As the school year begins in the United States and elsewhere, the “what do you want to be when you grow up?” conversation probably is occurring in thousands of classrooms, with parents and teachers encouraging children to dream of future occupations as teachers, doctors, inventors and the like. Yet, on al-Aqsa TV, a Hamas affiliate, children are encouraged to become murderers.

A clip of a Sept. 4, 2015 broadcast, translated by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) shows several Palestinian Arab children in the Gaza Strip, being interviewed by a host for al-Aqsa TV. The children, looking no more than elementary school age, are clad in small versions of military fatigues.

The al-Aqsa host asks one child, “What do you want to be when you grow up, Muhammad?” The young boy replies that he wants to be a member of the “al-Qassam brigades”—a U.S.-listed terror group named after Sheikh Izz al din al-Qassem, a Syrian terrorist who murdered Jews and British officials in 1930’s British mandate for Palestine.

Asserting that the boy’s career choice is “fine,” the smiling host asks another child about his aspirations. Seemingly unsatisfied with the response that the boy wants to become an “engineer,” the host asks, “Why do you want to become an engineer?”

“So that I can blow up the Jews,” the child responds.

Apparently relieved, the host doesn’t discourage such homicidal goals, but does try to impart to the child politically correct language for murder that may be more palatable to some Western audiences. “You want to blow up the Jews? No, we want to blow up the Zionists. You mean the occupation, right? Okay, so that is why you want to become an engineer.”

With prompting from the host another child then offers advice to the other children:

“Keep waging Jihad, and Allah willing, when you grow up, you will wage resistance against [murder] the Jews.”

Despite being run by a U.S.-designated terrorist group Hamas, al-Aqsa TV was considered a legitimate news group as recently as two years ago by the Newseum, a Washington, D.C.-based museum that bills itself as an “interactive museum of news and journalism.” The Newseum has a memorial wall that “honors fallen journalists” who died during the course of their work. As CAMERA has noted, the memorial includes deceased employees of propaganda arms of terrorist groups and dictatorial regimes such as those in Syria and Iran. Two al-Aqsa TV “journalists” are listed as well (“Newseum Discredits Itself,” May 13, 2013).

Despite the Newseum’s pledge to “reevalute” its standards for inclusion on the wall , over two years later it still pays tribute to fallen terrorists online. The title of journalist by extension would apparently cover the aforementioned Hamas TV host as well.

The translated clip by MEMRI can be found here.—Sean Durns

Update, 3:14 PM EST: Newsweek Corrects: Israeli Police Did Not Enter Mosque

In line with a long tradition of false media claims about Israeli leaders and troops entering the Al-Aqsa mosque, Newsweek published the following headline this week:

The accompanying article does not substantiate the headline’s false claim that Israeli forces stormed the mosque. According to the article, by Jack Moore:

Israeli forces stormed Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque compound as they clashed with Palestinians for the third day straight at the flashpoint site.

Dozens of Palestinians clashed with the Israeli forces around the mosque, throwing stones at police who had entered the compound and used stun grenades on protesters, according to The Times of Israel. . . .

Footage released by Al Jazeera showed Israeli riot police stormed the mosque complex on Tuesday as Palestinians throw stones towards them. Israeli police can then be seen standing on top of the roof of the Al-Aqsa compound, overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City. (Emphases added.)

In other words, Moore writes, police “stormed” the mosque compound or complex, also known as the Temple Mount plaza, but did not enter the al-Aqsa Mosque itself which sits upon the plaza. Moore also cites, and links to, a Times of Israel article and Al Jazeera footage (below). Although Al Jazeera goes with the false headline (“Raw Footage: Israeli forces storm Al-Aqsa Mosque”), neither the raw footage nor the Times of Israel article supports the false headline that Israeli troops entered the mosque. The footage shows Israeli forces on the Temple Mount compound, referred to in the Newsweek article as “the mosque complex.”

Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed that Israeli police did not enter the Al-Aqsa mosque.

Stay tuned for news of a correction.

Over at our main website today, we posted an article highlighting an almost unbelievable puff piece about Adolf Hitler published in The New York Times Magazine in 1939.

That Magazine piece is perhaps the most prominent of a number of pre-war stories that, falling prey to the plan hatched by Hitler’s propagandists, served to recast Hitler as a country gentleman with sophisticated tastes. Hitler’s mountain home is “furnished harmoniously, according to the best of German traditions” and the Führer “is very partial to English flannels and tweeds,” The Times explained. (And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.)

All this is discussed in an upcoming book by University of Buffalo historian Despina Stratigakos — and in a number of recent media stories about the book release. Virtually all of those stories mention the stunning New York Times whitewash. One notable example, though, ignores the Times role in refurbishing Hitler’s image. And since you’ve read the headline above, you know which one it is: The New York Times itself.

The newspaper reported late last month,

Before the Nazi invasion of Poland, British and American newspapers and magazines published flattering features about the interiors. The journalist and novelist William George Fitz-Gerald praised Hitler’s “cozy but modest” rooms, furnished with bouquets of flowers, cactuses in majolica pots and books on “history, painting, architecture and music.”

Ms. Stratigakos said that her study was meant “in large part to show how dangerous those stories were.”

And that’s the only reference to those unnamed “newspapers and magazines.” Quite a convenient omission by the New York Times

The following letter to the editor was published in print by The Baltimore Sun on Sept. 7, 2015:

“Sean Durns
9/2/15
The Baltimore Sun

Letter to the editor:

Rabbi Floyd Herman’s commentary “The Iran nuclear agreement will make America and Israel safer” (September 2) misrepresents the views of former senior Israeli security officials quoted and poll data allegedly showing a majority of American Jews support the deal.

Rabbi Herman notes that Ami Ayalon, former head of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service, has said the agreement “is the best possible alternative from Israel’s point of view given the other available alternatives.” However, in a July 26 interview with The Jerusalem Post, Ayalon makes clear that he begrudgingly supports the deal, declaring, “I think the deal is bad. It is not good.”

Similarly, Herman cites Efraim Halevy, former head of Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence agency, to imply his agreement with the present nuclear deal. Yet, in a July 24 interview with Israel’s Channel 2, Halevy calls for a national debate and says, “This is not an agreement that is entirely bad. There are positive elements in it.”

These statements, equivocal or critical, hardly support Rabbi Herman’s assertion that these former officials feel “that this deal offers the best option for preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

Herman also says “recent polling” shows a “majority of American Jews” support this present deal. Again, not exactly. In contrast to an early Los Angeles Jewish Journal poll, more recent surveys of American Jewish voters, by both The Israel Project and Quinnipiac University, indicate that the more American Jews learn about the deal, the less they like it—a trend that parallels other U.S. voters.

On an issue of paramount importance to all Americans, the positions of Israeli security officials and U.S Jewish voters are more nuanced and critical than Rabbi Herman’s commentary implies.

Durns is Media Assistant for CAMERA—the 65,000 member Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America”

The published version of the letter to the editor can be found here.—Sean Durns

The following letter to the editor was sent to The Washington Post, but went unpublished:

“Aug. 31, 2015
Letter to the Editor
The Washington Post
Washington, D.C.

Dear Editor:
The Washington Post identifies Op-Ed writer Seyed Hossein Mousavian (“The new pragmatism in Iran,” August 30) as “a research scholar at Princeton University and a former spokesman for Iran’s nuclear negotiators.” He is much more than that, and for readers to evaluate his “lift the sanction permanently” argument, they should know.

Mousavian served as the Islamic Republic of Iran’s ambassador to German in 1992 when Iranian terrorist agents assassinated dissident Iranian Kurdish leaders in a Berlin restaurant.

As World Affairs Journal has noted (“The Assassins’ Trail: Unraveling the Mykonos Killings,” November 2011) Iran’s Berlin embassy under Mousavian’s leadership, served as “headquarters for a government intelligence gathering operation largely focused on the activities of the exiled [Iranian] opposition.”

German police arrested Kazem Darabi, an Iranian grocer “with ties to Iran’s German embassy” along with several others. A four-year long trial included testimony from Abdel Ghassem Messbahi, a former senior Islamic Republic intelligence official who had defected. Messbahi described how the Mykonos assassinations were ordered by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other high-ranking officials working off of a hit list of 500 or so exiled Iranian opposition figures living abroad. At the trial’s conclusion, Darabi and another assassin were sentenced to 23 years. Mousavian and fourteen members of his staff were expelled.

Mousavian returned to Iran and was promoted to head the powerful Foreign Relations Committee of Iran’s National Security Council.

In his Post commentary extolling alleged mutual benefits of rapid, permanent sanctions relief, Mousavian—whose research at Princeton is funded partly by Iran deal proponents the Ploughshares Fund—describes Iranian President Hassan Rouhani as a “moderate.” Rouhani served as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council during the assassination of exiled opposition leaders in Germany in 1992, Austria in 1989 and elsewhere and during the Iranian-supported bombings of the Israeli embassy and Jewish community center in Argentina.

Absent adequate identification of Mousavian and financial supporters of his Princeton work, his Op-Ed was more of an advertorial.

Durns is Media Assistant for the Washington D.C. office of CAMERA—the 65,000 member Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America”

—Sean Durns

Sept. 2 Update Appended: Time Corrects

The Sept. 1 Time Magazinearticle “Gaza Could Become ‘Uninhabitable’ by 2020, U.N. Report Warns,” is chronologically challenged, claiming that extensive destruction in Gaza during this summer’s war, when Hamas launched thousands of rockets at Israel’s civilian population, including an untold number of projectiles from subsequently damaged and destroyed residential areas in Gaza, actually transpired following the war, a relatively quiet period. The article errs, claiming:

Since the most recent Israeli military operation in 2014, more than 20,000 Palestinian homes, 148 schools and 60 healthcare centers in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, according to the U.N.

But the United Nations report in question details that the aforementioned damage took place during the 2014 Israeli military operation in Gaza against Hamas, not since the operation, as reported. In particular, the U.N. document states on page 9:

35. OQR compiled a partial list of damages incurred by Gaza during the 2014 operation, which have significant economic and social effects, and reported the following (OQR, 2014):

(a) 18,000 housing units destroyed or severely damaged and 44,300 units damaged

(b) 26 schools destroyed and 122 damaged

(c) 15 hospitals and 45 primary health centres damaged

In addition, it is noteworthy that an article about the difficult situation in Gaza which cites “Israeli military operations and a nearly decade-long blockade” fails to mention the word Hamas even once. Hamas, a designated terror organization which rules the Gaza Strip and has put vast economic and human resources as well as building materials into its terror infrastructure, is responsible for the launching of thousands upon thousands of rockets at Israel: thus, the reason for the military operations and blockade.

Sept. 2 Update: Time Corrects

Editors at Time.com have commendably corrected. The text now accurately states:

The most recent Israeli military operation in 2014 left more than 20,000 Palestinian homes, 148 schools and 60 healthcare centers in Gaza damaged or destroyed, according to the U.N.

In addition, the following correction is appended to the bottom of the article:

Finally, editors took the additional, praiseworthy step of prominently noting at the very top of the article that a correction was appended.

Michael Getler, the ombudsman for PBS, published a piece titled More Self-Inflicted Wounds in which he criticizes PBS Newshour anchor and Washington Week moderator Gwen Ifill for her mocking tweet “Take that, Bibi.” Ifill’s tweet was in response to an announcement that there were enough Democrat senators signed on to President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran to avert a Senate override of a Presidential veto of any Senate bill to block implementation of the deal.

Getler wrote,

“Take that Bibi,” is in my book, inexcusable for an experienced journalist who is the co-anchor of a nightly news program watched by millions of people over the course of any week.

The question that remains is what will PBS do to censure or discipline Ifill for her breach of journalistic standards? Getler points out that this is not the first time Ifill has demonstrated her lack of professionalism and bias. He recounts an incident in 2012 when a reporter for Yahoo, David Chalian, unaware that his mic was still on, commented on Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his entourage, “They are happy to have a party with black people drowning.”

This was an allusion to the flooding of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Chalian was fired for this breach of professionalism.

Ifill tweeted, “One mistake does not change this. @DavidChalian is God’s gift to political journalism. #IStandwithDavid.”

Getler commented at the time, “I can understand Ifill’s wanting to go to bat for a friend and colleague but my personal view is that this was a big mistake on her part, feeding, unnecessarily, a conviction among many critics and reflecting poorly on PBS.”

Similarly, PBS has had to contend with a longstanding perception that it had an “Israel problem”, a perception which it has sought to overcome. Ifill’s taunt of Israel’s Prime Minister also to borrow Getler’s phrase, “feeds, unnecessarily a conviction” that PBS remains antagonistic toward the Jewish state and cannot be relied upon to cover issues relating to Israel free from bias.

Ploughshares Fund is a grantmaking organization that bills itself as supporting “experts and advocates who implement smart strategies to secure a more peaceful world… free of nuclear weapons.” The organization’s president, Joe Cirincione, and other staff members are frequently quoted as experts by news outlets reporting on the deal between the United States, China, Russia, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the Islamic Republic of Iran over the latter’s purported nuclear program. However, many media have not highlighted the group’s considerable role in funding advocates of the agreement.

Describing lobbying efforts, The New York Times (“Fierce Lobbying, Even on Vacation, for Iran Accord,” Aug. 18, 2015) briefly mentions that Ploughshares “also finances many of the participants” in the pro-Iran deal effort, but fails to provide further details. Similarly, The Washington Post, while noting that those supporting the Iran deal have “received significant contributions from” Ploughshares, fails to identify the groups pocketing those funds. It does detail major Ploughshare donors (“Mega-donors opposing Iran deal have upper hand in fierce lobbying battle,” August 13).

Writing in Commentary magazine, American Enterprise Institute (AEI) scholar Michael Rubin provides a more detailed look at the vast Ploughshares extensive role in doling out money to pro-deal elements. The number of organizations listed by Rubin as receiving Ploughshare funds is extensive.

The Arms Control Association—which Rubin notes “attested to the thoroughness of the agreement before its details were even negotiated”—receives Ploughshare Fund dollars. Donations were also made to the Center for New American Security to—in Rubin’s words—“lobby” congressional staffers. He also says funds were dispersed to self-described “pro-Israel” group J Street, the anti-sanctions and pro-Iranian regime National Iranian American Council, the National Security Network and the anti-Israel Friends Committee on National Legislation, among others.

Rubin writes that “in addition, the Fund gave $75,000 to Gulf-2000” a group he says feeds “pro-Iran talking points to journalists.” Gulf-2000 is run by Gary Sick, a former U.S. National Security Council staffer whose anti-Israel animus and proclivity for conspiracy theories CAMERA has documented (“New York Times Indicts Israeli Leader For Speech Exposing Iran,” Oct. 4, 2013).

The AEI scholar says that Ploughshare’s lobbying for policies favorable to the Iranian mullahs is nothing new and previously involved other organizations that receive special tax considerations and public funds:

“In 2010, Ploughshares gave National Public Radio [NPR] $150,000 in what appeared to be a pay-to-play scheme to get Cirincione and his grantees on air.”

Rubin states that the grantmaking group—classified as a non-profit, tax deductible 501(c)(3) organization—gave an additional $100,000 to taxpayer-funded NPR in 2015.

Rubin’s Commentary article examining the role of the Ploughshares Fund, can be found here.—Sean Durns

The New York Times yesterday published an article titled “Images of Palestinian Pleasure Not Allowed.” Not allowed by the Israeli oppressor, the piece’s opening makes clear.

An illuminating exercise: In which paragraph does reporter Jodi Rudoren finally admit that the delayed delivery of books to a Palestinian activist, which is the main subject of the piece, “may well have been routine” and tax related?

Gloating over the news today that there is enough support for the Iran nuclear agreement to avert any Senate override of an Obama veto, Gwenn Ifill, PBS Newshour anchorwoman and moderator of Washington Week, tweeted:

Take that, Bibi

Bibi, of course, is Benjamin Netanyahu, to whom the citizens of Israel have entrusted their security by voting to have him serve as Prime Minister three times.

While there is legitimate debate over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s gloomy assessment of the agreement, all who care about Israel’s future share his concern over whether the agreement will impede or aid Iran in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The Islamic Republic’s leaders have repeatedly promised to annihilate the Jewish state.

There is no doubt that Netanyahu’s opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement is based on his firm conviction that the agreement seriously jeopardizes the future of the eight million Israelis.

Gwenn Ifill does not merely mock Netanyahu; because he represents the citizens of the state of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state, she taunts every Israeli and every Jew who dreads what Iran might do if the agreement turns out to be as flawed as its detractors claim.

Ifill earns her living on taxpayer supported public television. PBS newshour and Washington Week are generously funded by many foundations. Washington Week lists Prudential, Newman’s Own and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting [CPB] as major donors. Along with CPB and PBS, Newshour lists the following sponsors:

Adrienne Arsht
S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation
David & Faten Black Foundation
The California Wellness Foundation
Carnegie Corporation of New York
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
Consuelo Duroc-Danner
Ford Foundation
J. Paul Getty Trust
The Gilchrist Foundation
Gruber Family Foundation
William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
The Kresge Foundation
The Lemelson Foundation
Lumina Foundation
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Howard & Abby Milstein Foundation
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
National Endowment for the Arts
National Science Foundation
John and Wendy Neu Family Foundation
Nicholas B. Ottaway Foundation
David and Lucile Packard Foundation
Park Foundation
Poetry Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation
Roger and Vicki Sant
Tom and Laurie Saylak
The SCAN Foundation
Skoll Foundation
Alfred P. Sloan Foundation
George and Camilla Smith
The Starr Foundation
Judy and Josh Weston
James Wolfensohn