The opening paragraph of today’s New York Times story about recent violence in the Middle East explains,

A Palestinian man was killed in an Israeli missile strike in Gaza on Tuesday hours after an Israeli civilian was stabbed to death by a Palestinian in the West Bank. The two attacks, coming against a backdrop of growing tensions, were the first such killings in months and raised the specter of further confrontation.

Imagine you are an experienced and impartial headline writer at one of the most prominent newspapers in the world. What’s your headline?

Surely something more impartial than the one the Times is currently going with: “Israeli Airstrike Kills Palestinian in Gaza.”

In our monograph about New York Times bias in coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we point out that, during a 6-month study period, “the newspaper’s coverage of violence was marked by a double standard that highlighted Israeli attacks and de-emphasized Palestinian ones.” Today’s choice of headline language is case in point.

Update: The Times has updated its online headline so that it fairly reflects the content of the story. It now reads, “Gazan Killed After Israeli Is Stabbed to Death in the West Bank.”

Emily Harrold, a 22-year-old filmmaker, has produced an 18-minute documentary about the New York Times’ failure to adequately cover the Holocaust. Inspired by Laurel Leff’s book Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper, Reporting on The Times: The NY Times and the Holocaust was just screened at the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival as well as the Nashville Film Festival.

The executive summary of CAMERA’s 2012 monograph, Indicting Israel: New York Times Coverage of the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict notes Leff’s findings that, in the words of publisher Arthur Hayes Sulzberger, the paper “went to great lengths to avoid having been branded a ‘Jewish newspaper.'” CAMERA continues: “The same mind-set continued to shape the news years later,” citing the paper’s reframing of the 1991 African-American violence against Jews in Crown Heights, as well as downplaying and distorting Palestinian violence against Israel, both in 2002 as well as in 2011, when CAMERA carried out studies.

(Hat tip: NDW)

Not for the first time, the Ha’aretz English edition uses a year-old photograph without indicating it is a file photo, passing it off as if it is more current and more relevant to the accompanying story than it actually is.

The latest case is a page-one photograph from Thursday’s paper (April 25):

The photograph in question accompanies an article headlined (“AG authorizes Shin Bet to read tourists’ emails at Ben-Gurion”), and is captioned:

A left-wing activist being arrested at Ben-Gurion.

(A different version of the print article is available online.)
(more…)

Via the Jerusalem Post

A poll released this week by Jewish News One, an independent non-profit international Jewish news network, says that four out of five UK Jews believe the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is biased against the State of Israel.

You can read about the poll here.

The Algemeiner writes:

Andrea Levin

Director, CAMERA

As a global media watchdog group, Levin’s CAMERA is unparalleled, and as an ambassador of the truth, it is indispensable. With erudition and eloquence, Levin’s organization holds increasingly incompetent news outlets and reporters accountable for their inaccuracies and bias. In 2012 CAMERA continued its eagle-eyed work, prompting such global news outlets as The New York Times and Yahoo to issue corrections to their reports.

In a piece in The American Thinker, novelist Noah Beck writes sympathetically about the tragic Boston Marathon bombing, calling victims “the epitome of innocent.” He continues:

But imagine if this happened again next week, at a pizzeria, killing 15 diners. And again, a week later, on a bus, killing 19 passengers. Then at a discotheque, killing 21 teens. Then at a church, killing 11 worshipers. And so on, with a new bombing terrorizing us almost every week.

Israelis don’t have to imagine; they just have to remember. Between 1995 and 2005, each year saw an average of 14 suicide bombings, murdering 66 victims. Two thousand two was the worst year, with 47 bombings that slaughtered 238 people. That’s almost one Boston bombing every week. Adjusted for population differences, Israel’s victims in 2002 amounted to the equivalent of three 9/11s in one year. And these bombing statistics don’t include all of the shootings, stabbings, and other violent attacks by Palestinian extremists during those years.

Unfortunately, as Beck notes, “the incidents usually received only scant and perfunctory media coverage, if they were mentioned at all.”

Much follow-up news coverage of Boston Marathon bombing suspects Tamerlan and Dzohkar Tsarnaev was, perhaps by necessity, repetitive. Many articles reported on those wounded by the blast, the brothers’ family members and the status of the investigation.

But USA Today’s April 24 feature, “Mosque that brothers visited tied to radicals; Older suspect was at odds with ‘moderate’ theology, official claims” broke new ground. Reporter Oren Dorell noted that “several people who attended the Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge, Mass., have been investigated in terrorism cases. … Its sister mosque in Boston, the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, has invited guests who have defended terrorism suspects.” (The online version is somewhat longer than the print article.)

These guests include, according to USA Today, Abdulrahman Alamoudi, “who signed the articles of incorporation as the Cambridge mosque’s president, [and] was sentence to 23 years in federal court in 2004 for his role in a Libyan assassination plot against then-Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.”

Also: Tarek Mehanna, sentenced in 2012 to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid al-Qaeda; Ahman Abousamra, wanted as Mehanna’s co-conspirator; Aafia Siddiqui, serving 86 years after conviction in 2010 for planning a chemical attack in New York City; and Jamal Badawi, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism case, in which five men were convicted at retrial of raising more than $12 million for Hamas.

Spotlighting an important part of follow-up coverage of the bombing many other major news media had not yet reported, USA Today more fully informed readers and did so without pulling linguistic punches. The newspaper refers in its own words to “terrorism suspects,” “terrorist activity” and “terrorism cases” without sanitizing euphemisms.

When terrorists bomb a public place in Israel, injuring dozens and even killing children, or when an Israeli police officer is killed by terrorists, it is not all that jarring to most of the world. Though it should be.

Last week, radicalized Muslim terrorists reportedly bombed the Boston Marathon, injuring dozens and killing three civilians including an eight-year-old boy. Subsequently, they allegedly also murdered a young police officer.

In the wake of this tragedy, both victims and the admitted terrorist are being treated by doctors who were trained in Israel, and in the case of Professor Kevin (Ilan) Tabb, the director of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (the BI), an actual Israeli. Suspected terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being treated at the BI as are 24 people who were injured in the attack, among them 16 who are in serious condition.

According to an article in Ynet:

“Unfortunately, I have had a lot of experience with these types of injuries after years of treating people injured in terror attacks in Israel,” said the professor, who is a member of the board of Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem, where he studied medicine and completed his residency. “We have a few Israeli doctors in the emergency room, and the director of the ER is also Israeli.”

[…]

“It was very similar to what I was used to in Israel in that we had to admit many injured people in a short period of time,” Professor Tabb said. “The fact that we are treating both the victims and the suspected terrorist also reminds me of similar situations in Israel. In Israel we had an injured soldier and a terrorist lying on adjacent beds. When an injured person is admitted to the ER, the doctor or nurse treats him without asking questions.”

These facts have not received much coverage, except in the Israeli and Jewish press. No surprise there. Even more important, however, is their broader implication. Israel is not just a great friend and ally to the United States. Israel is on the front line of our own battle.

The tragic events in Boston call to mind an article published in The Los Angeles Times on May 26, 1968, after Israel’s surprising triumph in the defensive war of 1967, known as The Six Day War. A career manual laborer and brilliant thinker named Eric Hoffer, frequently called the Longshoreman Philosopher, wrote a piece entitled, “Israel’s Peculiar Position” that read in part:

The Jews are a peculiar people: things permitted to other nations are forbidden to the Jews.

[…]

Other nations when victorious on the battlefield dictate peace terms. But when Israel is victorious it must sue for peace. Everyone expects the Jews to be the only real Christians in this world.

Other nations when they are defeated survive and recover, but should Israel be defeated it would be destroyed. Had Nasser triumphed last June he would have wiped Israel off the map, and no one would have lifted a finger to save the Jews.

[…]

Yet at this moment Israel is our only reliable and unconditional ally. We can rely more on Israel than Israel can rely on us. And one has only to imagine what would have happened last summer had the Arabs and their Russian backers won the war, to realize how vital the survival of Israel is to America and the West in general.

I have a premonition that will not leave me; as it goes with Israel so will it go with all of us. Should Israel perish the holocaust will be upon us.

And this is a fact that is ignored by the media, academia, political and thought leaders alike. Israel is more than a friend and benefit to America and the West. Israel is the canary in the coal mine. And yet… Where’s the Coverage?

To read Hoffer’s brilliant and prescient piece in its entirety, please click here.

Once again, Ha’aretz translators are again engaging in creative, even shocking, translations, inserting text into the English edition which is diametrically opposed to the Hebrew original. In an article today regarding a judicial proceeding against Palestinian prisoner Samer Issawi, who is refusing food, the English edition reports online:

During the hearing, which took place next door to Issawi’s hospital room, he stood up and removed his clothes. He looked very thin and skeleton-like, according to witnesses present at the hearing. “You showed this look a few days ago when you showed the victims of the Holocaust,” Issawi then told the hearing, referring to Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this month.

Those who attended the meeting report that Judge Kaufmann and the Military Prosecutor’s Office representatives were shocked at how Issawi looked, and agreed to the comparison. (Emphasis added.)

The wording in the print edition is very similar, and includes the error:

But the original Hebrew article by Jack Khoury does not state that the judge and prosecutors agreed with Issawi’s comparison of himself to Holocaust victims. Rather it says that they were shocked by it. The Hebrew reads:

נוכחי? בדיון סיפרו כי השופטת ונציגי הפרקליטות הזדעזעו ממר?ה העציר וג? מההשוו?ה שעשה

It states (CAMERA’s translation):

People who attending the hearing said that the judge and representatives of the prosecutor’s office were shocked by the prisoner’s appearance and by the comparison that he made.

CAMERA staff have contacted editors and requested a correction. (For earlier Ha’aretz corrections prompted by CAMERA, see here.) Stay tuned for an update.

Update: For the Hebrew version of this post, please see Presspectiva.

Update II, 2:40 PM EST — Ha’aretz Commendably Corrects Online

Following communication from CAMERA staff, Ha’aretz editors promptly corrected the online article, which now states:

Those who attended the meeting report that Judge Kaufmann and the Military Prosecutor’s Office representatives were shocked at how Issawi looked, and by the comparison that he made.

In addition, the following note appears at the end of the article:

Stay tuned for details about a correction in the print edition.

Update III, April 24, Ha’aretz Runs Print Correction

Monday, watchdog group UN Watch sent a letter to the Director General of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization:

UN Watch is alarmed by the reported destruction by Hamas of parts of the ancient Anthedon Harbor in Gaza for use as a terrorist training camp. We urge you to bring the matter immediately before the UNESCO Executive Board, currently meeting at its 191st session in Paris, for protective action.

We note the tragic irony that this destruction by the rulers of Gaza comes exactly one year after the area was nominated by new UNESCO member state Palestine as a World Heritage site.

As you must know, earlier last month, despite criticism from nongovernmental organizations, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades of Hamas bulldozed a part of the Anthedon Harbor in northern Gaza along the Mediterranean Sea, according to yesterday’s report by Al Monitor Palestine Pulse.

Hamas damaged the harbor in order to expand its “military training” zone, which was initially opened on the location in 2002, according to your own UNESCO representative in Gaza, Yousef al-Ejla.

UNESCO itself describes Anthedon, the historical significance of which dates back to 800 BCE, as a port that continued to thrive thru Neo-Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine and early Islamic periods:

The present site consists of a variety of elements which spread in the area from the seashore, including the underwater archaeology, to the inland: the ruins of a Roman temple and a section of a wall have been uncovered, as well as Roman artisan and living quarters, including a series of villas, testifying of the city of Anthedon. Mosaic floors, warehouses and fortified structures are found in the area.

Despite the importance of the site, its at-least-partial destruction has attracted very little mainstream news media attention. Outside of the Jewish and Israeli press and some blogs, CAMERA could find coverage in only The Washington Times, The Washington Free Beacon, FrontPage Magazine, and TheBlaze.com. The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, NPR, the network news, cable news channels… nothing.

Al-Monitor quotes Deputy Minister of Tourism in Gaza Muhammad Khela saying that the location was taken for “military” use:

“We can’t stand as an obstacle in the way of Palestinian resistance; we are all a part of a resistance project, yet we promise that the location will be limitedly used without harming it at all,” Khela explained.

[…]

“If the location was excavated already, I don’t think it would have been possible for anyone to take it over,” Khela explained, adding that “it should be UNESCO and other donating groups’ job to do so.”

Yet, UNESCO and Palestinian leaders have repeatedly failed to protect sites that have been excavated and that are even in use to this day. Though UNESCO’s constitution, Article 1 Paragraph 2c, states that the organization’s purpose is to “maintain, increase and diffuse knowledge by assuring the conservation and protection of the world’s inheritance of books, works of art and monuments of history and science,” UNESCO has been mute on repeated attacks on archeologically significant Jewish sites that were, if not allowed by, at least ignored by Palestinian authorities obligated to protect them.

Rachel’s Tomb, described by some as the second holiest place of worship in Judaism, comes under frequent rock and Molotov cocktail attack as do the Jews who worship there.

Visitors to Joseph’s Tomb report that vandals had urinated at the entrance to the tomb and there were indications on the wall and window of attempts to start a fire there.

Instead of protecting these and other sites from Palestinian damage, UNESCO, like many United Nations agencies, focuses disproportionate criticism on Israel. UN Watch notes in its letter to the organization:

According the current UNESCO session timetable, there are in fact four agenda items dedicated exclusively to Palestinian issues: Items 9, 10, 34, and 35, while Item 5 includes a fifth report on this issue. Israel is the only country in the world that is targeted for specific criticism in this session.

Though the United States withdrew funding for UNESCO when the organization admitted Palestine as a member state in 2011, the Obama administration seeks to restore $77.7 million in funding in the proposed 2014 budget:

The Administration seeks Congressional support for legislation that would provide authority to waive legislative restrictions that, if triggered, would prohibit paying U.S. contributions to United Nations specialized agencies that grant the Palestinians the same standing as member states or full membership as a state. Should the Congress pass this waiver legislation, the FY 2014 funding specifically requested for UNESCO would cover the FY 2014 UNESCO assessment and the FY 2013 and FY 2014 Contingent Requirements funding would cover arrears which accrued in FY 2012 and FY 2013.

Jewish heritage sites, which should be protected by the Palestinian Authority, are regularly desecrated and Hamas destroys a 3,000-year-old archeological treasure in Gaza yet UNESCO does nothing? Where’s the outcry in the archeological community? Where’s the outrage among academics? Where, oh where’s the coverage?