Tom Friedman thinks Jewish readers should get over it and let him come in from the cold. He’s explained to The Jewish Week’s Gary Rosenblatt that he “regrets” his choice of words in a December 13 column when he said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s standing ovations during his speech to Congress were “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”

The ugly charge with its overtones of anti-Semitism caused a firestorm of criticism. But now we know, he only meant to say the standing ovations were “engineered” by the lobby.

He tells The Jewish Week:

“In retrospect I probably should have used a more precise term like ‘engineered’ by the Israel lobby — a term that does not suggest grand conspiracy theories that I don’t subscribe to,” Friedman said. “It would have helped people focus on my argument, which I stand by 100 percent.”

Does that include standing 100 percent by his statement attributing to Mitt Romney the view that:

America’s role is to just applaud whatever Israel does, serve as its A.T.M. and shut up

And does it include Friedman invoking as admirable the radical, fringe voice of Ha’aretz’s Gideon Levy, whose unbridled attacks on Israel include applauding academic boycotts of Israel and hoping for boycotts “someday [that would] also include tourism officials, business people, artists and athletes.”

Of course, Friedman’s clarification is nonsense. It is precisely the argument that he stands by 100 percent that was so outrageous and offended so many and endeared him to the likes of Stephen Walt.

It will take a lot more than meaningless interviews in this vein, no matter in how many Jewish papers they appear, to persuade readers that his vituperative charges are consistent with his self-described — as relayed by The Jewish Week — “unswerving support for the State of Israel.”

Christmas is nearly upon us, giving anti-Zionists yet another opportunity to antagonize American and Israeli Jews and depict it as an honest and authentic expression of the Christian faith. It happens every Advent.

Sadly, 2011 is no exception as a group of Palestinian Christians issued “The Bethlehem Call” earlier this month. This statement, issued by the same folks who issued the Kairos Document in December 2009, is a ham-handed and obvious attempt to delegitimize the state of Israel. It’s so ham-handed and hostile that most mainline churches have been careful not to touch it with a 10-foot pole.
(more…)

The Jerusalem Post reports:

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is refusing to pen an op-ed piece for The New York Times, signaling the degree to which he is fed up with the influential newspaper’s editorial policy on Israel.

In a letter to the Times obtained by The Jerusalem Post on Thursday, Netanyahu’s senior adviser Ron Dermer – in response to the paper’s request that Netanyahu write an op-ed – wrote that the prime minister would “respectfully decline.”

Dermer made clear that this had much to do with the fact that 19 of the paper’s 20 op-ed pieces on Israel since September were negative.

Ironically, the one positive piece was written by Richard Goldstone – chairman of the UN’s Goldstone Commission Report – defending Israel against charges of apartheid.

“We wouldn’t want to be seen as ‘Bibiwashing’ the op-ed page of The New York Times,” Dermer said, in reference to a piece called “Israel and Pinkwashing” from November. In that piece, a City University of New York humanities professor lambasted Israel for, as Dermer wrote, “having the temerity to champion its record on gay rights.”

That piece, he wrote, “set a new bar that will be hard for you to lower in the future.”

Dermer’s letter came a day after NYT columnist Thomas Friedman wrote that the resounding ovation Netanyahu received in Congress when he spoke there in May had been “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby.”

For more on the Op-Ed lambasting Israel for so-called “pinkwashing” see here. For more on Friedman’s Op-Ed, which drew praise from Stephen Walt, see here. For more on NY Times’ coverage of Israel, see here.

Tom Friedman’s screed claiming that standing ovations for Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu when he spoke before a joint session of Congress were “bought and paid for by the Israel lobby” has stirred a firestorm of negative reaction.

Well, not only negative reaction. There’ve also been kudos from some quarters. Stephen Walt, co-author of the infamous The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy, really likes the column. Bizarrely, he titles his Foreign Policy blog post: “Why Tom Friedman is a true friend of Israel.”

“Bizarrely” because Walt, a maligner of the Jewish state who blames the pro-Israel community (defined as a vast collection of groups and individuals of many faiths who defend or support the Jewish state) for distorting American policy to serve Israel, seems to believe he can credibly comment on who is a “true” friend of Israel.

His effusive praise for Friedman is, though, certainly a telling measure of how extreme the views of the New York Times writer have become.

Surely unrelated — but noteworthy: Word of the sudden departure of Times CEO Janet Robinson included reference to the plunging value of the company’s stock. Seems that stock has declined more than 80 percent since December 2004 and is down nearly 25 percent this year alone.

Maybe Walt will discover the devlishily clever Israel Lobby is behind this too, undermining Tom Friedman’s platform for promoting their special form of friendship for the Jewish state.

Another new informational video by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and StandWithUs provides excellent background on refugees — Palestinian and Jewish. It exposes the destructive role of UNRWA in funding, promoting and perpetuating the Palestinian refugees.
Watch and share!

Sandra O’Neill (center, holding a water bottle) fabricated an atrocity

As first noted on CAMERA’s Web site, BDS activist Sandra O’Neill of California disseminated blatantly false charges against Israel in the Chico News and Review. Today, the paper ran a CAMERA column debunking O’Neill’s falsehoods. The column reads, in part:

It is a pity that local grandmothers Sandra O’Neill and Emily Alma did not use their recent trip to the Middle East to advance peace. As Palestinian-Israeli Khaled Abu Toameh once noted, all too many Western self-described pro-Palestinian activists torpedo the Palestinian cause by spewing anti-Israel incitement, as if there’s a shortage in the Arab world.

And that’s exactly what happened last month as the two spouted multiple falsehoods in the Chico News & Review. For instance, in a Nov. 10 letter, Ms. O’Neill claimed that in the last three weeks in October, “two Palestinian children, ages 6 and 4, were shot and killed by trigger-happy watchtower guards.” That’s a lie. A close examination of relevant reports published by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reveals that no children, and no civilians of any age, were killed.

Read the whole piece here.

Update, 8 a.m. EST: In a letter-to-the-editor, also published today in the Chico News and Review, Elma Alma kills off a living Palestinian girl to cover for her lying compatriot.

Republican Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich’s comment in a Dec. 9 interview with The Jewish Channel that the Palestinians are an “invented” people has stirred outrage among elements of the media known for their sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

The portion of the interview that attracted the most attention was Gingrich’s assertion,

Remember, there was no Palestine as a state. It was part of the Ottoman Empire… And I think that we have invented the Palestinian people, who are in fact Arabs and are historically part of the Arab community, and they had the chance to go many places.

An Associated Press (AP) story carried widely labeled Gingrich’s assertion “an incendiary comment that infuriated one side in the Mideast peace process.”

While affirming the historical accuracy of the statement that no Palestinian state existed prior to the establishment of Israel, the AP piece contends “It was known as the British Mandate for Palestine, and Muslims, Christians and Jews living there were all referred to as Palestinians.”

In fact, AP’s statement is not accurate (more on this in a follow-up post).

Media sympathetic to the Palestinians has mostly responded to Gingrich’s statements by trying to marginalize him, as the AP piece does, by asserting that his remarks “put him at odds not only with the international community but with all but an extremist fringe in Israel.”

Typically these stories showcase comments by an “official” Jewish figure. The AP story quoted Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, who “sharply criticized Gingrich’s comments as cynical attempts to curry support with Jewish voters and unhelpful to the peace process.”

According to Levin, “Gingrich offered no solutions – just a can of gasoline and a match.”

AP threw in Israeli writer Tom Segev, a critic of Israeli policy, who stated, “There is no intelligent person today who argues about the existence of the Palestinian people.”

Segev also offered, “I don’t think the Palestinians are less of a nation than the Americans.”

The New York Times turned to former United States ambassador to Israel, Martin S. Indyk, a critic of the Israeli government, who said “that if Mr. Gingrich believed that Palestinians did not have a right to an independent state ‘as implied in his language, then he’s not pro-Israel at all.'”

The New York Times blog went to David Harris, chief executive of the National Jewish Democratic Council, who posited,

What he’s saying is far to the right of the democratically elected Likud leadership of the State of Israel, not to mention established U.S. policy for decades… This is as clear a demonstration as one needs that he’s not ready for prime time.

Al Jazeera took it a step further. A spokesman for the American Task Force on Palestine, Hussein Ibish is quoted as stating,

“There was no Israel and no such thing as an “Israeli people” before 1948.”

Ibish’s line of argument is interesting considering that he is complaining about Gingrich denying Palestinian peoplehood. But this is a feature of the criticism of Israel. Critics of Israel, including Palestinians, accused Gingrich of racism, yet they argue that Jews do not deserve a sovereign state on the basis that they are not an ethnic-national group, but merely members of a religion.

The piece also contends that, “Most historians mark the start of Palestinian Arab nationalist sentiment in 1834, when Arab residents of the Palestinian region revolted against Ottoman rule.”

The most vitriolic responses of all came from commenters responding to a report in The Financial Times of London. Gingrich’s comments set off a surge of accusations in the paper’s talkback over the supposed influence of the Jewish Lobby and alleging pseudo-scientific theories about the non-Middle Eastern ancestry of Jews. Gingrich was disparaged as “a pathetic excuse for a human being.” If these commenters accurately represent the paper’s readers, the FT caters to a passionately judeophobic crowd.
(more…)

Eyal Gross rewrites Ha’aretz probe to suit him

Writing in Ha’aretz today, Eyal Gross, who is apparently the same Eyal Gross who is a lecturer on international and constitutional law at Tel Aviv University, seriously distorts a Ha’aretz article published last week about police incompetence in Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). While the Dec. 9 report found that the police were equally incompetent whether investigating complaints lodged by Israeli settlers or Palestinians, Gross falsely writes today that only Palestinians suffer from police incompetence:

A Haaretz probe revealed the shortcomings of police conduct in the Judea and Samaria District, exposing the fact that there are no serious investigations taking place when violence is directed against Palestinians.

But here is what the Ha’aretz probe by Chaim Levinson actually said:

The police’s Shai District, which is responsible for the West Bank, consistently fails to conduct even the most basic investigatory actions, such as taking fingerprints, checking alibis, questioning witnesses and conducting identification line-ups. As a result, case after case – against settlers and Palestinians alike – is either closed without going to trial or thrown out of court, Haaretz has found. . .

Still, there’s one thing to be said in [the police district’s] favor: It doesn’t discriminate. Complaints from settlers and Palestinians alike are all handled with equal incompetence.

As Gross ably demonstrates, it’s not just the police who are plagued by incompetence.

Update/Clarification, 6:45 am EST: Presspectiva, CAMERA’s Israeli site, points out that in the original Hebrew version of his column, Eyal Gross did indeed make a (very minimalist) nod acknowledging the part of the Ha’aretz probe dealing with police incompetence investigating Palestinian violence against settlers. It is the Ha’aretz English edition which completely deletes Eyal’s (unclear) reference to police incompetence with respect to Palestinian-perpetrated crimes. And, so, once again, we have ourselves a case of Ha’aretz Lost in Translation. (Case 11, to be precise).
(more…)

Last week, Ha’aretz considered slain Palestinian Isam al-Batash of the Gaza Strip a “terrorist” or “militant.” Today, the paper calls the same man an “activist.” The Dec. 8 headline and lede paragraph about the killed member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade who was preparing an attack in southern Israel read:

Today’s story carries details about al-Batash’s identity and terrorist involvements, describing him as:

Isam al-Batash, a Palestinian activist who was planning to carry out a terrorist attack into Israel from Egyptian territory. Batash, known for being a member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades and most recently to the Ayman Jude faction – a splinter group that broke away from Fatah – was killed in an air strike along with aide and family member Ala al-Batash. . . .

The decision to assassinate Isam al-Batash on Thursday was made after taking into account that there would be an escalation following the attack. However, the conclusion was reached that the attack was necessary in order to disrupt an attack being planned along the border with Egypt.

Batash funded and organized a team, probably a mixture of Bedouins from Egypt, to carry out an attack in northern Eilat. (Emphasis added.)

Despite the fact that we now have more, not less, information about al-Batash’s terror plans, Ha’aretz has inexplicably downgraded him from a “terrorist” to an “activist.” Why?

See today’s subheadline:

Hat tip: Matthew Mainen

A reporter who can’t straightforwardly state that Israeli troops were attacked on board the Mavi Marmara in 2010 is simply not up to the job.

In the December 12 issue of Time, Bobby Ghoush writes that Israeli-Turkish relations took a hit when

Israeli commandos halted a Turkish-led flotilla bound for Gaza in international waters. In the fighting that broke out, eight Turks and one Turkish American were killed. Israel claims its troops were attacked on board.

Video shot from multiple angles clearly shows the Israelis being descended upon, pummeled, and stabbed.

A panel of inquiry established by the UN Secretary General ascertained that “Israeli Defense Forces personnel faced significant, organized and violent resistance from a group of passengers when they boarded the Mavi Marmara requiring them to use force for their own protection. Three soldiers were captured, mistreated, and placed at risk by those passengers. Several others were wounded.”

A Turkish journalist on board the ship admitted that “soldiers were met with resistance and realized that some of their friends’ lives were in danger.” Another Turkish passenger attested that the Israelis were accosted “without pause or hesitation.”

So it doesn’t really take a seasoned investigative journalist to determine, and tell readers, that Israeli troops were in fact attacked. Bobby Ghoush’s unwillingness to do is just the latest evidence of Time magazine’s unreliability when it comes to Israel.