The New York Times will occasionally refer to government ministries in various countries. Nothing strange there. It’s an internationally focused newspaper, and it covers, among other things, foreign governments.

But, as is so often the case, there is something strange about how the coverage looks when the subject of Israel comes up.

Let’s consider some examples of how The New York Times has referenced government ministries responsible for conveying and controlling information. It won’t be hard to notice the recent exception:

About Myanmar: “Photographs posted online by the Myanmar Ministry of Information showed scores of men crowded inside a wooden boat…” (May 23, 2015)

About Liberia: “The Information Ministry issued a statement saying… (March 21, 2015)

About India: “A senior official in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry denied…” (January 17, 2015)

About the PA: “The Palestinian Authority’s Information Ministry issued a statement…” (September 28, 2009)

About Israel: “The government’s ministry of Hasbara — responsible for what Israel calls public diplomacy and its critics call propaganda…” (June 15, 2015)

Myanmar, Liberia, India, and the Palestinian Authority each have their fair share of “critics,” of course. Plenty have charged those countries with propaganda. So why are only Israel’s critics given the opportunity to define, in disparaging terms, the country’s efforts at communication and advocacy?

Note also that Robert Mackey, the author of the language about Israel above and perhaps the most biased journalist at the newspaper, refers to the (now defunct) Ministry of Public Diplomacy and Diaspora Affairs as the “ministry of Hasbara.” The New York Times doesn’t refer to India’s ministry of Sujna, or the Palestinian ministry of El Yaalan. (Thanks Google Translate.) So why, when it comes to Israel, do we read about the capital-h Hasbara ministry?

Although hasbara is a Hebrew word that means, more or less, explanation, Israel’s critics have taken to using it as a derisive word. For example, the anti-Israel and sometimes anti-Jewish website Mondoweiss called on readers to “Make ‘hasbara’ a household word,” and insisted the word “describes a concerted form of propaganda that no one word in English captures.”

It is no coincidence that the Mondoweiss piece focused largely on use of the word hasbara by none other than Robert Mackey. And this helps explains the Mackey’s most recent use of the term. He knows his fellow-travelers would understand his use of the word as a negative. And he wants more people to see it that way. It is “thanks to Mackey,” the Mondoweiss piece explained a year ago, that Americans will hopefully “start using the word hasbara with all its cynical implications.” (One month after that Mondoweiss piece was published, Mackey referred to hasbara as “a Hebrew euphemism for propaganda.”)

Every pro-Israel utterance should be suspected as inauthentic and malicious. That, Mondoweiss insists, is what hasbara means. It’s a theme Mackey himself has worked hard to promote in the past, and as we can see, it’s one that he continues to push.

June 17 Update: AFP Corrects Regarding 17 ‘Journalists’ Killed in Gaza

June 16 — In an article today about a short video produced by the Israeli Foreign Ministry mocking journalists’ coverage of the war last summer between Israel and Hamas, Agence France Presse parrots Palestinian propaganda about journalists killed in the fighting (“Israel ministry video lashes out at foreign journalists“):

Some 17 journalists were killed covering the July-August Gaza war. . .

The AFP does not attribute this claim to any source. The influential wire service does not inform readers that the figure is a Palestinian (Hamas) claim, disputed by Israel, which maintains that eight of the 17 were Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror operatives or were journalists who worked for Hamas media.

According to the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (“Examination of the Names of 17 Journalists and Media Personnel Whom the Palestinians Claim Were Killed in Operation Protective Edge,” Feb. 11, 2015):

About a week after the end of Operation Protective Edge the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate issued a list of 17 names, allegedly of journalists who had been killed in [the summer 2014 Gaza] operation. The list was published by the PA’s Wafa News Agency, which received it from the Hamas-controlled Gaza office of the ministry of information.

Among the Hamas operatives counted by the Palestinian sources as among the 17 journalists killed was Abdallah Fadel Mortaja, a military operative in the Shejaiya battalion of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades and a member of Hamas’ “information office.” In the YouTube clip below, he reads his last will in a Hamas produced video (uploaded Oct. 30, 2014).

UNESCO, which originally had identifed Murtaja as a “Palestinian journalist” in an Aug. 29 statement condemning his death, commendably followed up with this commendable Nov. 14, 2014 statement:

On 14 November, the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, issued an update about the statement she issued on 29 August, 2014, regarding Abdullah Murtaja, in the context of UNESCO’s mandate to defend freedom of expression and press freedom.

The original statement issued on 29 August was in line with UNESCO’s policy of condemning all killings of journalists. During this week, information has been brought to the attention of UNESCO that Mr Murtaja was a member of an organized armed group — an active combatant, and, therefore, not a civilian journalist. This has come to light in a video was posted recently on the Internet with Abdullah Murtaja speaking as a member of an organized armed group.

UNESCO therefore withdraws the statement of 29 August.

“I deplore attempts to instrumentalize the profession of journalists by combatants,” declared Irina Bokova. “The civilian status of journalists is critical, especially in situations of conflict, to ensure the free flow of information and ideas that are essential to the wider public and the restoration of stability and peace,” declared the Director-General.

Other “journalists” included in the list of 17 and exposed as Palestinian combatants include Ezat Salameh Doheir (shown below wearing an Islamic Jihad cap and holding an M-16 rifle) and Suleiman Muhammad Marouf (his death notice, issued by Islamic Jihad, follows the image of Doheir, and identifies him as a “jihad fighter shaheed.”)

During the November 2012 conflict in Gaza, AFP steadfastly refused to retract a false Hamas propaganda claim which the agency had reported as fact, despite overwhelming evidence which prompted numerous other media outlets to correct.

CAMERA has asked AFP editors to publish a clarification making clear that though Hamas and the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate has asserted that 17 journalists were killed, their list includes the names of eight Hamas and Islamic Jihad combatants and operatives.

If AFP fails to issue a clarification, the quip by the apparently foreign journalist featured in the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s video (below) criticizing media coverage — “there are no terrorists here, just ordinary people” — might have well been issued by the AFP bureau.

Indonesian maid executed

The United Nations Human Rights Council has a well-documented obsession with Israel. With that in mind, it is interesting to note a news report on June 15, 2015 that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which currently is a sitting member of the Human Rights Council, recorded its 100th beheading two weeks shy of the mid-year. Apparently, the Saudis are on a record pace. The majority of those decapitated are said to be murderers and drug offenders, however, apostasy is also listed as a capital offense. The executions are usually carried out in public.

Earlier this year, the Saudi practice of beheading those who commit serious crimes gained attention when two Indonesian maids were executed. Questions were raised as to whether the harsh sentences were meted out fairly or tended to be imposed on those with low societal standing.

Internet searches configured to discern the level of interest in the mainstream media for the Saudi beheadings will turn up only infrequent coverage by outlets like The New York Times or National Public Radio, who fervidly scrutinize any whiff of injustice allegedly committed by Israel.

Amnesty International, which monitors rights abuses in the Middle East, but tends to garner attention when it excoriates Israel for its policies and demands that Israelis be investigated for war crimes after the Jewish state responds forcefully to Hamas rocket attacks, is quoted in several news articles as stating that Saudi judicial proceedings “fall far short” of global norms of fairness.

Lieutenant General Michael Flynn (Retired- U.S. Army) testified on June 10, 2015 before the Joint Foreign Affairs and HASC subcommittees of the United States Congress on Iran. Flynn was the Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency from April 2012 to November 2014. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) is a Department of Defense combat support agency.

Flynn’s testimony on Iran is unequivocal. The picture he paints is one of an ominous and increasingly unstable future for the Middle East and for the world as a whole. The following are some selected quotes from his testimony:

Our closed, 20th Century bureaucratic system appears unable to adapt to the rapid and complex changes and threats we face in the 21st Century.

Iran has every intention to build a nuclear weapon. They have stated it many times, they have attempted well over a decade to move rapidly to nuclearizing its capability…

Iran’s stated desire to destroy Israel is very real. Iran has not once contributed to the greater good of the security of the region.

The notion of “snap back” sanctions is fiction.

Iran’s nuclear program has significant – and not fully disclosed – military dimensions. The P5+1 dialogue with Iran has glossed over a number of such programs (including warhead miniaturization blueprints) in pursuit of an agreement.

Iran possesses a substantial inventory of theater ballistic missiles capable of reaching as far as parts of southeastern Europe. Tehran is developing increasingly sophisticated missiles and improving the range and accuracy of its other missile systems. Iran is also acquiring advanced naval and aerospace capabilities, including naval mines, small but capable submarines, coastal defense cruise missile batteries, attack craft, anti-ship missiles, and armed unmanned aerial vehicles.

In his testimony Flynn recounts how monitoring the nuclear weapons development activities of North Korea and South Africa and Pakistan failed and he sees no likelihood that efforts to track the Iranian program will be any more successful.

What does a more proliferated region mean for US security?
Pretty much, what Prime Minister Netanyahu predicted to Congress, which was we would see the end of the Non Proliferation Treaty for all intents and purposes.

What does this mean for Israel?
The worst-case scenario is a reversion to a pre-Yom Kippur War security environment, except with less restraint.

Finally, Flynn had some choice words for those foreign policy “realists” like Columbia University professor Kenneth Waltz who argue in favor of Iran possessing nuclear weapons, claiming that it might actually be a good thing, in a June 2012 article in Foreign Affairs magazine. Flynn commented,

Delusions abound these days, but anyone who can argue for an ICBM or nuclear capable Iran is more a pyromaniac than pragmatist.

Now we know where National Public Radio’s The Diane Rehm Show, or the host herself, gets research from—a neo-Nazi website.

In an interview with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on June 10, 2015 the radio show host suddenly asserted that Sanders held dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship.

Diane Rehm: Senator, you have dual citizenship with Israel.

Bernie Sanders: Well, no I do not have dual citizenship with Israel. I’m an American. I don’t know where that question came from. I am an American citizen, and I have visited Israel on a couple of occasions. No, I’m an American citizen, period.

Rehm: I understand from a list we have gotten that you were on that list.

Sanders: No.

Although Sanders rebutted the claim—calling it “nonsense that goes on in the Internet”—Rehm persisted with an insinuation smacking of the classic antisemitic dual loyalty canard.

Rehm: Interesting. Are there members of Congress who do have dual citizenship or is that part of the fable?

Sanders: I honestly don’t know but I have read that on the Internet. You know, my dad came to this country from Poland at the age of 17 without a nickel in his pocket. He loved this country. I am, you know, I got offended a little bit by that comment, and I know it’s been on the Internet. I am obviously an American citizen and I do not have any dual citizenship.

Sanders correctly noted that one can read it “on the Internet.” But where exactly?

As CAMERA documented, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal program on May 22 featured an anti-Israeli, anti-Jewish caller making the same claim, along with two other phone-ins from the lunatic fringe essentially agreeing with her. This is typical for C-SPAN’s Journal. But one caller traced this particular lunacy, as repeated June 10 by Rehm, to its source.

“Nancy from Toledo” claimed “Bernie Sanders has dual citizenship with Israel. What is wrong with that picture? What is wrong with that picture? Why are there so many people in Congress and the Senate that have dual citizenship? Why is [Sic.] there so many people in our government that has [Sic.] dual citizenship with Israel?”

Nancy also claimed the Sept. 11, 2001 al-Qaeda terrorists attacks on New York City’s World Trade Center and The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. were part of a Jewish conspiracy. She noted that she “read that online. I think Counterpunch [a left-wing Web site] has it.”

A later caller to the show, however, traced Counterpunch’s source: “I found an article on a Nazi Web site called ‘StormFront’ and then lots of other sites quoting that information. So there is actually a Facebook page which talks about congressman with dual citizenship and what it does is just list random Jewish people [falsely] claiming that they hold dual citizenship.”

Rehm, 2013’s recipient of the Arab American of the Year award from the Arab American Community Center for Economic and Social Services, has exhibited anti-Israel bias in the past, documented by CAMERA. Knowingly or unknowingly, her staff—or Rehm herself, judging by her later apology to Sanders—gets “research” from neo-Nazi Web sites. Like “Nancy from Toledo,” they “read it online.”

Later in the day, Rehm issued an apology (to find it one initially had to click on Rehm’s interview with Sanders on NPR’s Web site, then scroll to the bottom. It has since been moved to the top, beneath the headline):

“On today’s show, I made a mistake. Rather than asking Senator and Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders whether he had dual U.S./Israeli citizenship, as I had read in a comment on Facebook, I stated it as fact.

“He corrected me, saying he did not know where the question came from. I apologized immediately. [Not “immediately”—she followed up by asking if other members of Congress were dual U.S.-Israeli nationals.]

“I want to apologize as well to all our listeners for having made an erroneous statement. I am sorry for the mistake. However, I am glad to play a role in putting this rumor to rest.”

Sanders deserved Rehm’s apology. For Rehm’s listeners, however, it was not so much an apology as the latest warning: When it comes to Israel, and Jews, you can’t believe everything you hear on NPR’s The Diane Rehm Show.—by Sean Durns

Celebrations of Israel’s 67th anniversary occurred on May 31, 2015 in, among other places, New York City and Washington, D.C. Yet, readers of The New York Times or Washington Post could be forgiven if they had no clue—neither paper provided anything that could be called coverage of events that drew an estimated 30,000-40,000 in Manhattan and 6,500 at two separate Washington sites. The Times did run an Op-Ed questioning Israel’s democracy (“Israel’s Charade of Democracy,” June 1, 2015) rather than cover the 51st annual “Salute to Israel Parade” in midtown Manhattan, celebrating the lone democracy in a region dominated by Islamic terrorism, upheaval and totalitarianism.

The Washington Post took note—if it can be called that—of Israel’s 67th anniversary activities by featuring a black-and-white picture of an unidentified person at the New York parade holding an Israeli flag. The accompanying cutline read “People carry a giant Israeli national flag at the Israel Day Parade in Manhattan. The annual celebration drew thousands of supporters, as well as anti-Israel protesters.” Meanwhile, in the Washington area, an estimated 2,500 people in Rockville, Md. and 4,000 in Fairfax, Va. attended twin “Israel-Fest” activities beneath The Post’s radar.

While The New York Times ignored the city’s annual “Celebrate Israel” parade, Mayor Bill de Blasio, Israeli Minister of Science Technology and Space Danny Danon, Grammy-award winning violinist Miri Ben-Ari and others attended.

The Times of Israel reported: “American and Israeli politicians joined 30,000 other people who marched up Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue in a show of solidarity with Israel for the all-day event marking Israel’s 67th birthday.” Festivities in New York counted “some 35 organizations including the Israeli government, Nefesh B’Nefesh and the UJA Federation of New York, [which] sponsored this year’s parade entitled ‘Israel Imagines Peace.’”

Instead of reporting the celebration of one democracy by another, The New York Times chose to give space on its Op-Ed page to an anti-Israeli organization. The writer was Hagai El-Ad, executive director of the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories, also known as B’Tselem.

B’Tselem, as CAMERA has noted, periodically manipulates facts and figures to malign Israel. NGO-Monitor charged that it also has disseminated propaganda from Hamas—a U.S.-listed terrorist organization—on civilian casualties in the summer 2014 Hamas-initiated war in the Gaza Strip. NGO-Monitor notes B’Tselem “has faced serious criticism for its misrepresentations of international law, inaccurate research, and skewed statistics.”

In New York City, tens of thousands marched in or turned out to watch the “Salute to Israel” parade. In the nation’s capital, thousands participated in two “Israel Fest” gatherings sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington.

Yet neither The New York Times nor The Washington Post covered them—an omission most unlikely to have occurred had the celebrants been black, Native American, Muslim America, feminists, gay or representative of virtually any other racial, ethnic, national, religious or otherwise newsworthy group.

In the case of The New York Times any news coverage, neutral or positive, vanished in favor of an anti-Israel commentary from a highly questionable source.

Where was the coverage, and why was it missing?—by Sean Durns

An article appearing in The New York Times discusses the decision by United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon to leave Israel and Hamas off a list of army and guerrillas groups that kill and maim children.

The article states,

The United Nations, in a separate report in April, found that Israeli military actions killed 44 Palestinian civilians who had sought refuge in seven schools run by the organization. The conflict left more than 2,200 Palestinians dead, while 72 were killed on the Israeli side, including 66 soldiers.

The war was a sharp escalation of tensions between Israel and the United Nations, which provides an array of services to the Palestinians in Gaza. United Nations officials said they had repeatedly communicated the locations of facilities harboring civilians to the Israeli military.

Crucial information is missing from this article that explains why Israel targeted certain schools. The separate report referenced in the article refers to an internal inquiry released on April 27, 2015. Here, in the report summary, is the crucial information contained in it that the Times article on June 9, 2015 left out:

It also said that weapons had not been found inside those United Nations schools, but rather in three other United Nations-run schools that were vacant at the time, that were used by Hamas militants to stash arms and that were “probably” sites from which rockets were fired at Israel.

So the Times article on June 9 does not inform readers that the United Nations confirmed that Hamas used schools to store munitions and launch rockets, albeit not the same ones the report notes were hit by Israeli fire. That is important information in trying to understand why Secretary General Ban chose to not include Israel on the “grim” list.

The entire inquiry report released on April 27, 2015 can be found here.

“Israel is busy maintaining the balance of terror with Hamas, which any errant rocket fired from the Gaza Strip could end. . . ” begins the Haaretz editorial today (“Let the people of Gaza go”).

The thing is, as reported in the news section of the very same newspaper, none of the recent rockets fired from Gaza at Israel were “errant.” They were all intentionally targeting Israel.

As Haaretz today reports about the rockets that landed last night in the Hof Ashkelon Regional Council:

A Salafist group calling itself the Omar Brigades, which identifies with ISIS, claimed responsibility for the rocket fire on Twitter later Saturday night. The group said it would not abide by an informal truce agreed between Hamas and Israel after last summer’s 50-day Gaza war, adding that that the rockets were a reminder to Hamas that Israel, not the Salafists, were “the enemy.”

About last Wednesday’s rockets, which reportedly landed in the Sdot Negev Regional Council, Haaretz reported last week:

A radical Islamist Salafist group posted a statement on Twitter claiming responsibility for firing the rockets, saying three rockets were fired. The group, calling itself the Omar Brigades, said the cross-border shooting on Wednesday was in retaliation for Hamas’ killing of an Islamic state supporter a day earlier in Gaza.”We are continuing with our jihad against the Jews, the enemies of God and no one will be able to deter us,” the statement said, using the term in Arabic for holy war.

Regarding the Katyusha rocket fired May 27 at Gan Yavne, Haaretz‘s Amos Harel had reported:

Both Israeli defense officials and sources in Gaza provided identical explanations for what happened. The head of Islamic Jihad’s military wing is currently trying to impose a new local commander on his men in northern Gaza. The field operatives oppose his appointment, and a violent conflict has erupted between the sides – one of which then decided to escalate it by launching a rocket at Israel.

Similarly, the story was much the same for the rocket fire on April 24, Israel’s Independence Day. Haaretz reported:

Estimates are that the rocket fire at Israel reflects a power struggle in Gaza between Hamas and other factions.

In short, all of the rockets fired at Israel in recent weeks, without exception, were intentionally targeting Israel, and were not “errant,” contrary to the Haaretz editorial.
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The Israel bashers are again cycling through their tired repertoire of long-discredited lies, aided by notorious anti-israel activist/University of Exeter professor, Ilan [“The struggle is about ideology, NOT about facts“]Pappé.

Yet again, the lie claiming that Israelis perpetrated a massacre of Arab residents of Tantura in 1948 is dredged up. Never mind that the originator of the lie was sued for libel. Never mind that he retracted his claims. Never mind that his sources denied his lies. It is a good enough lie for the famously dishonest Israel-bashing website Electronic Intifada and its frequent contributor Jonathan Cook to promote, resorting to a conspiracy theory of a cover-up by Israel and a vast network of its supporters , including CAMERA.

Let us re-examine the facts:
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Director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights of the Holocaust, Anne Bayefsky, and the team at Human Rights Voices, have created an online tool for educating the public, the media, advocates, and legislators, about every aspect of the UN’s handling of the Gaza war and the forthcoming McGowan Davis/Schabas report. This is the opportunity to arm yourself with the facts, and with an understanding of the law, and prepare for battle — against the legal pogrom that is now unfolding against the Jewish state.

The database on the UN’s Legal Pogrom and McGowan Davis/Schabas report will be updated regularly.