Four Jewish girls, Fara Zeibak, Mazal Zeibak, Eva Saad and Lulu Zeibak. were raped, killed, and mutilated while trying to flee Syria to Israel in 1974.

It is fair to describe the Alawites of Syria as a “long-oppressed group,” which National Geographic does in its March 2014 feature about fighting in Syria. But in the same paragraph, reporter Anne Barnard downplays the suffering of Syria’s Jews, stating only that “most left after the founding of Israel, when the government began viewing them with suspicion.”

Was it mere “suspicion” (the author doesn’t clarify whether the mistrust was deserved or unfounded) that reduced a community of tens of thousands to just a few dozen, or was it much worse?

It was in Syria that the “first serious blood libel in the Arab world” targeted the Jewish community, historian Norman Stillman explained. The charge that Jews murdered two Christians to use their blood for Passover rituals in 1840 brought torture and death to the Jewish community. Jewish children were taken hostage. A letter from Damascus pleading for help reported that “the Governor with a body of 600 men proceeded to demolish the houses of his Jewish subjects, hoping to find the bodies, but not finding any he returned and again inflicted on them further castigations and torments, the most cruel of which was the tying one end of a cord to the member of virility by the other end of which they were dragged through the Governor’s Palace to a water closet into which they were thrown.”

Nearly 100 years later, in 1936, JTA reported that in Damascus, “Jewish shopkeepers were forced to join [a] general strike under threats that their establishments would be burned down.”

In 1944, the city’s Jewish quarter “was twice attacked by mobs,” Maurice Rouhani pointed out in his chronicle of Jews in the Arab world.

The crescendo of anti-Jewish persecutions in the 1930s and 40s came to a climax in 1947. That December in Aleppo, Rouhani notes, “an unknown number of Jews were butchered to death by mobs that burned four big synagogues, 14 smaller ones and destroyed 150 homes.” In short, “the Jews of Syria were completely paralyzed, isolated and terrified.”

In the years that followed, the emasculated Jewish community was encumbered with severe travel restrictions, boycotts, and a virtual ban from Syrian universities, and other indignities.

The plight of Jews in Arab countries has too often been downplayed in the media. National Geographic‘s “suspicious” account of Syrian Jews only further harms understanding of Jewish history in the Middle East.

For many years, Amnesty International [AI] has pursued an agenda hostile to Israel. Like its sister organization Human Rights Watch, AI was originally founded to expose and combat human rights abuses by oppressive regimes, but its mission has been corrupted over the years by activists intent on ostracizing the Jewish state. Its biased reports on Israel’s Cast Lead military operation [Dec. 27, 2008 to Jan. 18, 2009] and numerous other reports published under its banner over the years attest to the organization’s inability to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in a credible and balanced manner.

The Feb. 27, 2014 issue of the Algemeiner, an online Jewish newspaper, interviews Anne Herzberg, legal counsel for NGO Monitor, an Israeli group that scrutinizes non-governmental organizations like AI that inject themselves into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. NGO Monitor has provided an important service by naming names and identifying the anti-Israel activities and affiliations of some of the activists hired by AI. Among them are

Deborah Hyams, [who] was a human shield in Beit Jala; the Amnesty US Israel researcher, Edith Garwood, used to be a member of the International Solidarity Movement.

Hyams signed a letter claiming Israel is “a state founded on terrorism, massacres and the dispossession of another people from their land.”

The International Solidarity Movement is a cult-like group that sends impressionable young Westerners into harms way to interfere with Israeli anti-terrorist operations. Several of these young people have lost their lives carrying out the dangerous activities urged upon them by this irresponsible extremist group.

The article also reveals that AI has collaborated with individuals connected to terrorism. Herzberg mentions one of these individuals, Moazzem Begg, who was just arrested this past Tuesday in the UK on terrorism-related charges.

The same issue of the Algemeiner published an article on a new report just released by AI accusing Israel of committing human rights violations.

The Algemeiner article provides a video of one of the incidents which AI accused Israeli soldiers of acting disproportionately. It shows Palestinians throwing large rocks capable of seriously injuring the soldiers.
The article also observes that the

report on Israel killing (by Amnesty’s count) 22 civilians in 2013 is 87 pages long. It goes into detail about every single one of those deaths, humanizing the victims and interviewing multiple friends of each, all in an attempt to paint Israel in the worst light possible.

By contrast,

Amnesty’s report about Egyptian repression since July 2013, where 1,400 people were killed, is only 49 pages long. It only provides details on a few specific cases, and most of those aren’t even for people being killed but for other violations of human rights.

The amplified focus on alleged Israeli disproportionate action, accompanied by an extensive portrait of the alleged victims, is a longstanding pattern with Amnesty International.

On a number of college campuses, this week is “Israel Apartheid Week,” a week where anti-Israel activists try to fool students into believing Israel systematically and legally oppresses minorities. This is a particularly ironic accusation since Freedom House, an independent watchdog group dedicated to the expansion of freedom around the world, has rated Israel as the only free country in the Middle East.

If these activists were concerned with human rights, they would be sponsoring North Korea Apartheid Week, Iran Apartheid Week or Syria Kill-Over-One-Hundred-and-Forty-Thousand-Civilians Week. Activists could be marching against Saudi Arabia, where violations of human rights laws are enshrined in the Kingdom’s legal code, including the systemic discrimination against women and minorities, where citizens are subject to arbitrary arrest and detention, denial of fair and public trials, torture and abuse, restrictions on freedoms of speech, assembly, association, movement, severe restrictions on religious freedom, and where homosexual activity is punishable by flogging or death by stoning.

Want to see who is behind “Israel Apartheid Week”? Here are a few of the culprits:

Many of the “Israel Apartheid Week” organizers are part of the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions (BDS) movement, aimed not at ending human rights violations, but at damaging Israel. As CAMERA reported:

This is the reality behind BDS: the BDS movement is simply a smokescreen for the delegitimization of Israel and an effort to undermine the self-determination of the Jewish people. As BDS proponent Ahmend Moor said, “Ending the occupation doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t mean upending the Jewish state itself.”

How is BDS doing? Well, as of now, 250 university presidents or chancellors have publicly rejected an academic boycott of Israel and the list is growing. Even students are starting to wise up. The UCLA student council just defeated a symbolic anti-Israel divestment resolution. But some of them are still fooled. The blog Legal Insurrection posted a video of one of the resolution organizers reacting to its defeat. She did not take it well. (Be aware, she uses some profanity.):

But as to the truth about so-called “Israel Apartheid Week”… In the mainstream media… Where’s the coverage?

The Zionist Organization of America is alive and well, contrary to a report of its demise from Samuel J. Kuruvilla, a scholar from India who received his Ph.D. in Political Theology at Exeter University in 2009.

In the glossary of his recent book, Radical Christianity in Palestine and Israel: Liberation and Theology in the Middle East (2013, I.B. Tauris) , Kuruvilla includes the following entry.

ZOA: Zionist Organization of America. Now defunct early Zionist lobbying organization in the US, superseded by influential lobbying groups like the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

The ZOA is “defunct”? Really? That’s news to us at Snapshots! Their website is operative and they have at least two twitter accounts that seem active (@Zoa_Campus and @ZOA_WestCoast). Being the careful researchers we are, the folks at Snapshots spoke with Morton Klein, ZOA’s president just to make sure that the organization he leads is um… still around.

“We’re very much alive,” he said and before enumerating the organization’s achievement which include establishing The ZOA Center for Law and Justice and increased campus activism. Klein has had articles published in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal.

“Obviously, we’re very active and very much alive,” he said.

CAMERA Analyst Dexter Van Zile wrote a review of Kuruvilla’s book for Spring 2014 Issue of the Middle East Quarterly.

Spanish Posts

Is Israel really isolated, as some media outlets portray?
Israel holds diplomatic relations with over 150 countries and has recently joined the Pacific Alliance as an observer. Is the country really “internationally isolated”? (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

Excelsior, from Mexico, corrects a mistaken information about Israel
In an article about Tel Aviv as a technological hub, the Mexican paper said that city was Israel’s capital. ReVista questioned the paper and the editors corrected the mistake. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

Europa Press unmasked
We highlight possible financial and political reasons behind the biased information about Israel in the Spanish speaking news agency. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

Russia Today claims Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital
Not only does the RT claim that Tel Aviv is Israel’s capital, it also falsely suggests that Globes, an Israeli media outlet, is the source of the information. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

Bethlehem celebrates Palestinian terrorism
Political and religious leaders honoured two suicidals and promoted violence against Israel, while the Spanish press didn’t considered the event as news. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

Middle East headlines in the Spanish speaking press
Read the Israel and Middle East related headlines of the main newspapers and news agencies in Latin America and Spain. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

Télam adopted an anti Israel ideological stance
The Argentinian news agency chose to quote only those sources that were critical of the Government of Israel and blamed the Jewish State for threatening the peace negoatiations and presented opinions as facts. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

RTVE: What was the Holocaust?
Commemorating the Holocaust involves knowing how it was. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

Johanssen and El País (the country) of shame
The effort of the Spanish newspaper to become a professional and reference media it’s of no use if they allow crude ideology to pop into its pages. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

EFE forgets the Israeli version of the facts again
One of the main premises of journalism is to contrast the information. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

EFE, please, check the information
The Spanish news agency is wrong when informing about the Oslo accords. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

EFE and sex change
Ariel Zilber is not a woman! (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

Maybe, the Spanish news agency EFE don’’t like the Israeli version, but readers have the right to learn about it and judge for themselves. (ReVista de Medio Oriente)

English Posts

UMass Amherst Chancellor Condemns Academic Boycotts of Israel. (in Focus)

A Tough Legacy for a Tougher Man
Setting the record straight on Ariel Sharon, written by Alisa Rudy and first published in Baruch College’s paper: The Ticker. Alisa is a junior majoring in Middle East Studies and is the current President of the CCAP group Youth Organization For Israel, Baruch’s student pro-Israel club. (in Focus)

Inciting Violence Through Inaccuracy
A look at the Arab world inciting violence in the land of Israel, from the Hebron riots 80 years ago to today, by Boston University student Lindsey Cohen. (in Focus)

Learn How to Table From These Guys
Our pro-Israel CAMERA supported group at McNeese University tables about Israel and CAMERA at their campus center. (in Focus)

Jon Haber Relaunches His Blog
Jon of “Divest This” has restarted his fantastic blog debunking myths about the Boycott Divest Sanctions movement. (in Focus)

Chloé Valdary Speaks on Canada’s Sun News on how CAMERA Helps
Watch: CAMERA helps students access accurate information about Israel on their campuses. (in Focus)

Correction in Weekly Portuguese Paper Thanks to CAMERA Israel Trip Participant
Major Portuguese paper falsely claims Israel is building 1400 new settlements. Former CAMERA Israel Trip participant Romeu Monteiro helps set the record straight. (in Focus)

Erasing the Jewish Connection to Israel
A common strategy in delegitimizing Israel is to erase the historic connection between the Jewish people to the land of Israel. (in Focus)

CAMERA Visits California and Boston University
Two campus staff members visited with students at USC who had just returned from Birthright, and spoke to them about inaccuracies in the media. (in Focus)

A Realistic Approach to the Israeli-Arab Conflict
Our Fellow at Washington University is published in her campus paper as she sheds some light on the current conflict and international law. (in Focus)

A Stand Against BoycottsOur CAMERA Intern explores how some Israelis are taking a pro-active step in the fight against boycotts. (in Focus)

Speakers Discredit SJPStudents for Justice in Palestine bring in a former Israeli soldier to defame Israel and spread inaccurate information about the conflict. Our CAMERA Fellow writes a letter to the editor to set the record straight. (in Focus)

BBC’s ‘Today’ programme ‘should know better’ than to engage in covert promotion of the PSC’s agenda
Despite a recent recommitment to summarizing the standpoint of interviewees, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an interview with an unidentified member of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. (BBC Watch)

In which BBC News abandons all pretence of fact checking
Fact checking has apparently too much of a bother for BBC website journalists. (BBC Watch)

Guardian caves to anti-Israel bigots, revises SodaStream article to please Ben White
The power of the pro-BDS lobby at the Guardian was revealed when editors at the London-based newspaper caved to pressure from Ben White, and revised an article which originally referred to anti-SodaStream activists as “anti-Israel” – opting instead fro the more benign term “anti-settlement”. (CiF Watch)

A Harriet Sherwood tale of Palestinian love and Israeli darkness
A nearly 4,000 word story on Israeli ‘villainy’ by Harriet Sherwood reached new lows, even in the context of the Jerusalem correspondent’s three and a half year pattern of filing such tendentious and egregiously biased reports from the region. (CiF Watch)

Hebrew Posts

Ynet puts Gaza under siege
Is it accurate to refer to Gaza as “under siege?” (Presspectiva)

Are these celebrities really boycotting Israel?
Dustin Hoffman, Meg Ryan and others are listed by Israeli media as celebrities boycotting Israel. However the evidence shows otherwise. (Presspectiva)

The New York Times repeats Palestinian propoganda
Last week we chastised Ha’aretz for repeating without any examination the claim that President Truman intentionally erased the words “The Jewish State” from his recognition of Israel. Now the New York Times does it as well. (Presspectiva)

What is incitment?
An op-ed writer in Ha’aretz displays a fine sense of irony, when accusing others of inciting hatred, but bases her argument on completly false charges. (Presspectiva)

The return of the Palestinian Children in Cages story
Presspectiva continues to correct papers accusing Israel of holding Palestinian children in cages. (Presspectiva)

Wikipedia’s “Lion of God” bites Journalists
Did various respectable news organizations (and Al-Jazeera) base their obiturary of Ariel Sharon on Wikipedia?. (Presspectiva)

Seven Christians were murdered in Libya. According to an article published by Reuters the victims were summoned from their apartments by gunmen looking for Christians. Here are the details.

Seven Egyptian Christians were found shot dead on a beach in eastern Libya after they were abducted from their apartments, security officials and local residents said, in the second such execution-style killing this year.

….

“They were killed by headshots in execution style,” a police officer said. “We don’t know who killed them.”

Local residents and an Egyptian worker, who asked not to be identified because of fears for their security, said unknown gunmen had arrived at the Benghazi building where the Egyptians lived and dragged them away after going door to door asking if residents were Christian or Muslim.

While in the U.S. and Great Britain academic organizations crusade against Israeli universities, promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions, some eager students in Arab countries apparently have different ideas.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes about the interest generated among students of surrounding Arab states in an on-line course on nanotechnology by Professor Hossam Haick, an Israeli-Arab scientist at Israel’s Technion Institute. According to Friedman

So far, there are about 4,800 registrations for the Arabic version, including students from Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Kuwait, Algeria, Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates and the West Bank. Iranians are signing up for the English version.

Interestingly, Friedman establishes that Haick’s father was also a graduate of Technion.

Stories like these expose the empty moral posing of the BDSers. Such stories also reveal why the anti-intellectual BDS movement will fail. Talented and intellectually curious young people will push back against the bigots who want to keep them ignorant and deny them access to knowledge.

The Public Broadcasting Service Master’s Series broadcast “Beauty and Truth” on Feb. 7, is a much publicized paean to Alice Walker. Walker gained renown from her 1982 novel, “The Color Purple,” which Steven Spielberg made into a film. Her agitation against Israel has kept her fashionable among segments of the media and academia. A review in the Feminist Wire describes how “In Walker’s life … beauty exists within a mosaic of truths alongside rabid institutional racism, patriarchy, misogyny, colonialism, heterosexism, and so much else.” The litany of “evils” listed here locates Walker in the American cultural landscape.

Toward the end of the 83 minute program, Walker discusses her adoption of the Palestinian cause. She planned to participate in the Gaza Flotilla in 2011, a show of support for Hamas-ruled Gaza. Walker compares the plight of the Palestinians to the black civil rights movement in the South, except in her opinion, Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians is “worse.” While other controversial aspects of Walker’s life, like her estrangement from her daughter, are candidly discussed in the PBS film, her denunciation of Israel’s “apartheid” wall and claim that the Palestinians are “just daily humiliated… ground in the dirt,” are aired without any pushback or scrutiny of the validity of such accusations.

Viewers are not made aware of Walker’s history of issuing hateful statements about Israel and Zionism. During the flotilla campaign, she described Israel and the United States as “great terrorist organizations” and used inflammatory (and false) religious imagery to stir up hatred of the Jewish state. She called “Jesus, a Palestinian” and claimed he “is still being crucified.”

Speaking before a synagogue known for its leftist activism, she appalled attendees who viewed “the tone of her speech as being hateful and frankly blatantly anti-Semitic.”

The American Masters series has substantial support from Jewish donors. One wonders what these donors think about how PBS is using their financial gifts.

In Europe and the United States, pampered academics rail against Israel, proclaiming it guilty of exploitation, apartheid, organ stealing and genocide; they demand that the Jewish state be subjected to boycotts, sanctions and isolation.

Meanwhile, among those from the Arab world given the opportunity to study in the West are a few daring enough to repudiate the mindless hatred they were exposed to in their native lands that they now hear repeated by their professors.

Abdel Bioud is an Algerian Muslim student who serves as the Vice President of Communications for McGill University’s Students for Israel (in Montreal, Canada). He writes:

All Arab countries are dictatorships. That is, you have ruling gangster families on top, who use their monopoly of violence (via the military) to kill/imprison anyone who questions their business plan. The business plan is the following:

1. Use force to maintain power and keep disarmed humans living in fear.

2. Send kids to government controlled schools so they can get indoctrinated with four things:
The ruling family is great (à la Kim Jung Il).
Their country is the greatest.
The Palestinian cause is something that is part of their identity.
Force feed them Islam so it can be used as a tool to control (I use the term force feed because I was force fed Islam in the Algerian government school since day 1).

3. While people are brainwashed and live in fear, negotiate a percentage on those resource/construction contracts

Bioud then asks,

Now, what about Israel? If you’re a citizen there, your basic freedoms are respected. You can live peacefully, raise a family, and send your kids to competitive and globally recognized universities. This simple basic respect for human dignity put them light-years ahead of any Arab state. As a human being who seeks to improve himself, Israel is a logical choice. It is the only place in the Middle East where your potential can be fully expressed.

Bioud sees Israel as a “force for good” in the Middle East region.

Differentiating himself from the Western academics who malign Israel, Bioud adds,

It’s coming from someone with a Muslim name and an Arab face… who actually lived and was raised in an Arab country. It’s not like I don’t know what I’m talking about and I’m just fantasizing from 5,000 miles away, like most people do.

The news media has extensively, and appropriately, covered the release of prisoners by the Afghan government. USA Today reported:

The expected release Thursday of 65 Afghan prisoners — many linked to attacks that have killed American troops — has angered U.S. officials who question why President Hamid Karzai’s government is turning them loose.

[…]

“These are bad men,” said Army Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman. “They’ve got a lot of blood on their hands. A lot of blood.”

Putting aside the fact that this same U.S. government has pressured Israel to release Palestinian terrorists with “a lot of blood on their hands,” and the fact that the media has not reported on this hypocrisy, at least Americans can take comfort in knowing these released murderers will not be getting large salaries funded in part by the American taxpayer.

The same is not true for Palestinian terrorists released by Israel. In fact, released Palestinian terrorists are getting a raise! Palestinian Media Watch reports:

Last week, the [Palestinian Authority] announced that it will be giving an additional $46 million a year to released prisoners, a category which includes hundreds of murderers of civilians. Since the PA cannot cover its monthly budget payments without Western aid, these additional payments to terrorists will also be facilitated both directly and indirectly by Western donor money to the PA.

The official announcement was made by the PA Minister of Prisoners’ Affairs Issa Karake, who said that the PA government has approved a regulation of the Prisoners’ Law that “is concerned with improving conditions for released [prisoners],” a regulation whose “budget… has been estimated at 160 million shekels a year.”

[…]

Significantly, the PA did not cover its 2013 budget without hundreds of millions of dollars from Western donors, tens of millions of which went directly into the bank accounts of terrorists. Since there have been no reports of massive improvements in the PA economy freeing it of the need to receive Western aid to pay its budget, clearly the PA is counting on Western donor money to facilitate this $46 million to terrorists as well.

In November, Karake appeared on official PA television, defending the practice of using Western aid money to pay terrorists and their families:

The Europeans want their money that comes to us to remain clean — not to go to families of those they claim to be terrorists. [They] need to renounce this occupation mentality. These [prisoners] are heroes, fedayyeen (self-sacrificing fighters), and fighters who fought so that we could live in dignity… These heroes, whom you are applauding, must live in dignity, so that we will continue to hold our heads high. We appreciate the people of the revolution and are proud of them.

American taxpayers provide hundreds of millions of dollars in aid money to the Palestinian Authority every year. And this aid money is being funneled into the pockets of terrorists with innocent blood on their hands. A lot of blood.

Where’s the outrage? Where’s your money going? And as usual… Where’s the coverage?

Watch Karake defend paying terrorists with aid money…