The antidote to this? More of this.

The BBC reports today:

A former senior British army officer has said international media including the BBC are being exploited by “dark forces” who want to harm Israel.

Col Richard Kemp, who was a commander in Afghanistan, said some international criticism of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) was motivated by anti-Semitism. . . .

But he added that despite similarities between the IDF and British forces, UK soldiers did not have to deal with the same amount of criticism from the international community.

“When we go into battle we do not get the same knee-jerk, almost Pavlovian response from many, many elements of the international media and international groups, humanitarian groups and other international groups such as the United Nations which should know better… of utter automatic condemnation. We don’t have to put up with that.”

To see Col. Kemp’s testimony before the Goldstone commission, click here.

The Jerusalem Post reports:

The New York-based American Jewish Committee blasted the BBC on Sunday for airing an accusation that Jews around the world assist in supposed Mossad assassinations.

The AJC said in a statement that it was “dismayed that a guest on BBC Radio 4 was allowed to state unchallenged” that the Mossad relies on Jews for assassination plots.

“This baseless accusation crosses every red line between legitimate public discussion and bigoted fear-mongering,” said AJC executive director David Harris. “In less than a minute, the BBC has cast a shadow on the lives of Jews worldwide.”

BBC Radio 4’s PM program interviewed Gordon Thomas, author of Gideon’s Spies, a book about the Mossad, about the January 20 assassination of Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai.

You got to give them points for consistency. Ha’aretz has systematically ignored substantive criticism of J Street’s policies, methods and funding, and so it comes as no surprise that the paper ignores the latest development in the reported snub of a J Street delegation by deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon.

It’s not that the paper has ignored the controversy. To the contrary. Coverage includes two news articles (see here and here) and at least one Op-Ed condemning the alleged snub, which appeared today.

While the paper which has paid the matter substantial coverage until now, it nevertheless ignores the fact, that as reported in the Jerusalem Post today, the Foreign Ministry claims that J Street has lied about the whole affair. The Post reports:

The American “pro-Israel, pro-peace” lobby group J Street made “untrue assertions” about an alleged boycott of the congressional delegation it recently brought to Israel, and about Israel allegedly apologizing to the group for the slight, a senior Foreign Ministry official told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday.

“[Deputy Foreign Minister Danny] Ayalon did not prevent the delegation from meeting with senior Israeli officials,” as claimed by J Street last week, said Barukh Binah, Foreign Ministry deputy director-general and head of its North America Division.

“Ayalon was never part of the delegation’s schedule and talk of boycotting meetings with congressman has no basis in fact. On the contrary, the deputy foreign minister is always willing to meet with elected officials from any friendly country, especially the United States of America, and [with] Jewish organizations which represent a range of diverse views from across the political spectrum.”

Binah also rejected the “subsequent assertion that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs apologized in hastily arranged meetings,” which he said was simply not true.

A senior Foreign Ministry official who asked to remain anonymous blasted the group for “coming to the region with the intention of creating headlines, perhaps for fund-raising purposes. The media and the congressmen became unwilling participants in a premeditated public relations circus. It is extremely disappointing that a so-called pro-Israel organization would put self-aggrandizement ahead of the interests of the State of Israel.”

Meanwhile, questions were raised in Israel about the pro-Israel credentials of the five-member congressional delegation brought by J Street, composed of California Democrats Lois Capps and Bob Filner, Massachusetts Democrat Bill Delahunt, New Jersey Democrat Donald Payne and Ohio Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy.

While J Street chairman Jeremy Ben-Ami asserted that the delegation members were “key friends of Israel in Congress,” a recent vote on House Resolution 867, which slammed the Goldstone Report and reaffirmed Israel’s right to self-defense, saw only one of the five voting in Israel’s favor.

Saree Makdisi, a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed page who calls for the dissolution of the Jewish state of Israel, argued Feb. 12 against the Simon Weisenthal’s planned Museum of Tolerance, slated to be built over a parking lot which was formerly a Muslim cemetery. His impassioned plea to prevent the alleged desecration of Muslim graves took a huge hit last week with the revelation of a 1945 Palestine Post article about Muslim plans to build over the very same site. The Jerusalem Post reports:

However, a November 22, 1945 article from The Palestine Post (the pre-state name of The Jerusalem Post), which was forwarded to the Wiesenthal Center on Monday after being posted on a blog, reports Muslim plans to build directly over the cemetery.

The report states, “An area of over 450 dunams in the heart of Jerusalem, now forming the Mamilla Cemetery, is to be converted into a business centre.

“The town-plan is being completed under the supervision of the Supreme Moslem Council in conjunction with the Government Town Planning Adviser,” the article continues.

“A six-storeyed building to house the Supreme Moslem Council and other offices, a four-storeyed hotel, a bank and other buildings suitable for it, a college, a club and a factory are to be the main structures. There will also be a park to be called the Salah ed Din Park, after the Moslem warrior of Crusader times.”

The 1945 article also describes plans by the council to transfer remains buried in the cemetery to a separate, “walled reserve” and cites rulings from prominent Muslim clerics at the time allowing for the building plans to progress.

“In an interview with Al-Wih-da, the Jerusalem weekly,” the Palestine Post article continues, “a member of the Supreme Moslem Council stated that the use of Moslem cemeteries in the public interest had many precedents both in Palestine and elsewhere.

“The member added that the Supreme Moslem Council intended to publish a statement containing dispensations by Egyptian, Hijazi and Demascene clerics sanctioning the building programme. He pointed out that the work would be carried out in stages and by public tender. Several companies had already been formed in anticipation, and funds were plentiful.”

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William Bapthorpe, a below the line commenter on the Guardian’s Comment is Free who was eventually banned after having commented that settlers “must be slaughtered, every last man, woman and child,” is back. He writes under the new name LavartisProdeo, though he freely admits he is Bapthorpe. CiF Watch has the whole story here.

An excerpt from CAMERA campus fellow Aaron Jacobs’ guest column in the Arizona Daily Wildcat, University of Arizona’s student newspaper:

It’s countries like Iran, Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia that should be criticized for the lack of rights their citizens receive, not Israel, which is the only democratic country in the region. As someone who has lived in Israel, I have witnessed the highs and lows of the Israeli government. The truth is that Israel is not perfect, but no country is. However, to even link Israel with the word “apartheid” is not only prejudiced but very much inaccurate. …

Instead of falsely accusing Israel as an apartheid state this year, let’s come together and celebrate the freedoms of Israel’s citizens in efforts to work together towards a peaceful future.

Andrew Sullivan, in a series of recent posts his blog The Daily Dish, purports to describe “What often happens to Israel’s critics.”

What happens, we’re meant to believe, is that these critics are met by little more than “smears and character assassinations.”

Of course we’ve heard this all before from the likes of former president Jimmy Carter, Gaza investigator Richard Goldstone, and Independent columnist Johann Hari. And of course, in each of these cases, the cry of “character assassination” was intended to denigrate and distract from the many serious, substantive critiques of their work. Put another way, the smears were not targeted at Israel’s critics, but rather employed by them and directed at the critics’ critics (including CAMERA).

But what about the latest charge by Sullivan?
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Washington Post coverage of the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh put the verbal equivalent of false beards on al-Mabhouh’s organization, Hamas, and the Lebanese Hezbollah movement. In “Pressure grows on Israel over Hamas official’s slaying; Fake British passports used by alleged assassins fuel speculation that Mossad spy agency killed operative in Dubai hotel” The Post refers to “militant groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah,” and to “Hamas militants in Gaza.” It also twice mentions “Hamas’ military wing.”

The dispatch, by Post Jerusalem bureau chief Howard Schneider, topped February 18’s foreign coverage including two articles about the U.S. and allied offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan, even though Schneider first reported the murder in “Death of Islamist Hamas commander in Dubai prompts hunt for killers” on January 30. The otherwise informative “Pressure grows on Israel over Hamas official’s slaying” fails to note that the United States has designated both Hamas (the Palestinian Islamic Resistance Movement) and Hezbollah (the Iranian-backed Lebanese Shi’ite “Party of God”) as terrorist organizations.

References to “Hamas’ military wing” sanitize the group’s “Izeddine al-Qassam” component, which primarily conducts terrorist attacks against Israeli non-combatants. They also ignore statements by Hamas officials that theirs is a unitary organization; its separate functions — schools, recruitment, terrorism, aid to “martyrs” families, etc. — complement each other in pursuit of the destruction of Israel and the establishment of an Islamic fundamentalist theocracy. A May 27, 1998 Reuters dispatch quoted Hamas founder Sheik Ahmed Yassin as explaining that “We cannot separate the wing from the body. If we do so, the body will not be able to fly. Hamas is one body.”
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While the major news media generally portray Palestinian Authority leadership as moderate (sharply contrasting it with that of Hamas), the PA continues to provide for the indoctrination of Palestinian Arabs – through its schools, mosques and media – to hate Jews and to deny the legitimacy of Israel.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) provides a video clip and translation of the Friday, January 29, 2010 sermon delivered from the pulpit of Nablus’s Bourin Mosque and aired on PA official television which is under the control of Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the American-backed Palestinian Authority:

The Jews are the enemies of Allah and His messenger (Muhammad) and the enemies of humanity in general, and of the Palestinians in particular…. Jews will always be Jews. Even if donkeys cease to bray, dogs cease to bark, wolves cease to howl, and snakes cease to bite, the Jews will not cease to be hostile to the Muslims. The Prophet Muhammad said: `Whenever two Jews find themselves alone with a Muslim, they think of killing him.’ Oh Muslims, this land, these holy places, and these mosques will only be liberated when we return to the Book of Allah, and when all Muslims are prepared to become mujahideen for the sake of Allah, in support of Palestine, its people, its land, and its holy places. The Prophet Muhammad said: ‘You will fight the Jews, and you will kill them …’

Major news media – including the New York Times and Washington Post which heavily cover Palestinian-Israeli matters – published nothing about the sermon, the content of which clearly violated existing Israeli-PA agreements on ending incitement.