As if any more evidence was needed to disprove Abu Marzook’s claim in the Los Angeles Times that Hamas treats journalists with “dignity,” Ma’an reported yesterday:

The chairperson of the oversight and human rights committee in the Palestinian Legislative Council, Dr. Faisal Abu Shahla, condemned Hamas’ Executive Forces for attacking press freedom in the Gaza Strip Monday.

He said the Executive Forces had detained workers from three newspapers, Al Ayyam, Al Quds, and Al Hayyat Al Jadeedah, for three hours, describing the incident as “a dangerous act.”

Earlier Monday, the Executive Force froze imports of newspapers in the Gaza Strip for an hour as a warning to end defamatory reports against Hamas in the press.

Hamas officials took foreign journalists to eight sites yesterdayPhoto by Reuters

Now that Hamas has the Op-Ed pages of major Western media outlets covered, it’s moving on to the news reporters. Steve Gutkin of the Associated Press reports that yesterday Hamas took two busloads of journalists on a carefully orchestrated tour of the Gaza Strip.

Barry Rubin of GLORIA blasts the Los Angeles Times’ July 27 editorial (“Two versions of history”) for “demand[ing] that Israel be completely balanced — and criticiz[ing] anything that appears not to be — while not demanding anything of the other side.”

While the Times demands that Hebrew editions of an elementary school book also include a line noting that Arabs consider the founding of Israel a catastrophe, the editors are silent about the fact that “Palestinians and Arabs in general are taught by every source–sermons, government statements, textbooks, etc.–that Israel is evil and illegitimate.”

In a piece entitled “Flashbacks of a Lost Cause” (July 17, 2007), Boston Globe columnist H.D.S. Greenway recounts the history of British entanglement in Mandate Palestine’s “civil war” as follows:

First came the Arab revolt of 1936-1939, which was marked by cruelty and torture of Arab prisoners – including simulated drowning. Later on, even before the end of World War II, came terror from the Zionist side.

Greenway has made a career out of condemning Israel, often by touching up or ignoring facts. But even by Greenway’s standards, this rendering of history, which portrays Arabs only as victims and Jews only as aggressors, is outrageous.

First of all, the Arab revolt of 1936-39 was neither the “first” conflict between Arab and Jew nor the first clash between Arabs and British authorities in Palestine. In 1929, for example, Arab rioters stirred up by the anti-British and anti-Jewish Mufti of Jerusalem massacred 133 Jews across the land. In its effort to stop the pogrom, the British police killed 110 Arabs rioters.

In describing the Arab revolt of 1936-39 as being “marked by cruelty and torture of Arab prisoners,” Greenway again ignores Arab acts of violence. Perhaps the “simulated drowning” of Arab prisoners, perpetrated by the British authorities, is worth mentioning. But what about the Aug. 13, 1936 bombing of a Jewish home that killed a Jewish father and his three children; or the Aug. 17 attack that killed two Jewish nurses and a young Jewish girl; or the Sept. 19 bombing that killed a 7-year-old Jewish child; or the bomb attack on a Jewish school that injured 9 children; or any of the other Arab attacks that claimed 80 Jewish lives in the spring and summer of 1936 alone?

In light of these attacks, and other Arab attacks that claimed the lives of British policemen, why does Greenway only specifically name “the Zionist side” as being guilty of terror?

(A minority of Jewish extremists did commit acts of terror, which were condemned by the mainstream Jewish leadership.)

CAMERA’s article about MIT’s Just Jerusalem contest concentrates on the severe anti-Israel bias of the contest’s steering committee and jury.

There is, however, another important point to be made about the contest, which was cogently expressed by an alumnus of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning who wrote to us. He wonders

whether the competition exercise has any validity at all. The objective seems noble. But I cannot see how creating a vision for something that doesn’t exist — Palestinian and Israel accord — can help to make it exist, when there are fundamental problems that must be resolved before any plan can be drafted. To do this is like planning a wedding for two people who mistrust and even hate each
other, who have long been divorced, planning as well how they will live together in the same house — and believing all the while that by holding up such a vision everything will fall into place.

I’ve pondered my knowledge of the history of cities and of national states, and I cannot find any parallel or precedent to using a design vision to unify two warring parties. The reunification of Berlin and Germany is not a pertinent example. They were unified culturally prior to physical unification. A little know plan for the Mekong River basin prior to the Vietnam War (published in Scientific American in the early 60s) doesn’t serve either. The people in the basin were pretty much the same ethnically. And look what happened.

Certainly much can be done to improve the condition of Palestinians in the Jerusalem area, but this exercise may not be an effective way to do it. It might create only disillusionment.

I think this MIT exercise might do more harm than good, setting up Israel as a pariah for not being more supportive of something they cannot support. Israel is not about to offer up Jerusalem, or split it. It’s that simple, jurors and their biases aside.

I hope that MIT gets this and other critical commentaries. I hope to hear more about the discussions on this matter within the MIT community.

Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), the 1999 Nobel Peace Prize-winning medical relief organization, is currently sending out packages as part of a fundraising campaign. The packages include a request for a donation and a world map. The maps show every country in the world and every national capital … except one. Israel — which is identified as “Israel & Palestinian Territories” — is the only country in the world without a capital on the map. Jerusalem is shown on the map, but is designated only as a city, not as a national capital.

By contrast, Taipei, the de facto capital of Taiwan — which mainland China adamantly insists is part of its own sovereign territory and which most countries of the world do not technically recognize as a national capital — is indicated on the map as the national capital of Taiwan.

The web site for the organization is www.doctorswithoutborders.org. Please draw attention to this organization’s hypocrisy and the double standard it is applying by refusing to recognize Israel’s capital on its maps. They can be contacted at their U.S. headquarters: 212-679-6800. Or you can submit a comment on their Web site by clicking here .

For other examples of Doctors Without Borders’ anti-Israel bias, click here and here

Authored by Stephen Silver

In reviewing Amity Shlaes’ The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression in its July 21st issue, the Economist Magazine actually seems to endorse the notorious anti-Semitism of Henry Ford.

While Ms. Shlaes in her book charges that President Roosevelt’s economic policies only made things worse, the Economist approvingly quotes Henry Ford to point the finger at another villain — the Jews. Here’s the somewhat shocking passage:

Ms Shlaes tends to look at the Depression in terms of the conflict between business (good) and politics (bad). At the time, though, Roosevelt’s view that the “lack of honour of men in high financial places” was at the root of the trouble seemed like a statement of the obvious, rather than a political pose. Even Henry Ford had been uttering warnings that “the Jews of Wall Street”, as he so nicely called them, had stored up trouble in the 1920s. The Depression appeared to prove him right.

al-Ali’s cartoons were critical of Mideast leaders like Arafat and Khomeini

Palestinian journalists face all kinds of threats from Palestinian leaders today, but this is hardly a new development. Twenty years ago, on July 22, 1987, a Palestinian cartoonist — Naji Salim al-Ali — was gunned down on a London street. al-Ali satirized Arab politics and was especially critical of Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini. The BBC reports:

An Al Qabas [newspaper] spokesman says [al-Ali] received over 100 death threats during his career.

Mr al-Ali’s colleague revealed a senior member of Yasser Arafat’s PLO telephoned the cartoonist in the middle of June and said: “You must correct your attitude.”

“Don’t say anything against the honest people, otherwise we will have business to sort you out,” the caller continued.

Mr al-Ali ignored the warning and published a cartoon lampooning Mr Arafat and his henchmen on 24 June.

(Hat tip: Michael H.)

CAMERA’s letter today in the Jerusalem Post invites readers to look beyond Jessica Montell’s general defense of B’Tselem’s research and to examine specific examples of B’Tselem’s questionable data.

Three briefs. Three headlines. Two standards. Thanks to the Los Angeles Times today for providing a case study in headline bias:

Israel kills 4 Palestinian militants

4 [Lebanese] soldiers slain battling militants

Gunfights leave 19 [Pakistani] insurgents dead

The LA Times’ tendency to single out Israeli actions with the active voice was documented years ago. (See here, here, and here.) In addition to the fact that the active voice is reserved exclusively for Israel, the verbs themselves are also striking. Israel “kills,” a very strong word in comparison to the softer “slain” and “dead.” Another interesting point in today’s sampling is that other than the Israeli-Palestinian example, the headlines don’t even indicate where in the world the other killings occurred.