One of C-SPAN’s most popular programs, Washington Journal (a 3-hour daily public affairs and call-in show), ushered in April with a double dose of “blame-the-Jews” tirades from the same caller. Once again, when it came to bashing Israel, a network host failed to uphold C-SPAN’s ostensible “one-call-per-30-days” rule.

It must be noted that C-SPAN, watched by more than 28 million viewers weekly (according to the network’s own estimate), allows no ethnic or religious group or nation except Israel and Jews to be repeatedly vilified on Journal broadcasts.

On April 5, “Pat” from Pittsburgh, an obvious conspiracy theorist, charged preposterously yet without challenge by either host Peter Slen or the guest that Israel manipulates U.S. elections through manufacture of voting machines (click here to listen):

When the American people are witnessing the massive manipulation of the election process when our election machines are being manufactured in the state of Israel which is manipulating our country on virtually every level, I think it is understandable that the skepticism of the American people is as high as it is.

On April 1, “Patrick” from Pittsburgh had launched into a propaganda tirade that began with an unsubstantiated and hearsay claim of a diplomat finding a key section of the U.S. State Department “occupied by Israelis,” proceeded to the wild assertion that there are “a billion” Americans (there are a little more than 300 million) and ended with the canards –- popular with both neo-Nazis and the extreme left –- that “Israel is the puppet-master of America” and leading this country into “another war of lies.” The guest’s dispassionate refutation of the caller’s smears could not relieve, ex post facto, Washington Journal host Paul Orgel of his professional responsibility to have recognized and quickly terminated the anti-Israel, anti-Jewish phone call in the first place. This is not a matter of censoring informed opinion, but of preserving air time from the lunatic fringe. Click here to listen.

C-SPAN can be contacted at (202) 737-3220, 877-662-7726, [email protected], [email protected]., twitter.com@cspanwj or facebook.com/CSPAN about its dismal, indefensible record of permitting on a regular basis (usually without challenge), callers’ defamations of Jews and Israel.

Checkpoints! 10-foot concrete walls! Arabs who can’t get to their businesses! Must be Israel, right? Wrong.

It’s Egypt, as reported by NPR:

After five days of skirmishes in early February, Cairo’s police chiefs ordered the construction of a series of 10-foot walls, seven of them in all, to block off access to the [interior] ministry.

Other walls have sprung up throughout the area, too, following other bouts of violence. Vibrant neighborhoods have been transformed into a maze of checkpoints and concrete blocks. Now residents are trying to get adjusted to the new, imposing barriers that have virtually paralyzed a large section of downtown Cairo.

And yet, with all the attention being paid to the vaunted freedoms of the “Arab Spring” and the outrage the world felt at Israel on “Land Day,” have you heard anything about the “Apartheid Walls” of Cairo?

Naturally, NPR puts a positive spin on Cairo’s walls as preferable to the alternative:

Mohammed Kadry Said, a retired major general and a senior analyst at the Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, says that the walls provide a limited solution.

“Either you go out and shoot the crowd who are attacking the building of the Ministry of Interior and can put a fire on it, or you can make a shield, so at least you are safe.”

When Egypt erects a barrier to keep government officials safe from citizens, it’s fine. But when Israel erects a barrier to keep citizens safe from terrorists, it’s an atrocity. Talk about a double standard. Furthermore, there are separation barriers all over the world yet only Israel’s security barrier is criticized. Where’s the fairness? Where’s the context? Where’s the coverage?

Yet again, Ha’aretz provides an example of how its distorted coverage provides fodder to anti-Israel writers abroad. Yesterday Ha’aretz‘s Web site published the following headline:

This dismal headline implies that the Israeli army is seeking to upgrade means in which to harm civilian populations. Indeed, one must read the article itself several times to understand the new brigade’s actual purpose: to increase precision of attacks on combatants so as to minimize harm to civilians. But the dismal online headline, coupled with the lack of clarity in the article itself, points falsely instead to IDF intentions to massacre, a notion that anti-Israel blogger Richard Silverstein jumps on.

One need only look at the English print edition for a straight-forward headline: “IDF plans to set up first short-range rocket battalion.” Ha’aretz editors take note: an accurate subheadline would read: “New rockets would reduce casualties among non-combatants during strikes against terrorist targets in populated areas.”

A new video exposes reckless disregard for scholarship and ethics at another university, continuing a trend. Northeastern University in Boston accepted funds for a Jewish Studies Chair from a donor concerned about preserving memory of the Holocaust, then allowed biased faculty and negligent administrators to “pervert” the clear aim of the donor, enlisting anti-Israel speakers who equated Israeli conduct with that of the Nazis.

Hijacking Holocaust Remembrance was produced by Americans for Peace and Tolerance. It lays out the disturbing story, citing the extreme anti-Israel speakers presented and an event that brought the matter to a head. Filmmaker Yoav Shamir and his anti-Israel work, Defamation, claiming Jews exploit the Holocaust to justify Israeli aggression were to be featured during Holocaust Remembrance Week in 2011. When Steven Stotsky, whose father had given Northeastern the Jewish Studies chair (and who is a Senior Research Analyst at CAMERA) discovered all this he wrote a column for the Boston Jewish Advocate. Shamir didn’t, in the end, appear as a Holocaust comemoration speaker, but he and his film — lauded on neo-Nazi Web sites — were given a platform later in the year.

“This is the 21st century. Where in the world could this happen? As a mother and a human being, we need to make sure that these atrocities stop.”

So said Asma Assad, wife of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and until recently a darling of fashion magazines and tabloid newspapers.

It was not, however, her husband’s suppression of the past year’s anti-regime protests and guerrilla attacks in Syria that the 36-year-old Mrs. Assad decried. It was Israel’s December, 2008 – January 2009 battle against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. “Operation Cast Lead,” she told Cable News Network (CNN) at the time, was “barbaric.”

The former Asma Akhras, daughter of a Syrian family who lived in a comfortable suburb of the British capital, graduated from King’s College London with a degree in computer science and diploma in French literature, Associated Press reported (“Syria’s first lady no longer idolized; British-born mother of three now denounced as part of brutal regime,” Washington Times, March 28).

According to the United Nations’, Bashar al-Assad’s forces have killed about 9,000 people, the large majority non-combatants. “They’ve gone for the children – for whatever purposes – in large numbers. Hundreds detained and tortured,” said Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (“U.N. chief urges Assad to stem continuing violence; Fighting reported across Syria despite regime’s acceptance of peace plan,” Washington Post, March 29).

In “Operation Cast Lead,” Israel’s response to thousands of Palestinian mortar and rocket attacks, approximately
1,200 Gazans were killed and the majority appeared to be gunmen from Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other terrorist groups (“Hamas’ Revelation Undermines Key Conclusion of Goldstone Report,” CAMERA, Nov. 19, 2010).

Until the start of Syria’s “Arab spring” upheaval, Mrs. Assad captivated the French fashion magazine Elle, which in 2008 named her the world’s most stylish woman. In 2009, The Sun, Britain’s largest tabloid, called her the “sexy Brit … bringing Syria in from the cold.” And just before anti-regime protests erupted across the country last year, Vogue cited her charity work, “killer IQ” and penchant for going incognito to hear from the populace.

No matter that her husband, like his father Hafez al-Assad before him, ran Syria and Lebanon Mafia-style, car-bombing when not simply “disappearing” opponents from journalists to prime ministers, allying with Iran and collaborating with anti-American insurgents crossing the Syrian border into Iraq.

Apparently, countless reports – and surreptitously transmitted images – of slaughter by the regime now have rendered Mrs. Assad’s good looks, expensive tastes and fluent English irrelevant. Vogue reportedly deleted the Asma Assad puff-piece from its Web site. A lesson not only for readers of fashion magazines and tabloids, but also those of the “quality press” when fawning features from Arab and other dictatorship turn up.

NBC’s World Blog reports as fact a Palestinian farmer’s disputed claims about expropriation of his land in Walaja:

But 70-year-old Abu Nidal doesn’t need a special calendar day to remind him of the Israeli occupation and their confiscation of his land. Nidal just needs to wake up every morning and look outside his window to see how the Israelis are confiscating his land.

He lives in the village Al Walaja, nestled in the hills between Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Half of the village of just over 2,000 is considered to be part of Jerusalem and the other half is part of the West Bank. So now the Israeli security wall snakes through the village. . . .

It was his grandmother’s wish that every family member be buried on their 11-acre farm land. But the Israelis have a different plan for the confiscated land. They are planning to build not only the wall, but a recreational park for Israelis on the other side of the wall.

But, as reported in Ha’aretz, authorities state that the plans for the park “do not call for the expropriation of privately-owned land”:

Ir Amim says 1,250 dunams were added to the park plan about a year ago. The fence will cut villagers off from agricultural land and the park, which are on the Israeli side of the separation fence, Ir Amim says.

The groups says residents lost access to their land inside Jerusalem when sites were declared national parkland. But the development authority says the entire park is within Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries and that the plans do not address land ownership.

They also do not call for the expropriation of privately-owned land, the authority says.

“In any event, there is no intention to expropriate privately-owned land,” the authority said in a statement. “Most of the area already serves as a national park, and the expansion is being carried out to protect nature and the landscape.” . . .

But Ze’ev Hacohen, a planner at the Israel Nature and Parks Authority, noted that Walaja residents would still be able to work their land.

He said the village’s farmers would be able to cross the fence at a gate, although he acknowledged that the barrier would make access more difficult.

(more…)

Usually, if there are differences in the lengths of online and print versions of the same article in a news outlet, it’s the online edition that’s longer. After all, while space is finite in print, editors do not have to deal with that restriction online.

So why is it that the online version of a Ha’aretz article about Jews moving into a building in Hebron is much shorter than its print counterpart? Notably, details about the Jews’ alleged purchase of the property which appear in the print edition do not appear online. For instance, the print edition includes the following, which does not appear online:

The Palestinians who owned the two buildings died, leaving them to his two sons. One son took the renovated, three-story house and half of the second story of the adjacent house, whilehis brother received the rest.

The first brother is the one who allegedly sold his part in the compound to the settlers. His brother, who lives in the adjacent building, said the deal was carried out under false pretenses and is therefore invalid. He said a third party had purchased the property from them, without telling them he represented the settlers.

(Hat tip: IMRA and Yisrael Medad)