The revelations in September 2009 that Human Rights Watch military investigator Marc Garlasco is an avid collector of Nazi memorabilia and author of a book on the subject prompted notable defensiveness and stonewalling by an organization devoted to challenging the conduct of others — and expecting corrective action. A March 28, 2010 story in the Times Online by Jonathan Foreman revisits the issue:

The vehemence of Human Rights Watch in defending Garlasco surprised many. But it made sense for two reasons. Though HRW relishes complaints from infuriated dictatorships, it is not used to its personnel and methods being questioned at home. And it coincided with a series of less-well-publicised criticisms of the group. Suddenly, when its own practices came under scrutiny, it became very touchy.

On September 14 last year the organisation suspended Marc Garlasco with pay “pending an investigation”. But as the months went by, HRW said nothing about the investigation — and nothing about Garlasco’s status.

Finally, the organization removed his name from the staff list on their Web site on March 5, 2010. Foreman notes Garlasco is far from the only dubious staff member, citing the case of Joe Stork. As CAMERA originally reported on Feb 19, 2009, deputy head of HRW’s Middle East department Joe Stork is a radical who spoke at a conference on “Zionism and Racism” in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 1976 and who, in a volume based on that conference,

refers to the “Zionist colonization of Palestine” (p 209), the “Zionist settler-colonial enterprise” (p 214), the “infamous Balfour declaration” (p 214), and the “Zionist theft of the property and productive resources” (p 218). (Zionism, Imperialism and Racism, A.W. Kayyali, editor, Croom Helm Ltd.,1979)

The Palestinian Authority appears to be harassing a Christian television station in the West Bank. According to an article in the Jerusalem Post, the PA had, for a while, shut down a station but allowed it to operate again in the face of protests from its owner Samir Qumsieh. It allowed the station to reopen again while it works on its licensing problems.

Qumsieh is a Palestinian Christian whose cousin travels the Unites States condemning for its human rights abuses but says nary a word about the misdeeds of the PA or other Arab leaders in the region.

Samir appears to be made of much sterner stuff than his cousin, speaking truth to power in a very difficult situation.

Samir’s ongoing problems with the PA would seem to undermine the story of Palestinian innocence his cousin tells in the U.S.

Don’t expect this story to generate much outrage in the so-called peace and human rights activists in the mainline Christian community in the U.S.

For these folks, Israel is the only country in the Middle East, worthy of condemnation.
(more…)

Ha’aretz has a problem with settler-related headlines that fail to match the information in the stories they accompany. Two days ago it was the settler clash that didn’t happen.

Today we have:

So while the headline claims “Judge says settlers can open fire on unarmed Palestinians,” a rather shocking and reprehensible ruling, the first paragraph indicates that the judge ruled that “settlers may fire in the air to repel unarmed Palestinians. . . ” Though the merits of the actual ruling could certainly be debated, firing in the air is hardly tantamount to opening fire “on” unarmed Palestinians.

It seems that we have a Ha’aretz trifecta today (see here and here). In the third strike, the Jerusalem Post reports today (“Haaretz fiddled with Obama poll”):

Haaretz misled readers to give the impression that an overwhelming majority of Israelis see US President Barack Obama as “fair and friendly” toward the country, the newspaper’s pollster, Tel Aviv University professor Camil Fuchs, said on Sunday.

Both the English and Hebrew editions of Friday’s Haaretz led with the headline “Poll: Most Israelis see Obama as fair, friendly toward Israel.”

The English edition elaborated near a picture of Obama that “69% say Obama is fair and friendly.”

The story itself gives no numbers, but the lead says “A sweeping majority of Israelis think his treatment of this country is friendly and fair.”

The English edition contains no graphic distributing the actual numbers, either online or in print.

The print and online versions of the newspaper’s Hebrew edition included a graphic indicating that just 18 percent of respondents considered Obama “friendly” toward Israel, 3 percentage points fewer than the 21% who called the president “hostile” to the Jewish state.

Ten percent did not know, and 51% defined Obama’s approach to Israel using the Hebrew word “inyani,” which can be translated as “matter-of-fact” or “businesslike,” but not as fair.

Fuchs, who chairs Tel Aviv University’s statistics department, said he received many reactions from people around the world who were surprised by the poll’s headline. He distanced himself from the headline and criticized the way his poll was presented.

“What can I do? Only the editor writes the headlines,” Fuchs said.

“When they write the number 69 together, it is correct but misleading. They could just as easily have combined the hostile and inyani categories and gotten a different large number.”

Fuchs was disturbed to hear that the English edition did not include the full distribution of the numbers. He also disagreed with the translation of the word “inyani.”

When told it had been translated as “fair,” he responded: “I definitely would not have translated it as fair. They must have a problem with English.”

The story has been removed from Haaretz’s online print edition archive. An edition of the story that remains online has been rewritten with no reference to the issue in the original headline. It instead focuses on the 27% of respondents who said Obama is anti-Semitic. . .

Oops.

In his column yesterday, Gideon Levy misleads:

And we must not forget that this huge building project in Jerusalem [Ramat Shlomo] is for Jews only; not one Palestinian neighborhood has been built in 43 years of occupation. Should that not be called apartheid?

Who need new neighborhoods when Palestinian building — the expansion of pre-existing neighborhoods — continues at an impressive pace? Consider this map from the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies (“Jerusalem: Facts and Trends 2005-2006,” page 60):

Should it not be called apartheid to prohibit Jews from building in certain neighborhoods, as Levy would like?

Ha’aretz‘s yesterday top page 2 headline was:

The article itself reads:

A 16-year-old Palestinian was killed yesterday near Nablus when Israeli soldiers fired rubber-coated bullets on demonstrators as riots continued throughout the West Bank. Another youth was critically injured in the same incident.

The clash occurred near the village of Iraq Burin, south of Nablus. Villagers own land that borders the nearby settlement of Bracha. In recent weeks demonstrations have taken place in the area by villagers, who have also pelted soldiers with stones.

A similar altercation took place yesterday around noon. Palestinian sources say settlers from Bracha tried to attack villagers. Sources in the Israel Defense Forces, however, say no settlers were present. They say the IDF force tried to prevent Palestinians from advancing toward the settlement. (Emphasis added.)

Got that? According to Ha’aretz‘s very own story, Palestinians claim that settlers attempted to attack Palestinians, while the army disputes this, saying that no settlers were present. But the Ha’aretz headline writer took it upon him/herself to take an even more extreme position than the Palestinians’. While Palestinians claim that settlers attempted to attack Palestinians, the headline writer says a clash did indeed occur.

Hardly ten days after the New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem told Chris Matthews that purported Israeli “racism” is part of why Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden are, according to bureau chief Ethan Bronner, more popular in Israel than Barack Obama, a poll showed overwhelming public support in Israel for the American president. (UPDATE: Was AP duped by Ha’aretz? See our latest post on the poll here.)

As AP notes today,

Some Israelis have misgivings about Obama, who is cooler to Israel than his immediate predecessors and has made a big effort to reach out to the Muslim world.

But a Dialog survey of 499 people on Wednesday and Thursday showed that seven out of 10 Israelis share a favorable view.

The title of that AP story: “Israelis view Obama favorably, mixed on Netanyahu.” So should Bronner say on his next TV appearance that Israelis are racist against white males?

Chances are, you don’t know of Hamas’s latest anti-Semitic rant. That’s because, with rare exception, the Western media did not report what senior Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar said about the Jews to a Palestinian conference on March 15, 2010:

You who are opening Hurva are heading towards ruin. Wherever you have been you’ve been sent to your destruction. You’ve killed and murdered your prophets and you have always dealt in loan-sharking and destruction.

You’re destined to be destroyed. You’ve made a deal with the devil and with destruction itself – just like your synagogue.

The virtual media blackout of this of extreme Palestinian incitement is consistent with media’s tendency to disproportionately focus on controversial Israeli actions while downplaying or ignoring Palestinian’s share of responsibility for exacerbating the conflict.

Writing in YNET, Jacob Shrybman makes a telling point. The inhabitants of the Gaza Strip, who are allegedly the targets of a “blockade” have gotten more aid than Haiti, which in January was the scene of a devastating earthquake.

Shrybman writes:

A USAID and DOD report calculating the aid sent to the quake-raved Haiti noted that, as of last month, all US government programs provided just over $700 million in aid, nearly $200 million less than to the terrorist-controlled Gaza Strip.

The piece is well worth reading in full.

Media outlets largely ignore the incitement to violence against Israel perpetrated by official Palestinian Authority TV, which is controlled by Palestinian Chairman Mahmoud Abbas. Prominent newspapers, like the New York Times and Washington Post, which heavily cover Palestinian-Israeli matters, say nothing about PA TV’s incendiary broadcasts, the content of which clearly violates existing Israeli-PA agreements on ending incitement and is an impediment to peace.

Following CAMERA’s recent report on the media’s failure to cover PA TV’s anti-Israel, anti-Jewish incitement, the phenomenon continues apace. Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) provides a translation of a March 11, 2010 PA TV report praising the March 11, 1978 terror attack in which 37 Israelis were murdered in a bus hijacking. The sister of the terrorist leader was interviewed:

This is a day of glory and pride for our Palestinian people and a blow to the Zionists… we must unite, and our rifles must unite, against the enemy who steals our land.

A PA broadcast aimed at Israeli Arab children teaches them to deny the legitimacy of Israel and to imagine a world without Israel. The broadcast segment refers to the land of the State of Israel only as “occupied territories” or “1948 territories” or “occupied Palestine.” PMW provides a video clip and translation of the Friday, February 26, 2010 PA TV news report in which the host addresses Israeli Arab children:

Soon, if it works out, we will be among you in the 1948 territories [PA euphemism for Israel] – the occupied territories… Our friends from the 1948 territories – the occupied territories – they write wanting us to [broadcast] there with them. Many of them have come here, Bissu [name of co-host, in cat costume], trying to be friends [of the program] and they are truly dear friends and regular [viewers]… There are also [children] from Lod [Israeli city] and also Ahmad from Nazareth [Israeli city] and there are so many. There’s Adnan from Be’er Sheva [Israeli city]. Dear children: We will definitely always remain in contact with you, because you have the right, and this program is definitely yours too, just as it belongs to every Palestinian child, since you are part of occupied Palestine.

PMW provides a video clip and translation of a Thursday, February 11, 2010 PA TV news report of a Palestinian mother celebrating her son’s death in an Israeli air strike against combatants:

We had always hoped for his Martyrdom (Shahada), knowing he wanted to die as a Martyr (Shahid). Every time he went out, we would say to him, ‘May Allah be with you.’ We knew that he wanted to die as a Martyr. Praise to Allah, he sought Martyrdom, and he achieved it. My message to every mother is to sacrifice her child for Palestine. Second woman: By Allah, we welcome every Martyr as if he were a groom among us [evidently referring to an Islamic belief, promoted by the PA and Hamas, that Islamic martyrs will marry 72 virgins in paradise].