Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin takes a swipe at Time Magazine‘s latest anti-Israel hit piece. Among other points first raised on Snapshots, Rubin notes:

The Time piece also takes issue with Israel’s Shin Bet security agency. Daniel Gordis, a senior vice president at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem counters: “Time calls the Shin Bet a ‘shadowy’ organization, as if the work of the CIA or NSA is carried out in broad daylight. Why on earth would a security organization not be shadowy, and why is that a crime? It’s a source of suspicion, for Time, only if the country in question is Israel.”

To its credit, the BBC is covering the recent attack on a train in Egypt that left at least one Coptic Christian dead. The BBC’s local correspondent seems to be missing an important part of the story. The BBC states: “The BBC’s Jon Leyne reports from Cairo that it is difficult to see how the gunmen would have known he could target Christians by boarding the train.”

If the BBC had been following the #copts hashtag on Twitter, the organization would have obtained a link to this article in Al Masry Al Youm, which answers Jon Leyne’s question as to how a gunman could identify and separate Christian victims out of a crowded train:

Security sources said the assailant had checked passengers for the green cross traditionally tatooed on the wrists of Coptic Christians in Egypt. After identifying several Copts, the culprit killed one of them and injured five others.

Ask and ye shall receive.

Al Masry Al Youm, an Egyptian newspaper that has provided detailed coverage of life of the Coptic Christian community in Egypt, offers a horrifying detail about the recent attack that has left one Coptic Christian in Egypt dead and several others wounded. According to the report, the assailant, allegedly ensured that his victims were in fact Christian by looking for green crosses tattooed on their wrists. Al Masry Al Youm reports:

Security sources said the assailant had checked passengers for the green cross traditionally tatooed on the wrists of Coptic Christians in Egypt. After identifying several Copts, the culprit killed one of them and injured five others.

A five-year-old entry at a blog titled “Deep Thoughts” provides some detail about the cross tatoos the assailant allegedly used to target his victims.

It is a sign of pride and defiance given by the Coptic Orthodox Church and worn by its members in a predominantly Islamic county. Apparently, getting caught with this tattoo guarantees the bearer harsher treatment by the government. Coptic Christians have been getting this tattoo for generations …

AP is reporting that a gunman has shot six people, killing on Christian and injuring five others. The gunman has been apprehended.

Karl Vick, Time Magazine, Jerusalem Bureau Chief

Apparently, Time Magazine has decided the way to save a waning magazine is to bash the Jewish state full tilt. A September 2010 cover emblazoned with a Star of David was memorably titled: “Why Israel Doesn’t Care About Peace.” A December 2010 article by the same author, Karl Vick, “Palestinians Contained,” offered more of the writer’s jaundiced and factually-challenged view of Israel, this time blaming Jews for Palestinian hostility.

Now comes a piece, laden again with bias, this one largely focused on Israel’s growing response to distorted attacks by NGO’s. Israel’s Knesset voted to establish a parliamentary committee to examine international sources of funding for Israeli organizations that “aid the de-legitimization of Israel through harming IDF soldiers.”

As Ronen Shoval, head of the Im Tirtzu organization that has exposed linkages between extremist NGO’s and the notorious Goldstone Report, writes in Ha’aretz:

During the past year, the vast majority of the public became convinced that the organizations that call themselves human rights groups actually belong to the extreme left and seek to force their radical values on others through foreign funding.

Much of the far left which supports the extreme NGO’s has risen in fury at the prospect of parliamentary inquiries into funding. Karl Vick’s story parrots the indignation of those who have previously dispensed biased, false attacks against Israel with impunity.

Among the more irresponsible statements was that of Oslo architect Ron Pundak:

Ron Pundak, a historian who runs the Peres Center for Peace, sees the current atmosphere of Israeli politics as the ugliest in the nation’s history. “It’s totally abnormal,” he says. “From my point of view, this is reminiscent of the dark ages of different places in the world in the 1930s. Maybe not Germany, but Italy, maybe Argentina later. I fear we are reaching a slippery slope, if we are not already there.”

His nasty rhetoric aside, Mr. Pundak is evidently aghast that many others think it’s a move toward getting off the “slippery slope” and onto solid ground to take a close look at the substance, sources and impact of certain NGO’s.

The real slippery slope is Time’s in abandoning any pretense of decent journalism.

Since our publication last week about the contradictions and questions in the reports about the death of Jawaher Abu Rahma, more reports and yet more discrepancies are piling up, including from the New York Times (see here), Ha’aretz (here and here), and Ynet.

While Ha’aretz‘s Gideon Levy is convinced today of the “definitive facts,” as he calls them, his colleagues Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff are less sure:

Among the soul-searching discussions taking place in the media over the circumstances of how Bil’in resident Jawaher Abu Rahmah died, one element is notably missing: proven and established facts.

Indeed, an indication just how difficult it is to determine the facts in this case, including those “facts” printed in Ha’aretz, come by way of blogger Elder of Ziyon today. Elder notes that a study about CS tear gas, the kind used in Bilin, in the Archives of Toxicology journal does not say what an article in Ha’aretz Friday says it says.

This wouldn’t be the first time that Ha’aretz fabricated or manipulated the findings of a primary source to suit is editorial bent.

Elliot Jager of Jewish Ideas Daily reports on the Economist‘s latest anti-Israel cover story. The Economist, which last spring accused Israel of afflicting its Arab population with racist traffic lights (!), employs David “Rape Israel” Landau, the former editor of Ha’aretz, as its Israel correspondent.

One hopeful counterpoint to the New Year’s Day attack against the Two Saints Church in Alexandria was offered by Muslims who served as human shields outside Coptic Churches throughout Egypt during yesterday’s Christmas masses. Ahramonline reports:

From the well-known to the unknown, Muslims had offered their bodies as “human shields” for last night’s mass, making a pledge to collectively fight the threat of Islamic militants and towards an Egypt free from sectarian strife.

“We either live together, or we die together,” was the sloganeering genius of Mohamed El-Sawy, a Muslim arts tycoon whose cultural centre distributed flyers at churches in Cairo Thursday night, and who has been credited with first floating the “human shield” idea.

Among those shields were movie stars Adel Imam and Yousra, popular preacher Amr Khaled, the two sons of President Hosni Mubarak, and thousands of citizens who have said they consider the attack one on Egypt as a whole.

“This is not about us and them,” said Dalia Mustafa, a student who attended mass at Virgin Mary Church on Maraashly. “We are one. This was an attack on Egypt as a whole, and I am standing with the Copts because the only way things will change in this country is if we come together.”

In the days following the brutal attack on Saints Church in Alexandria, which left 21 dead on New Year’ eve, solidarity between Muslims and Copts has seen an unprecedented peak. Millions of Egyptians changed their Facebook profile pictures to the image of a cross within a crescent – the symbol of an “Egypt for All”. Around the city, banners went up calling for unity, and depicting mosques and churches, crosses and crescents, together as one.

The comments sections underneath articles on the Internet are often fever-swamps of insanity.

Nowhere is this more evident in the postings beneath a Jan. 4, 2011 article about the interfaith response to the attack on a Coptic Church in Alexandria on New Year’s Day 2011 which cost 23 people their lives.

Underneath the article, there are a few comments which attempt to equate the suffering of Palestinian Christians in the “Israeli Occupied Territories” to the suffering of the Coptic Christians in Egypt.

No joke.

One poster states: “My persecution as a Christian in the Israeli Occupied Territories is strikingly similar to the mistreatment of Christians in Iraq, Egypt and other parts of the Middle East.”

Another commenter states, “The Christians of the Middle East face enormous obstacles. I know because I grew up in the Israeli Occupied Territories, and learned first hand. Even today, Christians in the birthplace of Christ live as second-class human beings under Israeli occupation.”

No, Snapshots is not making this up. Palestinian Christians are attempting to equate their plight with the murder of Coptic Christians in Egypt.

Click on the article and you’ll see similar statements for yourself.