Incoming New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief Jodi Rudoren

Hardly a day has passed since it was announced that Jodi Rudoren will be replacing Ethan Bronner as New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief. Rudoren announced her move to the Middle East on Twitter yesterday afternoon, and continued posting throughout the day about her new assignment. To Tablet’s Marc Tracy, those subsequent tweets “haven’t been innocuous.”

He elaborates:

Tweeting at Ali Abuminah, the editor of the frankly anti-Israel Electronic Intifada Website, that she’s “heard good things”—of someone who advocates boycott, divestment, and sanctions of Israel and a one-state solution—is rightly making supporters of Israel suspicious of her objectivity and of where she stands. Ditto retweeting an article titled “Palestine: Love in the Time of Apartheid.” Even tweeting praise for Peter Beinart’s forthcoming book suggests, at least, that she favors one narrative of the conflict over the others.

The most charitable reading says Rudoren possesses an astounding lack of sense of the profile of the post to which she has been appointed; of how she is going to be perceived; and of the fact that she is betraying her opinions before she has even started reporting. Only a fool would expect a reporter to have no opinions, but we expect them to zip their opinions up in favor of objectivity and to come to new stories with an open mind; Rudoren is already damaging her readers’ trust. And it’s a totally unforced error! Nobody’s telling her to tweet! (Right?) She is voluntarily doing this. In this reading, she is one more Gen-Xer, in the Anthony Weiner mold, totally clueless about Twitter.

And the less charitable, perfectly plausible reading, is that she is slanted toward anti-Zionism.

Tracy concludes by calling on the newspaper to clean up the mess by “telling her to—for the love of God—stop tweeting.” If his concerns do have merit, though, the solution would not be for editors to tell Rudoren to stop tweeting — to hide the proverbial tea leaves. It would be for them to do whatever it takes to ensure that the future isn’t marked by biased reporting.

Only time will tell whether Tracy’s concerns will be borne out. Meanwhile, we’ll repeat what we recently said of the other new entrant to the Israel journalism scene: If the goal is to report about Israel accurately and fairly, we certainly wish Rudoren the best. (It would be a welcome change).

Some like to refer to Ha’aretz as the “New York Times of Israel. (If there is any merit to the analogy, it’s not necessarily for reasons that would make either newspaper proud.)

But there is now, as of yesterday, an actual Times of Israel. You can read about it here, or skip straight to its homepage here.

The editor promises “to report Israel, the region and the Jewish world accurately and engagingly.” To that end, we certainly wish them the best.

CAMERA Senior Research Analyst’s Op-Ed published in The Algemeiner discusses Harvard University’s hosting of a two-day conference to be held on March 3-4, titled “One State Solution” regarding the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Read the Op-Ed here.

AFP photographer Hazem Bader (left) with Yaser Arafat. The picture is the opening image on Bader’s personal Web site

Canadian Jewish News publishes an Op-Ed by CAMERA’s Tamar Sternthal pointing out the inconsistencies in AFP’s accounts concerning Hazem Bader’s Jan. 25 photograph said to be depicting a Palestinian whose legs (or leg) was run over by a trailer (or maybe a tractor) driven by an Israeli soldier. It begins:

If you’re going for transparency, you can’t do much better than an x-ray.

The Agence-France Presse, an international news service, claims there are x-rays that substantiate the caption of a recent photograph allegedly depicting Israeli army brutality

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Images like this were posted on a Facebook page run by Presbyterian peacemakers.

The Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) has called on the Presbyterian Church (USA) to rein in the anti-Zionist and in some instances, anti-Jewish rhetoric proffered by its education and peacemaking organization, the Israel-Palestine Mission Network of the PC(USA). In a press release issued on Feb. 6, 2012, the JCPA, an umbrella organization of 125 local Jewish federations and 14 national Jewish organizations, called on the denomination to “take concrete actions to address the anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and at times anti-Semitic content that has been all too common in the church’s Israel Palestine Mission Network (IPMN-PCUSA).” The American Jewish Committee issued a similar statement that day as well.

The press release issued by the JCPA provides some details:

The IPMN-PCUSA Facebook page includes a cartoon of President Obama wearing weighty Jewish star earrings to suggest Jewish control of the American leaders, a common theme on the site. The IPMN-PCUSA has posted articles that accuse Jews of controlling Hollywood, the media, and American politics – and blaming Israel for the American housing and economic crisis. IPMN-PCUSA’s communications chair also posted her opposition to a two-state solution and the existence of a Jewish state, something which she terms “anachronistic.” The same IPMN leader, Noushin Framke, clicked “like” on the Obama cartoon with the Jewish stars and another post that Hamas should keep Israeli Gilad Shalit hostage until Palestinians are granted a right of return.

Presbyterian leaders were given multiple warnings about the problem before the JCPA went public with its concerns. Starting in 2009, CAMERA corresponded regularly with the denomination’s leaders in Louisville about this problem, but they did nothing even as the IPMN-PCUSA’s Facebook page became a focal point for anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic imagery and commentary. (For example, take a look at the comment beneath the Obama cartoon. Other examples can be seen here and here.)

Eventually, the JCPA started gathering a collection of the hateful postings on the IPMN’s Facebook page for a report about the organization. The JCPA then started to distribute a draft version of its findings to members and leaders within the denomination, which apparently prompted the IPMN-PCUSA to delete its Facebook page.

The IPMN-PCUSA has responded badly to the JCPA’s scrutiny.

In an Op-Ed today in Ynet, Tamar Sternthal, director of CAMERA’s Israel office, addresses the questions surrounding Hazem Bader’s Jan. 25 AFP photo:

In recent days, two dramatic photographs alleged to be depicting Israeli army brutality have gone viral. One, which circulated on Facebook, purportedly showed an Israeli soldier stepping on a Palestinian girl and pointing an AK-47 at her head. It was exposed as Bahraini anti-Israel street theater.

The second, by Agence-France Presse photographer Hazem Bader, was not confined only to the free-for-all Internet. Although it too is of dubious authenticity, it appeared in mainstream news outlets which claim to uphold journalistic codes of conduct. . . .

CAMERA’s International Letter-Writing Director’s Op-Ed “A Conference Of Falsehoods” in The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Starting Friday, PennBDS, a university-recognized group, will sponsor the 2012 National Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) Conference on campus. The BDS movement attempts to delegitimize the state of Israel through false accusations and dishonest scholarship masquerading as human rights advocacy.

PennBDS and the BDS movement claim to be interested in promoting, “the growing global campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction (BDS) the State of Israel until it complies with its obligations under international and human rights law.” That’s what it says on the PennBDS website.

However, if PennBDS is truly concerned with such violations, it is notable that it does not focus on blatant human rights abusers and oppressors such as North Korea, China, Sudan, or Iran.

….but only on the Jewish State.