Gazans protest against the Hamas-Fatah rivalries which have prevented sick Palestinians from leaving the Gaza Strip for medical care (AP Photo/Hatem Moussa)

One year ago, the New York Times dedicated prominent news coverage to seven Fulbright scholars who could not leave Gaza to study in the United States. The coverage, including a front-page news story and a finger-wagging editorial, (erroneously) blamed Israel for the situation.

Now another group of Gaza citizens is unable to travel abroad for a pressing need — and the consequences for these people are much more dire than those of the students unable to attend prestigious programs. As reported by the AP:

Hundreds of Palestinian patients have been trapped in the Gaza Strip, unable to travel abroad for crucial treatment for cancer and other diseases, because of political infighting between Gaza’s militant Hamas rulers and their Palestinian rivals.

Eight Gazans who were waiting to travel abroad have died since the crisis began in March, when the dispute shut down a medical referral committee that helps sick residents find treatment outside of Gaza, according to the World Health Organization.

While the New York Times deemed the dubious case of the seven Fulbright students a cause celebre, the paper of record has totally ignored the Fatah-Hamas controversy which is responsible for the painful and unnecessary deaths of innocent patients desperately seeking to reach Egypt.

(Note: Prospects of recovery for sick Palestinians were also dimmed in late January, when the Palestinian Authority decided to discontinue payments to Israeli hospitals for treatments there, a development that was reported at the time by the Times. But the issue of the Hamas-Fatah disputes which has blocked the exit of Gazan patients has not been reported by the Times.)

The befuddled Roger Cohen is having a tough time keeping track of what does and what does not exist in the Middle East. Thus, in recent weeks he has found “sophistication“, but he cannot find double standards. Today, Cohen writes:

In fact, you don’t so much drive into the Palestinian territories these days as sink into them. Everything, except the Jewish settlers’ cars on fenced settlers-only highways, slows down.

It is Cohen’s credibility which is sinking. While there are certain West Bank roads prohibited to Palestinian traffic, they are open to all Israelis — Jews, Muslims, Arabs.

“We stand by our film and do not intend to make any changes.”

With these words (in an August 16, 2007 letter), National Geographic Television’s President, Michael Rosenfeld, dismissed CAMERA’s recommendations for changes to the network’s “Secrets of Jerusalem’s Holiest Sites.” The recommendations were related to inaccuracies and distortions pointed out in a July 2007 CAMERA letter to Mr. Rosenfeld and later posted on-line in an October 3, 2007 CAMERA article. The film’s serious flaws remain in the recent re-broadcasts on Sunday, April 12, 2009 (5PM Eastern) and Tuesday, April 14 (5PM).

The basic problem is that this film favors key Muslim and Arab viewpoints regarding Israel that are either inaccurate or distorted.

National Geographic Television would be taking a major step toward accuracy and fairness if Mr. Rosenfeld and his associates in Washington D.C. were to honestly scrutinize and then, accordingly, revise this seriously flawed film. However, this appears to be unlikely since NGT, like its parent, the enormously prosperous “non-profit” National Geographic Society, has been able thus far to view itself as impervious to criticism. Such changes would also require overcoming National Geographic’s traditional anti-Israel bias.

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Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad once famously bragged that, during his September 2005 speech before the United Nations General Assembly, he was surrounded by a glowing aura and mesmerized world leaders didn’t and couldn’t blink.

On the last day when I was speaking before the assembly, one of our group told me that when I started to say “In the name of God the almighty and merciful,” he saw a light around me, and I was placed inside this aura. I felt it myself.

I felt the atmosphere suddenly change, and for those 27 or 28 minutes, the leaders of the world did not blink. When I say they didn’t bat an eyelid, I’m not exaggerating because I was looking at them. And they were rapt.

It seemed as if a hand was holding them there and had opened their eyes to receive the message from the Islamic republic.

His trance-inducing halo, however, was apparently missing during his speech today at the UN’s so-called World Conference Against Racism in Geneva. Watch as delegates walk out during one of Ahmadinejad’s typical anti-Israel rants:

Ashraf Ahmed El-Hojouj, the Palestinian doctor imprisoned and tortured for eight years in Libya (along with five Bulgarian nurses) on false charges of infecting hundreds of children with HIV, called out Libya on Friday (April 17) at the UN Durban II Review Conference for its discrimination against minorities. Libyan ambassador Najjat Al-Hajjaji, who chaired the meeting, repeatedly interrupted and ultimately shut down El-Hojouj, who was representing UN Watch, on the basis that he was “not addressing the agenda item” (which we all know is limited to demonizing Israel and banning any criticism of Islam.)

Abba Eban used the word in “Auschwitz” in reference to Israel’s boundaries from 1949-67

It wouldn’t be the first time that Ha’aretz‘s Gideon Levy bungled or fabricated a quote by one of Israel’s early leaders.

The latest specimen appears in today’s online column, in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day, entitled “The Holocaust and Israeli Occupation Cannot Be Compared,” in which all the while Levy pathetically tries to do just that.

The forever-factually-challenged Levy writes:

Abba Eban, the legendary Labor foreign minister, once called the borders established following the 1967 Six-Day War “Auschwitz borders” [sic] – no less.

Actually, Eban referred to the pre, not post, June 5, 1967 boundaries of Israel as “Auschwitz” lines. As cited by Levy’s colleague Bradley Burston, Eban told the German Der Spiegel in 1969:

“We have openly said that the map will never again be the same as on June 4, 1967. For us, this is a matter of security and of principles. The June map is for us equivalent to insecurity and danger. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has for us something of a memory of Auschwitz.”

Two of the many photos comprising the Palestinian Human Rights Week exhibit at the Law Building. At left, a letter purportedly sent from Gaza Strip, entitled “The war in which I was killed and Gaza survived,” alleging Israeli atrocities. At right, a picture of two dead Palestinian children. (Digital photos courtesy of Gregory Harris).

At Montreal’s prestigious McGill University, the demonizing of Israel, attendant to Apartheid Week activities, was extended for another week to March 11-18 with
Palestinian Human Rights Week (PHRW), comprised of lectures and an exhibit. Among other alleged human rights violations, the exhibit depicted the suffering of Gazans during the recent conflict.

An audience for an anti-Israel exhibit might be aware that the decades-long history of the Arab-Israel conflict has been full of terrible accusations of Israeli atrocities and human rights violations. But these audiences tend to be either unaware or unconcerned that the overwhelming majority of these accusations were subsequently shown to be either completely false or grossly exaggerated. A recent example are the false charges of Israeli atrocities in Gaza.

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The article begins:

The BBC Trust, which oversees complaints to the British state broadcaster, has ruled that coverage of Israel in an article on the BBC’s Web site and a radio broadcast by its Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen was partially inaccurate and that aspects of the Internet article lacked impartiality.

The Trust was responding to complaints filed separately by London-based barrister Jonathan Turner and by the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA).

Read the rest here.

You can also read CAMERA’s press release on the findings here. And be sure to check back at CAMERA’s Web site — we’ll soon be posting a detailed discussion of the findings.

The Wall Street Journal made it the lead “World News” section article for April 13 — “Egypt Arrests 49 In Planned Attacks.” That is, 49 members of a Hezbollah
cell allegedly planning attacks on Israeli tourists and smuggling weapons to Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The news appeared to confirm Hezbollah-Hamas assistance, Hezbollah’s use of Egypt as a base, and exemplify tension between Hezbollah’s patrons — Iran and Syria — and the largest Arab country

The Washington Times published an Associated Press dispatch headlined “Hezbollah: Egypt: Israeli tourists targeted; Destabilization said to be aim” the same day.

The New York Times followed on April 14 with a lengthy article, “Egypt Accuses Hezbollah of Plotting Attacks in Sinai and Arms Smuggling to Gaza.”

The Washington Post did not report this on April 13, 14, or 15, though former McClatchy Newspapers’ Washington bureau chief and CAMERA member Leo Rennert called it to the paper’s attention on April 14.

The Post recently eliminated its free standing, daily business section and folded the remnants into its “A” section with national and world news, reducing space available for foreign coverage. But the Journal, New York Times and Washington Times, dealing with economic pressures similar to those felt by The Post, recognized and found room for this important story.

Covering the president’s commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty (“Camp David Accords: Obama Praises Those Who Pursued Peace,” March 27), The Washington Post reported that “the Palestinian national movement is … divided over how to approach peace talks with Israel.” Former Post foreign editor and Jerusalem bureau chief, now White House reporter, Scott Wilson wrote that “the armed Islamist movement Hamas rejects Israel’s right to exist, yet controls the Gaza Strip and exerts some political influence in the West Bank. The rival Fatah party endorses a two-state solution with Israel, but it is weak and unpopular in much of the Palestinian territories.”

Fatah endorses a “two-state solution?” In “Dahlan to Hamas: Never recognize Israel,” March 17, The Jerusalem Post reported that “former Fatah security commander Muhammad Dahlan … called on Hamas not to recognize Israel’s right to exist, pointing out that Fatah had never recognized it.” Speaking on Palestinian Authority TV, Dahlan said reports that Fatah demanded Hamas recognize Israel as a precondition for a Palestinian unity government were “misleading.”
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