You may have seen CAMERA’s recent advertisement in The Wall Street Journal calling for CBS to correct on-air the falsehoods contained in the “Christians in the Holy Land” story broadcast on 60 Minutes on April 22, 2012. Not only was the story replete with inaccuracies, but it completely ignored the true suffering of Christians under Arab and Muslim regimes.

Case in point: Iran. Major media outlets have said precious little about the widespread persecution of Christians under the rule of Iran’s Ayatollahs. Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), told The Jerusalem Post:

Iran continues to persecute Christians simply because of their religious beliefs. Sadly, this nation is one of the world’s worst offenders when it comes to abusing religious and human rights.

Iran would prefer that the outside world never know what’s happening to these pastors — the imprisonment, the torture, and the executions.

The ACLJ is following the cases of at least three Christian pastors who have been imprisoned in Iran: Youcef Nadarkhani, Benham Irani and Farshid Fathi. The organization reported:

Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who has spent 1022 days in prison for his faith under the threat of execution, is only one of many Christians persecuted in Iran for their faith. Recently, the ACLJ learned that Iranian Christian Pastor Farshid Fathi, who was arrested on December 26, 2010, lost his appeal and is now serving six years for his faith in the notorious Evin prison.

[…]

Roughly thirty miles away, another Christian Pastor languishes in jail. Pastor Behnam Irani … was not formally charged with apostasy, the verdict sentencing him includes text that describes the pastor as an apostate and reiterates that apostates “can be killed.”

And yet, a Google News search for “Farshid Fathi” turned up few mentions and none in major media outlets. Even fewer turned up under a search for “Benham Irani” and of notable mainstream media outlets, only The Wall Street Journal allotted any space to “Youcef Nadarkhani.”

If the press is concerned with the plight of Christians in the Middle East, it is curious that there is so little attention to these cases. One might easily ask of, say, CBS… Where’s the coverage?

“Valley of the Wolves Palestine” poster. Photo: DVZ.

In his article “The Turkish Lobby Played a Long Game – And Won” CAMERA Analyst Dexter Van Zile documents how the Turkish government successfully blocked the production of a movie about the Armenian Genocide. Ironically, Turkish filmmakers have demonized Israel in the United States in a franchise of their own – The Valley of the Wolves. After summarizing the hypocrisy, Van Zile asks, “What’s wrong with this picture?”

MEMRI has provided a useful clip from al Manar TV (Aug. 7, 2012) in which Hezbollah MP (and former military commander) Walid Sakariya tells the host that “The nuclear weapon is meant to create a balance of terror with Israel, to finish off the Zionist enterprise…”

He also expressed the hope that Iran would share its nuclear weapons with Syria… and who knows, maybe Hezbollah too.

Apparently, MP Sakariya does not subscribe to the hypothesis of former Columbia University professor Kenneth Waltz that Iranian nuclear weapons should be welcomed because they will bring stability to the region.

Unlike PBS News hour host Judy Woodruff, MP Sakariya is not impressed with University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer’s assertion that nuclear weapons are “weapons of peace” lacking any offensive capability.

In broadcast on pro-Israel voters, NPR cites Stephen Walt’s (above) Harvard credentials, but doesn’t note that his views on the subject are highly controversial

The latest quarterly review of NPR’s Middle East coverage, carried out by former foreign editor John Felton, has been posted since at least July 19. In it, he points out several instances in which reporters gave insufficient descriptions of sources quoted on air. About some of the sources, he wrote: “As with all ‘analysts’ quoted by NPR reporters, listeners deserved to hear a little more background, if only to help them judge the analysts’ credibility.”

Well, it appears that not all NPR reporters got the memo. How do we know this? On the July 29 “All Things Considered” broadcast about pro-Israel voters, host Guy Raz gives extensive air time to Stephen Walt, and introduces him as “Harvard professor Stephen Walt, author of the book The Israel Lobby.” No mention that the book is highly controversial, that Harvard’s Kennedy School removed its logo from Walt’s paper and added a strong disclaimer, and that critics have noted numerous factual problems with it.

Raz also interviews Peter Beinart, identifying him as “the editor of Open Zion, a blog about Israel and Palestine featured on the Daily Beast.” Again, listeners are given no indication that Beinart is also a controversial figure, and that critics have charged that his blog, far from open, is a one-sided attack on Israel.
(more…)

Journalists in Gaza protest Hamas’ treatment of the media (date unknown) (Photo from Maan)

In 2007, Hamas official Mahmoud Abu Marzook promised Los Angeles Times readers that Gaza under Hamas will be a place where journalists “will be treated with dignity.” In line with earlier examples of Hamas’ version of dignified treatment of journalists, the International Federation of Journalists reports that Hamas is harassing elected officials of the Palestinian Journalists’ Syndicate.

Will Western journalists, including those at the Christian Science Monitor, look out for their colleagues in Gaza and report on this latest case of the harassment of journalists? Or is censorship in Gaza only interesting if Israel can be blamed, justifiably or not?

Over the weekend, The New York Times published an Op-Ed by Avraham Burg entitled, “Israel’s Fading Democracy,” in which the author argues:

Israel today is a religious, capitalist state. Its religiosity is defined by the most extreme Orthodox interpretations.

[…]

With the elevation of religious solidarity over and above democratic authority, Israel has become more fundamentalist and less modern, more separatist and less open to the outside world.

CAMERA recently documented The New York Times‘ slanted editorial policy which overwhelmingly features “obsessive hectoring and criticism of Israel.” But this problem is not limited to The Times. Currently, “The Economist” is hosting an online debate, Is Israel succumbing to Jewish fundamentalism? The fact that such a question is even entertained in the media is nothing short of Orwellian, given that Israel is the only liberal democracy in the region where residents are free to practice their religion as they see fit or to practice no religion at all.

Contrast Israel’s freedom of religion with the restrictive policies of its neighbors.

In June, Saudi Arabia beheaded a man for witchcraft and the state reportedly executed two people last year on similar charges. The BBC reported:

The BBC’s Arab Affairs Editor, Sebastian Usher, says there is a very strong prohibition of some practices from the country’s powerful conservative religious leaders.

Last month, the State Department called on Iran to release Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani who is facing execution for converting from Islam to Christianity. He has been in prison for almost three years already.

In Egypt, recent sectarian riots forced many Christian families from their homes and shops which were looted and burned by Muslim mobs. The ancient Coptic community is unhappy with the post-revolution Muslim Brotherhood government which they feel under-represents them and, as reported in The Jerusalem Post:

Christians complain school books discriminate against them as they include verses from Koran that both Muslim and Christian students are required to study, but make no reference to the Bible.

Several weeks ago, hundreds of Gaza Christians protested the kidnapping and forced conversion of several members of their community. As described by The Gatestone Institute:

According to Christian families, the world does not seem to care about their plight. “We only hear voices telling us to stay where we are and to stop making too much noise,” said a Christian man living in Gaza City. “If they continue to turn a blind eye to our tragedy, in a few months there will be no Christians left in Palestine. Today it’s happening in the Gaza Strip, tomorrow it will take place in Bethlehem.”

And indeed, oppression of Christians is taking place under the Palestinian Authority. According to the official PA newspaper, six people have been arrested and one sentenced to a month in prison for eating in public during Ramadan, the month when, under Islamic law, eating is prohibited from sunrise until sunset. And, in an interview on PA TV, Sheikh Yusuf Ida’is, the Chairman of the PA Supreme Court for Shari’ah Law, said:

Our streets are Islamic, praise Allah. Any person caught committing this sin in public during Ramadan has to be imprisoned until the end of Ramadan, as an example to others.

So, while the media are obsessed with criticizing Israel, even to the point of promoting absurd stories of religious fundamentalism, they routinely ignore the rising tide of true religious fundamentalism throughout the rest of the Middle East.

Where’s the sanity? Where’s the decency? Where’s the coverage?

The Washington Post’s Colbert I. King reminds readers of the threat the Iranian government poses to Israel, including the possibility of nuclear destruction, and the shame in turning a blind eye to those who would repeat the horrors that haunt the 20th century. According to King, “the leaders of today’s Iran” echo the Third Reich, yet there is a “global ho-hum response to the most virulent form of state-sponsored anti-Semitism since Nazi Germany” (“Echoes of the Third Reich,” August 4).

The commentary describes Iran as “the greatest threat to Jews to emerge in the past 70 years” and cautions that its aggressiveness is not limited to Israel. Today’s international focus on the Islamic Republic’s potential acquisition of nuclear weaponry is, according to King, “too narrow a view” of Iran’s fanaticism and globally sponsored antisemitism. Iran’s fingerprints can be “found in attacks on Jews in Bulgaria, India, Thailand, and Georgia” and “contending that Iran’s threat is mainly to Israel is to ignore reality…”

On the importance of recall, King writes, “I do, as a non-Jew, recognize vicious anti-Semitism when I see it. The Iranian government is as anti-Semitic as the Third Reich.”

The columnist quotes Iranian leadership, which echoes Adolf Hitler’s call for destruction of the Jews. In a recent address in Tehran to ambassadors of Islamic countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, “Any freedom lover and justice-seeker in the world must do its best for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the path for the establishment of justice and freedom in the world.” Similarly, in what King calls setting “the standard of hatred” for Jews, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi alleged—at a U.N.-sponsored conference on the illegal drug trade—that the Talmud teaches to “destroy everyone who opposes the Jews.”

Stressing that the Iranian threat is not only an issue of Jewish or Israeli concern, King issued a moral challenge: “We did not stop the greatest atrocity of the 20th century. What of the next?” Without exaggeration but with rare and necessary directness, King asked, “if we are to honor the pledge of ‘never again,’ will we be up to preventing the potential genocide of the 21st century?” — Erin Dwyer, CAMERA Washington research intern

CAMERA’s Christian Media Analyst Dexter Van Zile’s article, “Meet Taner Akcam, Anti-Denialist”, published in The New English Review states:

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan has a problem.

His name is Taner Akcam.

Akcam, a native of Turkey who currently teaches history at Clark University in Worcester, Mass., is calling on Erdogan and the government he leads to acknowledge the crimes perpetrated against Armenians and other minority populations in the early 1900s by the Committee for Union and Progress (or “Young Turks”) in its effort to create a homogenous Turkish state from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire.

Read the entire article here.

Shamai Leibowitz, spied on Israel for the National Security Agency until he was sentenced to 20 months in prison for leaking secret transcripts (Photo by AP)

Let’s decode AP’s alarmist article on how Israel spies on its American ally.

Number of paragraphs in the article: 37

Number of paragraphs dealing with Israel spying, or suspected spying, on U.S.: 25

Number of paragraphs dealing with American spying on Israel: 4

Placement of paragraphs dealing with American spying on Israel: paragraphs 19-23

Number of paragraphs dealing with specific incidents of Israeli spying on the U.S.: 15

Number of paragraphs dealing with specific incidents of American spying on Israel: 0

Language describing Israeli spying on U.S.: “meddling,” “counterintelligence threat,” “intrusions in homes,” “highly sophisticated, professional spy services,” “espionage incidents,” “trying to steal American secrets”

Language describing U.S. spying on Israel: “The tension exists on both sides,” “kept tabs on Israel,” “spying,” “listening to intercepts”

Number of words in an Oct. 31, 2008 secret memorandum (released by WikiLeaks), sent under Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s name, requesting intelligence on topics including “Israel’s decision-making process for launching military operations and determining retaliation for terrorist attacks”; details on Israel Defense Forces operations against Hamas, “including targeted assassinations and tactics/techniques used by ground and air units”; and everything about information technologies used by “government and military authorities, intelligence and security services”: 5000

Number of words in the AP document about that secret memorandum: 0

Daniel Pipes saves us the trouble of tracking known cases of the U.S. spying on Israel. For additional details on American spying on Israel, see here.

Writing a day after deadly attack in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and across the border in Israel, BBC’s Jonathan Marcus explained that

Sunday night’s attack on an Egyptian military post in the Sinai Peninsula marks a step change in the violence that has dogged the area for some time.

Israel is already pointing the finger at jihadist extremists.

Those crazy Israelis.