Posted by at 04:08 PM

Palestinian Leader Criticizes Israel for Demanding Palestinian Terrorists Be Reigned In

As we noted yesterday, Palestinian terrorism is on the rise. Not only has Mahmoud Abbas continued Arafat's "revolving door policy" and refused to confront terrorists, but he has now decided to take the offensive. He is criticizing Israel for daring to demand he comply with Road Map obligations to clamp down on terrorists, and is even placing a priori conditions upon Israel.

With an Israeli-Palestinian truce growing shakier by the day, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas criticized Israel for pressuring him to confront militants and accused it of looking to spill Palestinian blood.

In a meeting with business people, academics and public officials on Tuesday, Abbas also promised a referendum on any final peace deal, and said Palestinians "would not accept anything less" than Israel's return to the borders it held before the 1967 Mideast war, the official Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.

Palestinians declare an unequivocal end to violence and terrorism and undertake visible efforts on the ground to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning violent attacks on Israelis anywhere.

Posted by rh at 10:31 AM

No Terrorism in Oprah's Israel

The hugely popular Oprah Winfrey show aired a short segment focusing on a Palestinian woman (Joline) and an Israeli woman (Ronit) who are “working to end the conflict� in the April 25 show “Oprah Takes You Around the World.� Neither woman explained how they are helping to end the conflict except by their “unique� friendship.

The show casts Israel as militaristic and the Palestinians as weak and burdened. While nearly every image includes Israelis carrying guns, not a single shot depicts Palestinians carrying weapons except for rocks. Palestinian children are shown confronting Israeli guns and tanks with mere stones. No reference or image of terrorism was included in the segment.

Ronit: Shalom Oprah. My name is Ronit and I’m 27 years old. I’m an Israeli citizen living in Jerusalem. Chances are if you’re a woman my age you’ve already spent two years in the army.

Joline: My name is Joline. I’m 24 years old. I’m Palestinian from Jerusalem. Most of my family cannot visit me here because the Israeli government restricts where Palestinians can travel. But I have the Jerusalem ID card which allows me to enter Tel Aviv and other major cities.

Ronit: Our peoples have been at war for the more than 50 years which is why it is so unique that we’re friends.

Joline: We are working together so that people will stop choosing sides and start working for resolutions.

Ronit: Pretty much wherever you go in Israel there are soldiers and security guards carrying guns. It’s the norm.

Joline and Ronit represent the organization Just Vision which seems to be comprised of Israelis and Palestinians who are harsh critics of Israel. One Israeli woman Michal Zak describes herself as a non-Zionist. Gila Svirsky who is active in the group is a well-known anti-Israel detractor.

Oprah ends the segment by claiming that resolution will come from “peaceful minds coming together.� Apparently, blaming Israel and ignoring Palestinian terrorism makes one of “peaceful mind.�

Posted by CameraBlog at 10:24 AM

May 03, 2005

Wall Street Journal Exposes the Bogus Basis of AUT's Boycott

A commentary in the Wall Street Journal (May 2/05) by Haifa University's Fania Oz-Salzberger, a self-described peacenik, exposes the bogus basis of AUT's boycott. AUT voted to boycott Haifa University because it maintains the university sent Professor Ilan Pappe "a letter notifying him that he faced trial and possible dismissal from his position" because of his

...efforts to defend a 55 year old graduate student, Teddy Katz, whose Master's thesis was under attack by an Israeli veteran's organization because it documented a massacre of 200 unarmed civilians by the Haganah (the pre-state army of Israel) at a village called Tantura, near Haifa.

This is "patently false" says Oz-Salzberger.

...Mr. Katz's thesis was based almost solely on transcriptions of oral interviews he conducted with elderly Palestinian former residents of Tantura, who allegedly witnessed a massacre of their kin by Jewish soldiers. When veterans of the Israeli army force that attacked Tantura sued Mr. Katz for libel, a district court ruled that the empirical evidence was grossly manipulated in the course of transliterating the tapes. Mr. Katz had put words in the mouths of his interviewees that were never uttered. He agreed to apologize to the veterans, telling the media that radical activists -- including Dr. Pappe -- had led him astray.

On the basis of this ruling, the University of Haifa decided to reverse the impressive "97" grade already awarded to the thesis, and, in a mood of appeasement, asked Mr. Katz to rectify and resubmit his work. It was then sent out to five external examiners, a majority of whom failed it. It is fair to note that all examiners wished to remain anonymous.

Dr. Pappe, Mr. Katz's unofficial mentor, is an anti-Zionist scholar of great political energies who has been calling for a boycott of Haifa, his own university, for several years. He was, indeed, challenged by a colleague to an internal university disciplinary hearing, not for his connection to the Katz affair but for his enduring efforts to sabotage the institution for which he worked. Dr. Pappe's academic freedom was never on the agenda, and the university authorities did not dismiss him. ..

Ms. Oz-Salzberger points out that:

All this seems to have escaped the fact-finding capabilities of our British colleagues. The AUT disregarded not only the methodological nature of the decision to fail Mr. Katz's thesis, but also the meticulous judicial investigation. (In fact, the AUT ought to have called for an international ban on contact with the Israeli judiciary, for having ruled that Mr. Katz had libeled Israeli veterans.) What is worse, the AUT never sent anyone to check out the facts at Haifa, and, I am told, never asked the university for its response. Minimal standards of due process were not met.

Posted by rh at 12:17 PM

Palestinian Terror Attacks on Rise as Revolving Door Policy Continues

As Israeli leader Ariel Sharon prepares to evacuate Jews from the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian leader is reported to be cracking down on terror, the Israeli media reports an increase in terrorist attacks in April.

A 54 percent increase in terror attacks was noted from March to April, with 205 attacks counted in April, as opposed to 133 in the previous month.

The most notable change was in the amount of mortars fired at Israeli targets, an increase from 10 in March to 67 in April.

Meanwhile, no sooner does the international media report that Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas is cracking down on Palestinian terrorism...

Palestinian police have arrested two Hamas Islamic militants on their way to fire rockets into Israel after a gunfight in the Gaza Strip, the Palestinian Authority said on Tuesday.

...than the revolving door policy of prisoner release continues:

Palestinian police released a Hamas rocket squad operative Tuesday, despite a pledge to get tough with those who break a non-formal cease-fire with Israel.

Same old, same old...

Posted by rh at 11:01 AM

AP Road Map Update

An earlier entry pointed out a double standard in Associated Press reporting on violations of the road map peace plan. The AP was quick to point out that proposed Israeli building in Maaleh Adumim would be a violation of the peace plan, but didn't even mention the plan when reporting on a Palestinian rocket being fired into Israel — a clear road map violation.

A new AP report about PA reluctance to disarm Hamas shows that while the wire service is moving in the right direction, the double standard remains.

The journalist does (eventually) note that the PA is required to disarm Hamas under the road map:

In the first stage of the three-phase road map peace plan, Palestinians must dismantle militant groups and Israel must freeze construction in Jewish settlements. Neither side has done so. ...

"According to the road map, all terrorists must disarm and all terrorist groups must be dismantled and Hamas is a terrorist group and so they must disarm whether or not they join the political process," said Paul Patin, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv.

It's interesting, though, that in this story about a Palestinian violation of the road map, the journalist points out both the Palestinian and the Israeli violation of the peace plan.

This wouldn't be a problem if it was a consistent AP practice. But in AP stories which focus on Israeli building (for example, the AP reports linked to in our earlier entry), both sides' violations are not highlighted — only Israeli ones.

(In fact, one AP report on Palestinian arms smuggling — a road map violation — didn't mention the road map at all, except when discussing Israeli building.)

Posted by at 10:08 AM

May 02, 2005

BBC Moderator Bias

BBC apparently displays bias not only in its reporting but in moderating its Messageboard. Melanie Phillips points out BBC's double standard in moderating messages about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A curious Messageboard reader tested the moderator. Noticing references to Israel as an "apartheid state" that practices "ethnic cleansing", he posted messages referring to "apartheid-seeking, racist Palestinians". While the derogatory messages about Israel were allowed to stand, the messages referring to the Palestinians were immediately removed.

This seemed to be a clear case of double standards. The moderator allowed the same generalisation about ‘Israelis’ as he had disallowed about ‘Palestinians’. In reply, the moderator said the following;

‘The distinction here lies between one post referring to a state (ie.
it's government and their policies) and another referring to a
population. If a user wishes to argue that Israel is a racist state based its government's policies, whether you agree with this opinion or not it is legitimate point for debate. To refer to Israelis as racists is a huge generalisation that cannot be justified and is likely to cause great offence to other messageboard users. As such, posts of this nature will be removed from the messageboards.’

But as Ms. Phillips points out:

...While it is demonstrably true that the Palestinians are not yet a recognised state, it is demonstrably untrue that they do not have a state apparatus.

And this "state aparatus" is instrumental in promoting violence through PA-controlled media, religious exhortations by imams, schools, summer camps, etc.

In any event, the BBC moderator appears to have disregarded his own rules. The following post was subsequently allowed:

‘It is easy to play the victim, while the zionists are the victimizers. Israel has to leave the Palestinian territories right now, as Syria did in Lebanon. What goes around comes around!’

While the following post was removed:

‘It’s easy to be concerned when Islamists are the Terrorisers’.

Posted by rh at 05:12 PM

Updated: AUT Boycott Leader's "Link" to Anti-Semitism

Update: Blackwell has since removed the offending link from her Web site.

Sue Blackwell, one of the main proponents of the AUT boycott of Israeli universities, claims that she does not link from her Web site to any sites that promote racism. Jerusalem Post correspondent Yaakov Lappin exposes this as false, pointing out Blackwell's links to the MarWen Media Web site, which he says is run by "an anti-Semitic neo-Nazi activist," Wendy Campbell. A look at Campbell's Web site makes clear that these charges are not spurious:

(This is only a partial list of disturbing statements by Campbell on her Web site)

Zionists also push and often succeed for Jewish supremacy in many areas of American politics, media and culture to serve their narrow interests, often at the expense of non-Jewish Americans. American Zionist Jews tend to place their first loyalty to Israel, over and above any loyalty to America. ...

By the way, Hanukkah is a minor holiday in the Jewish religion, yet it has been elevated by Zionist Jews in order to compete and even at times to dominate over the most holy day for Christians, the holiday of Christmas, a time that is now simply referred to as “The Holidays�.

Zionist Jews relentlessly seek to promote programs to educate Americans about their version of the Holocaust, which by the way, claimed many non-Jewish victims including the ones who gave their lives to end the war although this is not emphasized by Zionists. As they seek to bring Jewish culture to mainstream America, Zionists often display insensitivity if not hostility towards others’ religions, including Christianity, as well as others’ nationalities, in particular for example, Germans, Austrians and all Arabs.

Jewish Dominance On Street Signs
Another example of Zionist hegemony over mainstream America in Miami could be seen in the street signs. Many streets such as 12th Street, 15th Street. 16th Street or 20th Street had Jewish names over them, such as Abe Resnick, Bernard Horowitz and Irving Meyer. Abe Resnick is on the board of the Holocaust Memorial in Miami, by the way. We saw no other names over South Beach Miami street signs besides Jewish names—no Hispanic names, not even English names.

... The compelling question is this: if it is true as the Zionists’ claim that there were six million Jews killed during the Holocaust under Hitler during WWII, then why has there been no complete central compilation of the victims’ names? Surely, with all the research and Holocaust “scholarship�, along with the claims and litigation that came in for compensation and reparations from Germany, Switzerland and other European countries, along with the aid of modern computers, there must be a central database with all of the names of the victims. But apparently, to the best of our knowledge, there is not. Why not? Could it be that Zionists know that such a compilation would possibly come up far shorter than six million Jewish victims? Could it be that this would lead to an open discussion of all the claims that Zionists make about the Holocaust? Could it be that this would lead to the lifting of the taboo against questioning Zionist claims about the Holocaust? Although we all know the Holocaust was a heinous occurrence in history, the Zionists insist that it is the worst occurrence in all history of mankind in their own chauvinistic, ethnocentric fashion, when in actuality, any genocidal, ethnic cleansing of any people is equally abhorrent, and that applies to what the Zionists are now supporting in Israel against the non-Jewish Palestinians who are the indigenous people of the Holy Land.

[Note: I have discovered that there is one database with the names of victims of the Holocaust at the largest Holocaust museum in the world. It’s the one in Israel, and it apparently has 3 million names, not 6 million names.]

At one point in this article, Campbell criticises a Miami museum placard, accompanying a Nazi poster on display, for not bashing Jews like the poster does:

The Role of Jews in the Bolshevik Revolution Airbrushed Away

...We found one poster that was printed in 1942 in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands to be especially interesting. The text read “BOLSJEWISME IS MOORD!� which translates, according to the placard beside it, as “BOLSHEVISM IS MURDER!�. However, there was no reference to the fact that the letters “J-E-W� were inserted into the word or why it was. It’s something that most people would most likely not notice. Most people don’t have a clue about the fact that Jews were prominent leaders in the Bolshevik revolution in Russia. Was this omission an oversight or further evidence of the unwritten rule against offending certain powerful sensibilities?

The placard explained how the poster graphically featured the horrors of a young girl raped, a man tortured and murdered, and Christianity under attack, as shown in the shattered crucifix on the ground, committed at the hands of the Bolsheviks. This was designed by the Nazi Germans to play on the Europeans’ anxiety of the savageness of Red Army of the Communist Soviet Union. What is interesting is that, just like in the overall American and European discourse, the role of Jews, many of whom were leaders in the brutal Bolshevik Communist Soviet Union, has been airbrushed out of history, just like it was deleted out of the placard at the museum, even while staring you in the face from the poster. In fact, a couple of top German politicians were recently publicly admonished for making a public reference to the significant role that Jews played during the Bolshevik Revolution and Communist Soviet Union.

WE BELIEVE that there should be "affirmative action" in the media world, specifically with regards to having more reporters and owners of media outlets who are more representative of the widely diverse backgrounds of the majority of Americans. As it is, the representation of those who are Jewish Americans / Israeli-Americans reporting in US media, especially with regards to US foreign policy, is hugely disproportionate to their percentage of the US population. We don't believe that is an accident, and we also believe that perhaps it is time to pass laws that require US media be more representational of its diverse population.

About the rise in terrorist attacks across the world, Campbell asserts that some

may in fact be Israeli "false flag" operations designed to increase anti-Muslim sentiment

She laments that

Jewish donors and activists (not to mention party bosses and a disproportionate number of candidates) basically comprise the new Democratic establishment. On the Republican side we’ve seen the emergence of Christian Zionists who, while lacking the political savvy and strategic thinking of their Jewish counterparts, compensate for this deficit by sheer numbers.

...and then procedes to give a partial list of the Jewish members of congress.

She adds:

Speaking of ‘fear’, consider these contemporary American customs: while it’s acceptable to discuss the “Jewish vote� in mainstream media, real Jewish influence comes not from their miniscule numbers (Jews allegedly comprise no more than 3% of the U.S. electorate) but from Jewish wealth, solidarity, determination and position. This extraordinary phenomenon (unless it’s being debunked) is altogether off limits for analysis. Expect CBS (or NBC-ABC-CNN-FOX) to run another “white supremacists meet in Idaho� segment, or air a story about the Vatican’s ‘failure to speak out� during The Holocaust, long before this disturbing political fact is ever even acknowledged.

Among our governing elites, this Judeo-centric worldview is so prevalent that the failure to pledge unconditional allegiance to Israel virtually assures political oblivion. ...

Why should it be of no interest that so many American editors, publishers, producers and opinion-makers (Thomas Friedman, Mort Zuckerman, Charles Krauthammer Marty Peretz, David Frum, and Bill Safire, to name a just a few) qualify for Israeli citizenship?

("Qualify for Israeli citizenship" is Campbell's way of saying that they are Jewish)

Posted by at 07:06 AM

May 01, 2005

Soraya Nelson's Blinders

An article on CAMERA's Web site points out major flaws in a story by Philly Inquirer's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson.

Compare some of Nelson's problematic comments to more accurate and balanced reporting in a recent story by AP's Steve Weizman...

Nelson:

Abbas has an assertive side. His hard-won cease-fire, which key Palestinian extremist factions agreed to on paper for the first time, is holding, even though Israeli soldiers have killed a number of Palestinians ...

Weizman:

Palestinian militants have been firing mortar and rocket barrages at Gaza settlements in recent weeks in an effort to make it appear that they are pushing Israel out of the volatile coastal strip. Israel plans to pull out of Gaza this summer.

Nelson:

On April 19, Abbas told Israeli media during a rare meeting that his government had collected weapons from all wanted men in Jericho and Tulkarm and would do so in every other city Israel returns to Palestinian control, state-run Israel Radio reported.

(Nowhere in the story does Nelson give Israel's perspective on the supposed collection of weapons.)

Weizman:

Israel pledged to turn over five West Bank towns to Palestinian security control as part of a Feb. 8 cease-fire agreement, but only Tulkarem and Jericho have actually been transferred. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz said last week he was putting further handovers on hold until the Palestinian Authority fulfilled a pledge to disarm militants in the two towns they already control.

Posted by at 06:25 PM