Recently, “Intelligence Squared U.S.” held a debate on the nuclear deal currently being negotiated between the United States (along with Great Britain, France, Germany, China and Russia) and Iran.

Philip Gordon, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former senior advisor to President Obama as coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and the Gulf Region, and Tom Pickering, who served five decades as a U.S. diplomat including positions as Undersecretary of State for political affairs and Ambassador to the U.N. as well as to Russia, Israel, and Jordan, argued that “Obama’s Iran deal is good for America.”

Arguing that the deal is not good were Mike Doran, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and former senior director in the National Security Council, and Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he also heads its Center on Sanctions and Illicit Finance.

Intelligence Squared U.S. presents debates on a wide range of provocative topics and aims “to provide a new forum for intelligent discussion, grounded in facts and informed by reasoned analysis; to transcend the toxically emotional and the reflexively ideological; and to encourage recognition that the opposing side has intellectually respectable views.”

The debate winner is determined by audience votes. The audience voted on the proposition that “Obama’s Iran deal is good for America” before the debate and again after the debate. The winner is the side that most increased its share of the vote. In other words, who swayed the most voters? The motion was defeated and the audience voted that the deal is not good for America.

You can read the transcript here or watch the debate here.

The debate is lengthy but certainly worthwhile.

The Washington Post’s, “From Exiles to Advocates; Importance of a pending nuclear deal spurs new dialogue in Iranian American community” (May 22, 2015) presented the National Iranian American Council in soft focus. Omissions meant readers didn’t get the full story about NIAC.

Writing about a recent fundraiser in McLean, Va. for the council, veteran Post reporter Pamela Constable failed to mention key details regarding the group, the Iranian regime it supports negotiations with, and Iranians and Iranian-Americans who directly oppose the tyranny of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary regime.

The Post refers to the NIAC as “a non-profit advocacy group that supports the current bilateral [U.S. and Iran] talks.” Although the newspaper briefly notes that the group has been accused of lobbying for Iran, it omits that an Iranian-American, Hassan Dai, successfully counter-sued NIAC. This followed the council’s unsuccessful lawsuit over allegations it lobbied for Tehran.

Business Insider explained in a March 5, 2015 article that a court decision a month earlier found NIAC, in responding to Dai, “flouted multiple court orders,” improperly delaying its delivery of documents and failing to turn over requested emails and membership lists in a timely manner—if at all.

The Post conflates Iranian Americans in general with NIAC and its supporters, writing “they have few friends in Congress on Capitol Hill, where anti-Iran sentiment remains strong.” Yet it simultaneously notes the presence of U.S. Reps. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) and Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) “as well as several former legislators” at the “lavish party.”

The newspaper uncritically reports that some Iranian-Americans believe the current regime is “more moderate and open to change than past officials.” This overlooks the nature of the Iranian theocracy—where ultimate authority has resided with Ayatollah Khamenei since 1989—which regularly makes statements calling for the destruction of Israel and “death to America.” Moreover, it obscures that both imprisonment of journalists and dissidents has seen a steady increase under the supposedly more “moderate” officials now in charge. Amnesty International asserted in January, 2014, for example, that “Iranian authorities are trying to change their international image, but it’s meaningless if executions are being ordered at the same time.”

The article quotes a fundraiser attendee: “Iranians don’t want another revolution. … [T]hey want to join the community of nations.” However, The Post omits that numerous Iranians took to the streets in 2009 to protest the regime only to be met with brute force, mass incarcerations, and executions. The arbitrary abuse inflicted by the regime on Iranians, and its support of terrorist groups and attacks—including an assassination plot against Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States that would have blown up a Washington, D.C. restaurant in 2011—seems to require more substantiation of a purported intent by the regime to “join the community of nations.”

The Post claims that “Iranian-Americans … are emerging as an unexpected and articulate constituency for U.S. diplomatic engagement with the ayatollahs.” Although it notes that “not all Iranian exiles favor” outreach to the regime, especially “religious minorities such as Jews,” coverage fails to emphasize divisions within the Iranian-American community. The Democracy Movement of Iran claimed a 2011 online English-Farsi survey of 1,851 individuals 18 and older found that 99 percent of respondents felt “NIAC did not represent their interests.”

The next time The Post covers the National Iranian American Council, the Iranian regime, and its opponents, it should do so in detail. — by Sean Durns and Eric Rozenman

(A May 22 CAMERA letter to the editor making the above points was not published by The Post.)

An article, Hezbollah’s Desperate Recruiting in the Bekaa, appearing earlier this month in an internet magazine, NOW, that bills itself as “the online source for news, features, analysis and much more, covering Lebanon, the Lebanese diaspora and the Middle East,” raises the question of whether Hezbollah has dug itself into a hole that it can’t get out of.

The terrorist organization has increasingly taken on the duties of a regular army in defending the failing Assad regime in Syria. The Syrian army, by many accounts, is collapsing. Reports indicate even its Alawite recruitment base is demoralized. This means the Hezbollah has to step in and provide the manpower.

As the article indicates, Hezbollah has no choice but to take on the expanded role demanded of them by the situation. Although, the terrorist group has demonstrated its effectiveness as a fighting force, it is not a national army and will have difficulty conscripting and training sufficient replacements should it begin to suffer the rate of losses experienced by regular armies attempting to hold onto a large territory that includes major cities.

The article claims that Hezbollah has even begun to expand its recruitment outreach to the Lebanese Christian community, who share their fear of the Sunni Jihadis. But even within the Shiite community in Lebanon, there is resistance to joining the fight. Hezbollah is the most forceful, but not the only, political organization within the Lebanese Shiite community.

The war in Syria appears to be heading toward a new phase. If Hezbollah cannot shore up the Assad regime, it may require the direct intervention of ground forces from Iran.

Save A Child’s Heart (SACH) provides pediatric heart surgery and follow-up care for indigent children regardless of race, religion, sex, color, or financial status. Based in Israel, the organization’s mission is “to improve the quality of pediatric cardiac care for children from countries where the heart surgery they need is unobtainable.” According to the organization’s Web site:

Every 29 hours our doctors save a child’s life in our medical facilities in Israel or on medical missions in partner countries around the world. Thousands of children are alive today because of a small group of medical professionals who volunteer their time and expertise to perform life-saving cardiac surgery and train local medical personnel.

Israel’s i24 reports on one recent patient:

At first glance, with her bright black eyes and wide smile, Lisa appears to be a perfectly normal baby girl. But she has hardly gained any weight since her birth six months ago due to a heart defect impeding her growth. Last Wednesday, baby Lisa and her mother made the arduous voyage from a small village in East Timor to Israel so that she could undergo a life-saving medical procedure.

When Lisa was born, her parents noticed that she was not growing as a normal infant would. After visiting the small hospital in their village, which provides only the most basic of health services, the doctor who examined Lisa said that everything looked fine, despite her having gained only six grams since her birth. Her illness remained undiagnosed and her parents began searching for answers.

Despite the considerable costs and their limited means, the family continued searching for medical professionals who would be able to provide their infant with the necessary medical care. Almost 40 percent of the population in East Timor, located in Maritime Southeast Asia, lives on under $1.25 per day.

[…]

SACH, an Israeli-based international non-profit organization founded in 1995 has carried out a number of projects in developing countries to help improve the quality of cardiac care for children and has already saved the lives of over 3,500 children from Africa, South America, Europe, and the Middle East. With the arrival of Lisa from East Timor, the number of countries involved in the program has reached 50.

Along with treating children from developing countries, the program has also trained more than a 100 medical personnel across the world.

[…]

Roughly 50 percent of those treated by the group at the Wolfson Medical Center in the central Israeli city of Holon are Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza.

But, Google news reports on Israel and you won’t find any coverage in the mainstream press about Israel’s compassion for children around the world and next door in the West Bank and Gaza. The State of Israel –as evidenced by its efforts most recently in Nepal– and Israeli-based organizations such as Save a Child’s Heart indeed demonstrate the size of Israel’s heart. And yet… Where’s the coverage?

Whether or not the Pope called Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas an “angel of peace” is the subject of debate. What there can be no credible debate about, however, is that Abbas is an anti-Israel –and even antisemitic– radical.

Since succeeding Yasser Arafat as Palestinian Authority president and leader of Fatah, Abbas almost invariably has been described by the press as a “moderate.” This, despite the fact that Abbas, Arafat and a few colleagues founded Fatah in 1959 to “liberate” Israel, not the West Bank (then occupied by Jordan) or the Gaza Strip (then held by Egypt).

Abbas continues to incite his people against Israel and recently described Jews who visit the Temple Mount as a “herd of cattle.” He has praised Haj Amin al Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem who cooperated with the Nazis during the Holocaust, and has lauded Dalal Mughrabi, a terrorist who perpetrated the Coastal Road Massacre of 1978 which resulted in the deaths of 38 Israelis including 13 children.

Official PA TV and other media outlets under Abbas’ control frequently describe Israeli cities as part of “Palestine,” exhibiting no inclination to recognize Israel’s right to exist or even the fact of Israel’s existence.

Further, Abbas has ignored generous offers of Palestinian statehood made by Israeli leaders. In 2008, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered a territorial proposal based on the 1949 armistice lines –often incorrectly referred to as the 1967 borders– with “land swaps”, contiguity between Gaza and the West Bank, no Israeli military presence in the Jordan Valley, relinquishing Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, and absorption of some Palestinian refugees. Abbas did not even get back to Olmert on this proposal.

Abbas is a Holocaust denier who published his doctoral thesis as a book, “The Other Side: The Secret Relationship between Nazism and the Zionist Movement,” which denied the severity of the Holocaust and claimed “a secret relationship between Nazism and the Zionist movement.”

He was also the paymaster for the Palestinian Liberation Organization’s massacre of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

There is nothing moderate about Mahmoud Abbas’ life, his deeds, his ideology or his rhetoric and certainly nothing angelic. So… Where’s the coverage?

Crosspost from UK Media Watch

Robert S. Wistrich, professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, head of the Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism, and perhaps the world’s foremost scholar of antisemitism, died of a heart attack yesterday in Rome.

He was 70.

Wistrich was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic in 1945, raised in Britain and educated in the US. He settled in Israel in 1982.

Professor Wistrich published dozens of books throughout his long career about the history of Jew hatred, including From Ambivalence to Betrayal: The Left, the Jews and Israel, and his magnum opus, A Lethal Obsession: Antisemitism — From Antiquity to the Global Jihad, published in 2010.

Though he was an accomplished academic, Wistrich also possessed the unique ability within academia to communicate effectively to non-academics, and was able to speak clearly and plainly even when contextualizing the often complex dynamics of historical and contemporary antisemitism.

This writer was honored to share a panel with Professor Wistrich at a CAMERA event in Jerusalem earlier in the year, where he addressed the relationship between media coverage of Israel and rising antisemitism.

Here’s a video of his talk:

This past Thursday, Wistrich spoke at the Global Forum for Combatting Antisemitism in Jerusalem, where he addressed the increasing threat posed by Islamist antisemitism to Europe’s Jews, a topic, he often lamented, which is routinely downplayed by both the American and European media.

During his speech, he emphasized that Islamism represents the spearhead of the resurgent antisemitism – hatred of Jews qua Jews disguised as ‘mere’ hatred of Israel. He explained that the problem is not Islam as such, but the malevolent ideology of Islamism which misuses, abuses and hijacks one of the great universal faiths to legitimize extreme racism and violent Jihad.

Wistrich was a giant in his field, and a brave, sober and intellectually serious voice on anti-Jewish racism – a scourge he referred to as “the world’s longest hatred.”

He will be sorely missed.

— By Adam Levick

Robert Naiman, a regular Huffington Post contributor, penned a piece titled “Is Saudi Arabia Now the Israel of the Gulf?”. In it, he addressed human rights concerns in Saudi Arabia, and without any background or context, likened them to issues in Israel.

Naiman suggests both that “Saudi Arabia is apparently becoming the Israel of the Gulf countries — a habitual aggressor in its neighborhood”, and that Saudi Arabia and Israel “have killed many human beings, including many civilians, for no clear military purpose.”

His version of Israel’s recent history compares unfavorably to reality and demonstrates sweeping bias. Naiman, as evidenced in the comparisons he draws, categorically ignores that Israel is neither an “aggressor” nor a ruthless apartheid state.

Indeed, both of Israel’s recent wars in Gaza have been defensive, prompted by unending rocket fire from Hamas. The untargeted rockets are indiscriminately fired toward Israeli population centers with the hopes of inflicting maximum casualties. Moreover, Israel has undertaken unprecedented measures to prevent civilian casualties. That they have happened is deeply regrettable, but they happen not because Israel targets civilians but because Hamas uses them as shields, prevents them from leaving targeted areas, and fires rockets – which they know will draw responsive fire – from densely populated areas. Indeed, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, claimed that “Israel went to extraordinary lengths to limit collateral damage and civilian casualties.”

These issues considered, to call Israel an aggressor that callously kills civilians is propagating an anti-Israel lie.

Particularities aside, the most glaring demonstration of Naiman’s deplorable bias is the construction of his article. He uses abuses in Saudi Arabia as a pretense to criticize Israel, and he does so without a hint of evidence. Each claim he levies against Saudi Arabia, he levies against Israel as well. However, when addressing Saudi Arabia, he substantiates his claims with evidence, and then simply suggests Israel engages in the same behavior, absent any evidence at all. To be sure, it is not as if the evidence he provides against Saudi Arabia is unimpeachable. Providing it at all, however, is the important distinction. It is as if Saudi Arabia’s human rights failings provide Naiman license to attack Israel, even if Israel is innocent of the claims he levies against it.

Harboring this antagonism to Israel is Naiman’s profession. He is the Policy Director at Just Foreign Policy, an organization that purports to be committed to reforming foreign policy based on diplomacy, law and comparison. Instead, what it amounts to is an anti-Israel group built upon many of the standard anti-Israel tropes. Of the four campaigns it is involved in, three focus on Palestinians. In fact, one is a campaign to alert congress to an incident involving Israeli extremists stoning cars in January. Naiman’s bias emerges ever clearer considering that his agency, which professes to be committed to addressing foreign policy issues, creates an entire issue campaign based on a single Israeli stoning incident but ignores frequent violent Palestinian attacks, such as the many reported by CAMERA here, here, here among many others.

Along similar lines, Naiman refers to his affiliation with a woman who works for CodePink, an organization which began as a feminist advocacy agency and has since devolved into an anti-Israel organization that prominently supports the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement. In fact, its National Director admitted such, articulating that CodePink’s goal is “freedom for Palestinians.”

Naiman’s affiliations call into question his journalistic chops, and should prompt Huffington Post to reconsider its relationship with him. Providing a platform on which a known anti-Israel bigot can write an article that maligns Israel for Saudi Arabia’s behavior is not pushing boundaries of journalism, it is pushing the boundaries of the truth.

Can the Agence France Presse news agency say “Egyptian blockade”? In the article today, “Gazans reach beyond blockade through start-up,” the “Israeli blockade” of the Gaza Strip looms large.

Though the article twice mentions the “Israeli blockade” of Gaza, under which hundreds of trucks containing all kinds of products pass every week, not once does it contain the phrase “Egyptian blockade,” though for most of the last seven months nothing at all passed through the Gaza-Egypt border crossing.

Thus, the second paragraph of the article states that the Gaza Strip “has been under an Israeli blockade since 2006.” Further along, the article asserts that Gaza “is effectively ruled by the Islamist Hamas movement and cut off from the rest of the world by the Israeli blockade.” The article adds:

Programmer Mohammed al-Banna, 27, says working in technology offered him a sense of freedom because it is the ‘the only area’ where Israel cannot cut Gazans off from the outside world.

Of the sweeping Egyptian blockade, the AFP says only half-way into the story:

Until last year, Palestinians were able to leave the Rafah crossing with Egypt, but since October the frontier has been closed as Cairo struggles with a growing insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula.

Why, then, doesn’t the second paragraph note that the Gaza Strip “is under an Egyptian and Israeli blockade”? Why doesn’t it later report that the territory is “cut off from the rest of the world by the Egyptian and the Israeli blockade”?

Clearly, the total Egyptian blockade has isolated the Gaza Strip far more than the Israeli blockade, under which goods and people do cross. The Egyptian blockade, therefore, should figure much more prominently in the story than the so-called Israeli blockade.

Under “the Israeli blockade,” during the week of May 5 to 11, 1,704 trucks entered the Gaza Strip through Israel, of which 854 contained construction materials, reports the U.N.’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Of the Egyptian blockade of Gaza, the same OCHA reports states:

The Rafah crossing was closed in both directions by the Egyptian authorities during the week. The crossing has been continuously closed since 24 October 2014, following an attack in Sinai, except for 12 days, on which it was partially opened. This measure is affecting at least 30,000 people registered for crossing to the both sides.

No people crossed between Egypt and Gaza during the reporting period.

Finally, in another striking double standard, AFP provides a reason for the Egyptian closing of the border (“Cairo struggles with a growing insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula”), but gives no reason for the relatively limited Israeli restrictions. In the interest of consistency, shouldn’t AFP note that Jerusalem struggles with thousands upon thousands of rockets fired at it from a territory from which it withdrew in 2005 and which is now ruled by a designated terror organization whose charter seeks the Jewish state’s destruction?

In an interview with Bob Schieffer on CBS Face the Nation, former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates offered his perspective on negotiations with Iran. The relevant portions of the interview are copied below:

ROBERT GATES (Former Defense Secretary): Well, first of all, getting the Iranians to the negotiating table in the first place was a success for U.S. foreign policy. They didn’t come to the table at a goodwill. They came to the table because their economy was being strangled and the leadership was afraid they might get overthrown. So they are there because they have to be there.

I think that the agreement there’re some specifics in the agreement that are very encouraging, but I– I have several concerns that I hope can be addressed in the negotiations between now and June the first is the timing of the lifting of the sanctions. Is it– are they going to be lifted right away as long as the Iranians agree to implement the agreement. Or will be– they be phased over time based on performance which has been our position all along.

The second is verification. Unless we have sort of on-demand inspection at all facilities, including military facilities, I think, there is a great potential to cheat.

Third, I think that this– the– the idea of being able to have these snapback sanctions, that sanctions could be re-imposed once lifted is very unrealistic.

I think that the pursuit of the agreement is based on the President’s hope that over a ten-year period with the sanctions being lifted that the Iranians will become a constructive stakeholder in the international community. That– that as their economy begins to grow again, that– that they will abandon their ideology, their theology, their revolutionary principles, their meddling in various parts of the region. And, frankly, I believe that’s very unrealistic.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What if we can’t get a deal? With is the alternative?

ROBERT GATES: Well, I don’t think the alternative is war. One alternative is better deal [emphasis added]. I think that you go back to the sanctions, I think you reinforce the sanctions, and you basically say, here are the additional things we need for this agreement to work and to be worthwhile, and an agreement that reassures our allies or at least doesn’t scare them half to death.

If they choose not to come back to the negotiations, but to race to a nuclear weapon, well my guess is that will show that they intended to do that all along. Despite all their protestations, that they have no interest in a nuclear weapon, but I think– I think that there is a potential for a better deal [emphasis added].

Gates, who served as Secretary of Defense under both George Bush and Barack Obama, shares the same concerns and appears to favor the same course of action as Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Will the New York Times or the Washington Post or CNN or NPR or the BBC or Fox cover the story that a former senior official of the Obama administration, one who is highly regarded by the mainstream media, sees the negotiations with Iran as Netanyahu does?