December 21, 2016
CAMERA Featured Letter-Writer
After CAMERA researchers highlighted the fact that an AFP reporter doubles as a Fatah politician, one of our letter-writers, Daniel H. Trigoboff, Ph.D., sent the following letter to AFP:
To The Editor,
A central policy of Agence France-Presse reads, "Truth, impartiality and plurality are Agence France-Presse’s golden rules. These values guarantee rigorous, verified news, free from political or commercial influence." Unfortunately in your employment of Nasser Abu Baker, you are in violation of your own policy. This is because in addition to reporting on Palestinian affairs for you, he was a candidate for the Fatah Council, and leads a campaign to boycott Israel.
Therefore the chances his reports will be impartial and free from political bias are precisely zero. This has been reflected in numerous slanted, inaccurate, and anti-Israel falsehoods in his articles for AFP on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Abu Baker has also advocated boycotting Israeli reporters, in inflammatory propaganda which has compromised their safety. As a result few Israeli reporters have safe access to Palestinian areas, which are therefore insufficiently covered in the media.
Employing Abu Baker as your reporter makes a mockery of AFP policy, and contaminates AFP news coverage with fanatical anti-Israel bias. The French Resistance journalists who founded AFP in 1944, in service of journalism uncontaminated by tyranny, would surely disapprove of Abu Baker's status in your organization. So will anyone else who values even a shred of journalistic ethics.
Daniel H. Trigoboff, Ph.D.
Posted by kabe at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)
December 20, 2016
Where’s the Coverage? UN Head Admits Anti-Israel Bias
The outgoing head of the United Nations admitted in a Dec. 16, 2016 speech that his organization is biased against Israel. The remarks by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon went largely unreported by major U.S. news media outlets.
Mr. Ban told the U.N. Security Council:
“Over the last decade, I have argued that we cannot have a bias against Israel at the U.N. Decades of political maneuvering have create a disproportionate number of resolutions, reports and committees against Israel. In many cases, instead of helping the Palestinian issue, this reality has foiled the ability of the U.N. to fulfill its role effectively.”
According to The Independent, a U.K.-based newspaper, Israel’s Ambassador to the U.N. Danny Danon, stated that the United Nations chief “had admitted the clear truth” and his organization’s hypocrisy towards the Jewish state had “broken records over the past decade (“Ban Ki-moon says UN has ‘disproportionate’ focus on Israel,” Dec. 17).”
As CAMERA has frequently noted, the U.N. has a history of anti-Israel discrimination. According to U.N. Watch, a Geneva-based non-profit organization, in 2016 alone, the U.N. General Assembly passed more than 20 resolutions singling out the Jewish state for opprobrium. This, in a year in which the Islamic State and Syrian-dictator Bashar al-Assad—supported by Iran and Security Council member Russia—have carried out mass slaughter in the Middle East.
After this admission, Mr. Ban stated, “Israel needs to understand that a democratic state which is run by the rule of law, which continues to militarily occupy the Palestinian people, will still generate criticism and calls to hold her accountable.” Yet, as CAMERA noted in a March 9, 2013 Washington Times Op-Ed, Mr. Ban does not “apply a consistent legal yardstick to Arab municipalities in the Jewish state, which he does not denounce as illegal.”
Clear-cut occupations such as Morocco’s conquest of the Western Sahara, China’s takeover of Tibet, and Turkey’s seizure of Northern Cyprus, among others, are often given short shift by the U.N. and the media (“Hypocrisy is Thy Name, Blaming Israel Thy Game,” CAMERA, Aug. 19, 2014).
Mr. Ban’s brief moment of candor—delivered as he completes his final term as U.N. Secretary General—was refreshing. However, his knee jerk response to follow it by singling Israel out was, unfortunately, more of the same.
Posted by SD at 12:32 PM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2016
Reuters Captions: Israeli Troops Kill Palestinian During Clashes
Dec. 20 UPDATE: Reuters Amends Captions: Palestinian Killed During Violent Clashes
Reuters photo captions about Ahmed Al-Remawi omit the fact that the Palestinian was killed Sunday during violent clashes, limiting information about the circumstances surrounding his death to the fact that the "Palestinian Health Ministry said [he] was shot and killed by Israeli forces on Sunday."
Given the minimal information, uninformed readers could reasonably conclude that unprovoked Israeli forces shot Remawi Sunday as he did nothing more than sit and drink coffee. (Reports conflict about his age, said to be either 19 or 23.)
But both Israeli and Palestinian sources agree that a mob of Palestinians was violently clashing with Israeli troops, throwing stones, when Remawi was killed. Haaretz reported:
According to the IDF, some 50 Palestinians were involved in the clash, some of whom threw stones at Israeli security forces. A Border Police officer was wounded. The army said that the forces responded to the stone-throwing with riot control measures and with shooting in the air.
Examples of the incomplete Reuters captions follow:
Continue reading "Reuters Captions: Israeli Troops Kill Palestinian During Clashes"
Posted by TS at 07:21 AM | Comments (0)
After Correction, ABC Repeats Error on Settlements
Dec. 20 UPDATE: For Second Time, ABC Corrects: US Does Not View Settlements as 'Illegal'
After correcting the very same error in an Associated Press story which appeared last month on its website, ABC News once again wrongly reports that "the United States considers Jewish settlements illegal" ("Donald Trump's Pick for US Ambassador to Israel Signals Changes in US Policy"). A screen shot of the Dec. 17 erroneous claim by ABC's Elizabeth McLaughlin follows:
The Associated Press correction which CAMERA prompted in November on the identical topic subsequently appeared in countless AP clients, ABC News among them.
The AP correction which appeared Nov. 21 on ABC's news site stated:
In a story Nov. 16 about Israel's settlement policy, The Associated Press reported erroneously that the United States considers Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank to be illegal. While the United States opposes settlement construction, it does not take a position on its legality. Instead, it says that settlements are "illegitimate," ''corrosive to the cause of peace" and "raise serious questions about Israel's ultimate commitment to a peaceful negotiated settlement with the Palestinians." Most of the international community views the settlements as illegal.
Since the Reagan administration, which explicitly said it did not believe the settlements were illegal, U.S. administrations have instead characterized the settlements as an obstacle to peace and illegitimate. The current U.S. government, and numerous preceding American administrations, have not characterized the settlements as "illegal."
CAMERA has contacted editors to request that ABC correct for the second time the incorrect claim the United States considers Israeli settlements illegal.
Posted by TS at 02:37 AM | Comments (1)
December 18, 2016
AFP, MSNBC Also Err on 'Palestinian Land'
In addition to NPR, this weekend Agence France Presse and MSNBC also incorrectly identify the disputed West Bank as "Palestinian land."
Using partisan language, AFP today refers to some Israelis who "view Trump's victory as an opportunity to expand settlements in the West Bank, Palestinian land occupied by Israel for nearly 50 years" ("Israelis look past anti-Semitism after Trump win," emphasis added.)
On Dec. 16, NBC's Katy Tur, reporting on Andrea Mitchell Report, also tripped up on the tendentious claim that the disputed West Bank is "Palestinian land."
Just over four minutes into her report, Tur defines "settlers" for listeners as "Jews who are settling their homes in the West Bank which is, has been, Palestinian."
Identifying the land as "Palestinian" completely endorses one side's political claims over the other side's claims in what is, in reality, an unresolved dispute. (Given AFP's employment of reporter Nasser Abu Baker, who leads the boycott against Israeli journalists and recently ran for the Fatah Revolutionary Council, in a gross conflict of interest and violation of journalistic ethics, the agency's unabashed bias regarding the so-called "Palestinian land" is hardly surprising, though certainly not excusable.)
But as a 2014 Washington Post correction, prompted by CAMERA, noted, the "Israeli-occupied territories are disputed lands that Palestinians want for a future Palestinian state."
Continue reading "AFP, MSNBC Also Err on 'Palestinian Land'"
Posted by TS at 04:34 AM | Comments (0)
December 15, 2016
A Puzzling Omission at Politico
A recent Politico article about the possible nomination of former U.S. Ambassador John Bolton to a top spot in the incoming Trump administration’s State Department (“Trump’s flirtation with Bolton sends shivers through Senate,” Dec. 14, 2016) painTs the diplomat as a man with radical views. The report, by Nahal Toosi and Madeline Conway, omitted crucial history on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Toosi and Conway wrote:
“Bolton is deeply pro-Israel, so much so that that he’s suggested forgetting the idea of creating a Palestinian state. Instead, he’s argued for placing the Gaza Strip under Egyptian control and handing the West Bank to Jordan.”
Politico implied that this is an unreasonable idea. However, the paper failed to inform their readers that Jordan occupied the West Bank from 1948 until 1967 and Egypt occupied the Gaza Strip from 1948 until 1967. It is also important to note that neither the Gaza Strip nor the West Bank have ever belonged to a Palestinian state, and that the status of these territories remains disputed. The West Bank, historically called Judea and Samaria until Jordan seized the land during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, was part of the initial Palestine Mandate that allowed for the reestablishment of a Jewish state.
Rather than painting Bolton as a radical, the reporters could have informed readers of some of the history of the territories and note that Bolton was merely offering a different solution than what has been favored for the last 25 years.
For instance, the article could have recounted that the idea of a sovereign Palestinian state only became official U.S. policy under President George W. Bush and that other solutions have long been considered.
Palestinian limited self-rule of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was facilitated by the Oslo process of the 1990s, which, among other things, stipulated that Palestinian leaders must recognize Israel, refrain from terror attacks and inciting anti-Jewish violence, and resolve outstanding issues in bilateral negotiations with Israel. Instead, the Palestinians leaders broke all of these promises.
In other words, it would have been more accurate for Politico to write that Bolton argued for returning the Gaza Strip to Egyptian control and returning the West Bank back to Jordan both of which had previously occupied it.
Similarly, it should have been incumbent upon the paper to note that although Bolton has expressed misgivings about recognizing a Palestinian state due, in part, to Palestinian rejectionism and terrorism, Palestinian leaders themselves have, on numerous occasions, rejected the opportunity to have a state if it meant living side by side, in peace, with a Jewish nation.
Under these circumstances, Bolton’s views are not radical, although they do differ from the model favored over the past 25 years.
Posted by SD at 10:35 AM | Comments (2)
December 10, 2016
Sen. George Mitchell’s Head-Scratcher on C-SPAN About Israeli-Palestinian Conflict
“... Palestinian authorities have long since renounced violence and accepted Israel's existence and have opted for peace negotiations to achieve a state.”
This assertion by George Mitchell (Democrat) – former U.S. diplomat (Israeli-Palestinian conflict) and Senate Majority Leader – was stated 17 minutes into an hour-long interview aired on the C-SPAN BookTV “After Words” program. It was in connection with admonishing Israel’s government to wait no longer to make a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by Mahmoud Abbas.
The program was recorded on Nov. 16, 2016 but not aired until Dec. 3, 2016. It was repeated on subsequent days.
Interviewer Jane Harman, former Member of Congress, now president and CEO of the Woodrow Wilson Center, spoke with Mitchell about his new book, "A Path to Peace: A Brief History of Israeli-Palestinian Negotiations and a Way Forward in the Middle East." The conversation was generally unremarkable except notably for the assertion cited here. Except for the fact that Harman here represented C-SPAN, whose record concerning Israel is generally one of journalistic malpractice, it would have been surprising that the former ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee failed to challenge the highly dubious assertion.
When have the Palestinian authorities renounced violence and accepted Israel's existence as a Jewish state? Acceptance of Israel's existence other than as a Jewish state is a non-sequitor. Furthermore, while most of the 22 Arab Muslim countries treat non-Muslim citizens as second-class ones, Israel has never seen a contradiction between its Jewishness and the need to respect and protect non-Jewish minorities. Under Israeli law, all (including Arab minorities) are provided full civil rights. Indeed, Israel is one of the few places in the Middle East where Arab women may vote in local and national elections.
Palestinian public opinion polling shows consistent large majority opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state while approving of terrorism against the Jewish state. A recent example of this is a December 2015 poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (PCPSR).
Recurring violence has been incited by longstanding and relentless anti-Israel and anti-Jewish invective from the Palestinian media, mosques and schools. Recent Palestinian violence – a year-long spate of stabbings, shootings and car rammings – has been fueled by daily Palestinian incitement against Jews by PA officials who honor terrorists and praise their acts of violence. The most recent wave of terror began around the time that an incendiary declaration was broadcast to Palestinians by PA controlled media.
Among the sources reporting on this matter was The Wall Street Journal on Oct. 18, 2015: "Mr. Abbas, the PA president, said the following on Palestinian television on Sept. 16: ‘We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every martyr will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward.'"
Palestinian Authority President Abbas has insisted that the recent Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis is a natural consequence of despair but the evidence shows that Palestinian incitement plays a major part in the phenomenon.
Meanwhile Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu awaits a meaningful response regarding negotiations from the Palestinian side while his Palestinian counterpart Abbas has repeatedly and explicitly rejected the idea of two states for two peoples. Palestinian leaders rejected U.S. and Israeli offers of two-state solutions in 2000, 2001, 2008 and spurned renewed talks on such an agreement proposed by Secretary of State John Kerry in 2014.
The PA insists on various conditions unlikely to be accepted by any Israeli government before peace negotiations can take place, including: Israel must abide by Palestinian refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state (evidently 22 Arab Muslim states is fine but one Jewish state is one too many) and Israel must accept a "right of return" (that does not exist in international law) for millions of Arabs (nearly all of whom have never lived in Israel) which would inevitably result in the Jewish state becoming unviable.
Questions for Mitchell, Harman and C-SPAN: What is the evidence that the PA has renounced violence against Israel? What is the evidence that the PA has accepted Israel’s existence as a Jewish state? What is the evidence that the PA has opted for peace negotiations without preconditions? There being none, Mitchell's assertion has little or no basis in reality.
Posted by MK at 05:04 PM | Comments (3)
December 09, 2016
FBI: American Jews Most Targeted Minority for Hate Crimes in 2015
American Jews account for a shockingly disproportionate number of hate crime victims, according to 2015 FBI statistics. The Bureau defines a hate crime as “an offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or gender identity.”
The FBI reported that of the 1,244 reported victims of hate crimes last year, 664, or 53.4%, were Jewish. By comparison, there were 257 victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes, or 20.7% of the total figure.
Indeed, in 2015 there were more Jewish victims of hate crimes in the U.S. than all of the other victims of religious groups combined
Yet, this conclusion is not reflected in U.S. news media coverage—or popular perception—of hate crime victims. Mark Perry, a scholar at the Washington D.C.-based think tank American Enterprise Institute (AEI), noted:
“According to a Google news search for the term ‘hate crimes’ along with the name of each of those three groups [Muslims, Blacks and Jews], there are 164,000 results for ‘hate crimes’+black, 134,000 results for ‘hate crimes’ + Muslims and only 36,400 results for ‘hate crimes’+Jews.”
“Based on news reports,” Perry stated, “you would think that blacks were 4.5 times more likely than Jews to be victim of a hate crime and that Muslims were almost 4 times more likely than Jews to be a hate crime victim.” However, “adjusting for the population size of each group (42.75 million blacks, 5.7 million Jews and 3.3 million Muslims), the hate crime victimization rates last year per 100,000 population were 11.6 for Jews, 7.8 for Muslims and 4.1 for blacks… . Therefore, American Jews were nearly three times more likely than blacks to be a victim of a hate crime last year, and 1.5 times more likely than a Muslim to be a hate crime victim.”
As CAMERA has noted, many U.S. news media outlets have provided coverage of anti-Muslim hate crimes. Often, the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) is quoted—despite the group’s history of having distorted hate crime statistics. However, hate crimes against Jews are often given short shift by the press (“The Washington Post Gets CAIR-Less, Again,” CAMERA, Nov. 23, 2016). For example, The Washington Post reported CAIR’s claims of an increase in anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2015 (“Attacks against Muslims hit highest mark since 2001,” November 14). But The Post article omitted those against Jews in 2015.
As AEI scholar Perry pointed out:
“Based on the actual rates of hate crime victimization and the fact that Jews are so disproportionately targeted, wouldn’t we have to conclude that hate crimes against Jews are routinely under-reported by the media relative to the reporting of hate crimes against blacks and Muslims?”
Posted by SD at 11:36 AM | Comments (5)
December 05, 2016
Defense One Notes Israel’s Security Challenges
Israel is employing innovative methods to confront an increasingly complex security environment, according to a recent article in Defense One (“In Israel, Race to Safeguard Borders From Multi-Dimensional Threats,” Nov. 28, 2016). The report, by correspondent Barbara Opall-Rome, offered a detailed and informative look at Israeli strategy that is seldom noted by other news media outlets.
Opall-Rome highlighted that Israel continues to face the danger posed by Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip. During its 2014 war, Hamas employed underground tunnels to attack Israelis. The reporter pointed out that:
“Since then, Israel has fast-tracked prewar development plans for a number of technological solutions aimed at detecting, mapping and operating in the subterranean environment, spending about $200 million in the process. Earlier this year, through improved operational and technological methods — most of which remain classified — Israel discovered another two tunnels reaching into its territory from Gaza.”
The U.S. has been working with Israel to develop counter-tunnel technologies since 2008. In 2016, the U.S. Department of Defense received $40 million to expand the project. Israel is expected to fund an “an equal amount in cash or in kind,” Defense One said.
The joint program has benefits for both sides; an anonymous U.S. defense official told Opall-Rome that terror tunnels are a problem for U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well.
The threats that Israel faces differ in nature. As a result, the Jewish state employs different strategies to confront them.
Israel employs border barriers in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria) and the Gaza Strip to deter terror attacks. On its northern border, Israel’s concerns extend past terror tunnels and include worries over “a full assault by Lebanese-based Hezbollah or its allies.” A spokesperson for the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF), Lt. Col. Peter Lerner, told Defense One:
“Up north, we view the threat differently. The topography is completely different, so what we’ve done on the border with Lebanon, we’ve created artificial cliffs that create an extremely difficult terrain for forces to easily storm into a civilian community or a military base along the border.”
Lerner stated that, in addition to altering the terrain, the IDF has expanded surveillance capabilities and established quick reaction forces to immediately confront an attack. Additionally, the IDF has created an evacuation plan for the 22 civilian communities who are likely to come under direct threat from an attack by Hezbollah.
As CAMERA noted in a April 30, 2016 Times of Israel Op-Ed “Media Fails to Connect the Dots on Hezbollah’s Next War,” the media has often failed to note Hezbollah’s growing capabilities. The Iranian-funded, U.S.-designated terror group has—in violation of several U.N. resolutions requiring the group to be disarmed—an arsenal that includes drones and more than 120,00 missiles. The group calls for Israel’s destruction and intentionally targets Israeli civilians while using “human shields” as cover—a double war crime.
However, the media often fails to note Hezbollah’s aims and tactics.
Defense One’s report provided readers with important details about Israel’s security challenges and how the country is addressing them. The article by Barbara Opall-Rome can be found here.
Posted by SD at 01:23 PM | Comments (1)
Iranian Ship Threatens U.S. Helicopter, Media MIA
An Iranian ship threatened a U.S. military helicopter in the Strait of Hormuz on Nov. 26, 2016. Many major U.S. news outlets have ignored the incident.
Reuters, citing two anonymous U.S. defense officials, reported that “a small Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard vessel pointed its weapon” at the U.S. Navy MH-60 helicopter (“Iranian vessel points weapon at U.S. helicopter: officials,” Nov. 29, 2016).
“The behavior by our standards is provocative and could be seen as an escalation,” the U.S. officials told Reuters.
Many in the U.S. press failed to cover the event. A Lexis-Nexis search of several U.S. print news outlets, including The Washington Post, USA Today and The Baltimore Sun, showed that the latest threatening Iranian action against the U.S. was ignored.
In the last year alone, Iran has engaged in cyberwarfare against the U.S. and threatened U.S. vessels and troops in Iraq, among other aggressive acts (“Where’s the Coverage? Iran Threatens U.S. Troops,” Dec. 11, 2015). Yet, the media frequently underreports or ignores Iranian belligerence, as CAMERA has noted (see, for example “Iran Increases Cyber attacks Against the United States; Where’s the Coverage?” Nov. 30, 2015).
Posted by SD at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
November 30, 2016
Let Him Who Is Sinless Throw The First Stone
Writing in Haaretz ("Netanyahu Fights Fire With Ire", 28.11), Odeh Bisharat warns readers that "Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.” The Op-Ed is a warning to Israelis not to hurl premature accusations against Palestinians and Arab-Israelis. Fair enough. However, Bisharat then employs some reductio ad absurdum to psychoanalyze the Israeli public:
"After all, if you don’t steal your neighbor’s land and don’t embitter his life, you have no reason to suspect that he will “rise up against us and annihilate us” – as the extremists here like to repeat day and night.
But if you feel deep down that, despite assuming the identity of the victim, you are harming your neighbor, then even if there’s an earthquake you’ll blame him for deliberately playing with some underground button. And if there’s a deluge from the heavens that will close the country’s highways, you will say he deliberately left the tap in the skies open. Truly, “Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.”
Would Israelis really blame Palestinians for an earthquake or a flood? Doubtful. However, what isn't in doubt is that the reverse has certainly happened.
A conspiracy theory that Israel might generate an artificial earthquake to harm the Al-Aqsa mosque has been making the rounds for years. For example in 2011:
And again in 2012 by the President of the Supreme Islamic Court and Chairman of the Supreme Council for of Islamic Laws:
There are many more examples on Google.
Earthquakes aside, what about floods? Did the Palestinians ever claim Israel left "the tap in the skies open"? In 2015 AFP and Al-Jazeera ran a story claiming Israel had opened dams in Southern Israel, thereby flooding Gaza. Only after CAMERA pointed out that aside from the Palestinian popular imagination, there were no dams in the area did AFP and Al-Jazeera retract their stories.
Posted by gs at 03:51 AM | Comments (1)
November 29, 2016
Where’s the Coverage? Palestinians Attack Palestinian Security Forces
A group of Palestinians shot at and bombed Palestinian Authority (PA) security forces in a little reported incident on Nov. 17, 2016.
According to Palestinian Ma’an News Agency, “a group of Palestinian youth…shot live fire and locally made bombs at Palestinian security forces near the al-Faraa refugee camp…” Al-Faraa is located in the West Bank (Judea and Samaria).
The incident began when Palestinians closed a main street in the camp. Ma’an stated that the street was closed “in protest of Palestinian security forces continuing to detain youth from the camp without charge or trial.” PA security forces that arrived on scene were attacked with explosives and responded with gunfire.
A Lexis-Nexis search of U.S. print news outlets, including The Washington Post, The Washington Times and USA Today, showed not a single mention of the clash.
As CAMERA has frequently highlighted (see, for example “The Washington Post Evicts Context on Palestinian Village Without Electricity,” Nov. 2, 2016) many in the Western media fail to provide coverage of internal Palestinian conflicts or events.
In a recent Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal, two analysts of Palestinian politics, Jonathan Schanzer and Grant Rumley, noted the tenuous nature of Palestinian politics (“The Fragile State of the Palestinian Authority,” Sept. 8, 2016). Schanzer and Rumley, both of the Washington D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, emphasized that riots, protests, governmental corruption, and canceled elections are all factors in creating an atmosphere ripe for instability in areas ruled by the authority.
The Post’s priorities are demonstrated by what it devotes more space on its pages to cover. For example, the newspaper ran a lengthy piece on Chinese tourists purportedly being overcharged at an Israeli restaurant. However, the PA’s decision to postpone municipal elections scheduled for Oct. 8, was apparently deemed not sufficiently important to warrant coverage in the print version of the paper.
In failing to report internal Palestinian events and politics—and by often viewing them solely through the lens of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—The Washington Post and other media that cover Israel and the Palestinians in a similar manner fail to inform their readers about some very important trends and developments.
Posted by SD at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2016
The Washington Post Gets CAIR-Less, Again
The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) portrays itself as a U.S. civil rights organization. However, as numerous terrorist analysts and the U.S. government itself has noted, CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2009 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) retrial, the largest terrorism financing case in the country’s history. Yet, The Washington Post has frequently failed to disclose CAIR's history.
The Post’s “Hate crimes against Muslims hit highest mark since 2001” (November 14) by reporter Matt Zapotosky, quoted Ibrahim Hooper, a CAIR spokesman, who claimed that anti-Muslim rhetoric was responsible for an increase in hate crimes. Zapotosky did not, however, inform readers about relevant information regarding Hooper, other CAIR employees, or CAIR itself.
As a CAMERA Washington Times Op-Ed pointed out (“CAIR’s cries of ‘Islamophobia,’” Aug. 9, 2016), at least five former staff or lay leaders from CAIR have been indicted, arrested or deported on weapons or terrorism-related charges. In an out of court settlement with the website www.anti-cair-net.org, the council did not contest assertions that it was founded by Hamas members, founded by Islamic terrorists and was funded by Hamas supporters. Hamas is a U.S.-designated terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip. The movement’s charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the genocide of Jews.
CAMERA has made The Post aware of CAIR’s history via several unpublished letters to the editor and in correspondence to the papers’ reporters. CAMERA has sent it’s Special Report “The Council on American Islamic Relations: Civil Rights or Extremism?” (July 2009) which noted, among other things, CAIR’s connections to the HLF retrial. Additionally, CAMERA has sent The Post documents such as FBI Assistant Director Richard Powers’ statement to members of the U.S. Congress, which stated that the bureau was ceasing official cooperation with CAIR or its executives until it could resolve “whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas.”
Nonetheless, The Post often omits CAIR’s background (see, for example “Washington Post CAIR Cover-Up Fails Readers,” CAMERA, May 3, 2016). The decision to trust Hooper’s claims regarding rampant Islamophobia is questionable. As CAMERA’s Special Report highlighted, “critics have charged that the council has shown a tendency to embellish statistics about hate crimes” against Muslims. The historian Daniel Pipes, a former U.S. State and Defense Department employee, has noted “an earlier CAIR hate crimes report in 2005…discovered that of twenty “anti-Muslim hate crimes” in 2004 that CAIR cited, at least six are invalid.”
Hooper has made several curious statements in the past, which Post readers should have been appraised of. For example, he was quoted as saying that he “would not want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.”
Other CAIR officials have made similarly outrageous statements. The organization’s executive director, Nihad Awad, stated in 1994, “I am in support of Hamas.”
Indeed, a mere five days before The Post’s latest uncritical CAIR quotation, the head of the council's Los Angeles office, Hussam Ayloush, made a questionable statement in response to news that Donald Trump was elected President of the United States. Ayloush took to Twitter, tweeting “Ok, repeat after me: Al-Shaab yureed isqat al-nizaam. (Arab Spring chant). As Pipes noted in National Review Online, the second line of Ayloush’s tweet is Arabic for “The people wants to bring down the regime.” “In other words,” Pipes said, “Ayloush unambiguously and directly called for the overthrow of the U.S. government.”
Pipes hoped that Ayloush’s tweet would “help awaken the press to CAIR’s true Islamist identity.” Early returns, however, aren’t encouraging.
(Note: An earlier version of this post stated that Pipes was a consultant to the U.S. Departments of State and Defense. In fact, he was an employee.)
Posted by SD at 03:31 PM | Comments (2)
November 21, 2016
BREAKING: InterVarsity Press in United States to Cease Publication of Stephen Sizer's Books
Earlier this week, Harry's Place (hurryupharry.org) reported that IVP, an Evangelical publishing house announced that it would no longer publish books written by the controversial anti-Zionist Rev. Dr. Stephen Sizer, an Anglican priest from England. As of this writing, (November, 21, 2016) the website is down, but information about IVP’s decision can be found at this link.
IVP reported to Harry's Place the following:
“The Stephen Sizer books have been in print for over 10 years and we understand and are very mindful of the sensitivities around this subject and author. We have decided to remove these titles from our list and the rights have reverted back to the author. Our website no longer lists these titles, though book retailers may well still be carrying stock and online retailers will continue to list these books for unsold and second-hand copies.”
Upon learning of IVP UK's decision, CAMERA called InterVarsity Press in the U.S. to see if it would follow the decision of its sister publishing house in England.
The answer is yes. InterVarsity Press has stated that it will not be printing any more copies of the book and that the rights have reverted to the author. Sizer's books have been officially declared out of print by their American publisher.
CAMERA lauds both IVP and Intervarsity Press for this decision. Sizer is the author of two virulently anti-Israel texts about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The first is Christian Zionism: Road Map to Armageddon? which was published in 2004. The second text is Zion's Christian Soldiers: The Bible, Israel and the Church which was published in 2007. In the 2004 book, Sizer encouraged his readers to check out a news article that suggested Israel was responsible for the 9/11 attacks. He later denied that he thought the Israelis were involved in the attack.
For more background about Rev. Dr. Sizer's work, please read articles here and here. For more information about Inter-Varsity Press in England, and InterVarsity Press in the United States, please read this article.
November 22, 2016 Update: Sizer's books remain on IVP America's website because they are a few copies of both books left in the warehouse. The texts however have been declared out of print and the rights have reverted back to Stephen Sizer. The books will soon no longer be available for sale on the house's website.
Posted by dvz at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)
Analyst: The U.S. Should Cut Aid to Lebanese Armed Forces
The U.S. Congress should “immediately defund the Lebanese Armed Forces,” a recent Weekly Standard article argues (“The Lebanese Army Is Misusing U.S. Aid,” Nov. 14, 2016).
In his commentary, Lee Smith, a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and a senior fellow at the Washington D.C.-based think tank, Hudson Institute, stated that U.S. aid may be winding up in the hands of Hezbollah, a Lebanese-based, Iranian-backed U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
Smith cited “pictures of a Hezbollah parade in the Syrian city of Qusayr [that] showed Hezbollah fighters using American-made armored personnel carriers (APCS). If the vehicles were transferred by the Lebanese Armed Forces [LAF], a recipient of U.S. aid and equipment, to Hezbollah, as some analysts have speculated, the consequences could be significant.”
The purpose of U.S. aid to the LAF according to the most recent Congressional appropriations bill, is to “professionalize the LAF and to strengthen border security and combat terrorism, including training and equipping the LAF to secure Lebanon’s borders, interdicting arms shipments, [and] preventing the use of Lebanon as a safe haven for terrorist groups.”
Yet, Lebanon itself remains a state that is, to a great extent, controlled by Hezbollah. In many important respects, the country is a vassal state of the mullahs in Tehran, a trend that is perhaps likely to continue with the recent election of Hezbollah ally Michel Aon to the presidency.
As CAMERA’s backgrounder on Hezbollah pointed out, several United Nations Security Council resolutions have called for the terror group to disarm. Despite this fact, Hezbollah has dramatically increased its weaponry and capabilities and continues to routinely call for the destruction of Israel and the West.
According to Smith:
“Lebanon is the fifth largest recipient of American military aid, receiving $220 million in 2016, including an August shipment that included 50 armored vehicles.” Smith noted if any U.S.-made weapons are transferred from the LAF to Hezbollah, the U.S. State Department is required to notify Congress.
Smith noted that although Washington believes funding and supporting the LAF is one of its few options in Lebanon, “it is no longer possible to see the army as anything but a Hezbollah asset.”
Hezbollah, as CAMERA has written, was, until the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks by al-Qaeda, responsible for more American deaths than any other terrorist organization.
Despite this, one is far more likely to encounter an Op-Ed calling for cutting U.S. aid to Israel—a key U.S. ally.
Lee Smith’s Weekly Standard article can be found here.
Posted by SD at 03:36 PM | Comments (0)
November 16, 2016
Where’s the Coverage? Incitement in Palestinian Textbooks
Since the “knife intifada,” as it’s become known, began in the fall of 2015, we’ve been hearing the narrative that says that “Palestinian despair” or “Palestinian frustration” over Israel’s military administration of the West Bank is the cause. As CAMERA and CAMERA’s affiliate BBC Watch have noted before, this is a PLO-endorsed talking point. Yet, it’s been adopted by the mainstream American media.
Last month, for example, at the Washington Post, William Booth wrote that “the year-long wave of Palestinian violence against Israeli soldiers and civilians has been carried out mostly by teenagers armed with knives or adults who use their families' cars to ram into pedestrians. Palestinians are frustrated by the almost 50-year military occupation and motivated by personal, religious and nationalist reasons to attack Israelis.”
In July, after two deadly attacks in the West Bank – the stabbing to death of Hallel Yaffa Ariel and the shooting of Rabbi Michael Mark – the New York Times wrote, “the recent attacks by Palestinians have been fueled in part by incendiary posts on social media and by militant groups urging more violence. But they also reflect growing despair by young Palestinians in particular over lives constrained by Israel’s decades-long military occupation and their own rudderless leadership.” Although the article did quote Israeli government officials blaming incitement, this sentence was in the reporter’s voice.
The month prior, after a shooting at a Tel Aviv café killed four Israelis, Rory Jones at the Wall Street Journal wrote, “The shooting reflected the despair young Palestinians feel over the lack of concrete steps toward establishing a Palestinian state, relatives of the men said.”
So fixated on this myth are they, that when actual evidence is uncovered to contradict this version of events, the media can’t even see it.
Last week David Bedein of the Israel Resource News Agency discussed the results of a review of 240 Palestinian children’s textbooks used in 400 UNRWA schools, including in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, as well as in Gaza. According to the Jerusalem Post, he found that the books “prepar[e] … children for war.”
The Post reported that Bedein found, for example, “a math word problem asking students to use variables, including the number of Jews killed during the first and second intifadas,” as well as this poem:
Hearing [weapons] clash is pleasant to my ear
And the flow of blood gladdens my soul
As well as a body thrown upon the ground
Skirmished over by the desert predator
By your life! This is the death of men
And whoever asks for a noble death – this is it!”
These books, moreover, have been approved by the US government.
“In all the books you have right of return and armed struggle being taught. Even in math books,” the Jerusalem Post quoted Bedein saying. Another scholar who worked on the study, Dr. Arnon Groiss, told the Post that the books, including books on history, geography, Islamic education, and language exercises, “encourage violent struggle for the liberation of Palestine, which they consider all of Israel – including Haifa and Jaffa – and the right of return….”
None of the above-mentioned news outlets have seen fit to prominently cover Bedein’s findings -- findings that undermine their narrative. Is it any wonder that the media finds itself in crisis of late?
Posted by kabe at 01:14 PM | Comments (0)
November 13, 2016
International Business Times Pulls a UNESCO on Temple Mount
In a headline and accompanying first paragraph, The International Business Times takes a page from UNESCO's book on the Temple Mount, casting Judaism's holiest site as Islamic only. "Israel Wants Jews To Pray at Muslim Mosque in Jerusalem: Temple Mount Tensions Grow in Middle East" is the grossly misleading headline about some Israeli lawmakers (not "Israel") who seek Jewish prayer rights at Judaism's holiest site.
Likewise, the article's first sentence depicts the site as Muslim only, ignoring the reason why Jews would want to pray there:
Some Israeli lawmakers want to allow Jews to pray at an Islamic holy site in Jerusalem, a contentious proposal that is opposed by Middle Eastern leaders and could stroke tensions between Jews and Muslims in the Israel. Israel Parliament speaker Yuli Edelstein joined three cabinet ministers and three lawmakers Monday to demand Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “open the gates” to the religious complex and rescind a year-long ban on Israeli lawmakers from visiting the site, the Times of Israel reported.
Not until the end of the second paragraph does reporter John Walsh acknowledge: "The compound sits on tops of the Western Wall in Jerusalem and is considered to be Judaism's holist [sic] site." How many readers, however, will make it past the misleading headline and first paragraph to get to the key information that the Israeli lawmakers are seeking Jewish prayer rights at the site because it is Judaism's holiest site?
Other media outlets which reported on Jewish visits to or aspirations to pray at the Temple Mount, while describing the site as Islamic only and ignoring its status as Judaism's holiest place, include Agence France Presse, The New York Times, The Telegraph and Times of London, all of which subsequently amended their misleading passages thanks to CAMERA and its British blog, UK Media Watch.
Ironically, The International Business Times article, with its skewed headline and first paragraph, is accompanied by an IBTvideo about UNESCO's decisions which ignore Judaism's connection to the site.
CAMERA urges The International Business Tribune to amend its headline and first paragraph to reflect the fact that some Israeli lawmakers are seeking Jewish prayer rights at the Temple Mount because it is Judaism's holiest site, and not because it is a "Muslim mosque."
Posted by TS at 03:25 AM | Comments (3)
November 09, 2016
German Authorities Investigate Facebook for Allowing Holocaust Denial
German officials are investigating four Facebook executives, including the company’s founder Mark Zuckerberg, over allegations that the social media network tolerates hate speech, Holocaust denial and incitement—violating Germany’s national hate speech laws.
A report by United Press International (UPI) (“Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg investigated in Germany for allegedly allowing hate speech,” Nov. 7, 2016), noted that a lawyer named Chan-jo Jun filed a complaint with German courts listing 438 offensive posts that were not deleted by Facebook despite repeated requests from users. Prosecutors in Munich subsequently took action and announced their investigation on Nov. 4, 2016.
In addition to Zuckerberg, three other top Facebook executives are named in the suit: chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg, European policy director Richard Allan and Eva-Maria Kirschsieper, the company’s head of public policy in Berlin.
As UPI pointed out, “German law bans hate speech targeting groups, glorification of the Nazi regime and Holocaust denial.” As such, Heiko Maas, Germany’s Federal Minister of Justice and Consumer Protection, said that Facebook has until March 2017 to comply with demands to address the problems noted in the suit. After that point, Maas said he would take action, according to UPI.
Facebook’s rules forbid bullying, harassment and threatening language. However, the social media organization has been criticized for failing to remove antisemitic posts and apologia and propaganda from terrorist groups. In one January 2014 example that CAMERA documented, an image posted on Facebook celebrated Nazi violence against civilians; perversely using Nike’s swoosh logan and slogan “Just Do It.” Initially, Facebook refused to remove the image, stating that it didn’t violate “community standards.” Eventually, the organization reversed course, removing the post and banning the user (“Facebook Admits the Obvious,” Jan. 9, 2014).
Facebook has also been used by Palestinian terrorist groups to organize and plot attacks against Israelis, as CAMERA noted in an Aug. 17, 2016 article (“Israel Busts Terror Cells Sponsored by Hezbollah, Recruited via Facebook”).
A company spokesman responded to the investigation: “We are not commenting on the status of a possible investigation but we can say that the allegations lack merit and there has been no violation of German law by Facebook or its employees.”
A previous complaint by Jun was rejected by Hamburg on the grounds that the regional court lacked jurisdiction because Facebook’s European operations are based in Ireland. Yet, Bavarian Justice Minister Winfried Bausback disagreed with the Hamburg ruling, The Jerusalem Post reported (“Germany probing Facebook over lack of removal of Nazi, hate postings,” Nov. 5, 2016).
The ramifications of the current investigation by Munich authorities will, perhaps, reverberate beyond Facebook’s extensive holdings and influence. Stay tuned for updates.
Posted by SD at 01:33 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2016
In Haaretz Headline, Alleged Attack Becomes Fact
Not for the first time, a Haaretz headline upgrades an unproven Arab allegation to fact.
A page-one print headline in the English edition today states as fact: "Palestinians harvesting olives attacked by settlers."
But as the accompanying article itself makes clear, Palestinians allege that settlers attacked olive harvesters, but that claim is under investigation and has not yet been confirmed. Jack Khoury and Yotam Berger wrote:
Four Palestinians were treated at a hospital in the West Bank city of Ramallah yesterday, reportedly after they were attacked by Jewish settlers near the village of Al-Janieh, west of Ramallah. The Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Police said they were investigating claims that around 20 people attacked the Palestinians with metal rods. (Emphases added.)
In addition, the headline and subheadline of the digital version of the article also makes clear that the claim is just that: "Palestinians Harvesting Olives Reportedly Attacked by Settlers Near Ramallah: Israeli authorities are investigating allegations that twenty assailants attacked four Palestinians west of Ramallah." (Emphasis added.)
The page-one headline in the Hebrew print edition is likewise clear that the alleged incident has not been established as fact. It states (CAMERA's translation): "Suspicion: Settlers Attacked Palestinians with Metal Rods and One Was Seriously Injured."
Continue reading "In Haaretz Headline, Alleged Attack Becomes Fact"
Posted by TS at 03:45 AM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2016
PA Official: Honoring Terrorists is Our Culture
A Palestinian Authority (PA) official, Issam Abu Bakr, has defended the authority’s decision to name a school after an arch-terrorist.
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that monitors Arab media in eastern Jerusalem, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank (Judea and Samaria), highlighted Bakr’s defense of the authority’s decision to name a school in Tulkarem after Salah Khalef. Khalef was one of the planners of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were murdered.
Bakr, the District Governor of Tulkarem, took umbrage at PMW for their reporting of his decision to name an educational institution the “Martyr Salah Khalef School.” Bakr told Ma’an News Agency:
“The occupation [Israel] is deluded if it thinks that the Palestinian people can change its culture and forget its leaders, Martyrs Yasser Arafat, Khalil Al-Wazir (Abu Jihad), Salah Khalaf, and a great number of the fighters who sacrificed their blood for the freedom, independence, and establishment of the independent Palestinian state whose capital is Jerusalem.”
PMW noted that later that same week, Fatah, the movement that dominates the PA, honored another Palestinian terrorist who took part in the Munich massacre. In an Oct. 24, 2016 post on their official Facebook page, Fatah called Muhammad Daoud, aka Abu Dauod, “one of the leader’s of Fatah’s Black September organization and the main planner of the Munich operation that executed the Israeli Olympic delegation in 1972 in the heart of Germany.” A picture of Daoud, surrounded by doves, was displayed with Fatah’s post.
Major U.S. print news outlets failed to report Fatah’s decision to glorify Daoud and Khalef.
As CAMERA pointed out in a July 6, 2016 Washington Examiner Op-Ed entitled “Missing the Palestinian after-terror after party,” Western media frequently omit the glorification of anti-Jewish violence that permeates Palestinian society.
Posted by SD at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)