Journalists like Ibrahim Eissa are working to expose the problems with the regime that currently governs Egypt.

Now that The New York Times has highlighted anti-Semitic statements made by Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, it is becoming increasingly evident that something is seriously wrong with the people who currently call the shots in the largest Arab country in the world.

More evidence of how bad things are getting is available a piece published at the Gatestone Institute on Jan. 9 by writer Michael Armanious. Armanious draws attention to a recent invitation for Jews to return to the Land of the Pharoahs. The invitation was issued by one of Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi’s closest advisors, Essam El-Erian. El-Erian invited Jews back to Egypt in an effort to promote his country’s economic development. Armanious reminds his readers that it was the Muslim Brotherhood – which currently controls the Egyptian government – that drove Jews from Egypt in the 1950s. He writes:
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On January 17, on page A3, you might have seen yet another in the long line of articles in The New York Times questioning Israel’s democracy. Jodi Rudoren’s “As Israeli Vote Nears, Arab Apathy Is a Concern” was only into its fourth paragraph when the reporter stated:

With Israel heading to the polls on Tuesday, the two intensifying sources of apathy are raising new concerns here over the health of Israeli democracy. Experts say a social media campaign to boycott the election and a growing frustration with Arab lawmakers’ focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rather than local concerns like crime, poverty and unemployment, threaten to depress Arab turnout below 50 percent.

A social media campaign by Arabs aimed at Arabs is not a sign that Israel’s democracy is sick. It is evidence of the freedom of political speech enjoyed by Israeli Arabs. And a frustration with ineffective politicians is again not a symptom of a weak democracy. It’s the universal condition of voters. The thesis of the article is that voter turnout among the Arab minority might dip below 50 percent and this is evidence that Israel’s democracy is under threat.

Well then, the United States must be in a pickle. According to the Center for Voting and Democracy:

After rising sharply from 1948 to 1960, turnout declined in nearly every election until dropping to barely half of eligible voters in 1988. Since 1988, it has fluctuated, from a low of 52.6% of eligible voters (and 49.1% of voting age population) in 1996 to a high of 61% of eligible voters in 2004, the highest level since 1968.

[…]

Low turnout is most pronounced in off-year elections for state legislators and local officials as well as primaries. In many cities, for example, mayors of major cities often are elected with single-digit turnout ; for example, turnout was only 5 percent of registered voters in a recent Dallas mayoral election, 6 percent in Charlotte, and 7 percent in Austin. Congressional primaries have similarly low turnout; for example, turnout was only 7 percent in a recent Tennessee primary, and was only 3 percent for a U.S. Senate primary in Texas. A statewide gubernatorial election in Kentucky has a turnout of only 6 percent since Kentucky gubernatorial elections are held in the off-off-year between mid-term congressional election and presidential elections was scheduled at a time when there were no elections for federal office. North Carolina’s runoff elections have seen turnout as low as 3 percent in statewide elections.

What about minority voters? According to the Pew Research Center, in the 2008 presidential election, voter turnout among Latino Americans was at an all-time high of 49.9 percent and among Asian Americans, another all-time high of 47 percent. Last time I checked, that’s below 50 percent. (2012 figures are as yet unavailable.)

If low voter turnout and minority voter turnout below 50 percent means a democracy is sick, the United States needs to check into the hospital. Or maybe, The Times should just get off its kick of criticizing Israel’s democracy. CAMERA suggested the news media resolve to do just that for 2013. Just two weeks into the year and already the Grey Lady has fallen short.

After the research organization MEMRI shared a video in which Mohammed Morsi, not long before he became president of Egypt, evoked an anti-Semitic slur by calling Zionists “the descedents of apes and pigs,” the amount of attention to the comments themselves was nearly eclipsed by the amount of attention to lack of reporting on the incident.

At Forbes, Richard Behar called out American press for largely (though not entirely) ignoring the revelation, and cited CAMERA’s new monograph documenting the New York Times‘ tendency to overlook anti-Israel and anti-Jewish incitement. And the Atlantic’s Jeffery Goldberg referenced the Forbes story when asking why Morsi’s anti-Semitic formulation had not been covered more widely.

The New York Times eventually did report on the video, along with another more explicit video showing Morsi calling on his countrymen to “nurse our children and our grandchildren on hatred for them: for Zionists, for Jews.”

This is important for several reasons:

• This type of hate speech is bad for Egyptian children and grandchildren, bad for Jews, and bad for Mideast peace prospects.

• The coverage raises hopes that the New York Times might begin covering anti-Jewish and anti-Israel incitement with the prominence it deserves.

• The ripples spread from the Times, to the White House and State Department, to editorials in major newspapers, all the way to Egypt, where Morsi’s office was forced to contend with the attention. (A spokesperson for Morsi probably didn’t convince many when he insisted the calls for anti-Jewish indoctrination were taken out of context.)

• With criticism coming from all corners, Morsi is unlikely to repeat his anti-Semitic slurs. Imagine, then, how the interests of peace could be advanced if Palestinian hate speech, which is no less vile than Morsi’s rant, was adequately covered in the US. More coverage could lead to more pressure on Palestinian leaders to cease the demonization of Jews and Israelis. Less incitement by the Palestinian governments (in both the Gaza Strip and West Bank) would mean less hate by the population of those territories, greater openness to compromise, and a future generation not nursed on hatred for the other.

Stay tuned for a CAMERA Op-Ed this weekend exploring the topic in greater detail.

When you think about throwing rocks, what comes to mind? Lazy summer afternoons skipping stones in a pond?

How about this?

On January 16, an Israeli child was injured when Palestinian Arabs heaved a rock through the windshield of the car he was riding in.

In December, an Arab teenager hurled a rock through the windshield of a car and nearly killed a baby when it crashed a few inches from the infant. In 2011, Asher Palmer and his infant son Yonatan were killed when their car overturned after being pelted with boulders.

In the pages of The New York Times, Tom Friedman recommended that West Bank Arabs engage in rock-throwing as part of “nonviolent opposition”. Nick Kristof described how Palestinians are taking up “noviolent peaceful resistance” of the type “inspired by the work of Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” though, he reported, they sometimes define “nonviolence to include stone-throwing.”

The columnists of The Times and other media must learn: nonviolence and rock-throwing are mutually exclusive. This is Palestinian rock-throwing:

Rock-throwing is not exactly Tom Sawyer stuff, is it? It’s violent and dangerous. So… Where’s the coverage?

Given that the news pages of Ha’aretz are falsely reporting that Israel violated a High Court injunction by evacuating Palestinian protesters from a tent camp in the controversial E-1 area, it comes as no surprise that their Op-Ed columnists are doing no better. Columnist Bradley Burston takes the false charge to a new level, charging that Israel’s alleged violation of Justice Neal Hendel’s injunction is no less than a “Naqba”(!). He writes that according to Prime Minister Netanyahu the protest camp:

needed to be destroyed despite a High Court order that appeared to give the new villagers six days to remain on the site. But in a peculiarly contemporary reinterpretation of the Naqba, the police announced that the injunction only applied to the tents. The people could be taken out. In the dead of night.

It’s a pity that Burston didn’t actually read the court injunction before he spouted off hysterical “Naqba” comparisons. The Palestinian protesters’ lawyer did read the document, and accurately characterized it. As the Jerusalem Post reported:

Attorney Tawfiq Jabareen who represented the Palestinians explain this to the High Court of Justice when he secured a temporary injunction against the outpost’s removal on Friday.

But the court’s language spoke of the tents, not the people, and added that security factors could shift the decision, Jabareen said.

So it’s not just a police claim that the injunction applied only to the tents. In fact, this is the case. For the benefit of Burston and his colleagues, here is the link to Justice Hendel’s injunction. The injunction states (CAMERA’s translation):

After studying the petition I hereby impose a temporary injunction according to clause 1 — preventing the removal or destruction of tents that were erected by the petitioners on a-Tur lands, east of Kfar al-Azeem, unless an urgent security need arises.

The respondents [the state] will respond to this temporary injunction within six days.

Traditionally, journalists read a court injunction before they report on it. Burston apparently prefers a peculiarly contemporary reinterpretation of journalism.

You may have read some of the thousands of articles about the conflict in Mali. The United States may even get involved in the French operation there. The Council on Foreign Relations links the conflict to “food insecurity related to desertification.” The Guardian’s Comment is Free asserts in a headline “Mali crisis caused by development failures” and cites specifically “corruption, desertification, impoverishment, and the inability to lure investment.” So, one would think the media would report on advances in combating desertification and the country that leads the world in doing so – unless, of course, that country were Israel, which it is.

In November, Israel hosted the fourth biannual International Conference on Drylands, Deserts and Desertification at the Sde Boker campus of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Israel also hosted the 2008 and 2010 conferences. This is not surprising since, according to Sharon Megdal, director of the Water Resources Research Center at the University of Arizona, “Israel is leading the way in water resources and management.”

Yet, CAMERA could find no mention of the conference in the popular press though, since the conference, desertification has been covered in Forbes, The New York Daily News, again The Guardian, Agence France-Presse, BBC News, and many other news outlets. The Los Angeles Times ran a glowing 1,250-word profile of an Iranian environmentalist but of the world leader… not a word.

In the conference’s opening plenum, Professor Paul Ehrlich of Stanford University declared that Israel, “as one of the most scientifically advanced countries, can play a major role in bringing all of these problems to global attention.” Perhaps Professor Ehrlich hasn’t noticed, but if there’s a story that shows Israel in a positive light, one must almost unfailingly ask… Where’s the coverage?

Conference delegates walk through the desert landscape of the Negev.
(Photo by Wolfgang Motzafi-Haller/BGU)

Contrary to the LA Times report, no tents were removed (Reuters photo)

Israel’s evacuation of a Palestinian protest camp in the E-1 area this weekend has generated a number of headlines, and a number of errors as well (some of which have already been corrected, thanks to CAMERA and our affiliate CiF Watch). Here’s another one yesterday from the Los Angeles Times:

Activists said the police carried the approximately 100 activists from the site, and then allowed them to return home. Police also removed 25 tents from the area. (Emphasis added.)

In fact, the police did not remove a single tent from the E-1 area protest camp this weekend, a fact reported in numerous media outlets including the Times of Israel, which stated: “The 25 tents at the site were left untouched, though soldiers remained at the site to keep any activists from returning.”

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld has confirmed the information for CAMERA. We have contacted editors requesting a correction. Stay tuned.

Jan. 16 Update: CAMERA Prompts LA Times Correction: No Tents Removed

UPDATE: Khaled Abu Toameh reports that his Facebook account has been reactivated, but that his posts about PA corruption have been deleted. (Jan. 15, 2013, 12:45 p.m.)

UPDATE 2: Facebook apologizes to Abu Toameh for the deleted article on Palestinian corruption, calling it an employee’s error. (Jan. 16, 2013, 6:10 a.m. EST)

Jerusalem Post journalist Khaled Abu Toameh has informed us that Facebook has closed his account, apparently in response to complaints concerning articles he posted, including “The Palestinian Authority’s Inconvenient Truths,” as well as Jordanian article criticizing corruption in that country.

Abu Toameh, who has spoken at CAMERA events, reports; “In the past few days I have been bombarded with dozens of hate and threat messages because of the these postings and articles. Some anti-Israel folks in the UK are now publishing my photo with a Star of David on my forehead.”

What are Facebook’s criteria for closing an account? As he notes, Hamas and members of other terrorist groups continue to operate accounts. Abu Toameh has not yet received an answer from Facebook. Contact Facebook for clarification: why was Khaled Abu Toameh’s account closed?

Christophe Deghelt

Italian author Umberto Eco called their ideas “absolutely crazy” and “fundamentally racist.”

Irish writer Gerard Donovan referred to them as “idiots” who try to bully and cajole and are guilty of “outright intimidation.”

The band Dervish was on the receiving end of their “avalanche of negativity”, “venom” and “hatred.” (Irish justice minister Alan Shatter described it as “cyberbullying.”)

And now Jazz musicians Erik Truffaz and Jack Terrasson, and Terrasson’s manager Christophe Deghelt are the latest artists to defy and speak out against the anti-Israel boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement.

Deghelt writes:

For some time now, artists invited to play a concert in Israel are routinely accosted by organizations urging them not to travel there, nor to support the Israeli government and its politics. …

For the last several days, two jazz artists, Erik Truffaz and Jack Terrasson have been swept into a fierce controversy, a furious and passionate debate on Facebook and other social networks and websites regarding their participation at the Red Sea Jazz Festival in Eilat, Israel this month. …

We noticed that Erik and Jacky’s Facebook pages were overrun with intimidating comments, not from our fans, but from activists. Some of these comments are really obnoxious, rising to the level of sheer harassment and blatant denigration.

Addressing the BDS activists, Deghelt wrote,

Your attempt to railroad artists into a black-and-white dilemma is intellectually dishonest. To allege that by performing at the Red Sea Jazz Festival we are supporting the Israeli government, or that by cancelling our concert we’ll be showing our compassion towards the Palestinian people, demonstrates an extremely reductive attitude. We refuse to be placed in either category. …

Your activism and your intolerance are abominable. Phony Facebook “fans” have posted messages expressly asking our musicians not play in Israel. This is sheer harassment. Moreover, it’s really quite surprising because these fans purporting to sway the artists are not fans at all, but simply your army of little soldiers polluting the calm and positive spaces of our artists’Facebook pages. …

What bothers me the most about your effort…is your hatred of Israel, a pathological hatred, blind and most assuredly hidden behind a veil of “political correctness.” Your actions don’t demonstrate a love or defense of Palestinians but rather a hatred for Israelis.

Read Deghelt’s entire post here, or in French here.

Writing in Ha’aretz, Israeli professor Shlomo Avineri argue that negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority are unlikely to bridge the gaps between the sides, and calls for reduced expectations, interim agreements, trust-building exercises, unilateral steps and other mechanisms.

There is a long list of steps Israel could take following this model. It could halt construction projects in the territories, ease up on the living conditions of Palestinians, and put a stop to the measures intended to punish the Palestinians for earning UN recognition. On the Palestinian side, such a list would include accepting the idea of two states for two peoples. This would mean a fundamental change in the Palestinian education system and in its propaganda, both of which evince a deep hatred toward Israel.

What Avineri perhaps forgets is that such an offer was on the table not long ago. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu proposed to extend Israel’s moratorium on settlement building if the Palestinians accepted the idea of two states for two people. The Palestinian leadership quickly said no.