“Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is trying to aid the besieged Palestinians by creating secure escape routes from the camp,” a Haaretz editorial last week praised the Palestinian leader for supposedly trying to assist Palestinian refugees residing in the Syrian Yarmouk refugee camp (“Politics aside: Israel must help Yarmouk’s Palestinian refugees“). Haaretz simultaneously called upon Israel:

Israel must do its part in this international effort. It should sit down with Abbas to evaluate ways and means of helping these refugees, some of whom are related, very closely in some cases, to Arabs in Israel.

Among other things, Israel could offer Abbas the possibility of absorbing some of the refugees into the Palestinian Authority, defray some of the costs involved and provide medical services to those who manage to come. Political considerations and disputes with the PA should be set aside at this time. This is a humanitarian task of the first order that Israel cannot shirk.

Haaretz contributor Oudeh Basharat today echoes the sentiment that Israel must make an effort to assist the Palestinians of Yarmouk (“Why Doesn’t Israel Help Palestinians in Yarmouk?”):

Why doesn’t Israel coordinate with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and the Israeli Arab leadership to absorb Yarmouk refugees in the PA-controlled territories and among Israeli Arabs, as was suggested in the Haaretz editorial on Thursday (“Help Yarmouk’s refugees,” April 9)?

Instead of running to the end of the world to show the beautiful face of Israel, extend a hand to your neighbor. Learn something from Jordan, a country that has no moral or political obligation to Syria yet has already absorbed more than a million refugees from there.

Newsflash to Haaretz: Over a year ago, it was the Palestinian leader, Abbas, who refused to put politics aside and agree to Israel’s conditional acceptance of 150,000 Palestinians refugees from Syria into West Bank and Gaza so long as they gave up the “right of return” to Israel. As the Associated Press reported on Jan. 28, 2013:

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he asked U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon last month to seek Israeli permission to bring Palestinians caught in Syria’s civil war to their homeland. Last week, he said that Israel agreed to allow 150,000 Palestinians refugees from Syrian into the West Bank and Gaza as long as they relinquished the right of return to what is now Israel. Abbas said he refused.

AP’s Mohammed Daraghmeh reported on Jan. 10, 2013:

Abbas said Ban was told Israel “agreed to the return of those refugees to Gaza and the West Bank, but on condition that each refugee … sign a statement that he doesn’t have the right of return (to Israel).”

“So we rejected that and said it’s better they die in Syria than give up their right of return,” Abbas told the group. Some of his comments were published Thursday by the Palestinian news website Sama.

Does Haaretz have any words to spare on Abbas’ death wish for his own people, whose entrance into the West Bank and Gaza he has rejected? Or was all of its righteous indignation about the welfare of the Yarmouk refugees spent on exhorting Israel to put aside politics to try to help the refugees, meanwhile ignoring that Israel had tried to do just that? Far from “creating secure escape routes from the camp,” Abbas has blocked them.

The director of CAMERA’s Washington office, Eric Rozenman, has written a prescient article, “The Theory and Practice of Hasbara,” that was published by the Jewish Policy Center in inFocus magazine. Rozenman emphasizes the important role played by Hasbara not only in countering immediate misinformation but in reversing the pervasive influence of the Palestinian narrative that portrays “Zionists as imperialists, Jews as colonialists, and Palestinian Arabs as oppressed, indigenous people.”

Rozenman recounts that in September 2000, when the Second Intifada broke out, the Israeli government’s media arm was caught flatfooted. Nothing exemplified this more than the Mohammed al-Dura affair. This was the incident where a Palestinian boy was caught on video tape pinned against a wall with his father during a gunfight between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian terrorists and allegedly shot and killed by Israeli fire.

According to Rozenman,

Images of the “martyred” youngster, Mohammed al-Dura, traveled across the globe. They turned up as partial, implicit justification in an al-Qaeda montage of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center, in images of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl’s beheading and in mass marches in European cities that featured “Down with Israel” and “Death to the Jews” banners.

Much later, after independent examinations cast doubt on the French television account and even whether al-Dura had been present during the firefight, an IDF re-enactment concluded that if any bullets struck the child and his father, they quite likely had been fired by Palestinian gunmen. This was far too late.

Since then, Israel has taken significant steps to improve its response to opposing propaganda. Rozenman describes the “nearly real-time checks instead of indefinite ‘we’ll get back to you’ handling of press queries” and rapid web postings along with utilization of social media releases and battlefield video showing the IDF calling off attacks when civilians were present. In this way anti-Israel charges ranging from exaggerations to inventions were not allowed to “take on lives of their own” in the media.

Rozenman also addresses the broader question of why Hasbara is necessary. He asks and then answers, “so who is hasbara for?”

First, for supporters of the Jewish state. At a minimum, it’s vital to prevent demoralization. Positively, it informs and encourages.

Second, for the undecided. Without a constant, sophisticated information effort—always factual and appropriately targeted—many originally in the “I don’t know” category may succumb to delegitimization campaigns.

Only third come news and other communications media, from encyclopedia and textbook publishers through Hollywood to specialty outlets dealing with everything from religion to travel and fashion… [W]ithout it, Americans would end up with European-style media such as Britain’s The Guardian and Independent, self-righteous in their hostility, eager enlistees in the anti-Israel psych war.

Rozenman adds that there is an often ignored fourth reason.

It is the past and the future. As George Orwell wrote in 1984 about the Party’s compulsion to revise history, tossing inconvenient truths down the memory hole: “He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”

Read the whole article.

The Daily Beast’s editor-in-chief, John Avlon, appeared as a guest on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal (April 2, 2015) from his New York office. Plainly in view on the wall behind Avlon is a list of admonitions (only two) to staff:

1. DON’T BE BORING.

2. DON’T BE STUPID.

The omission of an obvious third admonition for journalists, “DON’T BE INACCURATE” (and perhaps also a fourth, “DON’T BE BIASED BY OMISSION”) may reveal more than intended about the mind-set, even if subconscious, at a number of media outlets. The Web site has become a frequently-quoted source of news reporting and opinions. As CAMERA continually documents, many print, broadcast and Web sites frequently are short on both accuracy and providing even minimum context including, if not especially, about the Arab-Israel conflict.

The Daily Beast’s pair of warnings, however, raises a question about the performance of C-SPAN’s Washington Journal hosts: Given their chronic tolerance of, if not pandering to, mendacious anti-Israel and sometimes antisemitic callers – is this journalistic failure due to being “stupid,” too “boring” to challenge such callers, or willful acceptance of defamation of Israel and Jews?

The United Kingdom’s The Telegraph has reported:

A close media aide to Hassan Rouhani, the Iranian president, has sought political asylum in Switzerland after travelling to Lausanne to cover the nuclear talks between Tehran and the West.

Amir Hossein Motaghi, who managed public relations for Mr Rouhani during his 2013 election campaign, was said by Iranian news agencies to have quit his job at the Iran Student Correspondents Association (ISCA).

In a subsequent television interview, Motaghi described the talks he’d been witnessing, saying, “The U.S. negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal.”

Some blogs and niche publications have covered this, but major mainstream American news outlets have been silent on this enormous story. The U.S. negotiators are arguing Iran’s side to our allies instead of trying to get the toughest deal possible, a deal which would block all of Iran’s possible pathways to nuclear weapons, let alone nuclear weapons capability.

The U.S. negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal. Again, the U.S. negotiating team are mainly there to speak on Iran’s behalf with other members of the 5+1 countries and convince them of a deal.

Where’s the coverage?