For most Christians, the forty days before Easter, otherwise known as Lent, is a time of fasting, introspection, penance and prayer. Some Christians however, use the Lenten season as an opportunity to dust off New Testament polemic that projects humanity’s worst faults onto Jesus’s adversaries in first century Jerusalem and use these passages to portray modern Israel as “crucifying” the Palestinian people. This strategy is similar to the Bethlehem Formula in which Christians use the season of Advent as an opportunity to portray Israel as denying the Holy Family (Palestinians) a place to rest in the city of Jesus’s birth.

The Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) is the most recent group to demonstrate how the church’s liturgical calendar can be used to demonize Israel. Taking a page from Sabeel’s book of spells, CPT is using the Stations of the Cross to portray Israel and its supporters as solely responsible for the suffering of the Palestinian people.
(more…)

Another assertion that Yasser Arafat died of AIDS has appeared. As with previous indications, mainstream American news media have not followed up.

According National Review magazine’s “The Week” column (February 25), “Dr. Ashraf al-Kurdi, who looked after the master terrorist’s health for 18 years — has been telling a Jordanian news agency that Arafat had AIDS.”

Arafat died in a Paris military hospital in 2004. French officials conducted a post mortem, but results were kept secret. Palestinian sources alleged that Israel, having confined the Palestinian Authority president to his damaged Ramallah compound during the second intifada, poisoned Arafat, then allowed him to seek treatment abroad.

Arafat’s death occasioned voluminous coverage, much of it treating lightly his decades as a terrorist leader responsible for the deaths of thousands in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Jordan, Lebanon and beyond. Some reporting, for example “Bias By Omission: Washington Post Coverage of Yasser Arafat’s Death,” CAMERA’s Media Report, Spring, 2005, also repeated claims of Israeli responsibility while avoiding speculation that Arafat’s symptoms mirrored those of AIDS.

In July, 2007, Ahmed Jibril, secretary-general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, said he’d been told by staff members of Mahmoud Abbas that Arafat died of AIDS (SNAPSHOT, “PFLP-GC Leader: Arafat Died of AIDS,” July 12, 2007). The PFLP-GC belongs to the Palestine Liberation Organization, the terrorist umbrella group chaired by Arafat. Abbas was Arafat’s long-time assistant and is his successor as PA president and PLO chairman.

When al-Kurdi “repeated his diagnosis on al-Jazeera television, he was instantly cut off,” National Review reported. “But what else is new? In Arafat’s lifetime it was easy to guess his condition from his appearance. His permanent entourage of young boys, most of them orphans, also spoke for itself. The doctor’s accusation that somehow Israel managed to poison him is the usual attempt to pass responsibility for everything on to the Jews.”

And media disinterest in the story may reflect the usual reluctance to report news showing Palestinian leaders in a less-than-favorable light.

A law professor at George Mason University explains why describing Israel’s policies toward Gaza as illegal “collective punishment” makes a “mockery of international law.”

Activists and some UN Security Council members argue that Israel’s restrictions on fuel deliveries to Gaza constitutes collective punishment in violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The argument is nonsense.

Read his full explanation at American Thinker.

A small headline over a short wire service article nevertheless was a major blunder in The Baltimore Sun’s February 15 edition. For a McClatchy-Tribune news service dispatch covering both the funeral of Imad Mughniyeh, assassinated arch-terrorist of Hezbollah, and a three-year anniversary memorial for murdered former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, The Sun wrote:

“Lebanese honor 2 martyrs; Hezbollah officer led anti-U.S. attacks; Hariri remembered.”

Two martyrs? A more obscene equivalence is hard to imagine.

Hariri, a billionaire businessman with Saudi connections, rebuilt much of Beirut after the 1975 – 1990 Lebanese civil wars, and reportedly tried to distance himself from Lebanon’s Syrian overlords. He was murdered, along with 16 others, in a massive Feb. 14, 2005 car-bombing. U.N. investigators suspect Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s associates.

Mughniyeh was a sociopathic leader of the Iranian-trained and funded, Syrian-armed Hezbollah. The Lebanese Shi’ite “Party of God,” prior to al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, had murdered more Americans than any other terrorist organization. It’s also murdered hundreds more non-Americans.

But for The Sun’s headline writer, and any other wire and copy editors who handled the story, both men were “martyrs.” A martyr, it apparently needs to be repeated, is an individual who dies for his faith, not one who by it justifies murder.

The article said that “Mughniyeh is blamed for the 1983 bombings of the U.S. Embassy and the Marine headquarters at Beirut airport, the 1985 hijacking of a TWA flight and other attacks.” Like the secondary description of him as an “officer,” this omits too much, including:

The 1983 bombing of the French military barracks in Lebanon; the beating, torture and murder of U.S. Navy SEAL Robert D. Stethem during the 1985 hijacking; Mughniyeh’s oversight or participation in the kidnapping and torture of CIA Beirut station chief William Buckley, who eventually died in Iran; kidnapping, torture and murder of U.S. Col. Richard Higgins; the 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires; 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires; kidnappings of numerous Westerners in Beirut in the 1980s and early ‘90s; and reportedly serving as a link between al Qaeda’s 9/11 “musclemen” and Iran, and between Hezbollah and al Qaeda in Iraq.

Some martyr.

The Sun once operated bureaus in Beirut, Cairo and other major foreign cities. It closed the sole remaining overseas office — Jerusalem — last year. Like other big daily newspapers, it continues to suffer declines in circulation and advertising revenue. And, apparently, editorial judgment.

Humphrey Hawkesley called Imad Mughniyeh (above), responsible for numerous international bombings and the kidnapping and killings of several Westerners, a “great national leader”/Photo from FBI

The Jerusalem Post reports today:

In an uncommon act of journalistic contrition, the BBC has apologized for equating former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri and Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh as “great national leaders.”

The BBC took the unusual step after Don Mell, The Associated Press’s former photographer in Beirut, lambasted the parallel, drawn by BBC correspondent Humphrey Hawkesley in a BBC World report last Thursday, as “an outrage” and “beyond belief.”

American journalist Mell was held up at gunpoint by Mughniyeh’s men as his colleague Terry Anderson, AP’s chief Middle East correspondent, was kidnapped in Beirut in March 1985.

Hawkesley’s report on what he called “an amazing day for Lebanon,” when a memorial rally for Hariri was followed by Mughniyeh’s funeral, concluded: “The army is on full alert as Lebanon remembers two war victims with different visions but both regarded as great national leaders.”

Herb Denenberg, a columnist for The Bulletin, a family newspaper published in Philadelphia, takes on a dishonest statement issued by a group within the Presbyterian Church (USA).

In a piece titled, “Is The P.C.U.S.A. Peacemaking Or Promoting More Hatred?,” Deneberg writes there’s little difference betweeen the National Middle Eastern Presbyterian Caucus and the PC(USA) itself:

The PCUSA posts NMEPC statements on its Web site, provides it with logistical support and publicizes its work through its Presbyterian News Service. What’s more, the general approach of the NMEPC is in line with the actions of the PCUSA’s General Assembly. So although when asked, the PCUSA will not assume responsibility for the NMEPC, when all the dancing and dodging is over, the PCUSA lends its full resources, power and credibility to the NMEPC. So in this column I will usually refer to the statement, “A Call to End the Siege of Gaza,” as the position of the PCUSA itself, without constant references to the NMEPC.

Now, one might disagree with Deneberg’s reasoning, but the PC(USA)’s leadership has not disassociated itself from the statement issued by the caucus. And Denenberg is right when he states the denomination lent “its full resources, power and credibility to the NMEPC.” A statement from Clifton Kirkpatrick, the denomination’s stated clerk, distancing the denomination’s leadership from the NMEPC’s polemic, might have been helpful. Live and learn.

Deneberg then lists the words used to describe Israeli and Palestinian actions. Here’s what he found:
(more…)

Imad Mugniyah, left and his handiwork, right, the bombed out Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires

Two recent events recall the old adage that all roads lead to Damascus.

UNESCO Director-General, Koichiro Matsuura, visited the Syrian capital on Jan. 8-11 to congratulate the Syrians for being nominated Arab Capital of Culture for 2008. While in Damascus, Matsuura, the head of the UN body responsible for promoting education, culture and science, commended Syrian “hospitality.” Syrian President Bashir Assad marked the occasion by proclaiming Damascus as “the capital of resistance culture .” Assad asserted that the tradition of Damascus was to strive for peace “with dignity and pride,” adding that his country will “lead a dialogue among civilisations.”

Giving poignant meaning to Assad’s and Matsuura’s words, on February 12, one of Damascus most famous “resistance” figures, Imad Mugniyah, who in recent years had benefitted from Syrian hospitality, was killed in a car bombing. Mugniyah, a Lebanese Shiite personified the cooperation and links between terrorist groups (aka. resistance groups).

He joined the Palestinian Fatah organization in 1975 and served in Yasir Arafat’s special guard, Force 17. In 1983, he linked up with the newly formed Lebanese Hezbollah organization and became affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Emerging as a terrorist mastermind in his early twenties, Mugniyah was implicated in the Marine Barracks bombing in Beirut in 1983 that left 241 US Marines dead, the kidnapping and killing of US officials in Lebanon, the hijacking of TWA Flight 847, the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Argentina in 1992 and the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994 that killed 86 people.

Mugniyah was also accused of planning the cross-border raid on July 12, 2006 that killed eight Israeli soldiers and kidnapped two others, leading to the summer war between Israel and Hezbollah. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad blamed his demise on “Zionists,” although he was wanted by others, like the US, which offered $5 million for information leading to his capture.

Mugniyah is gone, but Damascus still remains a safe zone for numerous terrorist groups, like Hamas, PFLP, PFLP-General Command, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah.

Apparently ripping off Disney characters to incite young children against Jews is passé. Now, Hamas is taking Warner Brothers characters and reinventing them as rabble rousing anti-Semites.

A Bugs Bunny clone on Hamas’s television station is teaching children of his desire to “finish off the Jews and eat them.”

This is a prime example of the incitement that Palestinian human rights activist Bassem Eid and Israeli democracy activist Natan Sharansky warned about in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal when they referred to the use of Palestinian “media and schools to indoctrinate a generation into a culture of hatred.”

You can watch the video of Bugs — I mean “Assud” — here.

ZioNation blog noticed a fascinating Q&A between a correspondent and a UN spokesperson about the use of the term “occupied” to describe Gaza:

Question: You read a statement about the situation in Gaza before and I know it’s difficult to change terminology, but we have a new Secretary-General now, so let me try it again. A year and half after the last Israeli withdrew from Gaza, the UN system still refers to Gaza as an Occupied Palestinian Territory. The only people who are not Palestinian in Gaza currently are UN people. Do you mean that Gaza is occupied by the UN?

Spokesperson:Definitely not.

Question: So who is it occupied by?

Spokesperson: Well…

Correspondent: I think there are some Israeli soldiers on the border…

Question: Not borders, who is Gaza occupied by?

Spokesperson: Traditionally, this is the terminology we have used. Yes?

Question: But the situation on the ground changed since Israel withdrew from Gaza

Spokesperson: I will look into this.

Correspondent: Thank you.

When I picked up the papers this past Friday and learned that Israel had for the first time cut electricity to the Gaza Strip — by a whopping 1 percent — I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the Los Angeles Times. Why? Because on Jan. 28, the Times’ Richard Boudreaux had falsely reported:

With Egypt’s cooperation, Israel began reducing the flow of electricity, fuel, commerce and travelers across Gaza’s borders after the militant Islamic movement Hamas, which had won parliamentary elections in 2006, seized full control of the territory in June.

Thus, according to the LA Times — the facts be damned — Israel had begun reducing the electricity flow to Gaza as early as June. So what’s the paper to do when Israel actually began to cut electricity for the first time just this past Friday? Ignore the development? Or report it but ignore their earlier false report (and likewise ignore CAMERA’s requests for a correction)?

Well, it seems that the illustrious paper — which has recently taken a hit from a federal judge for “manufacturing facts” — opted for the latter option. A brief on Friday reported:

Israeli forces killed seven Palestinians, including a schoolteacher, during a campaign to stop daily rocket barrages from the Gaza Strip, and added a new economic pressure — cutting electricity by a symbolic one percent.

Likewise, the paper’s Web site includes an AP timeline which correctly notes:

Feb. 7: Israel starts reducing the 120 megawatts it provides from its own power station. Initially just over 1 percent will be cut.

(more…)