Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Israeli PR redux (Zvi)

Zvi, commenting on my post on how the hasbara problem is more fundamental, writes:

Israel (and Israel supporters) also need to learn that

1. Israeli PR must not only address those who already understand the conflict, but also those who do not; for all that there is heavy news coverage of Israel, it is, in much of the world, short on facts and long on libels and deliberately mind-narrowing boilerplate. Israeli PR often assumes that you understand the lingo and that you already identify Hamas as a terrorist organization. But if you're talking to a young, moderate left-leaner from the UK or Norway or Spain, it's unlikely that this person "gets" the references made by Israel or that anyone has been telling them the truth about Hamas.

2. The Israeli government's PR team (I'm not talking about unaffiliated supporters of Israel) needs to mobilize quickly. PR battles are typically won within the first 24 hours of the news cycle, and Israel almost always loses them during that period.

3. Israel, nevertheless, needs to remain scrupulously truthful.

4. Israel's PR team needs to take the initiative rather than being mostly reactive. One of the reasons for #2 is that Israel is far too reluctant to take the initiative. And by "take the initiative," I do NOT mean putting up paper ads in the UK tube system so that they can be torn down or removed via lawfare. Israel's detractors and enemies publish a constant stream of anti-Israel fluff & libel, complete with multimedia, reports, ads, etc. that are treated as objective reports and hard news by media around the world. They are funded by Israel's enemies and so-called friends. Israel's enemies manufacture a lot of imaginary humanitarian crises. Israel's enemies spend a lot of time in the media creating and repeating shameless lies. Israel spends a lot of time reacting to this stuff. And it should. But it also needs to spend a lot of time communicating the reality of Israel, and it is not doing that.

If you were going to design PR for Israel, what are some of the things that you might include in a PR campaign? How about some short stuff that would actually break the mold, that would actually inform people? Here are a few thoughts, none of which are likely to be particularly original.

* the true story of an Iraqi or Yemenite or Iraqi Jewish family living in Israel. Also, maybe people who lived in the refugee camps near Sderot

* I can also imagine ads featuring a variety of ordinary Israelis talking about ordinary, daily-life things, also about aspirations. Voiceover at the end providing context, possibly surprising context.

* life in Sderot - rockets = hundreds of thousands of military hand grenades (Michael Yon)

* This week, Israel delivered X amount of aid to Gaza. Why do so many news services deny that this is happening?

* use metaphors, starting with cops trying to stop gunmen and only afterward identifying the cop and gunman with the middle east: if a cop trying to stop a gunman from shooting at civilians hits another person by accident, after trying hard to avoid this, it's a tragedy. The gunman was the criminal (and the cop may be crying over the civilian death without being a war criminal). Hamas fighters are the gunman, Israeli soldiers the cop. I can imagine this as a TV or print ad as well as an online video. Break out of the prejudices of the middle east conflict and the crazed lies that accompany it in order to allow people to be openminded before coming back to it. Israel's position is the rational one here.

* Creation of a professional quality web site, with interesting and constantly refreshed content, including youtube videos, integration with social networking, etc. This needs to provide content that the media, bloggers, etc. can use. It needs to be a go-to site for information and it needs to provide content if Israel's cynical enemies get that content banned on youtube (at which point the youtube video should be replaced with a video of a person who tells viewers where to go to find the video, plus a clickable link for those who have half of a clue). I'm sorry, but the MFA web site doesn't cut it. This one requires a serious ongoing commitment.

* One thing on that site (while I generally favor proactivity) should be a set of SIMPLE, CONCISE myth/fact pages, clearly laid out by native English speakers. Better yet, myth/fact/recommended action. I'm talking about 2 PowerPoint slide's worth of content or 1 minute of video. People who want more info can be directed to more detailed info, but the 2 slides or video need to be clear, concise & professional. The Israel/apartheid thing can be exploded very concisely, and aid to gaza or rockets falling on sderot can have some short briefs too.

* Video: Israel's invitation to Iran to abandon a completely pointless conflict. To Turks, with whom there should literally be no conflict of interest and with whom there has been friendship. Whatever. Israel's position is rational and sane, but it gets mischaracterized and filtered through distorting channels. Bibi is quite capable of acting as Israel's spokesperson for public statements like this. Invitation to the Pals, though there is no chance that Abbas will accept it, or to the Arabs, particularly if Netanyahu thinks that he can provide an Israeli Peace Plan (an even more critical area where Israel has ceded the initiative to others).

And I know that Israel is a small country, with small budgets, but it's got a big problem and it needs to address that problem with speed, creativity, clarity and wisdom.

A counter-review of "Palestine Betrayed" (Aaron)

I asked one of my non-Zionist commenters, Aaron Carine, who is critical of Israel but very well-read about Israel's history, to write up a review of the Ephraim Karsh book "Palestine Betrayed" that I reviewed and excerpted last month. Here is Aaron's review and my comments:

Karsh presents a wealth of new information on Zionist-Arab-British geopolitics,as well as what was going on among Palestinians in 1948. But his boast of having refuted the New Historians is premature.

Take his account of 1948. Karsh offers nothing to support his claim that there were only a few expulsions--and it needs support,considering that over a hundred expulsions are recorded in Israeli archives. He deals with Arab and Jewish terrorism,but leaves out most of the massacres of Arabs by Israeli infantry,and even expresses skepticism about the Deir Yassin massacre. He records the Israeli offers at Lausanne,but omits the initiatives by Egypt and Syria(first uncovered, I think, by Simha Flapan). He also makes it sound as though Ben-Gurion's offer to take back 100,000 refugees was unconditional,which it wasn't.

Karsh's insistence that there was no conflict between Zionism and Arab interests strikes me as naive. He constantly quotes Zionist statements about coexistence,but doesn't see the inconsistency between this and a Palestine "as Jewish as England is English". The statements of Herzl, Ben-Gurion and others about transfer are left out, as is the eviction of Arab peasants and shepherds.

There are little errors, such as his claim that the Zionists accepted the Peel partition plan---the World Zionist Congress rejected it(cf. Christopher Sykes, Crossroads to Israel). Sometimes,when he differs with a New Historian they both cite contemporary sources, so we have no basis,beyond our prejudices, for choosing.

The quote of Palestine as "Jewish as England is English" was from Chaim Weizmann, testifying before the Peel Commission in November 1936. Here is the Palestine Post article that mentions it:

In that same testimony, however, Weizmann emphasizes both his hopes for Arab-Jewish cooperation as well as the frustrations Jews had in being discriminated against by the Arabs and his feelings that the Arabs were treated badly - by Great Britain! (click to enlarge)

From my own readings of contemporaneous Jewish Palestinian sources, it is clear to me that the quotes about "transfer" and other quotes that indicate bigotry against Arabs by the Jewish leadership have been taken out of context (not to mention the many that are wholly fiction.) Here is just one example - Weizmann spoke about Arabs at length to the Commission, yet only one sentence makes it into the "New Historians' " books. Karsh contextualizes it more accurately while the "New Historians" emphasize only the anti-Arab sounding statements and ignore the far more numerous ones that indicate sympathy and the desire for cooperation. Whether Karsh goes to far in the other direction is an open question, but his viewpoint is clearly ignored by the revisionists.

As far as how the Jews responded to the Peel Commission recommendations, it appears that the Zionist Executive of the WZO accepted it in theory but rejected the specific borders and they were charged with further negotiations concerning the matter. The absolute Arab rejection made that point moot.

A small indication of Iran's obsession with Israel

The Iranian Al-Alam satellite channel is aimed mostly at the worldwide Arabic audience. On its webpage, the top navigation menu includes these items in the Farsi edition:

Home
Top News
Iran
World Reports
Private Chat
Israel
Regional developments
Links
Articles

Their Arabic edition has a similar menu:

Home
All News
Policy
Reports and analysis
Hebrew newspapers
Economy
Sport
Science and Technology
Entertainment
Headlines

Their English edition, however, is missing the top-level Israel menu item.

Pro-Israel aid ship "Gilad Shalit" from the Netherlands?

The Kuwait News Agency reports:

Pro-Israeli bodies in the Netherlands are organizing a ship that is to head to Israel, carrying humanitarian aid destined for Sderot and Gaza Strip, Radio Israel reported.

This comes as an effort to counter the anti-Israeli Freedom Flotilla campaign trying to break the siege on Gaza and to strike and weaken international solidarity with the strip.

The ship is carrying the name of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, captured by Hamas in Gaza,"with the participation of a number of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim peace activists, politicians, and people in media," the radio added.

This campaign is organized by members of a pro-Israeli Christian society, and members of the Jewish community in the Netherlands, besides Dutch intellectuals.

The organizers informed the Israeli Embassy in the Netherlands of their planned journey to Israel.

I see nothing about this except in the Arab media.

Self-hating Jews to convene in Detroit

Jews who hate Israel, other Jews - and themselves - will be meeting in Detroit this weekend to denounce Israel and Zionism. Here's a small part of their vitriolic press release, courtesy of the Electronic Intifada site:

Overcoming Zionist ideas and practice is crucial, first and foremost, because of the impact of its institutionalized racism and colonialism on the people of Palestine and the broader region. This impact manifests in the demand for political, legal and economic power for Jews and European people and cultures over indigenous people and cultures. This racism is also the cause of the extensive displacement and alienation of Mizrahi Jews (Jews of African and Asian descent) from their diverse histories, languages, traditions and cultures and in the marginalization and economic exploitation of its Mizrahi population and migrant workers within Israeli society. Zionism is also anti-Semitic in its rejection of Jewish cultures and histories -- including both Jews who are "other" than European and the European Jewish "victim" which it attempted to distance itself from in the creation of the "new Jew."

Look how much these "Jews" care about Jewish culture and history! They complain about Israeli discrimination against Jews from Arab countries - fifty years ago. Yet they don't ask how many of these same Jews would prefer to have stayed in the Arab nations that treated them with as much respect. After all, Arab massacres against Jews were not nearly as bad as European massacres, so those Jews - around half of Israel's population - must really want to move back to Syria and Yemen and Egypt, right?

In fact, the Jews at this conference care so much about Jewish history and culture that they are opening their conference on Shabbat!

These self-loathing Jews, who are so much against "the rejection of Jewish culture and history," show their naked hypocrisy by invoking their own usurpation of even secular Jewish history, as can be seen by their poster for their meeting:

This is a Photoshop of a photo of a demonstration against child labor that took place in 1909:

Who is manipulating the history of their people again?

The sponsors are the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, whose anti-Israel demonstrations generally attract a handful of people. Their only tie to Judaism is to pervert it as a weapon for being against Israel, as their page of their events shows: they had a Tashlich ceremony and a Chanukah party, for example..

I wonder how many of them came home from that party to a real menorah in their home? Nah, that would be too Zionist - the celebration of Jews defeating the non-Jewish usurpers of their land. To them, that party was about dreidels and latkes.

(h/t Philosémitisme blog)

Israel's PR problem is more fundamental

Soccer Dad reproduces an email from an Israeli public relations expert:

Why Israel Cannot Solve Its PR Challenge (or, It's The Message, Stupid!)

By Glenn Jasper

Much has been written over the past few weeks - ever since "The Flotilla Affair" - about the overall weakness of Israel's PR, both when crises hit and in general. And they all brought wonderful examples of how and why Israel's PR has missed the mark.

But I'm afraid they've missed the mark as well.

To understand why we are failing, we must first look at why the other side is succeeding. And the answer to that question is simple: A unified message.

After 9/11, Israel was unified, not only in its condemnation of the attack, but in its message to the world of "You see! This is what we've been going through! Now, do you understand us?"

But time has "healed," and we have once again descended to our previous disagreements and ideologies. We are not united.

And sadly, if Israel itself is not unified - as our enemies are, for the purpose of destroying Israel - then there will be no unified message, and we will continue to lose the PR battle, even if we are right.

So, please do not waste your time analyzing the PR strategy - or even lack thereof - or tactical approach of the Israeli government. It's not about that. It's the same problem that has plagued the Jewish people for centuries. We can't unify. Even about a message. Even when our future is at stake.

Unity of message is a major problem, but I don't think it is the fundamental problem.

Implacable critics of Israel fall in a number of categories.

There are the anti-semites who will always hate a Jewish state. No amount of PR will change their minds.

There are the Muslims who feel that Israel's very existence is an affront to their honor and it must, ultimately, be destroyed for justice to be served. They will couch their arguments in more liberal-friendly terms but this is the ultimate goal of even so-called moderate Muslims. Their minds cannot be changed by PR either.

Then there is the far left. They have had the most success in their campaign against Israel. Much of the reason is because, just like the far right, people who are more moderate in their viewpoints are loathe to publicly criticize the fringe elements for fear of weakening their own position. Since the media is overwhelmingly liberal, this means that far left positions are subject to much less scrutiny than those of the right (and, again, the mirror argument exists in the right-wing media.)

So the obvious hypocrisy of "human rights' activists who are only interested in the human rights of those who are perceived victims of Israeli policy is not exposed nor discussed, and the position that Israel is uniquely beyond the pale of human decency is unchallenged.

Unlike the first two categories, however, this group is not only against Israel. They are against the United States, and many of them are against Western civilization and mores altogether. Israel, for them, is a convenient lightning rod for their hate, but if it didn't exist they would be doing the exact same thing against some other target.

This third group has willing allies in the other two groups, because their hate for America as the leader of the free world far outweighs their discomfort at supporting theocratic or autocratic Muslim dictatorships whose worldview is (supposedly) antithetical to their own. Their self loathing is what drives them, not their hate for others.

The far left (really, the socialist left) is skilled at using the terminology of liberalism to attract followers - and, more importantly, to inoculate themselves from attacks by the more moderate left. Who cannot be against colonialism, or oppression, or racism, or ethnic cleansing? Who would speak out against equal rights and justice? They frame the debate in terms of these keywords and the more mainstream liberals are not interested in digging a little deeper to uncover their de facto support for Muslim colonialism, racism and ethnic cleansing.

The success of this group of Israel haters has been stunning. The flotilla is only the latest example of groups with an ultimately destructive agenda is given a free pass by the media as a "humanitarian" organization. (Deep down, Western powers know that Israel has the legal and moral right to blockade Hamas, but they too are reticent to say so publicly because they don't want to appear to be the "bad guys" either. That is how pervasive the newspeak of the far left has become.)

The so-called BDS movement, that relentlessly supports boycotting and divesting from anything Israeli, has not been very successful in reality but has had enormous success in perception.

One minor but very telling gauge of the success of the Israel-haters has been the recent flurry of popular singing artists succumbing to demands by these groups to cancel concerts in Israel. Elvis Costello, the Pixies and just today Devendra Banhart (whose girlfriend is Israeli!) have all buckled under to the demands of those who single out Israel as uniquely evil. Popular musicians cannot be expected to be knowledgeable enough about the issues to withstand such pressure - in their circles, Israeli evil is self-evident.

A unified message is important, but it isn't going to happen. Even if it did, it would not erase this groundwork of embedded Israel-hatred that has been building for decades and is only now hitting a critical mass. Israel, from much of the world's perspective, IS South Africa and no PR blitz will erase that. The hate train left the station long ago.

What can be done about it? That is a much more difficult problem. Unfortunately, if Israel falls, the rest of the West will fall like so many dominoes, because they are as "guilty" as Israel is from the perspective of the haters. It is not only an existential crisis for Israel - it is a longer-term existential crisis for the entire Western world. That is what needs to be emphasized.

The rhetoric of freedom, justice, equality, self-determination and liberty needs to be taken back by its rightful owners, and those who have hijacked it must be exposed.

It cannot happen too soon.

A liberal takes on the hypocrisy of the European Left

The Portal of Ideas blog has been translating articles by Catalan activist, journalist and former politician Pilar Rahola. Here are excerpts from some of her writings:

Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona? Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam? Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan? Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel? Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism? Why don’t they defend Israel’s right to exist? Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism? An finally, the million dollar question:Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet? The two most solid democracies, who have suffered the bloodiest attacks of terrorism, and the left doesn’t care.

And then, to the concept of freedom. In every pro Palestinian European forum I hear the left yelling with fervor: “We want freedom for the people!” Not true. They are never concerned with freedom for the people of Syria or Yemen or Iran or Sudan, or other such nations. And they are never preoccupied when Hammas destroys freedom for the Palestinians. They are only concerned with using the concept of Palestinian freedom as a weapon against Israeli freedom. The resulting consequence of these ideological pathologies is the manipulation of the press.

The international press does major damage when reporting on the question of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. On this topic they don’t inform, they propagandize. When reporting about Israel the majority of journalists forget the reporter code of ethics. And so, any Israeli act of self-defense becomes a massacre, and any confrontation, genocide. So many stupid things have been written about Israel, that there aren’t any accusations left to level against her. At the same time, this press never discusses Syrian and Iranian interference in propagating violence against Israel; the indoctrination of children and the corruption of the Palestinians. And when reporting about victims, every Palestinian casualty is reported as tragedy and every Israeli victim is camouflaged, hidden or reported about with disdain.

I am not Jewish. Ideologically I am left and by profession a journalist. Why am I not as anti Israeli as my colleagues? Because as a non-Jew I have the historical responsibility to fight against Jewish hatred and currently against the hatred for their historic homeland, Israel. To fight against anti-Semitism is not the duty of the Jews, it is the duty of the non-Jews.

As a journalist it is my duty to search for the truth beyond prejudice, lies and manipulations. The truth about Israel is not told. As a person from the left who loves progress, I am obligated to defend liberty, culture, civic education for children, coexistence and the laws that the Tablets of the Covenant made into universal principles. Principles that Islamic fundamentalism systematically destroys. That is to say that as a non-Jew, journalist and lefty I have a triple moral duty with Israel, because if Israel is destroyed, liberty, modernity and culture will be destroyed too.

The struggle of Israel, even if the world doesn’t want to accept it, is the struggle of the world.

The first question, then, is why so many intelligent people, when talking about Israel, suddenly become idiots. The problem that those of us, who do not demonize Israel have, is that there exists no debate on the conflict. All that exists is the banner; there’s no exchange of ideas. We throw slogans at each other; we don’t have serious information, we suffer from the “burger journalism” syndrome, full of prejudices, propaganda and simplification. Intellectual thinkers and international journalists have given up on Israel. It doesn't exist exist. That is why, when someone tries to go beyond the “single thought” of criticizing Israel, he becomes suspect and unfaithful, and is immediately segregated. Why?

I’ve been trying to answer this question for years: why?

Why, of all the conflicts in the world only this one interests them?

Why is a tiny country which struggles to survive criminalized?

Why does manipulated information triumph so easily?

Why are all the people of Israel, reduced to a simple mass of murderous imperialists?

Why is there no Palestinian guilt?

Why is Arafat a hero and Sharon a monster?

Finally, why when Israel is the only country in the World which is threatened with extinction, it is also the only one that nobody considers a victim?

I don’t believe that there is a single answer to these questions. Just as it is impossible to completely explain the historical evil of anti-Semitism, it is also not possible to totally explain the present-day imbecility of anti-Israelism. Both drink from the fountain of intolerance and lies. Also, if we accept that anti-Israelism is the new form of anti-Semitism, we conclude that circumstances may have changed, but the deepest myths, both of the Medieval Christian anti-Semitism and of the modern political anti-Semitism, are still intact. Those myths are part of the chronicle of Israel.

Tolerant and cultural Islam suffers today the violent attack of a totalitarian virus which tries to stop its ethical development. This virus uses the name of God to perpetrate the most terrible horrors: lapidate women, enslave them, use youths as human bombs. Let’s not forget: They kill us with cellular phones connected to the Middle Ages. If Stalinism destroyed the left, and Nazism destroyed Europe, Islamic fundamentalism is destroying Islam. And it also has an anti-Semitic DNA. Perhaps Islamic anti-Semitism is the most serious intolerant phenomenon of our times; indeed, it contaminates more than 1,400 million people, who are educated, massively, in hatred towards the Jew.

In the crossroads of these defeats, is Israel. Orphan and forgotten by a reasonable left, orphan and abandoned by serious journalism, orphan and rejected by a decent UN, and rejected by a tolerant Islam, Israel suffers the paradigm of the 21st Century: the lack of a solid commitment with the values of liberty. Nothing seems strange. Jewish culture represents, as no other does, the metaphor of a concept of civilization which suffers today attacks on all flanks. The Jews are the thermometer of the world’s health. Whenever the world has had totalitarian fever, they have suffered. In the Spanish Middle Ages, in Christian persecutions, in Russian pogroms, in European Fascism, in Islamic fundamentalism. Always, the first enemy of totalitarianism has been the Jew. And, in these times of energy dependency and social uncertainty, Israel embodies, in its own flesh, the eternal Jew.

A pariah nation among nations, for a pariah people among peoples. That is why the anti-Semitism of the 21st Century has dressed itself with the efficient disguise of anti-Israelism, or its synonym, anti-Zionism. Is all criticism of Israel anti-Semitism? NO. But all present-day anti-Semitism has turned into prejudice and the demonization of the Jewish State. New clothes for an old hatred.

Benjamin Franklin said: “Where liberty is, there is my country.” And Albert Einstein added: “The World is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil; but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”. This is the double commitment, here and now; never remain inactive in front of evil in action and defend the countries of liberty.

Those who go into the streets claim to do so in favor of the freedom of Palestine. Well, where have they been all these years, as the fundamentalist phenomena that oppressed the Palestinians were on the rise? Does Hamas have anything to do with freedom, or rather, doesn't it have everything to do with Islamism of a fascist tendency? Is freedom defended by training children to commit suicide attacks and by enslaving women? Is freedom defended by Iran, which supports Hamas financially? Does freedom belong to the terrorists of Hezbollah?

Those who protest in the streets also say they do so out of solidarity. Well, solidarity with whom? With Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, who has been less critical of the incursion than any European carrying a sign? With the Palestinians who do not agree with having the financial aid sent to their people being used to build armies and prepare bomb attacks? Do they wonder what happens to these funds? Does solidarity with the Palestinians mean defending terrorism and excusing Hamas' aggressions? Is peace defended by boosting Palestinian leaders who do not believe in it?

It is true that the intolerant left lives better by being anti-Israel. And it is also true that, in the face of complex realities, the vociferous masses prefer the simplicity of the "good" and the "bad." But, beyond prejudice, facts are stubborn. Israel withdrew from Gaza, leaving intact the economic structures it had created. Hamas destroyed them all, and took advantage of the withdrawal to prepare an army of destruction. And hundreds of missiles later, it continues its preparations.

The silence of this left, which is so loud today, has been very significant. What is happening in Gaza is tragic. But it did not start with the Israeli incursion. And to put all the blame on Israel is comfortable and simple, but useless. Because the main enemy of the Palestinian people comes from within.

(h/t Zvi and Bubbe)

Mavi Marmara: The Facts (video)

Shown on Israel's Channel 2, this is the most accurate and up-to-date video presentation of what happened aboard the Mavi Marmara.

(h/t Islamo-nazism blog)

Hezbollah planning women's ship to Gaza?

Firas Press and Palestine Today both quote Israeli radio that a new ship is being planned to sail from Lebanon to Gaza that will have only woman passengers.

The ship would be called the "Mary," and is meant to force Israel to make difficult decisions about how to intercept it.

And who is behind this ship?

Why, Israel's peaceful humanitarian neighbors, Hezbollah!

Meanwhile, three more boats are expected to come in coming days. A Lebanese boat, sponsored by Reporters Without Borders and the Free Palestine movement, is expected this weekend. Two boats from the Iranian Red Crescent are also planned.

I find it interesting that Reporters Without Borders, which should be dedicated to the objective reporting of news, is instead choosing to create the news that its members will report.

Cement prices in Gaza plummet

Palestine Today reports that the cost for cement in Gaza, smuggled in from Egypt, has dropped from 1200 NIS to 700 NIS in recent months.

That comes out to about $180 per metric ton, which is about twice what it costs in the US.

The local Gaza cement industry continues to extract materials from destroyed buildings to create new cement clocks, but they are somewhat inferior for construction.

The article stresses that the price of other materials needed for construction remain high, including steel.

Ceramic tiles from Egypt are significantly cheaper than that which can be locally made, which hurts the local industry.

By backing the terrorist group against Israel, western countries are backing Hamas against Fatah and Islamist states against ME moderates.

This is how Caroline Glick summarizes her latest op-ed in the Jerusalem Post, but it was not what immediately got my intention. I was shocked to read this:

"His [Obama's, Suz.) administration’s decision to deport Hamas deserter and Israeli counterterror operative Mosab Hassan Yousef to the Palestinian Authority where he will be killed is the latest sign of its support for radical Islam."

And apparently this might become the case:

Mosab Hassan Yousef is a best-selling author who wrote "Son of Hamas" about his life as a Palestinian who became an informant for Israeli intelligence. He's probably near the top of every Islamist terror hit list, yet the U.S. may soon deport him as a terror threat.

Reason?

According to Mr. Yousef, a letter from Homeland Security attorney Kerri Calcador cites passages in "Son of Hamas" as evidence of his connection to terrorist leaders and suggests that the work he did for Hamas while spying for Israel provided aid to terrorists. "At a bare minimum, evidence of the respondent's transport of Hamas members to safe houses . . . indicates that the respondent provided material support to a [Tier I] terrorist organization," the U.S. lawyer wrote.

But unless Ms. Calcador knows more than she's saying, this is bizarre. As a spy for Israel, Mr. Yousef had to make his colleagues believe he was a loyal member of Hamas. He used that trust to gain information that he provided to Israeli intelligence, which used it to prevent terror attacks and save lives.

Under U.S. immigration law, anyone who is shown to have provided "material support" for terrorist organizations is automatically denied asylum. In the relentless way that bureaucracy works, this is being interpreted as leaving little discretion for deserving exceptions like the case of Mr. Yousef.

Hamas' version of The Wizard of Oz

Here is a public-service advertisement being aired by Hamas in Gaza. It is meant to encourage "collaborators" with Israel to turn themselves in and avoid being executed.

It shows a man about to be hung, and flashbacks on the crimes that caused him to get to this point - looking at porn on the Internet and using Facebook, which leads him into contact with an Israeli handler who provides him with drugs, money and explosives to blow up a terrorist car.

But then he wakes up, and it was all a dream, and he is back in his wonderful home in Gaza.

And, Auntie Em, there's no place like home!

(The deadline of the amnesty program is July 10.)

Settlers are not all from Brooklyn! (Zvi)

Zvi comments on my posting on Elanor Clift's ignorance:

Mizrachi Jews (Jews from Arab or Muslim countries) make up 52-54% of the Israeli Jewish population. This is a much, much larger group than Jews from the entire western hemisphere, much less Brooklyn.

[Possibly much] more than 1/4 of all Israelis today have multi-ethnic parents and that this trend is increasing over time (a plot of the data would probably resemble an S curve). While this statistic does not seem to be available for settlement towns in particular, this statistic is extremely unlikely to be radically different in, say, Maale Adumim, than it is in the rest of Israel.

Settlers all from Brooklyn?

"Settlers" in particular are not a homogeneous group. Neither are settlements. The media knowingly and unknowingly distort the image of settlers. Hard-line settlers with American origins make the most "interesting" interview candidates for foreign TV. This may, in part, drive perceptions of settlers. A news crew is not going to interview a mother of Yemeni descent who speaks no English at all if there is an American who speaks perfect English in the room, especially if he "looks the part" of a settler (e.g. he's wearing a kippah, which as all veteran news watchers know, means he's an extremist << ----- SARCASM ALERT). And if he's an American Israeli, and he's wearing a kippah, what are the odds that he has a New York accent? They're a little better than the odds that he sounds as though he's from Nebraska.

Also, the media tends to define "settler" tendencies based on the extremists rather than the vast majority of law-abiding Israelis - Kahanists on the fringe of the Kfar Tapuach population rather than mainstream residents of Maale Adumim. Case in point: we know that a lot of West Bank Arabs work or study in settlements, and that this has contributed to the economic growth of the West Bank. The number of cases in which West Bank Arabs are assaulted by fringe groups within settlements is vanishingly small. But the media portrays settlers as fringe radicals who go around beating up women, burning mosques and cutting own Arab owned olive trees. "Human rights" groups push this agenda and put out press releases every time an incident occurs. They don't refer to "unknown assailants" or "people from Kfar Tapuach" (I don't mean to pick on Tapuach here) but rather use the generic term "settlers" because this jibes with their political agenda. The "human rights" groups craft a perception that is very inconsistent with the reality. The media eat it up.

Where have we seen this recently... ?

One thing that you can say about "settlers" as a whole is that they are people who, for various reasons, are willing to move to a new town and make a life there. Most are just young families trying to buy a home, as opposed to radicals. The electoral results for Maale Adumim show that most "settlers" from Maale Adumim vote for mainstream Israeli parties instead of voting for fringe parties or ethnic parties. The security agenda pushes them to the right.

Also, the average age in "settlement" towns is relatively low. Based on the lack of voting for fringe parties, this tendency is not the result of an ideology. It is simply the result of the fact that settlers are usually young families.

If there were vast demographic gulfs between settlers and other Israelis, Israelis themselves would be widely discussing radical differences between the demographics of the "settlement" towns and those of Israel. And they're not.

The media single out Jewish settlers for blame and ignore Arab settlers who are MUCH more intransigent.

And of course it is important to remember that a percentage of Arabs living in Israel, the WB and Gaza, as well as those who are regarded as "Palestinian refugees" by the UN, are likewise descended from people who moved to the area during the last 100 years from some of the same countries and squatted illegally on government-owned land, which they now claim as "theirs" because they have the keys to houses that were built illegally. Helen Thomas and her supporters don't appear to believe that these people should go home to their countries of origin. Only the Jews are supposed to leave, or die.

UC Irvine's Muslim Student Union recommended for suspension

From the Orange County Jewish Experience:

Many in our community have waited a long time for UC Irvine officials to take action against the ongoing actions by the Muslim Student Union. Some thought it would never happen. Today’s blog is will certainly get your attention.

Jewish Federation Orange County announced this morning it has learned the results of UC Irvine’s judicial process. UCI has suspended the Muslim Student Union (MSU) for one year and placed it on disciplinary probation for an additional year. That’s not all. The MSU is also required to collectively complete 50 hours of community service. As a result, it will not be allowed to conduct organized campus events until at least the fall of 2011.
Here is what Shalom Elcott, the President of the Jewish Federation Orange County had to say about the decision.

“We commend the University for its judicious decision in support of free speech and civil discourse. The University’s disciplinary action regarding the MSU establishes an important and appropriate precedent and sends a powerful message to other universities across the nation.”

According to a UCI campus document, suspension means that the recognition of the MSU organization has been revoked. Gone. Done. Additionally the document states that no current executive officer listed on the Dean of Students registration application form will be allowed to act as an “authorized signer” for any other student organization at UC Irvine during the suspension. The effective dates pertaining to the suspension are from September 1, 2010 to August 31, 2011.

How did this come to pass. Let’s go back to events that happened earlier this year.

On February 8, 2010, Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren visited the Orange County, California, campus for a planned visit and speech to UCI students and community members. During the 90-minute event, Oren was repeatedly interrupted by members of the Muslim Student Union, 11 of whom were arrested. The investigation into this incident revealed the Muslim Student Union’s well-documented and premeditated plan to prevent Oren from delivering his presentation.
The results of the campus judicial reviews regarding the 11 individual students arrested at the Oren event will not be released by the University. Privacy laws protect the student notifications, so we cannot know the outcome at this time. Unless the students step up and make or challenge the announcement themselves, we may never know how the university has punished them.

Jewish students at UCI, whose campus experience is largely a positive one, have been the target of the Muslim Student Union’s anti-Israeli campaigns and anti-Semitic slurs for years. The MSU, while publicly denying its student programming as being anti-Semitic, brought fringe speakers to the campus just last month. One speaker, Malik Ali, said during a campus speech just steps from the UC Irvine administration building, “Ya’ll (Jews) are the new Nazi’s.” Ali also confirmed his public support for terrorist organizations Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

This is a very rare acknowledgment of the fact that many campus Muslim organizations routinely cross the line into pure hate.

Here's some background about MSU at Irvine.

According to the LA Times blog, the suspension has been recommended but has not yet been implemented, and the MSU is appealing.

(h/t Faith)

A great example of the media's willful blindness

From Newsweek's Eleanor Clift: (h/t Jennifer Rubin):

Google “good riddance to Helen Thomas,” and you get 41,700 results, more than enough to get the gist of the blogosphere’s general disdain for the 89-year-old doyenne who was a fixture in the White House press room going back to the Kennedy administration. Much of the commentary reflects revulsion at Thomas’s characterization of the Palestinian issue as something that could be solved if Jews left the Palestine territories and went back to where they came from.

She was talking about the settlers, and if she had said they should go back to Brooklyn, where many of them are from, she probably wouldn’t have made news. But suggesting they return to Germany and Poland touched a nerve that led to an abrupt ending of Thomas’s storied career. She apologized, saying “I made a mistake.” But there was no forgiveness

Was Thomas only speaking about "settlers"? Let's look at Thomas' words:

"Any comments on Israel?"

HT "Tell them to get the hell out of Palestine. Remember, these people are occupied and it's their land. It's not Germany, not Poland."

"So where should they go?"

HT "Home. Poland. Germany. America. And everywhere else.

Exactly what percentage of "settlers" have immigrated to Israel from Poland and Germany? Oh, approximately zero.

If Clift had even the slightest clue, she would know that Thomas' words were impossible to misinterpret. She regards all of "Palestine" as occupied, exactly as Hamas does, exactly as the PA does when they are not speaking in English. She is old enough to have already been an adult for a while when Israel was created, when no one referred to Arabs of the area as "Palestinians," when Arabs were crystal clear that Jews should all leave Palestine - just as Thomas still believes.

Clift's ignorance does not stop at her willful misinterpretation of Thomas' call for ethnic cleansing of Jews from the Middle East. She fully accepts the idea that most settlers are from Brooklyn - when in fact there are plenty of native-born Israelis in the territories, as well as Russians and people from other places. There are secular Israelis as well as religious ones over the Green Line.

Moreover, Clift accepts Thomas' apology as actually meaning something beyond a last-minute plea to save her career. Yet anyone who has followed that storied career that Clift goes on to praise knows that Thomas meant exactly what she said.

The last implicit mistake that Clift and others make is that the vast majority of Israelis have European ancestors. In fact, one of the great under-reported facts about Israel is that probably more than half of today's Israelis have great-grandparents who were born in an Arab country.

Clift has been a reporter for a couple of decades herself. It is one thing to hear college students talk confidently and ignorantly about Israel, but to see someone like Clift repeat stereotypes about Israel without having a clue of the truth shows either a serious case of laziness or of lying.

I'm not sure which is a worse habit for a journalist to have.