According to a report on Gulfnews.com, 22 Al Jazeera staffers in Egypt have resigned to protest what they describe as the station’s pro-Muslim Brotherhood bias.

Anchor Karem Mahmoud announced that the staff had resigned in protest against what he called “biased coverage” of the events in Egypt by the Qatari broadcaster.

Mahmoud said that the resignations had been brought about by a perceived lack of commitment and Al Jazeera professionalism in media coverage, adding that “the management in Doha provokes sedition among the Egyptian people and has an agenda against Egypt and other Arab countries.”

Mahmoud added that the management used to instruct each staff member to favour the Muslim Brotherhood.
He said that “there are instructions to us to telecast certain news.”

This cannot be good news for Al Jazeera, which in August plans to launch Al Jazeera America, and which surely hopes to reverse U.S. perceptions that the station has a “vicious anti-Israel and anti-American bias,” as the New York Times described it in 2001.

Such anti-Western bias continues today. And although it is unlikely to lead to any resignations, as did the network’s alleged pro-Morsi bias, it is no less dangerous. For example, the blog Elder of Ziyon has recently pointed to the publicity the network has been providing for an anti-Semitic television series entitled Khaybar, including an article on the Al Jazeera website in which Khaybar’s writer explains that Jews have been, and still are, treacherous and treasonous.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is on a three-day trip to Lebanon. In addition to the approximately 70,000 Palestinian refugees in Lebanon from the fighting in Syria, there are over 450,000 Palestinians living permanently in refugee camps there. The Jerusalem Post reports:

Following a meeting with [Lebanese] President Michel Suleiman, Abbas announced that the Palestinians were guests in Lebanon and would not meddle in the country’s internal affairs.

“The presence of Palestinians is temporary until they return to their homeland,” Abbas said.

(Of course, for a homeland Abbas means all of Israel since he even told The New York Times two years ago that “as Palestinians we have been under occupation for 63 years.” That’s not since 1967… but that’s a separate little-covered story.)

One often hears of Arab hospitality, but for guests in Lebanon, the Palestinians are getting less that welcoming treatment. Khaled Abu Toameh recently wrote for the Gatestone Institute:

Palestinians have, in fact, long been treated as third-class citizens in most of the Arab countries, where they are denied not only basic rights such as employment and health care, but also citizenship.

According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees [UNRWA], Lebanon’s 450,000 Palestinian refugees have long been subject to many employment restrictions.

For example, Palestinians in Lebanon are banned from working as doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers or accountants.

By contrast, anyone visiting an Israeli hospital or medical center would quickly notice the presence of a significant number of Arab doctors, nurses and pharmacists.

The United States State Department country report on Lebanon announces:

• Palestinian refugees were subject to arbitrary arrest and detention by state security forces.

• Property laws directly and effectively exclude Palestinians […] from owning land and property.

• Palestinian refugees, including children, had limited social and civil rights and no access to public health, education, or other social services.

Yet there has been little media coverage of this shameful situation. As Khaled Abu Toameh writes:

What is disturbing about the Apartheid laws in Lebanon and the mistreatment of Palestinians by Arab countries is the silence of the international community and media.

Even UNRWA, which is supposed to look after the well-being of Palestinian refugees, continues to turn a blind eye to Lebanon’s Apartheid laws.

[…]

The Palestinian Authority and Hamas governments are also continuing to bury their heads in the sand with regards to the mistreatment of Palestinians in Lebanon and other Arab countries. The two governments are too busy fighting each other while at the same time inciting Palestinians against Israel.

Is it possible that the media and even organizations tasked with protecting Palestinian rights like UNRWA don’t actually care about oppression of Palestinians? Is it possible that it only becomes a story if it can be used as a cudgel to beat Israel? Well, systematic, legal and state-sanctioned discrimination against Palestinians exists in Lebanon and yet… Where’s the coverage?

The name of James M. Wall, associate editor of Veterans News Now, a magazine that traffics in ugly antisemitic tropes and imagery (see screenshot above), will remain on the masthead of Christian Century, a magazine that caters to mainline Protestant clergy and intellectuals in the United States. That’s the verdict from Christian Century’s executive editor, David Heim, who described Wall’s work as “prophetic.”

“James Wall did a lot for our magazine,” Heim said. “He deserves to be on our masthead.”

Heim would not comment on the antisemitism that is routinely on display at Veterans News Now.

“I’m not going to get into discussing that magazine,” Heim said, adding that there are many sides to the debate regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict and that there are many voices that need to be heard.

“Jim is one of them,” Heim said.
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In a previous blog post, Snapshots reported that James M. Wall, a contributing editor at Christian Century was a “columnist” at Veterans News Now. Well, that is true, but he is also listed as “Associate Editor” at the antisemitic publication. Here’s the screenshot:

Can someone be a a contributing editor at Christian Century and an associate editor at Veterans News Now?

Apparently so!

Update (6:30 p.m.) Wall has held this post for almost a year.

There’s no room for denial here. Christian Century, the house organ for mainline Protestantism in the United States, has a problem, a real problem.

One of its contributing editors, James M. Wall, who is listed on the magazine’s masthead, is also listed as a contributor for Veterans News Now, a publication well known for publishing anti-Jewish conspiracy theories. It’s a scandal that the folks at Christian Century can no longer ignore. The man who served as editor and a regular columnist Christian Century for many years is now writing for a magazine that demonizes Israel and American Jews in no uncertain terms.

It is a disgraceful story that can be told in screenshots, which can be seen after the jump.
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John Eibner

Christians are on the verge of being driven from Syria. That’s the message offered by John Eibner, Ph.D., who testified before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on Tuesday June 25, 2013. Eibner, who serves as Chief Executive Officer of Christian Solidary International (CSI-USA), visited Syria the week prior to his appearance before Congress. “The very existence of the religious minorities of the Middle East is under threat,” Eibner told lawmakers.

His testimony is harrowing:
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CAMERA’s Christian Media Analyst Dexter Van Zile appeared on Rabbi David Kaufman’s internet television show, “Understanding the World.” During his May 16, 2013 appearance, Van Zile spoke at length about supersessionism, the failure of churches to speak about Islamist antisemitism and violence against Christians. He also spoke about 60 Minutes’ ongoing failure to correct mistakes in its April 22, 2012 segment on Christians in the Holy Land. Host Rabbi Kaufman is the rabbi of B’Nai Jeshurun in Des Moinse, Iowa’s largest Reform Congregation.

Van Zile’s appearance begins at about 9:50 into the video.

First, Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi wrote a feature highlighting National Public Radio’s comfortable new headquarters, which lie virtually within the shadow of the U.S. Capitol.

Second, two Post readers sent letters to the editor that criticized an executive for the Washington, D.C.’s top-rated radio station — commercial news-talk outlet WTOP FM — for questioning NPR’s continued claim on taxpayers’ money, given the up-scale nature of the network’s building.

Then, Jim Farley, the WTOP executive in question, reasserted his point in a June 27 Post letter of his own:

“NPR just built a luxurious new headquarters that includes a café with chefs, a gym with a trainer, a staffed wellness center, plug-ins for electric cars and other perks. Does an organization that well-heeled still need taxpayer money?”

Farley’s complete letter follows:

Letter to the Editor

NPR doesn’t need taxpayer support
“Charles H. Ellis III and Brian Ecker [“Throwing stones at NPR’s building,” letters, June 25] missed the point I made in the June 22 [Post] Style article, “Broadcasting their discontent.” NPR just built a luxurious new headquarters that includes a cafe with chefs, a gym with a trainer, a staffed wellness center, plug-ins for electric cars and other perks. Does an organization that well-heeled still need taxpayer money?

NPR says it needed the new headquarters because it ran out of room in its old building. That’s because it is growing. It is a vibrant enterprise that can afford to do without taxpayer largesse. How much better for NPR’s independence as a news organization if it refused the King’s shilling? The construct that the organization has two piles of money, one to buy its dream home and another with federal dollars that fund operations, is so twisted it would get a small-business owner in big trouble with the IRS.

At a time when newspapers and other news organizations are practicing austerity, and all federal agencies are pinching pennies because of sequestration, it is fair to question the support our competitor, NPR, gets from the federal government.

Jim Farley, Washington
The writer is vice president of news and programming at WTOP.

Addendum — NPR Gets Tax Breaks Too

In a later article about the District of Columbia’s failure to provide promised low income housing (“In District, affordable-housing plan hasn’t delivered,” July 8), The Post referred to one neighborhood not far from the U.S. Capitol: “This spring, NPR moved in across the street. The city bestowed $40 million worth of tax abatements and froze property taxes for 20 years to keep the media organization in the city.”

“Supported by listeners like you,” is the oft-heard tag line for NPR broadcasts. To which perhaps should be added, “not to mention friends in high places and low-income residents of the District of Columbia waiting years for better housing they were told was on the way”?

For many Americans, Islamic extremism, in the form of the terrorist group Al-Qaeda, emerged from the shadows on 9-11-2001. But the recent request by the government of Bangladesh to extradite promiment British Muslim leader Chowdhury Mueen-Uddin to stand trial for atrocities committed in 1971, provides disturbing historical perspective on the phenomenon of Islamic extremism. Mueen-Uddin is a prominent Muslim leader in England. He has served as chairman of the Multi-Faith Group Healthcare Chaplaincy in Britain and is a trustee of Britain’s leading Islamic charity, Muslim Aid. He was a leading figure in the protests by the British Muslim community against Salman Rushdie.

He now stands accused as a mass murderer.

According to the indictment, Mueen-Uddin was a leader of a Pakistani Islamist group called the Al-Badr Brigade that hunted down prominent secularist intellectuals in what was then East Pakistan.

The Daily Mail Online quotes Sanaul Huq, the Inspector-General of Bangladesh’s National Police Force, who describes how

Mr Mueen-Uddin and his associates allegedly subjected their victims to horrendous torture before killing them and dumping their bodies in sports grounds which earned the nickname ‘killing fields’.

‘They abducted an eye doctor, and then gouged his eyes out before killing him and dumping his body.

‘They abducted a cardiologist and cut out his heart before killing him and dumping his body.

‘They kidnapped a woman journalist, and cut her breasts off before killing her. Her decomposing body was later found with her breasts cut off.

In nine months from March through December 1971, between 300,000 and 3 million people were murdered by the Pakistani army and their Islamist accomplices. An estimated 200,000 to 400,000 women were raped. The country’s minority Hindu population was targeted for extermination as were ethnic minorities. Most of the victims, however, were Sunni Muslims who simply did not want to be ruled by West Pakistan and the Islamists.

Interestingly, during the time he allegedly directed Islamist killing squads, Mr. Mueen-Uddin’s day-time job was as a journalist for a newspaper, the Daily Purbadesh.
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