The Algemeiner has published a piece by CAMERA analyst Dexter Van Zile about a “peacemaking” document issued by Kairos USA. An excerpt:

Another group of Christian peacemakers has issued yet another statement about the Arab-Israeli conflict. The authors of this document state their goal is to “respond faithfully and boldly to the situation in Israel and Palestine.” Apparently in the lexicon of the folks who wrote this document – a group that calls itself “Kairos USA” – “situation” is another word for “conflict” or “war” and “responding faithfully and boldly” means focusing the eye of Christian judgment on Israel and its alleged sins like the Eye of Sauron looking for the holder of the One Ring on the slopes of Mount Doom.

Unlike Sauron, the folks who wrote this document found what they are looking for – a scapegoat upon which they foist all the blame for Palestinian suffering. This can be seen in the visual rhetoric offered by the group’s website, which shows pictures of the security barrier and juxtaposes them with pastoral images of the Holy Land. The implication is obvious – Israeli security measures are a blot on the Holy Land.

Just to give you a sense of how distorted the text is, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs accurately reports that the 8,000-word document does not include the word Hamas.

To read the whole thing, go here.

There are an estimated 45,000-60,000 people currently living in Israel illegally, mostly from Eritrea and South Sudan. Some of them would be considered refugees by the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR):

The 1951 Refugee Convention establishing UNHCR spells out that a refugee is someone who “owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country.”

Many others would not be considered refugees, but instead migrants:

Migrants, especially economic migrants, choose to move in order to improve the future prospects of themselves and their families. Refugees have to move if they are to save their lives or preserve their freedom.

Only refugees have protected status under international law and the preferred outcome for them is to be repatriated. According to the UNHCR Handbook for Repatriation and Reintegration Activities, “The UN General Assembly (GA) has repeatedly affirmed UNHCR’s function of promoting/facilitating the voluntary repatriation of refugees.”

So, when Israel undertakes a program to voluntarily repatriate several hundred South Sudanese refugees, there should be no hue and cry, right? Wrong.

A Washington Post blog on the subject used words like “deportation” and “expulsion”. And, of course, Isabel Kershner couldn’t resist a Holocaust reference in her New York Times article:

But the government clampdown is also ripping at Israel’s soul. For some, the connotations of roundups and the prospect of mass detentions cut too close to the bone.

“I feel I am in a movie in Germany, circa 1933 or 1936,” said Orly Feldheim, 46, a daughter of Holocaust survivors, as she doled out food last week to a long line of immigrants…

Of course, the usual suspects in the anti-Israel community could not help but pile on. Moira Levy, who claims to be a South African journalist, wrote a letter to the Cape Times declaring she will cut herself off from being a Jew because of Israel’s “violent racial repression.” In response, Desmond Tutu wrote a letter to Levy pleading:

Please do not blame your faith for the policies of the people who have political power in the State of Israel.

When members of our family behaved wrongly, we did not turn our backs on them, but tried to convince them to steer a fairer course.

What would that “fairer course” be here? Would it be the course taken in the case of Liberian refugees being repatriated from Gambia? Angolan refugees being repatriated from Namibia? Angolan refugees being repatriated from Zambia? Congolese refugees being repatriated from Burundi? Ivorian refugees being repatriated from Liberia? What about the refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo being repatriated from the Republic of Congo?

Are these “fairer”? Not really. In all of the above cases the world community through the UNHCR, funded in large part by the United States, picks up the tab. But in Israel’s case, the people of Israel are paying — adults reportedly received $1,300 each and children $650 each. In the “fairer” non-Israeli cases, repatriated refugees received much less, only a few hundred dollars each. Fairer?

However, the main thing that differentiates the repatriation of refugees from other countries from the repatriation of refugees from Israel is that there’s no outrage about it. There’s no uproar and there’s certainly very little media attention. Furthermore, regarding the fact that economic migrants have no legal status, have you heard about that in the press? Have you read that repatriation of refugees — including from Israel — is legal, fair, and even encouraged by the world community? No? Where’s the fairness? Where’s the journalistic integrity? Where’s the coverage?

Sometimes the devil isn’t only in the details, but mostly in the details editors cut. Compare Washington Times and Washington Post treatment of the same June 26 Associated Press dispatch covering Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Israel and meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Washington Times published the Associated Press article under the headline “Netanyahu, Putin put focus on Iran’s nukes” as a stand-alone primary world news story. The Times’ foreign desk illustrated the piece with a three-column, color photograph of the two leaders. The Putin-Netanyahu discussions reportedly focused on Iran’s nuclear program and escalating violence in Syria.

The Washington Post’s world news section condensed the same AP story to a four-paragraph “Digest” item that briefly highlighted contrasting policy positions of the two countries, primarily Israeli-Russian differences over efforts to curb Iranian uranium enrichment.

The following day, The Times covered Putin’s supportive meeting with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and visit to Christian sites in Jerusalem and Bethlehem in a four-paragraph brief illustrated by a two-column black-and-white photo (“Putin visits West Bank, tours Christian shrine,” June 27). The Post ignored the Palestinian portion of Putin’s trip in that day’s print edition, but did publish “Israel begins West Bank outpost evictions; Some homes were built illegally on Palestinian land, high court ruled”) as a stand-alone news, article, illustrated with two color photos, one three columns wide, the other two.

The Post’s article mentioned that “militant settlers [emphasis added] who have violently resisted other evictions were not in evidence at Beit El on Tuesday, although vandals torched a mosque in a Palestinian village this month [an incident covered prominently by the newspaper at the time].”

The Times coverage of Putin’s meeting with Netanyahu referred to the Jewish state’s fears of Iranian-funded “anti-Israeli militants.” In same edition, The Times carried an AP article headlined “U.S. expanding military aid, intelligence in Africa.” It described al-Qaeda and similar organizations as “terror groups” and noted that the United States is working to help African countries counter “terrorist activities”.

So, Jewish settlers who violently resist eviction by Israeli police and troops are, in The Washington Post’s own words, “militants.”

For The Washington Times, editing and publishing AP, Iranian-backed, anti-Israel Islamic extremists like Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (who specialize in attacking non-combatants to advance their religious-ideological agenda) are “militants.” Yet, for The Times and AP, al-Qaeda and other groups that also target non-combatants (including Americans) are “terrorists.”

Foreign news coverage, especially given the often small space even major dailies can allot to it, often amounts to a roll of the dice for readers. That was the case on June 26 and 27 for Washington Post subscribers, when it came to Putin in Israel, and for Washington Times readers on the latest “terrorist/militant” confusion. –Erin Dwyer, Washington Research Intern

Foreign Affairs, a leading journal covering foreign policy, has published a piece in its July-August issue by Columbia University Professor Kenneth Waltz advising us not to worry about an Iranian nuclear bomb. In fact, Waltz says “a nuclear-armed Iran would probably be the best possible result of the standoff and the one most likely to restore stability to the Middle East.” Dismissing American and Israeli concerns as “typical of major powers, which have historically gotten riled up whenever another country begins to develop a nuclear weapon,” Waltz argues that the Iranian leadership is rational.

Within that context, comments made by Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza-Rahimi at a UN sponsored conference commemorating the International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking deserve consideration. This is what he had to say according to Press TV, Iran’s main international news service:

“The Zionists play a key role in the production and distribution of narcotics across the globe, because destroying human societies and exploiting their virtues are among the objectives of the Zionists…” Rahimi said… Numerous studies have attested to the fact that the Zionists regard themselves as the master race and they view the other races as their slaves that must be used for achieving the Zionist objectives, he said.

While the Zionists utilize the narcotics to devastate other societies, they safeguard their own society against such drugs, he pointed out.

The Iranian vice president expressed Tehran’s preparedness to sponsor an international investigation into the role of the Zionist entities in the production and distribution of narcotics across the world.

FARS news agency, which billls itself as Iran’s leading independent news agency also reported on his speech. Here is how it covered the speech:

Addressing a ceremony on the occasion of the International Day of Drug Abuse here in Tehran on Tuesday, Rahimi stated that prevalence of narcotics and drug-addition throughout the world finds its roots in the wrong teachings of the Zionists’ religious book, Talmud.

The Talmud (Hebrew: “instruction, learning”) is a central text of mainstream Judaism in the form of a record of rabbinic discussions pertaining to Jewish law, ethics, philosophy, customs and history.
“The book teaches them how to destroy non-Jews so as to protect an embryo in the womb of a Jewish mother,” Rahimi stated. The Iranian vice-president said that the Zionists’ direct involvement in the prevalence of illicit drugs is while “you cannot find a single addict among the Zionists.”

Apparently Professor Waltz is confident that men who think the way Rahimi does will act responsibly once they have access to a nuclear bomb.

Archeological site of Tel Betar (from Tel Aviv University)

Leave it to the New York Times to cover the “heritage” of the West Bank village of Battir, named after the ancient Jewish site of Beitar, while ignoring its historical significance in Judaism.

Today’s International Herald Tribune headline for the article is “Defending the soil, and heritage,” but let’s be clear — the IHT/NYT interest in Battir/Beitar’s heritage is highly selective. The article begins:

In this scenic Palestinian village in the West Bank hills near Bethlehem, just south of Jerusalem, a week is said to last eight days, not seven. That is because Battir’s eight extended families take daily turns watering their crops from the natural springs that feed their ancient agricultural terraces, a practice they say has worked for centuries.

The water flows through a Roman-era irrigation system down into a deep valley where a railway track — a section of the Jaffa-Jerusalem railway built in Ottoman times — roughly marks the 1949 armistice line between the West Bank and Israel. The area is dotted with tombs and ruins upon ruins of bygone civilizations.

The Times sees fits to discuss the Palestinian history of Battir, and to identify the Roman presence, but the Jewish presence is relegated to the unnamed “bygone civilizations.” Blogger Yisrael Medad provides this information about Beitar’s Jewish significance:

Tel Betar (Khirbet el-Yahud) is situated southwest of Jerusalem near the Arab village of Bittir, its northern side flanking the Rephaim Valley…Khirbet el-Yahud is unanimously identified with Betar, the last stronghold of the Second Revolt against the Romans, where its leader, Bar-Kochba, found his death in 135 CE. The ancient name was (p)reserved in the name of the Arab village Bittir, and the Arab name of the site – Khirbet el-Yahud, that is “The ruin of the Jews”, keeps the memory of the Second Revolt. The identification is supported by the results of the surveys and the excavations. The Roman siege of Betar in 135 CE, the conquest of the settlement and the slaughter of the besieged, including Bar-Kochba, which put an end to the Second Revolt, is mentioned in both Jewish and Roman Sources – The Talmud and the Midrash, and Eusebius (3rd-4th centuries CE) in his book on the history of the church.

(more…)

The UK’s Jewish Chronicle reports:

The BBC “got it wrong” by not giving prominence to the massacre of the Fogel family by Palestinians in the West Bank settlement of Itamar, the outgoing director-general has admitted.

Mark Thompson was quizzed by Conservative MP Louise Mensch, who made various complaints to the BBC about the coverage, at a Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee hearing on Tuesday. Mrs Mensch said the BBC’s decision not to include the story as part of its rolling news coverage generated “the most reaction I have ever had in all my time in politics.”

Read the entire article here.

While some are raising concerns about the future of the Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty now that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate has won Egypt’s presidential race, AFP has a different issue with the historic bilateral agreement. Today AFP refers to “1980, the year after Cairo signed its peace agreement with Tel Aviv.” (Emphasis added.)

AFP would hardly be the first to relocate Israel’s capital from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, but the misinformation is all the more jarring in light of then-President Anwar Sadat’s unprecedented trip to Jerusalem in 1978, paving the way to the Egyptian-Israeli peace agreement.

Perhaps AFP would do well to review its own archives from that time, including this AFP photograph of Sadat addressing the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in the capital city, Jerusalem:

AFP’s own caption reads:

Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat (L) addresses the Knesset (Israeli parliament) in Jerusalem 20 November 1977 during his historic visit to Israel, as Israeli Premier Yitzhak Begin (C) listens to him. Thirty years ago, the Egyptian leader became the first Arab leader to visit the Jewish state. AFP PHOTO/FILES

Anwar Sadat’s obituary in the New York Times states:

Eleven days before Mr. Sadat made his trip to Jerusalem, he said in Cairo that he was willing to go to ”the ends of the earth,” and even to the Israeli Parliament, in the cause of peace. The Israeli Government made known that he was welcome in Jerusalem, and after complex negotiations he flew there, although a state of war still existed between the two nations.

His eyes were moist and his lips taut with suppressed emotion as he arrived, but his Arabic was firm and resonant when, hours later, he told the hushed Israeli Parliament, ”If you want to live with us in this part of the world, in sincerity I tell you that we welcome you among us with all security and safety.

In 1978, the leader of the Egyptian nation, which at the time was in a state of war with Israel, could bring himself to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but in 2012, AFP cannot?

In today’s installment of Ha’aretz Lost in Translation, the English edition remakes an injured Hamas man into “an injured man.”

The Hebrew and English editions both ran the same photo of a Hamas man injured yesterday in an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip, but only the Hebrew version indicates that he was a Hamas member. For some reason, the editors of Ha’aretz‘s English edition apparently believe that the fact that the injured man is a Hamas member, and not a civilian, is not relevant to their English-speaking, foreign readers.

Here’s the Hebrew caption:

?יש ביטחון פלסטיני שנפצע בתקיפת חיל ה?וויר בעזה

Meaning (CAMERA’s translation):

A member of the Palestinian security forces injured in an air force strike in Gaza

While the Hebrew edition does not explicitly state he is a Hamas member, Israeli readers understand that “security forces” in Gaza are Hamas.

Here’s the whitewashed English caption:

Inset: Rescue personnel carrying an injured man to safety in Gaza City. (AP)

The original AP caption was very clear about the man’s Hamas affiliation, stating:

A wounded member of the Hamas security forces is carried to a car following an Israeli air strike on a Hamas security building in Gaza City, early Saturday, June 23, 2012. A Gaza health official reported that at least one militant was killed and more than a dozen wounded during Israeli air strikes Saturday on the Gaza Strip. The Israeli military says the airstrikes target Palestinian militants who have fired over 150 rockets at residential areas in southern Israel this week.(AP Photo/Yasser Qudih)

This wouldn’t be the first time that Ha’aretz‘s English edition gave a Hamas man a civilian makeover.

President to the Russian Ambassador: Now then Dimitri. You know how we’ve always talked about the possibility of something going wrong with the bomb. The bomb, Dimitri. The hydrogen bomb. Well now what happened is, one of our base commanders, he had a sort of, well he went a little funny in the head. You know. Just a little… funny. And uh, he went and did a silly thing. … (listens) … Well, I’ll tell you what he did, he ordered his planes… to attack your country.
(Excerpt from Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb)

USA Today published an Op-Ed on Monday, June 18 by Kenneth Waltz arguing that “a nuclear-armed Iran would probably be the best possible result of the standoff and the one most likely to restore stability to the Middle East.”

Some excerpts present Waltz’s logic. He offers three possibilities for how the current Iranian nuclear crisis could end:
1) Diplomacy and sanctions convince Iran to give up pursuit of nuclear weapons.
2) Iran doesn’t test a weapon, but develops the capacity to build one.
3) Iran builds a weapon and tests it.

Waltz likes option 3 and he tells us why.

First, Waltz dismisses U.S. and Israeli concerns about Iranian nuclear weapons as “typical of major powers, which have historically gotten riled up whenever another country begins to develop a nuclear weapon.”

Second, he claims Israel’s regional monopoly on nuclear weapons “has long fueled regional instability… It is Israel’s nuclear arsenal, not Iran’s desire for one, that has contributed most to the crisis.” Waltz is mistaken, Israel’s alleged nuclear capacity has not spurred its long-time adversaries, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to develop nuclear weapons. But the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons has.

Third, Waltz asserts, “the danger of a nuclear Iran has been grossly exaggerated due to fundamental misunderstandings of how states generally behave in the international system.” Thanks. Feeling better? Waltz’s analysis may hinge on the observation that the huge arsenals possessed by the U.S. and the Soviet Union dissuaded both powers from using their weapons against the other. Waltz apparently believes the same rational behavior can be expected from Iran.

A few commentators have already weighed in. Gary Schmitt, former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, wonders “Maybe we could even begin handing out nukes on the street corner. By Waltz’s logic, it’s likely to reduce crime as well.”

Ira Stoll at Commentary focuses in on Waltz’s smug reliance on “probably” and “likely” when figuring the odds that Iran will act rationally and not launch a nuclear attack on Tel Aviv or New York. What if Waltz is wrong? What if the Iranians really mean it when they say they want to erase Israel from the map?

That is no big deal for Waltz, like betting on the wrong horse. But it is a serious problem for the residents of Tel Aviv. What odds can they tolerate?

While it may be tempting to parody Waltz’s lack of concern over Iranian nuclear weapons, it is sobering to recognize that Waltz is a professor at Columbia University and that Foreign Affairs, a serious publication, has published an expanded version of the USA Today Op-Ed in its July-August 2012 issue.

As an analyst of the Iranian nuclear crisis, Waltz reveals himself to be a fantasist. He concludes with the assertion that “citizens worldwide should take comfort from the fact that where nuclear capabilities have emerged, so, too, has stability. When it comes to nuclear weapons, now as ever, more could be better.”

Dr. Strangelove couldn’t have said it better.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, speaking at a technology conference in Tel Aviv, announced “We love Israel.”

According to Israel 21c:

Schmidt praised Israeli engineers, the country’s higher education system and the training acquired in the army.

…

“There are no disadvantages to investing in Israel — just advantages,” he was quoted by Yedioth Aharonoth as saying.

“Israel has the most important high-tech center in the world after the US,” he told the Hebrew daily.

Given Google’s success and influence in high technology, one might think this would get some play in the broader media. Think again. While the Israeli press and some Jewish media covered this aspect of Schmidt’s speech, the mainstream media gave it scant attention. How can one know this? Google it.

In a separate meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the pair exchanged gifts. Schmidt gave Netanyahu a reproduction of the Scroll of Isaiah found in the Dead Sea Scrolls referencing the joint venture between Google and the Israel Museum to digitize the Dead Sea Scrolls and provide free online access to them. Netanyahu gave Schmidt a doodle he drew:

The Algemeiner reported:

On his Facebook page, Mr. Netanyahu explained the drawing as “the Israeli flag, a person sitting under a sun umbrella and the crystals that Professor Dan Shechtman, who won the Nobel Prize this year discovered”.

Netanyahu is the first head of state in the world to produce a Google doodle. Want to know how little play this got in the mainstream press? Google it.

Google is heavily invested in Israel, intends to invest more, is working closely with Israeli cultural and educational institutions and is happy to talk to about it. Is the media listening? Goo– Don’t bother. While the media love to cover fringe elements that urge divestment from Israel, here we have an influential leader of global industry recommending investment in Israel and… Where’s the coverage?