Category Cross Post

Sep 16 2019

Here’s how to write critically about Jewish Trump officials without evoking antisemitism

Cross posted by UK Media Watch

Last week, we posted about a Telegraph article focusing on newly appointed US-Middle East peace envoy Avi Berkowitz which, we argued, evoked an antisemitic trope.

Here are the relevant paragraphs from that Sept. 6th piece, written by Leila Molana-Allen (the Middle East correspondent for France 24 News).

The appointment [of Berkowitz] “demonstrates a lack of seriousness” in the administration’s approach to the peace plan and Mr Kushner’s complete dominance over the process, former Middle East advisor to the US defence department Jasmine El-Gamal told The Telegraph. “They are not even pretending otherwise by hiring a qualified person as an envoy.”

Others have raised concerns that Mr Berkowitz, like Mr Greenblatt before him and Mr Kushner, is a Zionist Jew, which may lead to a perception of bias in any peace negotiations with Palestinian officials.

This doesn’t need too much unpacking. The word “Zionist” before “Jew” is meaningless, as the overwhelming majority of diaspora Jews are Zionists, in the sense that they wish for Israel to continue existing. The journalist was legitimising unnamed critics who evidently believe there are too many Jews on Trump’s Middle East team, and that these officials, by virtue of their religious background, can’t be trusted to faithfully carry out their duties. This is a classic example of a news organisation – which, we should note, is normally very responsible on the issue of antisemitism – legtimising the dual loyalty charge, codified as antisemitic by the IHRA Working Definition.

Let’s turn now to another article, one published on Sept. 15th by Bel Trew at the Independent – a publication which, unlike the Telegraph, hasn’t always been so vigilant about preventing antisemitic narratives from being promoted.

Like the Telegraph piece, Trew’s article also raises the question of conflicts of interest against some Jewish members of Trump’s Mid-East team.

However, Trew raises the concerns in a completely different manner than Molana-Allen did at the Telegraph, noting not the religion of US Ambassador David Friedman and Senior Advisor Jared Kushner (architect of the US peace plan), but, rather, their personal and financial ties to Israeli settlements, particularly the community of Beit El.

Trew highlights the fact that Friedman and Kushner’s family have given significant donations to Beit El. (She also adds that former US National Security Advisor John Bolton spoke at a fundraising event for the settlement.)

Trew makes her argument thusly:

And it is the unique relationship Trump’s cadres have with this settlement that is a keyhole to the overhaul in the US administration’s attitudes towards Israel’s policies in the Palestinian territories as a whole.

To be clear, we’re extremely skeptical that Friedman and Kushner’s ties to Beit El provide a “keyhole” to the shift in US policies towards Israel, as Trew’s explanation leaves out other important factors likely impacting US policy. It also fails to consider that Friedman’s and Kushner’s important roles may merely be a reflection of the president’s desired Mid-East policy, rather than representing a force driving it.

However, at least Trew’s argument doesn’t rest on the implicit assumption that the religious background of Friedman and Kushner (and Berkowitz) alone renders them biased – a toxic and racist charge that should have no place in mainstream British publications.

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Sep 15 2019

Sky News Arabia omits fact that deceased Palestinian prisoner was a terrorist

Cross posted from UK Media Watch

The death of Hamas-affiliated Palestinian terrorist Bassam as-Sayeh, 47, in an Israeli prison last Sunday received a considerable amount of attention from Arabic-language Western media outlets, which are often quite eager to amplify Palestinian Authority propaganda when dealing with such matters.

Having learned that as-Sayeh died of cancer, the outlets (AFP on Sep. 9, Independent Arabia on Sep. 9 and Sky News Arabia on Sep. 8) uncritically quoted Palestinian officials who leveled allegations at “the Occupation” (i.e, Israel) for “medical negligence”, “withholding treatment” and engaging in a “slow-motion execution” – though without providing any evidence of such conduct.

Even more telling was the fact that all three outlets ignored as-Sayeh’s conviction in an Israeli court for a series of terrorist acts, the most significant being his role in the murder of Eitam and Na’ama Henkin in October 2015.

Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin

Rabbi Eitam and Naama Henkin (Photo courtesy of MFA)

The Itamar couple was gunned down in front of their four children while driving the family car, and As-Sayeh was found responsible for funding and authorizing the attack.

While AFP and Independent Arabia mentioned his involvement as merely an Israeli accusation used to justify his “arrest” (thus omitting his conviction), Sky News Arabia – a venture between UK-based Sky News and UAE-based Abu Dhabi Media Investment Corp – ignored his connection to the attack altogether: AFP:

“As-Sayeh was arrested in 2015, having been accused of participation in the shooting deaths of two Israeli settlers near the settlement of Itamar […]. The Israeli prosecution demanded that as-Sayeh be sentenced to life in prison.”

The report also refers as-Sayeh as “detainee” (Arabic: Mu’taqal) rather than “captive/prisoner” (Aseer/Sajeen), thus creating the false impression he was still waiting trial, or sentencing, at the time of his death. Independent Arabia:

“Four years after the arrest of Bassam as-Sayeh under the accusation of killing two settlers near the city of Nablus, the latter has died after a long suffering from blood and bone cancer, [which lasted] since 2011.”

Ironically, the most decisive confirmation of as-Sayeh’s involvement in the Henkins’ murder appears in Hamas’ response, which was indirectly quoted by Independent Arabia:

“The ‘Izz ad-Deen al-Qassam battalions, the military wing of Hamas movement, has stated that Bassam as-Sayeh was one of its field leaders, and one of those who committed the ‘Itamar attack’ in October 2015.”

Research and writing by CAMERA Arabic. Edited by UK Media Watch.

Sep 12 2019

UK Media Watch prompts Financial Times correction to false Oslo claim

Cross posted from UK Media Watch

A recent article in the Financial Times (Netanyahu vows to extend Israeli sovereignty in West Bank, Sept. 10) includes the following claim about the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords.

Extending Israeli sovereignty to the sprawling settlements that divide up the occupied West Bank would make it extremely difficult for future prime ministers to live up to pledges made in the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords to negotiate a possible withdrawal of Israeli forces in order to facilitate the birth of a Palestinian state.

However, the agreement did not pledge Israel to facilitate the birth of a Palestinian state.

As our CAMERA colleagues have noted previously, this fact was made clear by by Martin Indyk, the former U.S. ambassador to Israel, in a piece for the Atlantic marking the 25th anniversary of the agreements. The Oslo Accords, he wrote, “did not provide for a Palestinian state.” He also re-emphasized that the two-state solution is “a concept that is nowhere mentioned in the Oslo Accords.”

Moreover, the New York Times, responding to a complaint from CAMERA in April, corrected an article which similarly claimed that the Oslo Accords committed both sides to a two state solution.

To their credit, shortly after we notified the Financial Times journalist of this error, the passage was revised, and no longer alleges that Oslo committed Israel to the creation of a Palestinian state.

Extending Israeli sovereignty to the sprawling settlements that divide up the occupied West Bank would make it extremely difficult for future prime ministers to live up to pledges made in the 1993 Oslo Peace Accords to negotiate a settlement with the Palestinians.

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Sep 11 2019

UK Media Watch prompts Times of London improvement to wild Lebanon War claim

Cross posted from UK Media Watch

A Sept. 5th obituary at The Times for Princess Dina bint Abdel Hamid, the first wife of Jordan’s King Hussein, included the following sentence, in the context of noting Princess Dina’s role in prisoner-exchange negotiations between Lebanon and Israel:

It had all started in June 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon and rounded up all males aged between 9 and 75…

This staggering claim, that, upon invading Lebanon in 1982 to stop PLO rocket attacks on northern Israel, the IDF rounded up “all males” as young as 9 years old, was not supported with a source, and we hadn’t previously come across this allegation, even from anti-Israel activists. The closest thing we could find online or in books we reviewed on the war was a claim by radical academic Noam Chomsky in his book ‘The Fateful Triangle’ that Israel had rounded up males as young as 16.

So, we contacted editors at The Times to ask for a source. However, instead of providing one, they instead slightly toned down the sentence to claim that the IDF had rounded up not “all”, but only “thousands of males aged between 9 and 75“.

Again, we asked editors for the source of this revised, but still wild and unsubstantiated accusation.

The following day, they changed it again to the following:

It had all started in June 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon and rounded up thousands of males, from children to old men.

Since a “child” can technically be a teen as old as 17, and they are no longer claiming that preteen Lebanese and Palestinian boys were rounded up and imprisoned by the IDF, the claim is at least more plausible. However, we’re continuing to press The Times to provide a source, and will update this post when we receive a response.

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Sep 10 2019

Telegraph legitimises dual loyalty charge

Cross posted from UK Media Watch

There appears to be concerns voiced ‘by some’ that newly appointed US-Middle East peace envoy Avi Berkowitz is, like his predecessor Jason Greenblat, and White House advisor Jared Kushner, a “Zionist Jew”.

Unfortunately, we don’t know who exactly feels that, by virtue of his religious background and the fact that he supports Israel’s right to exist, Berkowitz can’t be trusted to faithfully carry out his diplomatic role, as Leila Molana-Allen, the reporter who penned the Telegraph article in question, didn’t say.

Here are the relevant paragraphs from the Sept. 6th piece:

The appointment [of Berkowitz] “demonstrates a lack of seriousness” in the administration’s approach to the peace plan and Mr Kushner’s complete dominance over the process, former Middle East advisor to the US defence department Jasmine El-Gamal told The Telegraph. “They are not even pretending otherwise by hiring a qualified person as an envoy.”

Others have raised concerns that Mr Berkowitz, like Mr Greenblatt before him and Mr Kushner, is a Zionist Jew, which may lead to a perception of bias in any peace negotiations with Palestinian officials.

Though The Telegraph is normally extremely responsible when it comes to avoiding language that could be seen as antisemitic, this particular sentence clearly serves to legitimise the historically toxic dual loyalty trope, codified as antisemitic by the IHRA Working Definition.

Here’s the wording from the IHRA definition:

“Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”

We’ve contacted Telegraph editors to complain.

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Sep 9 2019

Daily Mail (sort of) corrects. Britain’s national mapping service (clearly) deceives.

Cross posted from UK Media Watch

The Daily Mail’s coverage of Israel is, by and large, not compromised by the egregious bias found in UK media outlets such as the Guardian and Independent, and editors there are generally amenable to corrections when we point out errors. Nonetheless, their “correction” to a complaint we filed over a map they distributed (to close to a million news consumers) in their Sunday print edition, which falsely listed Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital, is disappointing.

Here’s the section of the map in question, which we originally posted about last week.

Now, here’s the ‘correction’ the Daily Mail published in today’s print edition in response to a complaint filed by UK Media Watch (and countless other followers of our blog):

First, it’s important to note that the UK government map cited by Britain’s national mapping agency, Ordnance Survey, which was sent to us by Daily Mail editors in response to our complaint, does NOT, as they claim, list Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital.

Here’s the map they cite:

As you can see, there’s no capital listed. (Capitals, per the legend, are marked with a black square.)

Moreover, Ordnance Mapping’s claim that they are just following the government’s position on Israel’s capital is not accurate. Though the UK government does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital (a reflection of diplomatic sensitivities regarding the future status of the holy city), it also is not Downing Street’s position that Tel Aviv holds this status – a fact that the quote from the Foreign Office in the Daily Mail correction makes clear.

However, the main point – one that we’ve made continuously at this blog when getting corrections from UK outlets suggesting that Tel Aviv was Israel’s capital – is that, regardless of the question over diplomatic recognition, Jerusalem has been Israel’s official capital since 1949. It is the seat of government, and the city where the Knesset, Supreme Court, Prime Minster’s office and most government ministries are located.

As the Press Complaints Commission (the regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines that preceded IPSO) ruled back in 2012 in response to a complaint made about the Guardian: ‘Stating that Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital represents a breach in the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code of Practice’.

Whilst we’re reasonably confident that Daily Mail editors will remember this, the fact that the country’s official mapping agency got it wrong, and then mischaracterised the government’s position on the matter when facing criticism, is extremely troubling.

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Oct 15 2018

Indy ignores deadly Palestinian terror, but rushes to pronounce settlers guilty in lethal rock-attack

Cross posted from UK Media Watch

We recently noted that the Indy was one of three British media outlets which failed to cover the two recent Palestinian terror attacks that claimed the lives of three Israelis – Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, Ziv Hajbi, and Ari Fuld – but did find time to report on other Israel related stories.

By contrast, the Indy on Saturday night was quick to publish a story about a rock-throwing attack in the West Bank that claimed the life of a Palestinian woman – an attack, relatives claim, was carried out by settlers.  However, not only did the Indy jump on the story, but immediately pronounced the settlers guilty, despite the fact that the incident is still under investigation and there aren’t any suspects.

Here’s our tweet to the Indy journalist, Samuel Osborne.

Here’s the opening sentence of the Oct. 14th article:

A Palestinian woman has been killed after being struck in the head by a stone thrown by Israeli settlers.

However, as other media outlets made clear, claims are based on testimony by the victim’s relatives who  didn’t actually see the perpetrators. 

Note Reuters’ far more careful and accurate headline on the incident:

Here’s Reuters’ equally cautious opening sentence:

Israeli police said on Saturday they were investigating the death of a Palestinian woman in the occupied West Bank, after her husband said he suspected Israeli settlers had pelted their car with rocks.

Though the Shin Bet has opened an investigation into the incident, and the accusations may ultimately turn out to be true, to report that the settlers are guilty as if it’s an established fact is inconsistent with the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code, which requires that media outlets “distinguish clearly between…conjecture and fact”.

We’ve filed a complaint with Indy editors.

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Oct 14 2018

UKMW prompts Guardian to acknowledge there’s no ‘settler-only’ roads in the West Bank

Cross posted fromUK Media Watch

The myth that there are ‘Jews-only’ or ‘settler-only’ roads in the West Bank has been debunked numerous times over the years by CAMERA and its affiliates – prompting corrections at media outlets such as CNN, Associated Press, Washington Post, The Economist, Financial Times and The Telegraph.

As we’ve explained on numerous occasions, there are, for security reasons, a very small percentage of roads in the West Bank restricted to Palestinians.  However, all roads are open to Israeli citizens of all religious backgrounds and foreign nationals of all religious backgrounds.  There is not, nor have there ever been, religiously based restrictions on roads in Israel or the West Bank – nor roads only for settlers.

The latest publication to publish a version of this lie is the Guardian, in an Oct. 11th op-ed by Nkosi Zwelivelile (the grandson of Nelson Mandela) attempting to use this ‘fact’ to support the larger lie that Israel is an apartheid state.

Here’s our tweet pointing out the erroneous claim – one of several in the paragraph, but, we concluded, the one most egregiously inconsistent with the accuracy clause of the Editors’ Code.

We followed up our tweet with an email editors, who upheld our complaint and amended the text in the sentence to the still misleading but improved “roads built for settlers which are not accessible to Palestinians”, and, more importantly, included the following addendum at the bottom of the op-ed:

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Oct 9 2018

For 2nd time in 3 weeks, major UK media outlets ignore deadly Palestinian terror attack

Cross posted from UK Media Watch

Times of London

Since the Palestinian terror attack at the Barkan Industrial Park on Sunday that killed two Israelis, Kim Levengrond Yehezkel, the mother of an infant, and Ziv Hajbi, a father of three, Times of London’s Jerusalem correspondent Anshel Pfeffer published two articles: both concerning fraud charges against Sara Netanyahu. 

Times of London articles by Anshel Pfeffer, Oct. 7th and Oct. 8th.

But, neither Pfeffer nor any of the paper’s other regional correspondents published anything on the deadly West Bank terror attack.

Barkan terror attack victims: Kim Levengrond Yehezkel and Ziv Hagbi

The Telegraph

The Telegraph’s Jerusalem correspondent, Raf Sanchez, published an article this morning on the row between Turkey and Saudi Arabia over the missing Saudi journalist, and another regional correspondent published an Israel related story – regarding Netanyahu’s scheduled meeting with Vladimir Putin.  

However, as with Times of London, nothing has been published by any of the Telegraph’s reporters about the Barkan terror attack.

The Independent

The Independent published an article on the day of the attack about new Israeli restrictions on Gaza’s fishing zone, but nothing on the Palestinian terror attack, despite the fact that the Indy has a Middle East correspondent, Bel Trew, who covers Israel and the Palestinian territories quite extensively.

Independent, Oct. 9

In addition to ignoring Sunday’s deadly attack, by 23-year-old Walid Suleiman Na’alowa, a colleague of the victims at the Barkan plant, Times of London, The Telegraph and Independent have something else in common: they all similarly ignored the Palestinian terror attack on Sept. 16th at Gush Etzion Junction that killed Ari Fuld, a father of four from Efrat.

Other major outlets:

The Guardian published an AFP article on Sunday about the Barkan Industrial Park attack – though nothing on the murder of Ari Fuld.  In contrast, the Daily Mail – as with the BBC – eventually covered both terror attacks.

Beyond the question of journalistic priorities on the day of, and first few days following, the attack, it’s telling that all of the media outlets cited have, over the course of the past six months, more often than not, devoted coverage to Palestinian injuries and deaths related to the weekly violent border riots – many which included highly evocative photos from the scene.

Times of London

Independent

The Telegraph

The journalistic axiom ‘if it bleeds it leads’ isn’t entirely true when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, where selective concern for the suffering of one side is the norm – indicative of a broader pattern of double standards which continues to compromise British media coverage of the region.

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Oct 8 2018

BBC Two presenter Victoria Derbyshire should read this A-Z thread on Labour antisemitism

As followers of BBC Watch no doubt recall, on Aug. 15th, BBC Two presenter Victoria Derbyshire interviewed two British Jews, Mark Lewis and his partner Mandy Blumenthal, to discuss their view that antisemitism in the UK has become so bad that they no longer felt safe living there, and had decided to emigrate to Israel.

As we noted at the time, the interview was so biased – and at times hostile – that the BBC presenter could have been mistaken for a Jeremy Corbyn spokesperson, as she spouted off meaningless Labour talking points, used misleading statistics attempting to downplay antisemitism and seemed convinced that the couple was grossly exaggerating their concerns – despite death threats and other forms of abuse they’ve experienced.  

Derbyshire even at one point – in an attempt to discredit their claims – accused Lewis and Blumenthal of belonging to a non-existent Zionist political party in the UK.

Yesterday, @GasherJew, a twitter account that’s been doing extremely important work exposing antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party, tweeted the following thread containing an A-Z of examples of Labour antisemitism.

The list is especially useful for journalists and pro-Corbyn activists who deny that antisemitism is a serious issue in the party, or suggest that the problem has been greatly exaggerated by the British Jewish community. (See web version of the twitter thread here)

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