During the summer many parents send their children to summer camp to grow, learn and make new friends. Hamas—a U.S. listed Palestinian terrorist organization that has brutally ruled the Gaza Strip since 2006—sends young Gazans to summer camps too. But there they are indoctrinated with hatred of Jews and the West and trained to murder.

On June 13, 2015, the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades—a wing of Hamas—was running its third summer camp for Gaza teens and young adults to learn military tactics and training. The brigades take its name from Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, a Syrian-born Islamic revivalist preacher and president of the Young Men’s Muslim Association in Haifa who led terrorist attacks against British officials and Jews in late 1920’s and early 1930’s Mandatory Palestine.

Hamas recruits their youth from mosques and central cities in the Gaza Strip for the Brigades’ camps. Groups known as “The Liberation Pioneers” were formed to provide youthful terror recruits after the summer 2014 Hamas initiated war with Israel.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) notes in a July 6 report on the camps that the Hamas daily newspaper Filastin advertised the al-Qassam Brigades “aim to “create a nucleus for the future liberation project,” that is, the attempted destruction of Israel. Summer camp activities for the young terrorists-to-be include “sermons, displays of courage, training in military skills, live fire exercises, field training, civil defense classes and first aid.”

Fliers promoting the camp carry the “Liberation Pioneer” anthem, which includes a verse exhorting “martyrdom”: “We [come] from our people and return to it, our blood is sacrificed for young and old.”

According to MEMRI, Hamas’ marketing for the summer camps “is meant to impress youths and entice them to register” through special videos, social media, especially Facebook, that provides registration information, cartoons, and public displays featuring loud public music and martial arts demonstrations.

Although Hamas claims that summer camps to train future terrorists are only for those 15 and over, pictures in the MEMRI report indicate otherwise. Taken from social media posts by Hamas, the images show children apparently much younger than 15 crowding tables that are attended by masked terrorists. AK-47 assault rifles lay on the tables next to registration sheets. In one image, a young child is seen sitting in the lap of one of the terrorists.

By training youth to fulfill Hamas’ charter calling for the destruction of the Jewish State and the genocide of Jews, Hamas is in violation of the United Nations 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child. The convention defines child soldiers as combatants under the age of 15.

Children forced to take up arms by Ugandan Joseph Kony and his Lord’s Resistance Army resulted in the viral “Kony 2012” campaign. This anti-child soldier effort gained numerous Facebook ‘likes,’ ‘retweets’ on Twitter, and much notice on other social media platforms. It garnered—if briefly—public notice and disgust with Kony’s tactics. The predatory terrorist activities of Hamas—whose “leaders” attend graduation ceremonies for camp trainees—has yet to receive similar notice and condemnation in very many media outlets. –Sean Durns

In a film review last week, The Los Angeles Times (“Life in Israel from an Arab’s view“) understates the percentage of Israel’s Arab population by half. The review states: “‘A Borrowed Identity’ deals with the situation of the roughly 10% of the state of Israel population (1.617 million people, we are told) who are Palestinians.”

In fact, Israel’s Arab population constitutes just over 20 percent of the country’s total population. According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (in Hebrew), as of April 21, 2015, Israel’s total population was 8.345 million, of which 1.730 are Arab (20.7 percent).

As The Los Angeles Times correctly reported on March 13, 2015, “Arabs make up one-fifth of the population but have long felt disconnected from Israeli politics — until now.”

Likewise, the paper correctly reported Jan. 16, 2015: “In a country where Arabs make up about 20% of the population, the village is separated from other Arab communities nearly as much as from its Jewish neighbors.”

CAMERA has requested a correction. Stay tuned for an update.

July 19, 2015 Update: LA Times Corrects: Israel’s Arab Population Is 20 Percent

Last week, three Palestinian men were found dead in their jail cells. Shocked that you haven’t read about this on the front page of The New York Times? Don’t be. They didn’t die in Israeli custody. Two of the men died in Palestinian Authority security facilities in Bethlehem; the third was found dead in a Hamas-controlled jail in the Gaza Strip. According to the PA and Hamas, all three committed suicide. Hmm…

As Israeli-Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh writes:

When three detainees die in less than a week in Palestinian detention, this should sound an alarm bell, especially among so-called pro-Palestinian groups and human rights activists in different parts of the world.

But these folks, like the UN and mainstream media, do not care about the human rights of the Palestinians if Israel cannot be held responsible. Their obsession with Israel has made them blind to the plight of Palestinians living under the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as well as to the horrific crimes committed every day by Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere.

The story of the three men who died in Palestinian jails is yet another example of the double standards that the international community and media employ when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When an Israeli officer shoots a young man in self-defense as he attacks the officer’s car with stones, the incident receives widespread coverage in the press and condemnation by United Nations officials. But when three men already in prison die under Palestinian control… Where’s the coverage?

A scholarly institution with a mission to promote harmonious relations between Jews and non Jews has a supporter of BDS on its board.

Ordained as a minister of the Church of England in 1926, the Reverend Dr James Parkes (1896-1981) was a devoted and tireless campaigner against anti-Jewish prejudice, unrelenting in his efforts to promote tolerance and understanding towards Jews among his fellow churchmen and in society at large. He constantly championed persecuted Jews during the dark decades when Nazi and pro-Nazi governments were in power and helped to rescue a number of Jewish refugees during the 1930s.

One of this great man’s legacies was the Parkes Institute, the activities and origins of which are summarised as follows:

“The Parkes Institute is the world’s oldest and most wide-ranging centre for the study of Jewish/non-Jewish relations across the ages.”

Reverend Parkes had sound understanding of historical realities and would not have been surprised by the gradual erosion of sympathies for Jews and Israel within his church and in society and large and the corresponding rise in influence of anti-Israel activists which have occurred within the past four decades. The impact in certain circles of new forms of “replacement theology” and the “revisionist” doctrines of Christian Palestinian leaders – many of whom have no hesitation in propagating the most extreme lies about Israelis and in expressing themselves in openly anti-Jewish ways (the time when the Anglican Church in Israel was represented by a cultured and broad-minded scholar like Bishop George Appleton being long past) – has been well documented and analysed, including in the authoritative 2002 study, “Christians who hate the Jews”, by Melanie Phillips.

While Reverend Parkes would have been greatly saddened by the above phenomena, he would surely have felt deeply betrayed by developments within the Parkes Institute. The past decade has seen a growing presence within its administrative and academic bodies not only of individuals who show themselves from time to time to be dishonestly or unfairly critical of Israel, but also of sympathisers of boycotts and sanctions of various kinds, like Professor Oren Ben-Dor. There was widespread media coverage of this professor of law and philosophy, the main organiser of a pseudo-scholarly conference, entitled “International Law and the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism” – intended to bring together rabidly anti-Zionist academics to present papers delegitimising all aspects of Israel.

Read the whole piece by Paul Leslie. (Update: A version of this article was published in the Algemeiner on July 2, 2015)
(more…)

Ever hear the story about the cub reporter sent to cover a city council meeting who comes back empty-handed? “Nothing to report,” he tells his city editor. “City hall burned down.”

In that manner, major U.S. news media covered U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Martin Dempsey’s June trip to Israel. Dempsey made a headline-worthy prediction about Iran while visiting Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gadi Eizenkot and Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon on June 9, 2015, Dempsey’s comments about Iran using sanctions relief to fund its terrorist activities and imperial ambitions has gone unnoticed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other major media outlets.

Dempsey—the principal military adviser to President Obama, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter and National Security Adviser Susan Rice—said he expects sanctions relief following a nuclear agreement between Iran and the “P-5+1″ (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, China and Germany) would allow the theocratic state to expand funding for its terrorist proxy groups increasingly active in the region. The [c]hairman observed, “I think they [the Iranians] will invest in their surrogates; I think they will invest in additional military capability.”

Dempsey remarked he “shared” Israeli concerns about funds going towards Iranian-supported Shiite terrorist groups like Hezbollah or to strengthen the Iranian military. And he expressed skepticism that relief from tight economic sanctions would go to improving the “lot of the average Iranian citizen.”

These conclusions differ dramatically from other Obama administration officials such as Secretary of the Treasury Jacob Lew, who claimed less than two months before that “most of the money Iran receives from sanctions relief will not [emphasis in original] be used to support those activities.”

The top military official of the United States went on record expressing that sanctions relief likely would benefit not only terrorist organizations, but also an Iranian military engaged in disruptive operations in Yemen, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria. Yet The Washington Post failed to provide any coverage of the chairman’s Israel visit. The New York Times, in its reporting (“Head of U.S. Joint Chiefs Seeks to Assure Israel on Security,” June 10), omitted Dempsey’s comments on sanctions relief going to fund terror and Iranian imperialism. Instead, it focused on his efforts to “reassure” Israel.

Reassurance is nice, but sometimes it is what’s disturbing that ranks as important and newsworthy.– Sean Durns

This year, two prominent Middle Eastern media outlets — Al Jazeera and The Jerusalem Post — each published a completely bogus story about Israel.

In February, one of them published an article which falsely claimed that Israel flooded the Gaza Strip by opening a dam in southern Israel. The headline was “Gazans flee floods caused by Israel’s dams opening,” and was followed by the subheading: “Palestinians were evacuated from their homes after Israeli authorities opened a number of dams flooding the Gaza Valley.”

After CAMERA contacted that media outlet pointing out that Israel has no dams in the south which could be opened, editors commendably entirely retracted the article and ran the following editor’s note:

Article retracted, 25/2/2015.

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this page hosted an article which stated that Israel had, without warning, opened a number of dams, which had resulted in a part of Gaza being flooded.

This was false.

In southern Israel, there are no dams of the type which can be opened.

We apologise for this error.

[This media outlet] depends on objective reporting and strives to correct all errors of fact. We are committed to accountability and transparency.

We encourage our audience and others to identify and report our mistakes.

On Friday, an article in a second Middle Eastern media outlet falsely claimed that a Saudi prince launched an unprecedented peace-making initiative vis-à-vis Israel including plans for a groundbreaking visit to the Jewish state.

The article had stated:

In an unprecedented overture, Saudi Arabian prince and wealthy media tycoon Talal Bin Waleed announced Thursday that he is planning a seven-day-trip to the Jewish State and urged all the Arab nations in the region to “strive for a more peaceful, prosperous and homogenous Middle East,” according to Saudi Arabian news media.

“All my Muslim brothers and sisters must understand that it became a moral imperative for all inhabitants of war-torn Middle-East, namely Arabs, to desist their absurd hostility toward Jewish people,” Okaz reported the prince saying, an Arabic-language Saudi news agency.

“My sovereign, King Salman has instructed me to open a direct dialogue with Israel’s intellectual (community), building amicable ties with our Israeli neighbors,” Bin Waleed added.

The Saudi prince said that he plans to pray at the Al-Aksa mosque located on top of the Temple Mount when he visits Jerusalem’s old city, the holiest site in Judaism and the third holiest site in Islam.

When editors learned this was a hoax, did they publish a retraction and apologize, as had the first media outlet? No. Instead, without notifying readers of any change, editors replaced the original article with a different article headlined: “False online rumors suggest Saudi prince to visit Israel.”

The replacement article began:

In an apparent hoax, unsubstantiated reports claimed Thursday that Saudi Arabian prince and wealthy media tycoon Talal Bin Waleed was planning a seven-day-trip to the Jewish State.

At no point did the media outlet in question acknowledge that it itself was one of the purveyors of the hoax. Furthermore, within a few hours, editors today ultimately pulled that article as well, so that those who return to that url receive an error message.

So which media outlet, Al Jazeera or The Jerusalem Post, forthrightly notified readers of its gross error and forthrightly apologized, exhibiting professional transparency and accountability? Which media outlet, on the other hand, shirked its journalistic responsibility to set the record straight? Read on for the answer.
(more…)

Mitri Raheb, a Lutheran Pastor from Bethlehem, spoke at the General Synod of the United Church of Christ in late June. (Youtube screenshot.)

The General Synod of the United Church of Christ held its 30th General Synod in Cleveland, Ohio during the last four days of June.

On June 29th, the day before the General Synod approved a resolution calling on the church to join the anti-Israel BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions) movement, Rev. Dr. Mitri Raheb addressed the assembly. His sermon starts at about one hour and forty nine minutes into this Youtube video.

Raheb, a Lutheran Pastor from Bethlehem in the West Bank, has a well-deserved reputation for assailing the legitimacy of the Jewish people and their state. He does this while wearing the mantle of a Christian theologian, pastor, and peacemaker.

One of his most notorious statements came at a conference of Evangelical Protestants held in Bethlehem in 2010. At this conference, Raheb stated that the modern state of Israel “represents the Rome of the Bible, not the people of the land.” To further his point, he stated:
(more…)