Ethan Bronner, Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the New York Times at Brandeis in February (Photo: Dexter Van Zile)

One of the biggest problems with coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict is the failure of journalists to acknowledge and correct for the fundamental differences between Israel and its adversaries. Israel is an open society with a free press and as a result, its actions are subject to much greater scrutiny than its adversaries.

Ethan Bronner, the Jerusalem Bureau Chief for the New York Times acknowledged this problem during a recent talk at the Brandeis University. Speaking at the school in Waltham, Mass., on February 2, 2010. During his talk, Bronner stated that covering Israel is “kind of a a piece of cake, to be honest.”

He continued:
(more…)

As we’ve noted twice before, the Associated Press misleadingly tends towards phrases like “warm times” to describe the relationship between Jews and Muslims in Morocco.

In yesterday’s Jerusalem Post, a more somber and honest picture was sketched:

Only in later years did Dina come to appreciate the constant pressure her parents had endured before their departure. There were small things—insults and ceaseless intimidation. For example, her father, who owned a large and successful butcher shop, was at the mercy of local thieves, who sometimes simply walked into his business and demanded that he give them whatever they wanted – at no cost. “Not once and not twice,” Dina explains, “but whenever they wanted something. These were our good Muslim neighbors, you know?”

Avraham knew better than to argue. “If you said something they didn’t like, you were in danger,” Dina recalls. “Most of the time everybody got along. But when you are in a lower place in society, you don’t dare to stand up for yourself.”

There were bigger threats too, including mysterious disappearances. First her father’s best friend vanished. Then one of Dina’s cousins, a remarkably beautiful 14-year-old girl, also disappeared, never to be seen again. In the Moroccan Jewish community, such things weren’t exactly unusual. And they happened more and more frequently after 1948, when Israel declared itself an independent state. At that moment, the centuries-long, low-grade oppression Jews experienced in their role as dhimmis under Muslim rule was ignited into ugly confrontations, humiliation and random attacks. These episodes sometimes exploded into full-blown pogroms in which hundreds were killed or wounded.

An article in Commentary magazine published in September 1954 described the difficult circumstances of Morocco’s Jews during the early years of Dina Gabay Levin’s life. “In disputes with Muslims, or on civil commercial and criminal issues among themselves, Jews are almost entirely subject to Islamic courts… even under the best of circumstances [the courts] regard Jewish litigants as unclean, inferior beings.”

Read the rest here.

In an interview yesterday with Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, the Los Angeles Times‘ Edmund Sanders repeats a false canard about Jewish National Fund land in Israel:

But doesn’t the Jewish National Fund control most of the land in Israel and doesn’t it have restrictions against dealing with non-Jews?

In fact, 79.5 percent of Israel’s land is owned by the government, 14 percent is privately owned by the JNF, and the rest, around 6.5 percent, is evenly divided between private Arab and Jewish owners. Thus, the Israel Land Administration, which administers both government-owned and JNF-owned land, administers 93.5% of the land in Israel (Government Press Office, Israel, 22 May 1997). That JNF owns only 14 percent of all of Israel’s land is a fact acknowledged even by the virulently anti-Israel organization Adalah.

Unfortunately, Mayor Barkat failed to correct the reporter, responding incorrectly:

That’s not true in the city of Jerusalem. It’s different in other parts of the country. In Jerusalem, the vast majority of the land is privately owned. Ownership in the city is diverse.

A related error in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1997 resulted in the following correction:

Oct. 18, 2007: A letter on the Oct. 16 Editorial Page misleadingly stated the case regarding the right of Arab Israelis to own land in Israel. Arab Israelis may own land, but there is not much to own: Only about 6.5 percent of the land in Israel is privately owned (some by Arab Israelis). Of the rest, almost 80 percent is owned by the governmental agency called the Israel Land Administration. ILA land is not sold but leased; by law, it is available to be leased by all Israelis, whether Jewish, Arab or other. About 13 percent is owned by the Jewish National Fund. In September an Israeli high court ruled that the JNF must allow non-Jews to buy its land.

Will the Los Angeles Times likewise correct? Write to Readers Representative Deirdre Edgar at [email protected].

Hamas’ Al-Qassem Web site has published an interview with Gideon Levy and praised the non-Arabic speaking Ha’aretz correspondent for the Palestinian areas as “a rare voice of courage and bravery.”

Levy, among other statements such as calling Israeli soldiers “trigger happy,” reveals his abhorrence of the Jewish state within any borders, not simply the post-1967 boundaries. He states:

The moderate Zionists are like the Zionist left in Israel, which I can’t stand. Meretz and Peace Now, who are not ready, for example, to open the “1948 file” and to understand that until we solve this, nothing will be solved. Those are the moderate Zionists. In this case, I prefer the right-wingers.

The New Republic publishes an eye-opening investigative report on the internal division within Human Rights Watch about the organization’s handling of Israel. Among the many significant quotes from HRW insiders is the following:

“I think we tend to go where there’s action and where we’re going to get reaction,” rues one board member. “We seek the limelight—that’s part of what we do. And so, Israel’s sort of like low-hanging fruit.”

Gazan hairdresser Barakat al-Ghoul, forced by Hamas to stop cutting women’s hair (AP)

The Los Angeles Times reports what it believes to be a revelation:

Hamas, the Palestinian faction viewed by many in the West as a nest of terrorists and Islamic hard-liners, is battling a curious new epithet: moderate.

In fact, this epithet is hardly new in certain circles. Again and again over the years, journalists have ventured that perhaps now a new moderate Hamas is emerging and it is fending off the true Islamist extremists in the Gaza Strip.

Edmund Sanders’ article is one more in this genre. He reports:

Palestinian hard-liners say that instead of attacking Israel, Hamas has been fighting its own people: Islamic extremists, including some disaffected Hamas members who pledge allegiance to the terrorist network Al Qaeda and accuse Hamas of selling out.

But while Hamas may be battling groups loyal to Al Qaeda, it does not do so in the name of secularism and human rights, but rather Hamas hegemony. For instance, as reported by AP (but not by the LA Times) Hamas is battling its own people — not just Al Qaeda loyalists but also male hairdressers attending to female clients — a big no-no in Hamas’ “moderate” book.

A couple of weeks ago, we drew attention to a Wikipedia article claiming that Israelis, who are known for sexual exploitation of children, harvested and sold Haitian organs.

It seems that this time, and for now, Wikipedia’s flawed “everyone-is-an-editor” system did manage to effectively deal with the falsehoods. The article has been deleted.

The deletion follows a nearly unanimous vote by the Wikipedians — specifically, the handful of members who happened to be paying attention — in favor of pulling the article. Apparently the article was so far over the top that even Wikipedia’s anti-Israel caucus didn’t bother defending it.

AP photographer Khalil Hamra has been awarded the The Robert Capa Gold Medal Award 2009 by the Overseas Press Club for his images of the winter 2008-09 war between Israel and Hamas. The OPC commended Hamra:

Khalil Hamra’s pictures of the Israeli military incursion into Gaza showed exceptional courage and enterprise by a committed local photographer during a sustained and dangerous conflict. His images are close up, powerful and direct and taken at considerable risk due to the nature of the conflict which had combatants mingling amongst the civilian population. Hamra’s personal circumstances are equally compelling: he covered the conflict in spite of concerns about the welfare of his wife, then pregnant with twins.

In December 2008, during the fighting, Snapshots noted that Lenny Ben-David flagged an apparently staged photo by Khalil Hamra of injured children in Gaza:

A Washington Post photo essay posted the two pictures above of the Palestinian combatants along with a picture of Palestinian wounded in a Gaza hospital. The picture was accompanied by this caption:

Palestinian children and a man wounded in Israeli missile strikes are seen in the emergency area at Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Saturday, Dec. 27, 2008. Israeli warplanes demolished dozens of Hamas security compounds across Gaza on Saturday in unprecedented waves of simultaneous air strikes. Gaza medics said at least 145 people were killed and more than 310 wounded in the single deadliest day in Gaza fighting in recent memory. (AP Photo/Khalil Hamra) (Khalil Hamra – AP)

The children appear healthy. Would the photographer and caption writer, Khalil Hamra, fake a picture?

And one more question comes to mind. Given that Hamas combatants mingled among the civilian population, as OPC points out, why wasn’t Hamra willing or able to take photographs of the some 15,000 fighters? Indeed, AP carried virtually no photos of Hamas fighters during Cast Lead. Could it be because Hamas intimidated Hamra who was concerned about his and his wife’s personal safety? Or is there a different explanation?

NGO Monitor reports:

1) An April 18, 2010 article on the News1 website (Hebrew) discusses a European Union project to promote the Arab Peace Initiative among Israeli journalists. As noted below, this is part of EU efforts to “Influence Institutions/ Decision makers, Public opinion and Media” outside of diplomatic channels, and under the guise of Israeli “civil society.”

2) The project is entitled “Simulating the Arab Peace Initiative,” and is part of the Partnerships for Peace (PfP) program (€298,422 in 2010-12). The official link on the EU website is: http://www.delisr.ec.europa.eu/english/content/cooperation_and_funding/3.asp

3) The recipients are Neve Shalom School and Conflict Resolution and Reconciliation (CCRR). CCRR, a Palestinian NGO, calls for the boycott of Israeli academics or Israeli academic institutions that support the occupation (“for more than 50 years,” i.e. Israel as a Jewish state), as well as those that do not take a position on it.

4) In contrast to the track record of CCRR, the PfP website claims: “The project aims to promote tolerance and better understanding between Israeli and Palestinian societies by engaging core representatives of the media in a process of reflection on the past treatment and historical background of the API and simulate the adoption of API and its potential consequences in the media; Moreover, the project will facilitate critical discussions on the journalist-editor relationship in uni-national settings, on the one hand, and establish open and sustained channels of communication between Israeli and Palestinian journalists and editors, on the other” (emphasis added).

5) The wider picture of EU manipulation to promote their version of the Arab Peace Initiative through targeting of journalists was a key element of the May 2009 EU PfP Call for Proposals: “Initiatives targeting ‘veto’ and ‘blocking’ groups (communities opposed to or sceptical about the peace process), will be particularly welcomed…Under this priority, also innovative projects targeting media to promote tolerance, better understanding, balanced reporting, and objectivity will be encouraged.” “Influence Institutions/ Decision makers, Public opinion and Media…Initiatives that bring together representative participants from the different communities involved in the conflict to advance the progress of existing visions, including that of the Arab League, of a future peaceful relationship between Israel and its Arab neighbours…a particular priority will be given to actions based in neighbouring countries designed to foster understanding of and support for the Arab League Initiative.” . . .

In his 2008 article in Ha’aretz, Israeli journalist Uri Blau used illegally obtained military documents obtained by soldier Anat Kamm to accuse the army of committing war crimes and violating a High Court ruling by assassinating West Bank terrorists. As pointed out recently in Snapshots, a letter by former Attorney General Menachem Mazuz destroyed Blau’s claims that the killings violated the court ruling.

Now Ben-Dror Yemini of Ma’ariv has thoroughly decimated Blau’s allegations. In “Libel Manufactured by Ha’aretz,” he writes:

The headline, at the time, was “The chief-of-staff and IDF leadership authorized killings of wanted and innocent men.” The expression “innocent” appears almost 20 times in the article in which the documents were published. The impression is that the IDF has been committing war crimes. This is the impression “Haaretz” intentionally attempts to create. . . .

Well, we should rise to the challenge, and examine what exactly these documents show. The main argument, which the paper attempted to promote, was that the High Court of Justice ruled that targeted killings were illegal. There is indeed a ruling, but nowhere is there any ruling that forbids targeted killings. The High Court of Justice did not go down this path, and wisely so. It was no other than Aharon Barak who made the determination in 2006: that it is impossible to determine a priori that all targeted killings are forbidden by international law, just as it is impossible to determine a priori that all targeted killings are permissible according to international law. This is very clear statement that is somewhat at odds with the impression received when reading “Haaretz” back then, when the documents appeared in Uri Blau’s article, and certainly today, as the paper attempts to hide behind the guise of exposing the truth.

It is well worth reading Yemini’s entire expose.