On Friday, July 27, prior to the official opening of the 2012 London Olympic Games, the Lebanese judo team refused to practice next to the Israeli team and Olympic organizers erected a barrier to split the gym in half.

According to a spokesman for Israel’s Olympic Committee, “We started to practice. They came and they saw us – they didn’t like it and they went to the organizers.” (Reuters)

The organizers promptly accommodated the Lebanese demand and set up the separation screen.

The Times of Israel reported:

According to several Hebrew sports sites, the two teams were scheduled to use the same gym and mats at London’s new ExCeL center for their final preparations. However, the delegation from Lebanon would not train in view of the Israeli team, and insisted some sort of barrier be placed between them.

The Telegraph (London) wrote:

London 2012 organising committee officials erected a makeshift curtain to split the two halves of a training gym at the ExCeL centre on Friday afternoon to placate the Lebanese team, which was refusing to train at the same time as the Israelis.

The UK’s Guardian picked up Reuters’ story as did Yahoo Sports:

Olympic officials were forced to erect a screen between Lebanon’s and Israel’s judo fighters on Friday after the Lebanese refused to train on the same mat, the Israeli Olympic team said on Friday.

Yet, as of this writing, CAMERA has found no mention of the incident in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, Associated Press or networks such as CNN and ABC.

One of the fundamental principles of “Olympism,” as outlined in the Olympic Charter, states:

Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic Movement.

Can accommodating the request of an Arab team not to share the mat with or be seen by Israelis be regarded as anything other than a form of discrimination based on race, religion or politics? Would it be allowed if it involved any country other than Israel? And shouldn’t it be covered by major American news organizations?

Ironically, earlier in the week, when the IOC refused to include a moment of silence to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the terrorist murders of 11 Israeli Olympians, Jibril Rajoub, head of the Palestinian Football Federation, sent a letter to IOC chairman Jacques Rogge thanking him for his position, writing:

Sports is a bridge for love, connection and relaying peace between peoples. It should not be a factor for separation and spreading racism between peoples.

And yet “separating and spreading racism between peoples” is exactly what occurred in the practice center for the judo teams in London. Where’s the outrage? Where’s the decency? Where’s the coverage?

The New York Times reports that Jonah Lehrer, a staff writer for The New Yorker, resigned from the magazine after fabricating quotations attributed to Bob Dylan.

Meanwhile, Rashid Khalidi and Ilan Pappe, both of whom are guilty of the same serious transgression, have not resigned from their university positions, nor even publicly addressed their fabrications. (See details here and here.)

July 26, 2012: The Prime Minister “warned that it might take action to stop groups it deemed ‘terrorists’ from forming” an autonomous region. “No one should attempt to provoke us. If a step needs to be taken …. we would not hesitate to take it (Fox News).”

July 25, 2012: “… forces killed at least 15 … in a raid near the country’s border … after tracking them with drones and attacking them with helicopters and on the ground, officials said on Wednesday.”

June 19, 2012 : “Fighting leaves 26 dead.”

March 25, 2012: “15 [were] killed…all of them women.”

Dec. 29, 2011: “… at least 35 people died most of whom were teenagers” from air strikes (“Attack on Civilians Tied to U.S. Military Drone, Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2012).”

Oct. 19, 2011: “… airstrikes and artillery attacks against the group’s bases… killing as many as 160 militants…”

1) Who is the Prime Minister who threatened to use his military forces to attack a neighboring state in order to stop militants from setting up an autonomous region?
2) Is the media complaining about the use of “disproportionate force” against the militants in these cases?
3) Has the U.N. Human Rights Commission launched a special investigation like it did for the Israeli Cast Lead operation in 2009?
4) Have the Presbyterian and other churches set aside large blocks of time at their national conventions to debate and vote on motions to boycott and divest from companies that do business with this state because its forces utilize American technology, including drones, to crush the aspirations for autonomy of a dispossessed people?

The answer to question 1): Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s Prime Minister. Erdogan’s unapologetic resort to military force in dealing with Kurdish militants contrasts with his condemnation of Israel’s response to the Gaza flotilla in 2010 which resulted in the deaths of 9 Turkish militants who attacked an Israeli boarding party initially armed with paint guns. Erdogan continues to demand an Israeli apology even though a UN investigation found Israel’s interception of the flotilla to be legal.

To questions 2), 3) and 4) the answer is no.
Major news media report on the Turkish-Kurdish conflict in a perfunctory and dispassionate manner. This contrasts with much of the reporting on Israel. The New York Times and the BBC, for example, do not routinely publish editorials, op-eds and columns lambasting Turkey for failing to show any willingness to accomodate Kurdish demands for autonomy. Compare the Times’s measured handling of Prime Minister Erdogan’s bellicosity with its scathing treatment of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Then consider the fact that the Turkish-Kurdish conflict has taken an estimated 40,000 lives, including many civilians, over the past 30 years.

Adam Levick, Managing Editor of CiF Watch, an independent project of CAMERA, writes the following in his article “The Guardian and Glenn Greenwald: The anti-imperialism of fools” published by the Times of Israel:

The Guardian’s most egregious moral blind spot – especially in light of the media group’s claim to represent anti-racist values – pertains to their editors’ licensing of commentators who possess an antipathy towards Jews and routinely advance tropes indistinguishable from what is normally associated with far-right Judeophobia.

Read the entire article here.

Last week CNN commendably caught and fixed a bad headline about the Burgas terror attack which had stated: “Israeli tourist bomber had fake U.S. ID.” The simple reading of that headline is that an Israeli tourist was the bomber.

The headline is no longer available online, not even cached, though you can still find it if you do a Google search for the headline, as seen below:

The new headline is: “Bulgarian bus attack is work of suicide bomber, minister says”

CNN is to be commended for removing the misleading headline in such a timely manner, and we urge the network to likewise change photo captions and a headline misidentifying terrorists as “political prisoners.”

A previously little-known Sunni religious leader in Lebanon made headlines in The Washington Post and Washington Times for public denunciations of the Shi’ite Hezbollah (“Party of God”), the terrorist organization that also is the country’s most influential political movement.

Washington Post readers got the story first. Washington Times readers got it more precisely. The Post relied on one of its own correspondents, The Times on Associated Press.

The Post reported the rise of Sunni critics of the Iranian-backed, Syrian-supported Hezbollah, most vociferously Sheik Ahmad Assir, a hard-line mosque preacher (“In Lebanon, cleric turns rabble-rouser” July 11).

The Times’ AP dispatch quoted Assir as declaring that his small roadside encampment near Sidon “is the start of what will become Lebanon’s Tahrir Square” in rebellion against Hezbollah dominance, but its publication trailed The Post by two weeks (“Sheik Challenges Hezbollah” July 25).

Though late, The Times’ AP account was the more straightforward, its details of Lebanon’s sectarian tensions, emerging anti-Shi’ite opposition groups, and the vulnerabilities of a Hezbollah dependent on Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s endangered regime somewhat clearer. It included historical context of the Hezbollah/Shi’ite suppression of other Lebanese groups not found in The Post’s coverage, including this:

“Sunni bitterness still runs deep over clashes in May 2008, when Hezbollah gunmen swept through Sunni neighborhoods in Beruit. … More than 80 people were killed”.

The Post’s description of Hezbollah as “the Shiite militia and political party that is the most powerful group in the country…” and “Syria’s closest ally in Lebanon” fell short in reminding readers of the movement’s history as an Iranian-allied terrorist surrogate. Both media sources failed to note that Hezbollah has been designated a terrorist organization by the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and the Netherlands. Neither mentioned that until al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, Hezbollah had murdered more Americans than any other terrorist group. And neither took note of reports that Hezbollah members have been fighting for Assad’s regime.

The Times dispatch points out that Hezbollah’s “extensive arsenal of weapons and rockets is virtually untouchable at the moment.” The Post refers to Assir’s demand that “the government confront Hezbollah over its arms caches”. Yet neither outlet recalled for readers that Hezbollah’s arsenals violate U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701, the measure that helped end the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war. And neither The Post nor The Times mentioned the Israeli military’s release last year of maps said to identify nearly 1,000 Hezbollah underground bunkers, weapons caches and related sites.

The Times lagged behind The Post by two weeks. Both were informative, with the edge going to the former. But neither focused the spotlight on Hezbollah as intensely as deserved.

Erin Dwyer, CAMERA Washington research intern.

Competition in the London Olympic Games begins today although the opening ceremony will take place on Friday, July 27. As of this writing, the International Olympic Committee has not agreed to a moment of silence to memorialize the murder of eleven Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

In observance of the 40th anniversary, blogger Elder of Ziyon recently posted an item highlighting Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ connection to the Munich Olympics massacre. In it he quotes a 2002 Sports Illustrated article about attack mastermind Mohammed Daoud Oudeh, a.k.a. Abu Daoud:

Abu Daoud openly acknowledged his role in the Olympic attack, both in his memoir, Palestine: From Jerusalem to Munich, published in Paris, and in an interview with the Arab TV network al-Jazeera.

[…]

Though he didn’t know what the money was being spent for, longtime Fatah official Mahmoud Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, was responsible for the financing of the Munich attack. Abu Mazen could not be reached for comment regarding Abu Daoud’s allegation. After Oslo in 1993, Abu Mazen went to the White House Rose Garden for a photo op with Arafat, President Bill Clinton and Israel’s Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres. “Do you think that … would have been possible if the Israelis had known that Abu Mazen was the financier of our operation?” Abu Daoud writes. “I doubt it.”

EoZ also quotes a telegram of condolence sent upon the death of Abu Daoud in 2010, as reported in the Palestinian Media:

President Mahmoud Abbas sent a telegram of condolences yesterday over the death of the great fighter Muhammad Daoud Oudeh, ‘Abu Daoud,’ who died just before reaching 70. The telegram of condolences read: ‘The deceased was one of the prominent leaders of the Fatah movement and lived a life filled with the struggle, devoted effort, and the enormous sacrifice of the deceased for the sake of the legitimate problem of his people, in many spheres. He was at the forefront on every battlefield, with the aim of defending the [Palestinian] revolution. What a wonderful brother, companion, tough and stubborn, relentless fighter.’

Given all the talk about whether there would or would not be a moment of silence and the frequent mention — though not frequent enough — of the terrorist attack, you might think there would be some coverage of Abbas’ role in it. But then, you would be wrong.

Mahmoud Abbas is named as the financier of the Munich massacre and he praises its mastermind. Yet, he is the very Palestinian Authority president frequently referred to by the media as “moderate” and with whom Israeli leaders are supposed to negotiate.

Why is the media world so upside down? When will sanity prevail? Where’s the coverage?

In an article about Romney’s election campaign, The New York Times saw it necessary to “correct” the candidate’s suggestion that “The people of Israel deserve better than what they have received from the leader of the free world.” The quote by Romney was immediately followed by The New York Times clarification:

Some Israeli leaders do not share this view; Ehud Barak, the defense minister and former prime minister, said last year that Mr. Obama had been an ”extremely strong supporter of Israel in regard to its security.” They also have praised Mr. Obama for opposing the Palestinian Authority’s bid for statehood at the United Nations.

While there is nothing in itself wrong with a political opinion being countered with additional information, the problem is that The New York Times does not do this consistently across the board.

Clearly, The Times is not always so diligent about clarifying statements by non-reporters. For example, in an article last year about an Israeli group involved in the illegal smuggling of Palestinians across Israel’s 1967 lines, then-bureau chief Ethan Bronner quoted verbatim an entire advertisement by the group that was fiilled with demonstrably false accusations against Israel. Yet no clarification followed to correct the false assertions.

Not only did the newspaper’s editors feel it unneccessary to vet the claims in the quoted ad, they also felt it unnecessary to issue a subsequent correction or clarification of the falsehoods the article relayed.
Just another example of the double standards employed by The New York Times.

(more…)

As Syria spirals out of control, tens of thousands of refugees attempt to escape the violence. Rightfully the media continues to cover this story. A Google News search turned up 9,580 results in 0.10 seconds.

Among the media stories, Fox News reported on Syrian refugees in Jordan and The Washington Post reported on Syrian refugees in Turkey. Reuters’ AlertNet reported that:

…Syrian refugees are dependent on humanitarian aid, with some coming with only the clothes on their backs…

So there are stories on Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey receiving humanitarian aid. Yet there are no mainstream media reports on Syrian refugees in Jordan and Turkey receiving humanitarian aid from Israelis. But they are and the Israeli media has covered the story. The Times of Israel wrote:

Israeli aid groups are providing “food, medicine, and a lot of help” to Syrian refugees who have fled to Jordan and Turkey, Likud MK Ayoub Kara told AFP Thursday. The Israeli groups have been working under the auspices of European institutions to provide direct aid to the refugees, including children and infants, over the past two months, he said.

Israel National News (Arutz Sheva) wrote:

Kara, a member of Israel’s Druze minority, said the governments of Jordan and Turkey “know about the work of the Israeli organizations.”

He also noted that efforts are underway in an attempt to bring wounded Syrian refugees to Israel for treatment, AFP reported.

Note that both of the stories refer to Agence France-Presse reporting and while numerous mainstream media outlets frequently pick up AFP stories, none has seen fit to follow up on this one. As far as CAMERA could determine, the only outlet, other than Israeli media, to cover the story is L’Orient Le Jour, a French language Lebanese newspaper.

When it comes to Israel and refugees, the media is awash in flawed and incomplete stories portraying Israel negatively. A recent CAMERA article, “On Refugees and Racism, a Double Standard Against Israel,” noted:

Recent press attention has focused on the repatriation of illegal African migrants from Israel. Reuters, the Associated Press, AFP, and UPI have disseminated stories. The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Financial Times, ABC, CNN, CBC, BBC and others have added their own reports.

But, when Israelis go out of their way to help refugees from a country at war with Israel in countries unfriendly to Israel, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Financial Times, ABC, CNN, CBC, BBC and others are silent. Where’s the fairness? Where’s the balance? Where’s the coverage?

Ahmed Masoud blames an Israeli airstrike for being switched at birth, but the Gaza skies were quiet at the time

Elder of Ziyon takes down Ahmed Masoud’s tale of being switched at birth in a Gaza hospital in 1981, due to the chaos that ensued from an Israeli bombing. Masoud, a British writer and playwright, originally published his dramatic story in the Guardian, and more recently shared on CBC radio and Radio Netherlands.

Elder observes:

Wow…what a story! It is custom made for reader (and listener) sympathy. You can almost feel the heat from the explosions and smell the gunpowder, as you picture Masoud’s father desperately trying to save his baby’s life from the heartless Israeli air raid at the maternity ward, and the parents’ desperate race through the streets of Gaza – with the still recovering mother forced to flee on foot, no doubt barefooted, dodging the falling bombs and debris while tenderly protecting her newborn baby.

Only one problem: Israel didn’t bomb any hospitals in Gaza when Masoud was born. It didn’t have air raids until the second intifada.

This story happened six years before the first intifada, when tens of thousands of Gazans were peacefully commuting to and working in Israel. Hamas didn’t exist. Thousands of Israelis lived in Gaza. More from Israel would go there weekly to buy goods cheaper than they were within the Green Line. Arabs with the proper means would travel to Israel to be treated in hospitals there.

Masoud’s birthday is August 27, and I cannot find any possible actions by Israel in Gaza in 1981 or 1982 around that date. Israel was fighting in Lebanon, not Gaza, and the very few protests there were met with riot control methods, not airplanes.

This takes us back to another story of an Arab birth, flight and the brutal Israeli war machine. The June 11, 1998 front-page Boston Globe story interviewed Hakma Abu Gharoud, a refugee living in Gaza, who fled her peaceful Negev home in 1948:

then nine months pregnant, [Gharoud] fled her Arab village in panic as Israeli tanks closed in. On the road outside her village, she went into labor. As her screams were drowned out by the thunder of shelling, she delivered a baby boy in an open field. She named him Mohajir, which in Arabic means “refugee.” … Today, Mohajir and his mother still live in the squalor of the United Nations refugee camp where the family ended up after the 1948 war that gave birth to the nation of Israel but displaced some 700,000 Arabs.

But as CAMERA’s Alex Safian noted at the time:

On the date of the alleged attack against the Gharoud’s village of Ashweih, Israel had only two tanks, neither of which was operational. (Arab-Israeli Wars, A. J. Barker, p. 19) According to Chaim Herzog’s The Arab-Israeli Wars, Israel’s armored forces on that date consisted of “some scout cars and a number of crudely home-made armoured vehicles.” (p. 48) None of these vehicles were anywhere near the Gharoud’s village. Whatever caused the family to leave, it could not have been Israeli tanks or armored vehicles. Of course, [reporter Charles] Sennott never mentions that invading Arab armies possessed such weapons in abundance, which they used to overrun many Jewish communities including, for example, Yad Mordechai and Kfar Etzion. . . .

In the area of Gharoud’s village on the date in question, invading Egyptian forces were the ones on the offensive. The Israeli forces opposing them were heavily outnumbered and outgunned, totaling no more than 800 soldiers, “equipped with light arms, some light mortars, two 20-mm guns . . . and two davidkas (a type of home-made mortar) with ten bombs.” (Edge of the Sword, Netanel Lorch, p. 201) The hard pressed Israelis struggled, sometimes in vain, to defend their Negev communities, and were in no position to go on the offensive. Sennott’s article was therefore actually an inversion of history.

So Masoud was not the first to come up with a false tale about being chased at birth by Israeli weaponry that was not in use at the time. As long as journalists continue to unquestioningly accept such fictions, he won’t be the last.

Correction: This post originally misreported the year of Masoud’s birth in one reference as 1987. We regret the error.