For the past several weeks, the Presbyterian Church (USA) has been selling a 74-page booklet about the Arab-Israeli conflict. It has sold this booklet through its website.

The booklet, titled Zionism Unsettled, was prepared by the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA), an organization that was created by a vote at the denomination’s 2004 General Assembly.

When it was created, the organization was charged with educating members of the PC(USA) about the Arab-Israeli conflict, but the IPMN has fulfilled this mandate by demonizing Israel and Jews. See this article for background.

Over the years, as the IPMN’s hostility toward Israel and Jews has become increasingly manifest, PC(USA) officials have tried to assert that the organization is not really part of the denomination they lead, but it is.

It’s part of the denomination’s network of missions. At one point, after receiving a complaint from CAMERA about the organization’s anti-Semitic messaging, a PC(USA) official in Louisville said the denomination was going to issue a set of rules that the denomination’s mission groups would have to follow if they want to stay a part of the PC(USA), but apparently, nothing ever came of these rules.

The report just issued by the PC(USA)’s Israel Palestine Mission Network has been described, accurately, as an assault on Zionism and the Jewish people.

This is contrary to the “official” statements of the PC(USA), but nothing ever happens when the IPMN behaves like this. It behaves like a rogue organization, but with the acquiescence of PC(USA) officials who could rein it in.

Just to be clear. PC(USA) officials who say they don’t have control over the IPMN are not telling the truth. The denomination collects funds for the organization here. And if the Israel Palestine Mission Network of the Presbyterian Church (USA) is, despite its name, somehow independent of the denomination, it would have to file reports with the IRS. A search on Guidestar.org’s website indicates that no such reports have been filed, indicating that the organization does in fact, operate under the umbrella and authority of the Presbyterian Church (USA).

Why does any of this matter? It matters because Zionism Unsettled, the report sold on the PC(USA)’s website, has gotten two ringing endorsements. The first came yesterday from PressTV, the state television network of Iran.

The second came from David Duke, whom the Anti-Defamation League describes as “perhaps America’s most well-known racist and anti-Semite.” This doesn’t just reflect on the IPMN, but on the denomination as a whole, the leaders in Louisville, especially.
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The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Feb. 10, 2014 “Four Corners” documentary on alleged widespread abuse and even brutal torture of Palestinian children by Israeli authorities has clearly manipulated footage in at least one instance to downplay the involvement of children in violence.

Thus, at around 33 minutes into the “Stone Cold Justice” broadcast, reporter John Lyons describes the case of a boy whom he identifies as Islam Dar Ayyoub, and whom soldiers photographed in the middle of the night and then arrested in a night-time raid three days later and interrogated. (Islam’s full name is Islam Dar Ayyoub al-Tamimi.)

After discussing Islam’s arrest, Lyons reports:

Later, police come for Islam’s nine-year-old brother, Karim.

The clear implication is that young Karim was detained without any provocation or cause.

From our earlier analysis of the January 2011 detainment of Karim al-Tamimi, we know that the beginning of the full footage shows the boy throwing a rock at an Israeli military vehicle. The sound of the rock hitting the vehicle is clearly heard. At that point, the troops stop the van, get out, and chase Karim.

“Four Corners'” decision to cut the footage of 11-year-old Karim throwing a rock is consistent with the broadcast’s overall theme: Palestinian children and adults alike are merely non-violent victims, and not particularly responsible for having any role in the conflict. For example, Lyons falsely depicts the weekly violent clashes at Nabi Saleh as “non-violent”:

It quickly becomes clear that what the authorities really want is information about the non-violent protest movement in the town [Nabi Saleh], including Bassem Tamimi.

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Melbourne Australia’s Herald Sun published an article revealing the cruelty that manifests among some Palestinians. In “Israel may pay for tolerance it shows to killers” Alan Howe writes about some of the individuals released by Israel as a gesture for the current round of peace talks:

Take Issa Abd Rabbo. When he was released recently, he was welcomed home personally by the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who raised Rabbo’s hand in victory and referred to the double killer as a hero.

He calls men like Rabbo “the best of the Palestinian people”.

Rabbo killed two university students, Revital Seri, 22, and her friend Ron Levi, 23.

The murderer was interviewed on television the other day. I’ll let him describe what happened:

“There was supposed to be a military operation shooting at a bus transporting Israeli soldiers … I was surprised when on my way to the area, I waited, waited and waited and the bus didn’t come.

“I was forced to carry out an operation on my own, an improvisation, I took it upon myself.

“An Israeli car approached, with two in it. I said, here’s a chance and I don’t want to return empty-handed. They left the car … and sat down under a pine tree.

“I went down to them. Of course I was masked and was carrying a rifle. He asked me: ‘Are you a guard here?’ I told him: ‘No, I’m in my home.’

“I told him: ‘You are not allowed here. This is our land and our country. You stole it and occupied our land and I’m going to act against you.’ They were surprised by what I told them. I tied them up, of course, and then sentenced them to death by shooting, in the name of the revolution.

“I shot them, one bullet each, and went [hiding] in the mountains … I went to my aunt and told her: ‘We have avenged Muhammad’s blood.’

“I told her: ‘Instead of one, we got two!’ She cried out in joy.”

There is much more in the article. Such journalism is necessary to expose the twisted attitudes that exist toward anti-Israel violence and to raise questions about a lack of compassion and a cavalier attitude about justice among Israel’s political elite.

Actress Scarlett Johansson’s decision to end her relationship with Oxfam, the British charity, generated a lot of publicity. Most people, however, have little awareness of Oxfam’s distorted portrayal of Israel.

Oxfam currently (Feb. 7, 2014) has on its web site a report by the Association of International Development Agencies, Dream On. It opens with the following statement:

Everyone in the world wishes they had done more with their lives over the years, but not everyone has a blockade standing in their way.

It continues:

Gaza’s blockade is also about wasted time, loss and longing, and aspirations unfulfilled, which are universal themes that speak to the human emotions in us all. In order for people in Gaza to live with dignity and self sufficiency, the blockade must end.

The four page report recites story after story with the same theme:

All I need is a dignified life for me and my family, but the blockade has destroyed my hope.

Gazans are held blameless for their predicament. Gazans elected a terrorist organization that diverts desperately needed international aid to build mile long tunnels into Israel laden with explosives; that launches thousands of rockets into Israel while ignoring the critical needs of its own population; that alienates its powerful Arab neighbor, Egypt, by supporting terrorism there. None of that matters to the Oxfam moralizers, who can’t be bothered to provide a substantive explanation of why the blockade was put into place.

Nor do they mention that the West Bank and Gaza rank above average for all Arab states in the United Nations Human Development Index, higher than neighbor Egypt.

But so what when you can blame Israel’s blockade for shortcomings in Gaza’s pediatric care. The report quotes a Gazan mother who “has found that the kind of care her daughter needs is just not available in Gaza.”

There is no mention of the traffic of thousands of Gazans, including infants, treated in Israeli hospitals for serious conditions, despite the fact that Israel and the Hamas government running Gaza are in a state of war. Even an incident where Wafa al Bis, a Gazan woman treated by Israel for serious burns in a domestic accident, tried to murder her Israeli caregivers with a concealed bomb, did not stop the flow of patients from Gaza.

As far as offering an explanation as to why Israel has imposed the blockade, a footnote at the bottom of page one states, “Citing security concerns, the government of Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza, which officially started on 14 June 2007.” That’s it. Nothing about suicide bombers, nothing about incessant rockets targeting Jewish communities, nothing about Hamas tunnelers kidnapping an Israeli soldier and killing several others. The key to ending the blockade is for the Hamas government to end its terrorism and threats against Israelis. But Oxfam can’t admit that self-evident truth.

While Oxfam moralists wax poetic with moral indignation from their London offices, Israeli doctors and nurses actually provide crucial life-saving services to Gazans.

Here is an another example, an information brochure linked to on the Oxfam site for Gaza. It is completely one-sided.

Curtis Marez, spokesman for the ASA boycott

An official body within UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) labeled the recent American Studies Association [ASA] boycott resolution against Israel as comparable to Nazi boycotts against Jewish academics.

According to an article in the Jewish Press

The statement comes from the Board of Trustees of the American Unit of the International Network of the UNESCO Chair in Bioethics, also known as the American Bioethics Culture Institute.

The official statement by the Board of Trustees contains the following:

While ASA may make the misleading claim that its actions are an exercise of academic freedom, in singling out Israeli academics for such a boycott, our Unit’s work indicated that this immoral boycott, though not intended, is far more akin to actions of prominent Nazi academics in the early 1930′s, such as those German physicians who took leadership positions in the Nazi party and singled out their Jewish colleagues for boycott and expulsion from academic life and professional societies.

Dr. Omar Sultan Haque, a leading expert on why so many German physicians supported the Nazi boycott against Jews, asserted,

drawing an analogy between American academics and German physicians is not too much of a stretch, as both suggest deep Anti-Semitism.

Blogger Elder of Ziyon writes that Arab news outlets have reported on Sheikh Ahmad Adwan. Adwan, who introduces himself as a Muslim scholar who lives in Jordan, posted on his personal Facebook page that the Koran states:

Allah has assigned the Holy Land to the Children of Israel until the Day of Judgment (Koran, Sura 5 – “The Sura of the Table”, Verse 21), and “We made the Children of Israel the inheritors (of the land)” (Koran, Sura 26 – “The Sura of the Poets”, Verse 59).

“I say to those who distort their Lord’s book, the Koran: From where did you bring the name Palestine, you liars, you accursed, when Allah has already named it “The Holy Land” and bequeathed it to the Children of Israel until the Day of Judgment. There is no such thing as ‘Palestine’ in the Koran. Your demand for the Land of Israel is a falsehood and it constitutes an attack on the Koran, on the Jews and their land. Therefore you won’t succeed, and Allah will fail you and humiliate you, because Allah is the one who will protect them (i.e. the Jews).”

The sheikh added: “The Palestinians are the killers of children, the elderly and women. They attack the Jews and then they use those (children, the elderly and women) as human shields and hide behind them, without mercy for their children as if they weren’t their own children, in order to tell the public opinion that the Jews intended to kill them. This is exactly what I saw with my own two eyes in the 70’s, when they attacked the Jordanian army, which sheltered and protected them. Instead of thanking it (the Jordanian army), they brought their children forward to (face) the Jordanian army, in order to make the world believe that the army kills their children. This is their habit and custom, their viciousness, their having hearts of stones towards their children, and their lying to public opinion, in order to get its support.”

In addition to the Arab media, the only reporting on this pro-Israel Muslim scholar has been on blogs. CAMERA could locate no mainstream news coverage whatsoever. While The New York Times opinion pages have had plenty of room for anti-Israel pieces, there has not been a single pro-Israel Op-Ed or column all year. Perhaps The Times would consider a slot for Sheikh Adwan or Rev. Gabriel Naddaf, a Greek Orthodox priest in Nazareth, who has declared:

The State of Israel is our heart. Israel is a holy state, a strong state, and its people, Jews and Christians alike, are united under one covenant.

Pro-Israel Arabs… Where’s the coverage?

If you speak Hebrew (though there is also some English), watch a video about Sheikh Adwan’s visit to Tzfat from Orot TV:

The excellent Divest This! blog is back in business after an extended hiatus, and it wastes no time in cutting down Omar Barghouti’s grandiose visions of BDS success, most recently expressed in The New York Times.

Divest This! observes:

As the leader of a “movement” that has accomplished next to nothing in close to fifteen years, Omar Barghouti seems to have developed special vision powers (perhaps learned while studying at an Israeli school he insists everyone in the world but he should boycott). These powers allow him to see panic-stricken Israeli supporters on all sides that quiver in perpetual fear of BDS’s explosive growth that always seems to arrive in the form of a damp squib.

Barghouti’s latest New York Times piece (paired with a “rebuttal” by Hirsh Goodman which declares Israel to be guilty, but urges something other than boycotting as a punishment – great diversity of opinion Grey Lady!) demonstrates all the rhetoric ticks that give BDS staying power despite lack of concrete victory (incidental or otherwise).

Thus 16% of the American Studies Association’s membership voting for an academic boycott is a “landslide vote” while the stunning backlash against the boycott from across the academy goes unmentioned. Or perhaps that is just part of the panicked response of Israeli supporters? (Keep in mind that in the heads-I-win-tails-you-lose world of BDS, both the BDSers own activity and the overwhelmingly negative response it generates counts as a victories for them.)

Then you’ve got odd-hand quotes from people like Secretary of State John Kerry treated like official policy, without mentioning actual US policy which has been to reject and condemn boycott and divestment (as well as enforce anti-boycott legislation implemented by that Zionist stooge Jimmy Carter in the 1970s).

Mix in two parts Apartheid accusations, a sprinkling of “non-violence” and “we can’t be anti-Semitic because we’re anti-racists” and voila: the rhetorical magic that seems to have kept Mr. Barghouti on top of a movement willing to fly him around the planet, despite his inability to get anything bigger than a student council to do his bidding (and even then, only barely). . . .

In fact, it has been the failure of BDS to achieve its goals at the level of civil society that has helped de-legitimize the entire de-legitimization movement, which is why the boycotters have to resort to badgering a film star about which soft drink she endorses in order to get anyone’s attention (ignoring the fact that the planet has already decided to flip them the bird by stocking up on Zionist bubbles and flavor).

When fictional massacres take place in fictionalized films or theater productions about real life conflicts, news reporters have an obligation to make clear that the said “massacre” wasn’t real.

The Los Angeles Times ran into trouble here last year when a movie review of the fictional film “The Attack” referred to “Jenin in the West Bank (a site where Palestinians say the Israeli Defense Forces massacred hundreds of civilians).”

As we earlier noted, Palestinian officials long ago admitted that dozens (among them many fighters) — not hundreds — were killed in Jenin, bringing their figures into line with those of the United Nations and human rights groups.

Perhaps fictional Palestinians in the fictional film “The Attack” say that the Israeli army massacred hundreds, but The Times made no attempt to distinguish fiction from fact.

Ha’aretz reporter Tamar Rotem similarly trips up in failing to separate fact from fiction, in her article today about objections to the upcoming Washington DC Theater J production of Motti Lerner’s controversial “The Admission,” a fictionalized account of Palestinian casualties in 1948.

She writes:

Lerner says “The Admission,” written in 2005, deals mainly with the discrepancy in the reports of how many people were killed in an army operation in 1948 in the village of Tantura: The Israel Defense Forces puts that number at 70, while historians Ilan Pappe and Teddy Katz of the University of Haifa insist that a massacre took place there in which more than 200 were killed.

Contrary to Rotem’s suggestion, the Tantura story is not an unresolvable “he said/she said” argument between two equally credible sides. Rotem fails to inform readers that Teddy Katz, a then PhD candidate at the University of Haifa, lost a libel suit against the brigade that he had accused of the 1948 Tantura massacre, and was forced to apologize.
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Ha’aretz has clarified that a recent tweet featuring a photoshopped image of the glamorous, evening-gown clad Scarlet Johansson standing in front of Palestinians crowded into a fenced passage-way was not an endorsement.

Ha’aretz tweeted on Feb. 2:

Yesterday, Ha’aretz tweeted this clarification:

A couple of readers, including “Judge Dan,” clarified in turn that Ha’aretz’s tweet was an attack on Israel, not on Johansson’s ad.