in 1948 and today lower by a factor of about 4, it is corrected now. (h/t David B)

Why Hamas' beating of protesters is a big story

This story encapsulates how much the media ignores stories from the territories that don't involve Israel.

Last night, many members of the Eshtewi family held a protest outside the home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza. One of their sons, Mahmoud (in some reports Abul Magd) has been in Hamas prisons for months without charge. The family demanded that Haniyeh come out to talk to them, and they chanted slogans and held up banners.

Hamas police came and started beating them, injuring a number of family members including a female journalist Buthaina Eshtewi, and two brothers were arrested and taken away to an unknown destination.

In one story we have:

Detention without charge
Peaceful protesters being beaten
Peaceful protesters being arrested

In the grand scheme of things, this is not that big a deal. But the complete absence of any western media ever reporting stories like this while eagerly reporting on similar stories that can be blamed on Israel reveals a much bigger issue here.

Even if the media does not consider this newsworthy, "pro-Palestinian" NGOs would be expected to be compiling statistics of these sorts of events, and issuing annual reports counting the number of arrests, beatings, imprisonment without trial, cases of torture, people killed by police - all the statistics that are being zealously kept and often inflated by these same NGOs against Israel, even though they often claim that they are non-partisan.

Journalists, NGOs and diplomats have an unwritten agreement to ignore these sorts of stories to ensure that the news that filters out to the world is one-sided against Israel. The tiniest anti-Israel stories in the Hebrew press get translated and quoted prominently while Arabic stories like these get ignored. The decision as to which stories get coverage is not newsworthiness or the level of human rights being violated. No, the major decision-making is based on a single factor: whether the Jewish state can be properly blamed.

This ensures that generations of young people are brought up on biased, one-sided news stories based on simplistic memes of Jewish oppression and Arab victimhood.. It takes real effort to find out the truth and practically no one will spend the time, since there is an assumption that the news media will do their jobs. And the very people who should investigate this bias are the people who practice it.

This particular case is not a big story. But the situation that causes stories like this to be ignored day in and day out is indeed a very big deal.

Hamas detains journalists who accidentally saw Hamas kick civilians out of a shelter. Media silent.

Hazem Balousha is a Gaza-based journalist who has written for The Guardian and The Washington Post.

According to the Al Mezan Center for Human Rights, on Wednesday Balousha and two other journalists, an Australian and a Brit, were detained by Hamas because they happened to be near a UNRWA school shelter that was being forcibly evacuated by Hamas police (which would be a story itself in any other universe.)

The foreign journalists were released after about an hour but Balousha was transferred to a police station where he remained a bit longer.

The journalists tried to explain that they were trying to film a story about the anniversary of "Israel's aggression" in 2014, not to film the Hamas police forcing out innocent people who have nowhere to live. (UNRWA officially closed the shelters this week.)

The Hamas police insulted the reporters and treated them with contempt.

In fact, one person who was at a UNRWA shelter tried to commit suicide when the apartment his family had been promised was given to another family with better connections at UNRWA.

There has not been a word about this detention of Western reporters in Western media. The Guardian and Washington Post have not covered the story of their own reporter.

So not only does the world media refuse to report on Hamas abuses of Gazans, they even refuse to report when their own journalists are arrested.

The only conclusion one can make is that Hamas controls the media in Gaza with threats.

Every report from Gaza that doesn't mention that the reporters are intimidated by Hamas is a betrayal of journalistic standards.