Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Monday, August 23, 2010

Hungry or not? Mainstream media's hypocrisy on Gaza

The mainstream media and NGOs were the the main purveyors of the myth of Gaza was suffering from a humanitarian crisis - a myth that goes back to the early 90s at the very least.

Since the Gaza Mall opened, we have seen on a few occasions the people who have made a living talking about how miserable life is in Gaza take a step back and re-frame their arguments. They cannot deny the truth, but they don't want to retroactively look like liars - which is what they effectively have been for nearly two decades.

So, one by one, they are reframing the Gaza meme to try to save face and make sure that people still blame Israel for Gaza's problems.

Gaza is still miserable, these newly-sophisticated and nuanced journalists are saying, but it is not because the Gazans are hungry, or poverty-stricken, or cannot get basic items. Forget all those thousands of articles over the years that we wrote, forget us uncritically quoting Jimmy Carter about how Gazans are "literally starving" or being "starved to death." No, the problems with Gaza are not so much physical but a state of mind, you see.

Previously, we mentioned Slate's backtracking, admitting that there is no humanitarian crisis in Gaza and no hunger. Instead, Slate quotes an official, it is a "crisis of dignity."

Oh, I see. So how does Gazans' dignity stack up against, say, that of poor Egyptians or Yemenis or even Saudi Arabia's lower class? We don't know, and we won't know, because reporters much prefer to hang out in Gaza where they can visit the Roots restaurant than to go to poor Arab villages in other parts of the world.

Time magazine's reframing of Gaza sounded like this:

Gaza's residents will concede that there is no hunger crisis in the Strip. Residents do love the beach, and the store shelves are stocked. But if you're focused on starvation, they say, you're probably missing the point. To them, the word prison speaks more to the effect that years of conflict and political and economic isolation have had on the Gaza psyche. "We are talking about continuous stress and ongoing trauma," says Hasan Zeyada, a psychologist at the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP), the territory's main psychological treatment and research NGO. "It's not one incident, but all of the time. We are at a continuous level of high stress and human-rights violations and traumas through Israeli invasions and war."

Oh, so we are missing the point if we focused on starvation? Then why did Time magazine's Gaza correspondent write, in 2008, "As you sit down to a Thanksgiving feast, please spare a thought for the starving Palestinians of Gaza. There are 1.5 million of them, most of them living hand to mouth, or on UN handouts, because Israel has them under siege."

Now, the latest to join the hypocrites is Ethan Bronner of the New York Times. Two years ago he didn't hesitate to state as a fact:

Militants have tried to infiltrate the border crossing into Israel five times in recent weeks. That has led Israel to keep the border closed more often, further reducing supplies and worsening the already severe humanitarian crisis there.

No nuance there, Gazans were in a "crisis," the exact same way one would describe sub-Saharan Africa or parts of Bangladesh.

Now, however, Bronner has caught onto the new Gaza meme, talking about the Gaza mall:

To the commentators who have never been here, certain points need to be cleared up. To those who contend the mall is proof that Gaza has construction materials: the building is 20 years old. To those who have described the mall as “gigantic” and “futuristic”: it is small and a bit old-fashioned. To Danny Ayalon, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, who wrote that the mall “would not look out of place in any capital in Europe”: it would.

But the broader point many of these advocates are making — that the poverty of Gaza is often misconstrued, willfully or inadvertently — is correct. The despair here is not that of Haiti or Somalia. It is a misery of dependence, immobility and hopelessness, not of grinding want. The flotilla movement is not about material aid; it is about Palestinian freedom and defiance of Israeli power.

On at least 14 occasions the New York Times described the ships that try to sail to Gaza as "aid ships."

Bronner is not only trying to willfully change the Gaza meme, but in the paragraph above he is showing his own support for the illegal breaking of a legal blockade. He is not quoting a Free Gaza official as to the purpose of the ships, he is stating their purpose from his own perspective - "Palestinian freedom and defiance of Israeli power." He is all but publicly admiring their aims and goals.

However, the fact is that both the media and the anti-Israel activists have used the "starvation" meme as a convenient fiction to focus the world on demonizing Israel. Their current re-framing to change it instead to "dependence, immobility and hopelessness" is nothing more than an attempt to not look like fools and not admit that they have been lying to the world for years.

If they cared about Palestinian Arab "hopelessness" they would be spending much more time in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria. They would be interviewing Mahmoud Abbas about why he has yet to dismantle a single "refugee" camp in the West Bank - all of which are under Palestinian Arab control.

No, these hypocritical reporters are not interested in revealing truths about how Gazans live. They have been dining in fine restaurants in Gaza and staying in fancy hotels - they knew the truth for years. They are equally not interested in Palestinian Arab suffering and deprivation - because by any measure, the Arabs in camps in Lebanon envy the Gazans. These hypocrites hammer away at Gaza for years because they want to blame Israel for Gaza's problems, nothing more. They'll occasionally leaven their prodigious Gaza output with an article about Hamas abuses of Gazans, but their focus has been unrelentingly on Israel.

The unraveling of the "humanitarian crisis" meme just shows how deeply the mainstream media has been in bed with NGOs and anti-Israel activists and how easily they parrot false statistics and claims.

Any way you look at it, the media has been lying to you about Gaza for years. Why should you believe them now?

When Ted Kennedy visited the West Bank

From AP, January 8, 1967:

Sen. Edwards Kennedy, D-Mass., toured three refugee camps in Jordan in November as part of a fact-finding tour, without arousing any apparent resentment among the Palestinians.

One patriarch, however, confronted and harangued the senator. "The Jews have killed your brother as they killed Jesus Christ," the refugee told the solemn-faced Kennedy.

Of course, the real irony of that statement was not realized until Kennedy's other brother was assassinated.

Airport delay open thread

I am stuck waiting for a flight that has been delayed 2 1/2 hours (so far.)

All I can say is thank G-d for 3G coverage with my carrier who usually has spotty coverage, for my now-obsolete Android phone having a hotspot feature so I can easily use my laptop, and for finding an electric outlet before the mad rush.

Also, for last minute $59 upgrades to first class instead of the center seat I was going to be stuck in.

Here's an open thread to celebrate my misfortune.

If AFP had decent editors....

It is too bad this AFP article is so poorly edited.

Here's the version that would have been decent:

KIBBUTZ KARMIYYA, Israel — Dana Chetrit, her husband Alain and their two young children in August 2005 reluctantly left their home in the northern Gaza settlement of Elei Sinai, never to return.

They were among 8,000 Israeli settlers evicted by their own government from 21 settlements in Gaza, in a move heralded as ending 38 years of Israeli occupation and as bringing closer an end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

To Chetrit, a 36-year-old art teacher, the pullout brought broken dreams, broken promises and a broken marriage.

Five years since soldiers ordered settler Dana Chetrit out of her home, she is still living in temporary accommodation at the Karmiya kibbutz just across the border in Israel.

Her marriage collapsed under the strain of the move.

As a 22-year-old newly-wed in 1996, she had found her ideal home in the small settlement of Elei Sinai, just inside the Gaza Strip and about five kilometers (three miles) from where she now lives.

"It was our first home, it was the home we had been looking for," she said. "We wanted to live in a communal community, it was cheap, there were other young couples there, everyone was like us."

The idyll was shattered in October 2001 when Hamas gunmen cut through the settlement's perimeter fence and shot dead a 19-year-old girl and her 20-year-old boyfriend. Another 15 Israelis were wounded before the attackers were shot dead in a gun battle with soldiers.

Chetrit said the incident only strengthened her attachment to the settlement and her commitment to her neighbours.

But in 2004, then Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announced the withdrawal of Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza. On August 18, 2005, the Chetrits were turfed out of their home.

The violence, however, followed them across the border to the small kibbutz collective farm, where she and the boys now live in a five-roomed prefabricated house.

Gaza militants regularly fire rockets across the border. In February 2006, a Qassam rocket, produced in the workshops of the Palestinian territory, thudded into a neighbour's house, destroying it and blowing a toddler out of the playpen in which he had been sitting.

The injured child recovered but the traumatised parents moved out the same day.

"Rockets had fallen before but this was a direct hit," Chetrit said. "If you had seen the house, you would have been amazed that anybody could come out of it alive."

In a separate attack, a rocket fell on the kibbutz football pitch, injuring two people, she said, adding that there were plenty of near misses as well.

Of around 50 families from Elei Sinai who were initially housed at Karmiya, only about 20 remain today, some driven out by fear of more rockets.

Chetrit, who has been promised land on which to build a home in the nearby village of Talme Yafe, said the bureaucratic wheels are turning very slowly.

"We haven't yet received a plot," she said. "By the time we get building permits ... it could be another four or five years."

She is not going to move again until she has a permanent home. "Qassams or no Qassams, I'm not leaving again ... I can't see myself packing up again and moving house," she said.

Instead, AFP threw in a "balanced" set of paragraphs about Arabs in Gaza with no consistent viewpoint and some questionable quotes, breaking up the narrative and changing the article from something pretty good into a nonsensical mishmash.

Why is it so against wire service editorial standards to have a story exclusively from an Israeli perspective? They sure do it for Palestinian Arabs enough.

Hamas fumes at Ramadan skit

Last week, PA TV broadcast a skit on a satirical program that made fun of Hamas leaders - and Hamas reacted angrily.

In the skit, Hamas leaders Haniyeh and al Zahar are waiting anxiously at the Gaza border for curvaceous Lebanese diva Haifa Wehbe to arrive. They are holding signs that say that "the siege is made of Iron, but only Haifa can melt it." When she arrives, she goes into Haniyeh's car and puts on a veil.

The skit continues with Haniyeh being so distraught at her eventual departure from Gaza that he cancels a reconciliation meeting with Egypt and Fatah.

The satire not only makes fun of Hamas hypocrisy but also of Arab celebrities who latch onto Gaza as a cause in order to further their careers (Wehbe was planning to join the women's ship from Lebanon before Hezbollah nixed the idea, according to reports.)

The same program has also made fun of PA leaders and corruption, but Hamas did not take kindly to its airing, accusing the PA Ministry of Information of broadcasting "black propaganda in support of the Israeli propaganda." It was to the "detriment of all Islamic morals and values of the Palestinian National movement, to the point of libel and slander." They said it was "making fun of the leaders of the resistance and the martyrs who gave their children."

I think it is time for a Hamas comedy channel!

(h/t Ali for translation help)

Arabs suffering power outages, water shortages. No flotillas coming.

Some Egyptian areas are suffering from power outages, and as a result there are also water shortages. These are mostly affecting the governorates of Fayoum and Damietta.

The minister of iand energy is pleading with citizens to cut back their electricity usage during the current heat wave.

Affected citizens are starting to hold protests.

Not only that, but basic food staples are in short supply as well.

Of course, this is not news. There are no pictures in the wire services of little Egyptian kids eating their Iftar dinners in candlelight or of people queueing up to get clean drinking water. Because this is not Gaza and no one can possibly blame the Jews for the problems - so they might as well be invisible.

Col. Richard Kemp on the dangers of withdrawal from the territories

From JCPA:

To stand any real chance of success, every insurgent or terrorist movement needs a safe haven to operate from - one that is outside the control of the state being targeted and preferably in a land that is free from interference by the target state or its allies, whether due to geography, the protection of a friendly regime, or operating within a failed state. The Vietnam conflict was a classic example of the use of a safe haven. More recently, in the Iraq campaign, Sunni extremists had a safe haven in Syria which was their main logistic support base and a pipeline for suicide bombers flowing into Iraq. They also used extensive support networks in Iran, which also provided a safe haven for Shi'ite insurgents attacking coalition forces, as well as through the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and Hizbullah, which provided training, organization, munitions, and direction.

Today the Afghan Taliban's safe haven and support base is in Pakistan, although the second largest extremist group engaged in Afghanistan, Hizb-i-Islami, has its main base in Iran itself. In March, General Petraeus, the Head of U.S. Central Command, in testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, revealed that Tehran is letting al-Qaeda leaders travel freely between Pakistan and Afghanistan, effectively using Iranian territory as a safe haven, while permitting them also to hold meetings in Iran to plan terrorist attacks against U.S. and other Western targets.

Israel has had more than a flavor of what it can mean to leave hostile groups in control of lands adjacent to its own borders in southern Lebanon and in Gaza. Any similar move to totally cede control to the Palestinians of the West Bank or a part of Jerusalem may have considerable attraction for any peace process, and that is certainly the view of many in the international community. But both prospects would carry immense risk from the perspective of asymmetrical activities against Israel.

Some might argue that a modern high-tech state can monitor hostile activities outside its borders. Yet we've seen many failures of intelligence in relation to offensive activities by conventional forces and war plans by nation-states which are generally relatively easy to identify and monitor. But surveillance and intelligence collection against a deeply embedded, secretive, extremist network operating within a dense civilian population is the most difficult target, and no national intelligence organization can be confident that it will have a high success rate against such a target.

Despite many spectacular successes, including the killing in Pakistan of al-Qaeda's number three, Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, the unrivalled technological supremacy of the U.S. military has failed to effectively dent the Taliban's ability to smuggle munitions and infiltrate large groups of fighters across the Afghan border. I do not for a moment underestimate the difficulties this entails. Jordan's support or effectiveness in countering extremist activity directed at Israel from the West Bank could not be counted upon, and extremists would also seek to destabilize Jordan, an important stepping stone to the destruction of Israel.

...

It has been suggested that an international force, perhaps a NATO force should replace the IDF presence in the West Bank. While I would not exclude that idea in principle, it raises a number of very serious questions. First of all, where are the NATO troops going to come from and how long are they going to stay? Let us not forget the difficulties that NATO has had for years and still has in mustering forces for the war in Afghanistan - and this is for a campaign that is NATO's declared main effort and its only real, current, live operation. Many of the troops that are there are restricted by significant national caveats, including restricting deployments to the safest areas. Some nations are simply not prepared to put their troops into undue danger. Unfortunately, undue danger goes hand in glove with war and with the toughest peacekeeping operations, and the West Bank would fall clearly into that category. Some NATO nations can't operate after dark and they leave the insurgents to control the night, with all the implications that this has.

There is a significant risk that in trying to develop and maintain good relations with all parties, the peacekeepers would instead become the enemy of both sides. Potential contributors to the international forces would know that. What would happen to those who were prepared to take part when the going got tough, as it inevitably would? ...

Just how sure could we be that the electorates in contributing countries would allow their militaries to remain deployed in the West Bank under these kinds of pressures, and how effective would NATO be as a peacekeeping force in the demanding circumstances that we are considering? The only previous success that NATO is able to claim in this field, and it is by no means uncontroversial, was in Kosovo, which also in practice was a far less complex situation.

... Would a NATO mission be ready and able to take on insurgents, and if not, to what extent would they then get in the way of a vital Israeli effort to do so to protect their own people?

In many ways peacekeeping is far tougher and more challenging than fighting as combatants. It is one thing to act robustly against people that are attacking you and your comrades. It is quite another to put your troops' lives on the line when it is not them but others who are in danger. Dutch forces have fought gallantly and effectively in Afghanistan. They've been brave and they've taken many casualties, but Srebrenica cannot be forgotten. More than 8,000 civilians were massacred there in 1995 under the eyes of Dutch UN peacekeepers.

To conclude, I would neither exclude the possibility of an IDF withdrawal from the West Bank nor their replacement with a NATO force, but before either can be seriously contemplated there are some fundamental questions to be resolved. These issues are critical to NATO, the West as a whole, and the entire Middle East because a failed NATO mission and a West Bank under extremist control, flourishing under a security vacuum there, would encourage and strengthen violent jihadists everywhere in the world.

Read the whole thing.

Fatah website accuses Hamas of killing people for their kidneys

Firas Press reports that a Hamas doctor has killed a mentally-handicapped man in order to harvest his kidneys.

Firas normally rips off their stories from other sources, but I could not find the original story, just a copy in a Fatah forum quoting "Kofia Press" which I am unfamiliar with but looks to be a Fatah website.

While it sounds like a wild rumor, what makes this story so interesting is the amount of specificity: it names the doctor, the victim, the dates, and the place of the alleged crime:

The perpetrator is a doctor named Mohammed Rashid Abdul Hamid Deeb, belonging to Al Qassam Brigades, who lives in the Nasr district, near the Turquoise towers in Gaza City, with identity number 900336215, who was born on September 12, 1974 and works in the Ministry of Health. The victim is mentally handicapped citizen named Anwar Hassouna - known as Anwar Abbas - from Beach Camp he was thirty-eight years old.

Anwar was kidnapped on 15.06.2010 and then [Deeb] killed him with an air injection into a vein leading directly to death, for the removal of his kidney, and the victim's body was disposed of in the area of Wadi Gaza.

The article goes on to say that this case indicates that other "natural" deaths in Gaza could have been murders by Hamas.

Abbas angry at Clinton's invitation "without preconditions"

Last Friday, Hilary Clinton invited Israel and the PA to Washington for direct talks. “These negotiations should take place without preconditions and be characterized by good faith and a commitment to their success,” she said.

According to Asharq al-Awsat, Mahmoud Abbas was furious at the announcement.

The newspaper says that Abbas went "mad" when he heard Clinton's words, because he wanted there to be a statement from the Quartet before the negotiations to confirm that they support a solution based on the 1949 armistice lines.

His angry reaction caused much consternation in Washington, and the White House made three separate phone calls to Abbas in an hour in order to calm him down, according to the report, in order to convince him not to abandon the talks.

US support of the LAF is counterproductive

A "news analysis" in the New York Times by Robert F. Worth comes, unsurprisingly, to a conclusion that the US must continue and perhaps increase aid to the corrupt and ineffective Lebanese army. Its flaws are obvious, starting with the beginning:

Earlier this month, Israeli soldiers were pruning a tree on their country’s northern border when a firefight broke out with Lebanese soldiers across the fence, leaving one Israeli and four Lebanese dead.

The skirmish seems to have been accidental.

And Worth's ability to ignore basic facts just keeps going. He mentions

The Lebanese Army, meanwhile, has been so intent on preserving its status as the country’s one neutral institution that it is now largely impotent. During the fighting in May 2008, for instance, soldiers sat in their American Humvees and watched, unwilling to take sides.

Yet he concludes that if the US wouldn't fund the LAF, then Hezbollah would take over Lebanon.

This "analyst" clearly hasn't spent five minutes reading the statements of mainstream Lebanese, including LAF leaders, concerning the border incident with Israel. Their reaction was identical to Hezbollah's - no one is the least bit critical that they sent a pre-planned ambush to murder Israelis, complete with tipping off a large number of reporters that a routine and legal tree-cutting was going to turn into major headlines. Their hatred of Israel far exceeds their hatred of Hezbollah. The liberal idea that funding states somehow magically turns them into friends has been proven time and time again to be laughably false, but it has become a major foundation of US foreign policy.

Everyone who reads Worth's worthless piece should also read the following, written by EoZ contributor Zvi.

Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid provides a fairly sensible commentary on the Lebanese Armed Forces' attempt to seek donations to fund procurement in the wake of the loss of $100M from the United States. Although one provably fallacious phrase has been added (the claim that the tree was in southern Lebanon is "malarky"), the rest of the column is quite sensible.

The crisis with the Lebanese army is not due to it being ill-equipped, nor does this concern the army's need to develop, but rather the problem is the army's position in the structure of the state, and the lack of it being acknowledged as the only state instate with the right to bear arms.

In other words, the problem is that the government of Lebanon is not a sovereign government, according to the definition of sovereignty. It does not have supreme, independent authority over Lebanon, because it cannot control territory held by Hezbollah or by the Palestinians. It does not enjoy a monopoly on the use of force, and cannot enforce its authority throughout the state.

Al-Rashid concludes,

One of the reasons that may have prompted the Americans to spend so generously to equip the Lebanese army – having invested more than $600 million to date – is because they think that the army will one day be strong enough to eliminate militias such as Hezbollah. However this is unrealistic when looking at the current situation in Lebanon; for the army will remain weak without a political agreement on granting the military powers, not just weapons.

Any western support for the LAF is pointless and misguided. Recent events demonstrate that while the LAF cannot and will not solve any of Lebanon's problems, it can easily make them worse. With this in mind, and despite my respect and affection for the people of Lebanon, the United States and other western powers must not support or contribute to the LAF.

Who do you trust more to understand Lebanese politics: a New York Times columnist whose conclusions were set in stone before he did any research, or an Arab who has studied Lebanon for years?

Jamaican Orthodox Jew, former hip-hopper, murdered in Brooklyn

From CBS:

A robbery in Brooklyn Thursday night led to the death Yoseph Robinson, a man whose life led him on a journey from street criminal, to music executive, to a conversion to Orthodox Judaism.

The former hip-hop record executive who converted to Orthodox Judaism, was shot and killed while trying to stop a gunman from taking a woman's jewelry at a Brooklyn kosher liquor store where he worked.

Police say Robinson was shot in the chest and arm Thursday night at the MB Vineyards liquor store in the Flatbush section of the borough.

Residents say the 34-year-old Jamaican-born man had recently converted to Judaism and enjoyed telling customers about his spiritual journey.

"He was a good guy. Rock solid," Rabbi Ezra Max told the New York Post of Robinson.

More than 100 people from the Orthodox and Hasidic neighborhood gathered outside the liquor store to pay their respects.

You can read more about Yoseph's life on his website.

Lebanese call on gov't to kick Palestinian Arabs out of Leb.-owned homes

Hot on the heels of the slight easing of restrictions on professions that Arabs of Palestinian descent in Lebanon can practice, the Lebanese Forces (which are mostly Christian) are trying to ensure that PalArabs cannot live in Lebanese-owned homes:

The Lebanese Forces urged the government on Saturday to find a solution to Palestinian occupants of homes owned by Lebanese in villages east of the southern port city of Sidon.
While hailing parliament's decision to grant Palestinians working rights, an LF statement said "the Lebanese government is urged to find a quick solution to the issue which has become an unacceptable burden."

It said homes in Miyeh Miyeh, Darb al-Sim and other areas are occupied by Palestinians.

The government should adopt an effective solution to find alternative housing to them, the LF said.

The bigotry in Lebanon against Palestinian Arabs is so entrenched that it is not newsworthy. This isn't about the PalArabs owning land - this is saying that they cannot even live outside camps, even if they are (apparently) paying for it!

Mariam ship delayed yet again

From Ya Libnan:

Samar al-Hajj, coordinator of the Gaza bound Mariam aid ship said on Saturday that the ship is now scheduled to depart Tripoli port on August 29, instead of Aug 22

She told LBC: “It seems as if there is universal war against us … We will not allow anyone to cancel the ship’s trip.”

Hajj added that the ship will not head to Gaza directly from Tripoli, stressing: “The ship cannot be the reason for the start of a war.”

Meanwhile, a source from the Cypriot foreign ministry told Ad Diyar Saturday: “Since Cyprus is a member of the European Union and maintains its policies, it will not allow the Mariam to sail to its ports and later head to Gaza in order to avert any problems.”

Cyprus’ foreign minister had recently toured a number of Arab states explaining his country’s position from the ships docking at its ports.

Earlier reports indicated that the ship may sail first to Greece instead of Cyprus and contacts are ongoing to get Greece’s approval for docking the ship at one of its ports .

Originally, the ship's organizers said they would sail some 9 weeks ago. Sounds more like a publicity stunt than an aid ship.

But who knows - maybe they will sail to Venezuela and then towards Gaza.

Latest Latma is The Bomb

Includes The Bomb song:

Thanks to the many who sent this in!

JNews fails its stated purpose

Last March, a group of left-wing British Jews started a new website called JNews. In the words of the founder of the site, Miri Weingarten, writing in Comment is Free,

There is therefore an urgent need for reliable, real-time information, authoritative and expert commentary, and deeper and more courageous analysis – all of which must be informed by a primary concern for human rights and social justice. JNews – Alternative Jewish Perspectives on Israel and Palestine is being launched today to answer this need.

An initiative of a group of British Jews, JNews will make its output available to the British and international media through its website. It will feature news and stories focusing on the lives of Israelis and Palestinians and on the work of organisations and individuals struggling to protect and promote human rights and create conditions in Israel and Palestine in which social justice can prevail.

JNews will bring to public attention the authentic voices of those directly affected by the conflict and highlight the problems facing migrants and asylum seekers in Israel, the poor and the dispossessed, Arab-Palestinian citizens and the Bedouin. More generally in Israel-Palestine it will focus on the conditions of prisoners and detainees, the status and treatment of women, and the political and civil rights of Palestinians living under occupation and under the control of the Palestinian Authority.

While the description here is heavily weighted towards perceived Israeli abuses rather than any Palestinian Arab abuses of human rights, this description at least pretends that it would look at both.

On the site itself, it partially describes itself this way:

JNews believes that disseminating a range of viewpoints broader than that offered by most Jewish and Israeli organizations will benefit Palestinians and Israelis.

JNews supports the human rights of both Israelis and Palestinians and believes the two are intertwined.

JNews believes in the application of the universal principles of social justice and human rights as the path to a just and comprehensive solution to the conflict.

Given these high standards, of being able to have a "broader" range of viewpoints and of caring about the human rights of all Israelis and Palestinian Arabs, how well has it done?

The answer is simple. It looks exactly like a Palestinian Arab publication. There is nothing Jewish nor the least bit Zionist about it.(There are two articles over five months that quote Jewish sources to advocate a secular, liberal Judaism.)

Based on keyword searches, I found exactly one article over the past five months that could be construed as critical of the Palestinian Authority or Hamas - and that was a verbatim copy of a PCHR press release about PalArab elections.

There is barely a word on the entire site criticizing Hamas' human rights record. There is nothing criticizing the PA's human rights record. Nothing about the lack of press freedoms in the territories, nothing about rockets, nothing about terrorism, nothing about Hamas and Fatah infighting.

JNews does not care about the human rights of Palestinian Arabs. They only care about the human rights of those that they can consider oppressed by Jews. In this sense, they are exactly in the mainstream of world anti-Zionism.

As far as the supposedly broad "range of viewpoints" that it was meant to have, every single article is either left, far left or ultra left (including one by the founder that quotes without any criticism an EU opinion that every part of Israel outside the 1947 partition lines is "occupied.")

JNews is yet another case of using a veneer of Jewishness in order to do one thing: criticize the Jewish state. That is the entire purpose of the site, and everything it says about caring about human rights and liberalism and a range of viewpoints is simply a lie. (So are many of the articles it chooses to publish, but that is an argument for another day.)

(h/t Bella)