The Washington Post has made recurrent references to a fatwa–an Islamic religious decree–in which Iran’s “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei purportedly ordained that the faith bars Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. U.S.-led negotiations with Iran over the latter’s suspected illegal nuclear weapons program make the fatwa’s existence, or non-existence, newsworthy.

When the newspaper repeated the fatwa claim recently CAMERA submitted the letter to the editor reproduced below. It appeared, slightly edited, in the June 27, 2015 print edition under the headline “Recalling the Fact Checker’s Iran advice.”

“The Post’s ‘Kerry hints at possible compromise in Iran nuclear talks’ (June 17, 2015), claims that in 2003 a fatwa, or religious decree, was ‘issued by Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that, according to some interpretations, banned the production and use of nuclear weapons as a sin under Islam.’ However, as CAMERA and others have noted, there is no written proof that such a religious edict exists (‘Fatwa? What Fatwa? Does Ayaltollah Khamenei’s Edict Exist?’ Apr. 30, 2015,).

“A 2011 report by Shiite theologian Mehdi Khalaji and Michael Eisenstadt of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy notes that religious edicts in the Islamic Republic are ‘grounded not in Islamic law but rather in the regime’s doctrine of expediency, as interpreted by the Supreme Leader….if the Islamic Republic’s leaders believe that developing, stockpiling, or using nuclear weapons is in its interests, then religious considerations will not constrain these actions’ (‘Nuclear Fatwa: Religion and Politics in Iran’s Proliferation Strategy,’ September, 2011, Washington Institute for Near East Policy).

“In fact, The Post previously cited this report—and explored the issue of a ‘nuclear fatwa’—in Glenn Kessler’s ‘Fact Checker’ feature (‘Did Iran’s supreme leader issue a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons?’ Nov. 27, 2013). This item cautioned, ‘U.S. officials should be careful about saying the fatwa prohibits the development of nuclear weapons, as that is not especially clear anymore.’

“Has The Post changed its mind regarding its own advice? Or was ‘Fact Checker’ advice meant for U.S. officials and not the paper’s own journalists? If Ayatollah Khamenei indeed issued a fatwa against creating, stockpiling, and using nuclear weapons, The Post usefully should translate and print it as a sidebar to its next article on the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the United States and other participating countries.”

Sincerely,
Sean Durns
Media Assistant
Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America

On Monday night, a Palestinian terrorist attack targeted four young Israeli men in a car fired on while travelling from a basketball game in the Binyamin region of the West Bank. Three men were seriously wounded, while the fourth, Malachi Moshe Rosenfeld, died of his wounds. The attack is believed to have been carried out by a Palestinian terror cell. It is the latest of several terrorist attacks, some deadly, that have taken place in the region since the beginning of the Muslim Ramadan, when Israeli security forces ease restrictions on Palestinian travel between the West Bank and Jerusalem.
A June 30th AFP article, “Shooting wounds four Israelis near West Bank settlement” includes the following “explanation” for the terrorist attacks:

A shooting near a Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank wounded four Israelis ..

…West Bank settlements are considered illegal under international law and Israelis have been attacked previously in and around them, as well as in annexed east Jerusalem.

This comes across disturbingly as AFP’s attempt to legitimize/justify Palestinian terrorism and blame the victims.

On June 8, the U.S. Supreme Court decided Zivotofsky v. Kerry, the case of a boy, an American citizen born in Jerusalem in 2002, whose parents wanted to list “Jerusalem, Israel” as the birthplace on his passport, as was their right under a law passed by Congress. The State Department, first under the Bush administration and currently under the Obama administration, would not allow it, disregarding this law. According to the majority opinion, the Constitution gives the president – or the administration, as opposed to Congress – the exclusive power to recognize foreign sovereigns. In plain English, Jerusalem doesn’t have to be part of Israel if the president doesn’t want it to be.

This got quite a bit of attention by the media. But, the press did not delve too deeply into this issue. (No surprise there.) When it comes to recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the United States is even more extreme than the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO).

After the War of Independence, Israel held part of Jerusalem, referred to by the media as “West Jerusalem,” and established it as the capital in 1949. Part of Jerusalem was illegally occupied by Jordan from 1948-1967, frequently called “East Jerusalem.”

While theoretically the PLO recognizes that Palestinian Arabs have no claim on “West Jerusalem,” publicly claiming to seek Israel’s withdrawal to the 1949 armistice lines or “the 1967 borders,” the American government refuses to.

In an opinion piece in The New York Jewish Week, law professor Avi Bell writes:

The State Department, backed by both Republican and Democrat-controlled White Houses, has insisted that no part of Jerusalem be recognized in any way as part of Israel… None of it.

The Obama administration has explained that refusing to recognize Israeli sovereignty in any part of Jerusalem is necessary to avoid interference with the “peace process.” Jerusalem, says the White House, must be dealt with solely in negotiations between the parties.

But this justification falls apart upon the slightest examination.

The current PLO territorial demands, repeated often and in every forum imaginable, are for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and “East Jerusalem.” No senior PLO figure has demanded in recent years that Israel also withdraw from “West Jerusalem.” In demanding that Israel acquire PLO approval for its sovereignty over “West Jerusalem,” the White House is taking a more hardline anti-Israel position than even the PLO.

[…]

Historically, the anti-Israel position of the U.S. on Jerusalem developed without any connection to the Israel-PLO peace negotiations that began in 1993. The U.S. never recognized Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, even in 1948, when Israel’s War of Independence left parts of Jerusalem in Israeli hands. When Israel declared Jerusalem (“West Jerusalem”) its capital in 1949, the U.S. refused to recognize it, even though international law makes states the sole determinants of their own capital.

In 1949, there was no “peace process” between Israeli and Palestinian leaders. Not in 1949, 1959, 1969, 1979, or 1989. So what did the “peace process” have to do with Jerusalem as Israel’s capital for all those years? Why has the American government taken such an anti-Israel position? And… where’s the coverage?

Washington Post columnist Walter Pincus has opined again on Israel, Iran, and nuclear weapons. And again, his compulsion to play “gotcha” against Israel cripples his analysis.

Pincus’ “Nuclear-free Middle East is worth imagining” (June 16, 2015) flawed premise leads to a flawed conclusion—just like his “Is the U.S. going too far to help Israel?” (May 17, 2012), as CAMERA noted at the time.

The Post columnist says his reading of Ari Shavit’s book My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel—a key chapter of which CAMERA exposed for falsely portraying the 1948 battle for Lydda (Lod) as a “massacre at the heart of Zionism”—sparked the thought that if Israel would just agree to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a nuclear-free Middle East eventually would emerge.

Pincus says that according to Shavit “the Iranians have been doing what Israel did…if Iran succeeds, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey and Algeria could be next.” The veteran correspondent muses:

“That thought made me realize how different this all would be if Israel, rather than opposing a P5+1 [Germany and the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council] agreement calling for new economic sanctions against Iran and threatening a military attack on Tehran’s nuclear facilities, would put its energy into developing a rational NPT option.”

By this logic, nuclear proliferation in the Middle East is Israel’s fault. By its extension, other Middle Eastern countries are not independent actors with their own motivations; they only react to actions of Israel and the West. In this line of thinking, Iran—despite its own calls to “wipe Israel off the map”—wants a nuclear weapon only because Israel has had one before the treaty existed.

To Pincus, the solution is simple: Israel should quit calling for Iran—a signatory to the NPT—to abide its promises and instead propose a “rational” NPT option. How this would elicit a different response from the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, a regime that repeatedly refuses to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) he doesn’t say.

A clouded crystal ball

Perhaps this is because nuclear proliferation in Middle Eastern countries isn’t the primary focus of the article—Israel’s defense policy is.

The Post’s long-time reporter and columnist asserts the Jewish state has no need for nuclear self-defense because “the threat to Israel that generated its bomb—overwhelming Arab armies—no longer exists. The Israel Defense Forces have far more conventional capability than the nation’s neighbors put together, including Iran.”

By this logic, Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, and their terrorist ilk pose little or no threat to Israel—even as they gobble up territory (including some near the Israeli-controlled portion of the Golan Heights), mount operations to kill Israelis, and in the case of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip—receive support from Iran. Similarly, had not Israeli bombers conducted “nuclear arms control” against Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007, conventional or terrorist armies might be protected today by radioactive umbrellas.

But in Pincus’ crystal ball photograph, as opposed to the Middle East’s unspooling video of upheaval, today’s tactical threats will never change into strategic dangers, Arab armies will never serve aggressive pan-Islamic regimes and Israel with its inescapable population inferiority will remain militarily superior to any combination of threats without a presumed nuclear arsenal.

Pretzel logic and crucial omissions leave the author comfortable with his mind-numbing claim “the best way to remove the Iran nuclear threat is to create a Middle East nuclear-free zone.” After all, he says, as if it mattered, it “has been on the U.N. agenda since the 1960s…promoted initially by Egypt and Iran [emphasis added].”

Not only CAMERA recognized Pincus’ faulty reasoning. Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Executive Director Abraham Foxman noted in a June 21, 2015 letter to the editor that Pincus’ attempt to compare Israel to South Africa—which cancelled its nuclear program—was “faulty” since “South Africa faced no enemies committed to its destruction. Israel faces an Iran that openly calls for the end of the Jewish state.”

Pincus concludes by “sadly” noting demands by theocrats in Tehran for Israel to sign the treaty—which the Iranian regime regularly violates—are not likely to be heeded.

In James Thurber’s 1939 short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”—enlarged if not improved as a 2013 Ben Stiller film—the main character daydreams his fantasies into apparent reality. Many children play with imaginary friends; Pincus periodically writes about an imaginary Middle East.—Sean Durns

The stated mission of the biannual Christ at the Checkpoint (CaTC) conferences in Bethlehem “is to challenge Evangelicals to take responsibility to help resolve the conflicts in Israel/Palestine by engaging with the teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God.”

This mission has been carried out through the targeting of a western – and in particular, American – evangelical audience with a message that blames Israel for the problems Palestinian Christians face. In the process, key American evangelical leaders and organizations have not only been involved in every conference since the first one in 2010, but they are actively engaged in promoting the Christian Palestinian narrative to followers in the US.

One of the ways CaTC disseminates its message and that of its sponsoring institution, Bethlehem Bible College (BBC), is through the use of social media and the production of online videos. Since the targeted audience of these organizations is American evangelicals, the facebook pages of BBC and CaTC, as well as the videos they produce, are in English.

However, CaTC has recently posted two videos on YouTube that were produced in Arabic. This fact, combined with the content of these clips, raises the question: Does Christ at the Checkpoint have a new agenda? Is it possible they intend to communicate a different message to an Arabic-speaking audience than the one they present to their Western friends? The material presented in these newest videos suggests that this might be the case.

A video posted on May 6, 2015 by CaTC documents a televised meeting held at Bethlehem Bible College on April 2, 2015 that was allegedly addressed to the persecuted churches of the Arab world. Participants in this meeting included Jack Sara, president of Bethlehem Bible College, Madleine Sara, leader of Counseling and Coaching at BBC, Yohanna Katanacho, Academic Dean of BBC, Michel Sabbah, the Latin Patriarch Emeritus of Jerusalem, Orthodox Archbishop Atallah Hanna, and Noura Karmi, project coordinator of Kairos Palestine, which is an organization known for its issuance of a document by the same name in 2009.

The Kairos Palestine document asserts, among other things, that Jewish sovereignty or self-determination is contrary to God’s plan for humanity. The document is so egregious that a resolution adopted by the Central Conference of American Rabbis (CCAR) has declared it to be supersessionist and anti-Semitic. In light of this, it is troubling to say the least, that four of the six people involved in the televised meeting at BBC in April played major roles in the development of an anti-Semitic document that delegitimizes Israel’s right to exist on theological grounds.

In addition to the participation of Karmi as project coordinator, Katanacho, Sabbah and Hanna were all co-authors of this document. The involvement of these people in this meeting, and Katanacho’s position as Academic Dean of BBC, suggests that the president of BBC and the institution itself support this position as well.

The content of Michel Sabbah’s talk as recorded on the video is no less disturbing.
According to a translation of the Arabic by George Michael, one of the professional translators who provided the US government with a translation of Osama Bin Laden tapes in 2001, Sabbah says:

During the Palestinian resistance, and the intifada, there was a lot of Christians “involved”, their position was a true and correct Palestinian position, but they lacked something else and that is to have a Christian position. They would have been stronger; they should have a Palestinian and Christian position at the same time, that makes them stronger.

Sabbah’s comments about Christians being involved in the Intifada are vague. He does not say exactly how they were involved. But it is clear from this statement, as well as the context in which it appears, that Sabbah is encouraging his audience to continue to be involved in some form of resistance against Israel.

As with his reference to the past, it is not clear what kind of future involvement he is encouraging. If asked, he may claim he is only encouraging non-violent activity. However, due to the vagueness of his statements, he could easily be interpreted as offering an encouragement of violent means.

In light of CaTC’s professed intent to help resolve the conflicts in Israel/Palestine by engaging with the teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God, and in light of the volatile state of affairs in the Middle East, it is irresponsible for someone associated with CaTC to state that Christian involvement in Palestinian resistance was “a true and correct Palestinian position” without being much more specific about what form that involvement should take.

The second recent video, posted on YouTube on March 26, 2015, promotes a Christ at the Checkpoint Young Adult conference this coming July through the use of explicit imagery in which Israel is demonized by being equated with ISIS.

Images of ISIS captives about to be beheaded are juxtapositioned with images of the security barrier Israel was forced to build to protect its citizens from suicide bombers.

Images of the Jordanian pilot about to be burned alive in a cage are juxtapositioned with scenes of people going through a checkpoint.

And images of the ISIS flag are juxtapositioned with those of the Israeli flag.

The obvious implication is that the security measures Israel has been forced to take in response to Palestinian suicide bombers is equivalent to what ISIS is doing to people as it seeks to forcibly establish a caliphate ruled by an extreme form of Islamic law.

The video also equates Israel and ISIS with the H1N1 virus, or swine flu. In so doing, the contagious spread of swine flu is equated with the terrifying ease with which ISIS is conquering territory, and with the existence of Israel, or at the very least, Israel’s need for a security barrier with checkpoints.

The analogy between Israel and swine flu is reminiscent of the raging of Hitler against the Jews as a “dangerous bacillus,” and it is consistent with the dehumanizing designation of Jews as pigs that is common throughout the Muslim world. However, this video was not produced by Nazis or Muslims, but by those who claim to be Christians!

The production of these two videos, in Arabic, with such inflammatory content, causes one to wonder if Christ at the Checkpoint has a new agenda.

The presentation of such material also makes one question how these latest videos are consistent with the stated mission of CaTC, which “is to challenge Evangelicals to take responsibility to help resolve the conflicts in Israel/Palestine by engaging with the teaching of Jesus on the Kingdom of God.”

And in light of the fact that the content differs so radically from other videos produced by the same organization, one has to ask whether CaTC would show these videos – particularly the one that equates Israel to ISIS – to the English speaking audience it looks to for spiritual and financial support.

Ultimately, the question is: Do the leaders of Christ at the Checkpoint really intend to promote the peace they tell their Western audience they want?

The High Level International Military Group [HLIMG] published preliminary findings of its inquiry into the conduct of the Israeli Defense Forces during its summer 2014 military operation in Gaza. The report is available on the web site of UN Watch. UN Watch is an organization dedicated to exposing and combatting the corruption of the United Nations human rights mission.

The HLIMG report concludes:

Our overall findings are that during “Operation Protective Edge” last summer, in the air, on the ground and at sea, Israel not only met a reasonable international standard of observance of the laws of armed conflict, but in many cases significantly exceeded that standard. We saw clear evidence of this from the upper to the lower levels of command. A measure of the seriousness with which Israel took its moral duties and its responsibilities under the laws of armed conflict is that in some cases Israel’s scrupulous adherence to the laws of war cost Israeli soldiers’ and civilians’ lives.

The Group’s findings refute and repudiate the findings of an inquiry by the United Nations Human Rights Council [UNHRC]. The UNHRC inquiry was headed by veteran anti-Israel activist William Schabas until he was forced to resign when it was revealed he was on the Palestinian payroll.

According to Hillel Neuer of UN Watch, the UNHRC is a key part of a bureaucratic infrastructure created at the UN that is dedicated to isolating and undermining the world’s only Jewish state. UN Watch recently observed, “The 47-nation body has condemned Israel in 80% of its country censures, in 20 of 25 resolutions.” Meanwhile, massive abusers of human rights like the governments of Sudan, North Korea and Iran receive only a fraction of the condemnation directed at Israel.

UN Watch criticized the council for elevating two of the worst human rights offenders, Iran and Saudi Arabia, to leadership positions in the UNHRC. The appointments make a mockery of the UN’s obligation to defend human rights worldwide.

In sharp contrast to the UNHRC inquiry, the HLIMG group found that “The measures taken [by the Israel Defense Forces] were often far in excess of the requirements of the Geneva Conventions. They sometimes placed Israeli lives at risk.”

Members of the High Level International Military Group are listed below:

Giulio Terzi – former Foreign Minister of Italy.
General Klaus Naumann – former Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee.
General Vincenzo Camporini – former Chief of the Defence Staff of Italy.
Admiral Jose Maria Teran – former Chief of the Joint Staff of Spain.
Ambassador Pierre-Richard Prosper – former US State Department Ambassador at Large for war crimes issues.
Mr Rafael Bardaji – former National Security Adviser for the Spanish government.
Lieutenant General David A Deptula – former Standing Joint Force Air Component Commander, United States Pacific Command.
Major General Jim Molan – former Chief of Operations, Headquarters Multi National Force, Iraq and Commander of the Australian Defence College.
Colonel Eduardo Ramirez – Member of Colombian Congress and former Chief of Security, Colombia.
Colonel Vincent Alcazar – former senior United States Air Force officer in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Colonel Richard Kemp – former Commander of British Forces in Afghanistan

In response to the outpouring of interest in a recent New York Times correction about the number of Eritreans detained in Israel (it’s 464, not 34,400), CAMERA decided to review the The New York Times’ fuzzy numbers concerning Israel over the years.

While CAMERA did not prompt the correction about the Eritrean detainees (though CAMERA’s Tamar Sternthal flagged it in the above tweet that was widely shared), the following corrections were all the work of CAMERA.

Thousands, Not Hundreds, of Rockets

Error (Somini Sengupta, 2/2/15): . . . .during the Gaza conflict, in which Palestinian militants fired hundreds of rockets into Israel . . .

Nazareth: 50 Percent, not 5 Percent, of Land Compared to Jewish Town

Error (Jodi Rudoren, 12/9/14): Professor Jamal said the Arab city of Nazareth has twice the population but 5 percent of the land of its neighbor, predominantly Jewish Upper Nazareth. . .

Grossly Inflated Number for Gaza Refugees

Error (International New York Times, Jodi Rudoren, 9/15/14): The United Nations Relief and Works Agency runs schools through the ninth grade for the children of Palestinians who were expelled from or fled homes in Israel and the West Bank, about 70 percent of Gaza’s 1.8 million residents.

Correction (9/19/14):

(more…)

Note June 19, 2015: This post has been updated. See the update after the jump.

Michael Oren, former Israeli Ambassador to the United States, has leveled a serious charge at Andrew Rosenthal, editorial page editor of the New York Times. Oren, who is now a member of the Israeli Knesset, reports that Rosenthal exhibited a troubling indifference to factual misstatements made by Mahmound Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority in 2011 and in the words of Jamie Weinstein at the D.C. Caller “is unable to distinquish between fact and opinion.”

Oren lays the story out in his soon-to-be published book, Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide (Random House, 2015).

When The Times published Abbas’ factually challenged piece in The New York Times in May 2011, Oren called Rosenthal to complain. Weinstein reports that Oren recreates the conversation went as follows:

“When I write for the Times, fact checkers examine every word I write,” I began. “Did anybody check whether Abbas has his facts exactly backwards?”

“That’s your opinion,” Rosenthal replied.

“I’m an historian, Andy, and there are opinions and there are facts. That the Arabs rejected partition and the Jews accepted it is an irrefutable fact.”

“In your view.”

“Tell me, on June 6, 1944, did Allied forces land or did they not land on Normandy Beach.”

Rosenthal, the son of a Pulitzer Prize-winning Times reporter and famed executive editor, replied, “Some might say so.”

Oren’s allegation against Rosenthal is pretty serious given The Times’ stated commitment to getting it right. In 2004, David Shipley, who was then serving as editor of the Op-Ed pages for the paper wrote a piece titled, “And Now a Word from Op-Ed.” The piece describes how an opinion piece ends up in The Times. It states explicitly that if a submission is accepted for publication, “we’ll edit and fact-check your work.”

Really?
(more…)

A high-ranking Fatah leader, Abbas Zaki, has claimed that the United States is responsible for the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria terror movement. ISIS, also known as ISIL, Islamic State (IS) or Daesh, has overrun large portions of Syria and Iraq, murdering thousands, in the past year.

Zaki told Syrian News TV in a June 2, 2015 interview, “They [the U.S.] created IS, but cannot control it.” Zaki—a close associate of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas—also claimed, “the U.S. is destroying itself by its own hand” as a result of its purported creation of the terrorist group. Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) highlighted Zaki’s interview.

Zaki—as CAMERA has noted—was one of 14 new members of the Fatah Central Committee called “more pragmatic than their predecessors” by The New York Times in April, 2009.

The U.S. did not, of course, create ISIS. The terrorist group—an offshoot of Al Qaeda—originated as the group
Jama’at al-Tawhid wa-l-Jihad in 2000, according to Aaron Zellin a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

A history of Zaki’s statements reveal not just conspiratorial, but also violent and antisemitic thinking. According to MEMRI, Zaki has asserted “those Israelis have no religion and no principles. They are nothing but advanced tools for evil. They talk about the Holocaust and so on. So why are they doing this to us? Therefore, in my view, Allah will gather them so that we can kill them. Every killer is bound to be killed. There is no other option. …”

Dispossession if not genocide of the Jews of Israel—though the former without the latter is virtually impossible to imagine—which he has referred to as “the inspiring idea,” long has been part of Zaki’s thinking, as CAMERA has noted. In 2008, Zaki advocated Yasser Arafat’s 1974 “phased plan” to destroy the Jewish state: “Let me tell you, when the ideology of Israel collapses, and we take, at least, Jerusalem, the Israeli ideology will collapse in its entirety, and we will begin to progress with our own ideology, Allah willing, and drive them [the Jews] out of all of Palestine.”

The Fatah leader’s conception of pragmatism was on full display in a Sept. 23, 2011 Al Jazeera broadcast in which he admonished, “If one says that one wants to wipe Israel out…C’mon, it’s too difficult. It’s not [acceptable] policy to say so. Don’t say these things to the world. Keep it to yourself.”

Zaki the rejectionist here lives up to The New York Times’ definition of a “pragmatic” Palestinian leader: Highly immoderate, he advises expedient discretion in pursuit of extremist goals.–Sean Durns

Denis MacEoin earned a B.A. and an M.A. in English Language and Literature from Trinity College, Dublin, followed by a second 4-year M.A. in Persian, Arabic, and Islamic Studies from Edinburgh and a PhD in Persian/Islamic Studies from Cambridge (King’s College). He has lectured in Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University, and written several academic books, numerous articles as well as reports on hate literature, Shari’a Law, and Islamic schools.

As an expert on Arabic and Islamic studies, fluent in Arabic and Persian languages, one might think that Dr. MacEoin’s point of view on the Arab-Israeli conflict and its related controversies would get some coverage in the press. Well, not so much.

Dr. MacEoin sent a letter to the Executive Council of the National Union of Students (NUS), an umbrella organization representing 600 student unions across the UK, calling them to account for voting to boycott Israel. The NUS, which comprises 95% of higher and further education unions in the country, recently passed a motion to boycott Israeli companies and to affiliate to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

But none of the popular press has covered this important response. Dr. MacEoin writes:

The world you live in is upside-down: you claim to act in defense of human rights, but your motions do not reflect this. You give free passage to the worst abusers of human rights — countries that persecute religious minorities, suppress and kill women, throw homosexuals from high roofs, execute hundreds of dissidents every year, imprison, torture and slaughter — without rebuke. Yet you fulminate against Israel, which does none of those things. It does not use torture, it does not execute anyone, not even Palestinian terrorists who have committed mass murder against innocent civilians and children — and all this while being forced to defend itself against more wars, more terrorist attacks, and more hatred than are suffered by the rest of the world combined.

[…]

Your prejudice is as appalling as your refusal to act fairly and honestly. Criticize Israel if you must, but at least learn that it does great good for mankind and that the best hope for the Palestinian people, with whom you express solidarity, does not lie in further acts of terrorism and warfare, nor in defiance of international legal norms, but in encouraging the paths to real peace: free speech for the Palestinians, and freedom from their own barren leaders, who hope to keep their jobs-for-life by deflecting blame for their own corrupt governance onto their neighbor. You could insist on their ending their incitement, which is only radicalizing the Palestinians to turn to the waiting arms of Hamas and ISIS. Why not encourage the Palestinians to accept Israel’s frequent offers to help them actually build their infrastructure and economies?

More of the letter can be read on the Gatestone Institute Web site. It is worth reading. The media should read it. And, they should write about it. Where’s the coverage?