You may not have seen the video displayed below on any network television, but it is pretty compelling. Egyptian soldiers equipped with heavy equipment and armed vehicles are shown knocking down a wall built around a Coptic monastery. There’s the sound of gunfire and people shouting. If the events shown took place in Israel, you can be assured the confrontation would get wall-to-wall coverage. Here’s the video:

The Assyrian International News Agency (AINA) which has done yeoman’s work detailing the ongoing assault on Christians in the Middle East, provides some detail here.

A quick summary is that after a bunch of criminals (including members of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood) were allowed to escape from prison during the Jan. 15 uprising, Coptic monasteries were subject to robberies and attacks.

In response, two Coptic monasteries built fences around their property in an effort to protect their lives and property. Sometime later, the walls were demolished by Egyptian soldiers equipped with heavy equipment and armored vehicles. In one instance, they were apparently incited to engage in this behavior by “a fanatical Muslim officer.”

Will this video go viral? Will this get coverage from the legacy media? Or will it be ignored because it’s not part of the story they want to tell?

Have you noticed how Ha’aretz has published very few editorials or Op-Eds concerning events in Libya? In contrast to the revolution in Egypt, about which Ha’aretz published dozens of opinion pieces and analyses, including editorials, the vast majority in support of Egyptian citizens, Ha’aretz has been largely mum on Libya.

Why the reticence to speak out in this case?

Perhaps editors are embarrassed by last year’s editorial in defense of the delegation of Israeli Arab Knesset members who traveled to Libya and paid homage to Muammar Gadhafi. In the wake of the torrent of criticism of the trip, Ha’aretz wrote (April 30, 2010):

Hysteria gripped the right wing in the Knesset after an Arab delegation of MKs and dignitaries visited Libya. . . .The tongues of Habayit Hayehudi and National Union, two parties that could unite under the name “the Racist Union,” were abruptly unleashed as though they were dealing with an unparalleled act of treason. . .

Libya is not on the list of enemy states. . . Libya signed the Arab League’s peace initiative, holds the League’s rotating presidency, and its ruler Muammar Gadhafi maintains excellent relations with the U.S. administration.

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On Sunday (Feb. 20), the Associated Press circulated an article erroneously claiming the U.S. had declared settlements “illegal.” By the end of the weekend, to its credit, AP replaced the article with an amended version that did not include the error.

The piece, by AP’s Mohammed Daraghmeh, had originally asserted:

The Palestinians, along with the international community, say Israeli settlements on occupied lands claimed by the Palestinians are illegal. At Friday’s Security Council meeting, the U.S. said it agreed with this position, but did not believe the United Nations is the appropriate place to resolve the dispute.

(The original language, which has been replaced on most sites across the web, can for now be found here.)

Had the American ambassador indeed told the U.N. told the Security Council that the U.S. deems settlements illegal, it would have been a significant change to the status quo. Ever since Ronald Reagan explicitly said settlements are “not illegal,” no U.S. administration has reversed course to call them “illegal.”

But Ambassador Susan Rice said no such thing. The word “illegal” doesn’t appear once in her comments to the Security Council. And following to the Council’s vote on a resolution referring to settlements as “illegal,” Rice indicated that use of this word was in fact one of the reasons the U.S. had used its veto. She discussed the issue on Sunday’s Meet the Press:

GREGORY: Before you go, I want to ask you about the U.N. vote on a resolution brought forward by the Palestinians to declare Israeli settlement activity as illegal. You, as the United States representative there, vetoed that measure because of the word “illegal.” The administration believes that settlements are illegitimate but not necessarily illegal. …

RICE: First of all, David, we vetoed the resolution not only because of the word “illegal” but because our view is that we need to get the parties back to direct negotiations so that they can agree through direct talks on a two-state solution. That’s the goal. And the problem with this resolution is it was one-sided. And it was designed — not designed — but it would have had the impact of hardening one or both sides and making it much harder for us to get them back to the table.

Palestinian Hypocrisy Week (aka “Israeli Apartheid Week”) is coming up, and Israeli graphic artist David Guy, who brought us an illustrated fact-check to IAW in 2009, is back with his new artistic parodies:

Official IAW poster (left); Guy’s remake (right)

Official IAW poster (left); Guy’s remake (right)

Don’t forget to visit www.IsraeliApartheidWeek.com for more information.

At a certain point, it becomes nearly impossible to give Tariq Ramadan the benefit of the doubt. His recent description of his grandfather and founder of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hassan al-Banna, as an anti-colonialist and an anti-fascist is so demonstrably false that one has to wonder just how stupid Ramadan thinks Westerners are.

Does he think we have no translations of his grandfather’s writings? Does he think we have no libraries where we can get our hands on these translations? Does he not know that when he makes outragous claims about Hassan al-Banna’s alleged enmity toward colonialism and fascism that these claims will be checked by people who will actually, you know, read what al-Banna has written?

At the risk of boring our readers, Snapshots is providing yet another gem from the writings of Hassan al-Banna as translated by Charles Wendell, mentioned previously. In this passage, al-Banna expresses admiration for Adolf Hitler.
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In a recent article appearing in The New York Times, apologist for the Muslim Brotherhood Tariq Ramadan portrayed his grandfather, Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood as an anti-colonialist.

This is simply not true. Al-Banna was a self-proclaimed colonialist. His own writings prove it.

In an essay titled “Our Mission” written to describe the goals of the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Banna described how the adherence to true Islam fulfills the impulse embodied by a number of different “patriotisms” offered by propagandists who compete with Islam for humanity’s allegiance. In the essay, translated by Charles Wendell and published by the University of California Press in 1978 (Five Tracts of Hasan Al-Banna), the author lists a number of patriotisms whose impulses are better fulfilled by authentic Muslim practices. After detailing the problems of the “Patriotism of the Sentiment” and the “Patriotism of Freedom and Greatness” al-Banna writes

Or if they mean by “patriotism” the conquest of countries and lordship over the earth, Islam has already ordained that, and has sent out the conquerors to carry out the most gracious of colonizations and the most blessed of conquests. This is what He, the Almighty, says: “Fight them till there is no longer discord, and the religion is God’s” [Q.2.193].

This is support for religious colonialism pure and simple. Readers will have to decide for themselves if Ramadan is either misinformed about his grandfather’s beliefs, or if he is willfully mischaracterizing al-Banna’s teachings.

CBS news correspondent Lara Logan was sexually assaulted by a crowd in Egypt nearly a week ago. CBS has just today confirmed the incident. A New York Post story questions the delay in making the news public. The Post and other conservative news outlets like Foxnews report that the crowd was yelling “Jew, Jew, Jew” at her as she was being sexually assaulted. The Village Voice also mentioned the taunts and called for more exposure of the incident. But several other popular left and liberal news outlets like the Huffington Post, Daily Kos, CBS, the Washington Post and other sources omitted any mention of the crowd’s anti-Jewish taunts. NPR’s blog also did not mention the crowds taunts, but that didn’t stop its talkbacks from featuring several comments attempting to change the topic by blaming Israel for trafficking in women.

None of the reports clarify whether the throng that assaulted her were members of what the media has mostly described as orderly, peaceful and pro-democracy demonstrations.

CAMERA has already documented the placards of Hosni Mubarak defaced with Jewish symbols. Logan apparently was previously accosted by Egyptian soldiers who accused her of being an Israeli spy. It is now apparent that hostile sentiment towards Jews is a component of these demonstrations that is not receiving much coverage.

Professor Abbas Milani, who is director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution, and author of the book The Shah, warns that what just happened in Egypt is “eerily reminiscent of the events in Iran in 1979.” In a long interview with Michael Totten on Feb. 1, Milani compares the two, describing how a revolution for democracy brought about a brutal theocracy:

… I knew [the Islamists] were bad news. I knew that what they were going to deliver was not democracy.
But most people had never read any of Khomeini’s writings because they were banned….Even those who were willing, like me, to actually read this stuff, we dismissed it because we were under the Age of Enlightenment illusion that religion is the opiate of the masses and that there is an inverse correlation between reason and science on the one hand and religion on the other. We believed that Iran was too advanced for these ideas.

He explains further on today’s edition of NPR’s “Morning Edition”:

They [the clerics] began to take over initially by Khomeini returning to Iran…to very jubilant celebrations, delivered a very tough message and said “I would punch this government in the nose”…He said I will appoint a new government, and he appointed a very soft-spoken, liberal figure to be head of the transitional, provisional government of Iran, and the cabinet that he introduced was not at all a clerical regime. Immediately, of course, Khomeini appointed for each of these ministries his own representatives. So you had virtually from moment one, kind of a dual power: the government officially in charge of the ministry but the clergy representing Khomeini meddling in every affair, learning the ropes, learning what they could take over, which happened about a year after the revolution….

…[Khomeini] had talked about [a theocracy] in many of his earlier writings, but In ’79…he realized what the people of Iran want is democracy. That’s why he hid his intention…

Although in Egypt “there is no charismatic leader like Khomeini who could take over this movement,” Milani acknowledges, “there is the Muslim Brotherhood” which is “well-organized and has deep roots in Egyptian society…” And while the Muslim Brotherhood has been trying to distance themselves from Khomeini and insists that what happened in Egypt is not an Islamic revolution but a democratic revolution, Milani does not believe them. Listen to the interview here.

For David (H.D.S.) Greenway, smearing Israel is a bit of a bad habit. Indeed, the Boston Globe columnist’s desire to malign the Jewish state is seemingly more important to him than his obligation not to mislead readers.

At least one assertion in Greenway’s Feb. 12 column, “Israel’s close watch on Egypt,” is so misleading that it amounts, in essence, to an outright lie.

Greenway paints the following scene of a war-hungry Israel:

[N]one of us who were there at the time will ever forget the rejoicing throughout Israel when Sadat and Prime Minister Menachem Begin said together: “No more wars.’’

That was the sublime moment that Israel failed to grasp, however. Instead of turning “no more wars’’ into a peace policy, Israel took it to mean that Egypt was now enabling Israel to make wars with other people. Within a year Israel sent its tanks into Lebanon up to the Litani River against pesky Palestinians … .

We will never know how the Middle East might have looked had Israel taken no-more-wars more literally, instead of using Egypt’s forbearance as a license to continue occupation and make wars elsewhere.

Got it? Israeli leaders regarded the peace treaty with Egypt as a green light go to initiate war against Palestinians in Lebanon, whose “peskiness” was apparently rubbing them the wrong way. Or so Greenway indicates to his readers. (Merriam Webster’s usage examples for the word “pesky“: 1. I’ve been trying to get rid of this pesky cold for weeks. 2. the pesky problem of what to do with all the leftovers.)

Israel launched its Operation Litani on March 14, 1978. Three days earlier, Palestinian terrorists crossed into Israel from Lebanon and perpetrated what Israelis call the “Coastal Road Massacre,” a bloodbath in which dozens of Israeli men, women and children were slaughtered.

Time Magazine called it “the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history,” and added:

[S]hortly after Saturday’s bloodbath, Al-Fatah, the commando group within Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization, claimed responsibility for the operation from its headquarters in Beirut. …

The attack seemed to be the opening salvo of a new policy by Palestinian leaders, launched in Tripoli last December at the Arab states’ rejectionist summit, to carry to Israel’s soil the war against Sadat’s peace initiative.

It may have been the worst, but it was hardly the only terror attack launched by PLO groups entrenched in southern Lebanon, whose mission was to kill Israelis and destroy the Jewish state.

Greenway’s polemic notwithstanding, Israel of course never promised, explicitly or implicitly, that its peace treaty with Egypt meant it could no longer respond to acts of war emanating from other hostile countries. His readers, at any rate, wouldn’t even know that there were any acts of war against Israel in 1978.

Writing at Jewish Ideas Daily, Sol Stern shows once again there’s nothing new under the sun. In his prescient article “The New York Times Revises the Peace Process,” Stern exposes how the New York Times exaggerates the prospects for peace and falsely claims to have a scoop on the process. Stern also reveals how a politican changes his description of past events in an apparent effort to burnish his reputation.

Stern ends his piece with a powerful admonition: “Delusions of ‘peace,’ it seems, can have a similarly debilitating effect on political leaders, the journalists who write about them, and the editors of influential newspapers.”

Read the whole thing, here.