Independent Catholic News, a publication that serves Catholics in Ireland, recently published an article about Israel demolishing a playground in the West Bank.

The main thrust of the article, which was published on April 14, 2016, is that Israel is behaving badly by demolishing the playground. Israel is acting well within the rights accorded to it under the Oslo Accords, which give Israel authority over the area where the playground was built — illegally and without permits — by Palestinians who do not own the land on which it was built.

Moreover, it appears that the Belgian government, which paid for the playground’s construction, is aiding an abetting illegal construction by local Palestinians, not to improve the living standards, but to provide a pretext for anti-Israel propagandizing, which sadly enough, the Independent Catholic News fell for.

Here’s the background: According to the story, the playground, which was built last year with funds provided by the Belgian government, was demolished on Tuesday April 12, 2016. The playground was located in a village south of Nablus.
(more…)

Twitter, the social network, closed an account linked to Hamas, the U.S.-designated Palestinian terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, on April 15, 2016.

The Times of Israel reported that Twitter “took unprecedented steps to remove the Palestinian group’s influence on its medium (“Twitter shuts account of Hamas spokesman,” April 16, 2016).”

In March 2016, Twitter closed the official accounts of Hamas’ Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades that were operating in Arabic, Hebrew and English. At the time, the Twitter account of Abu Obeida, Hamas’ spokesman, was left untouched. That same day, Obeida used his Twitter account to direct the 196,000 Twitter followers of the al-Qassamite brigades to a new page created for the group.

Although the company closed Obeida’s account on April 15, the Times of Israel noted that the Hamas spokesman opened a new account on April 16. The same day, Abu Obeida also created an official account on another social network, Facebook.

Using what was perhaps a veiled threat, Obieda decried Twitter for shutting down his account, saying, “Twitter yielded to the pressure of the enemy, which gives us an impression that it is not neutral in regards to the Palestinian cause and it caves into political pressure.”

As CAMERA has noted, Hamas’ charter includes a call for the destruction of Israel and genocide of the Jews (“The Facts About Hamas,” April 24, 2014). Essayist Paul Berman pointed out in his 2010 book The Flight of the Intellectuals (Melville House Publishing), Hamas’ charter and ideology borrow extensively from Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Party.

As Politico reported, Twitter has faced criticism from U.S. government officials and non-governmental organizations for not addressing “online extremism.”

In February 2016, Twitter announced that since June 2015 it had suspended more than 125,000 accounts for “threatening or promoting terrorist attacks primarily related to ISIS (“Twitter says it’s acting against terror groups,” Politico, Feb. 5, 2016).”

During the 2014 Israel-Hamas war, Twitter shut all accounts associated with Hamas’ armed operations. However, the al-Qassam brigades opened new accounts “almost immediately.”

Speaking of the latest shutdown, Abu Obeida vowed, “We are going to send our message in a lot of innovative ways, and we will insist on every available means of social media to get to the hearts and minds of millions.”

For the moment, it seems that Hamas can once again Tweet its “message” of terrorism and genocide.

Bernie Sanders’s anti-Israel comments at April 15’s presidential debate — he insisted that Israel’s military action in Gaza in 2014 was “a disproportionate attack” — were met with a media storm of praise. From Vox to The New Yorker, Sanders was praised for “breaking the taboo” on the approach of the United States to Israel. Perhaps most egregious in its coverage was Haaretz, stating flat-out and erroneously in the headline, “Bernie Sanders Got It Right. Israel Did Use Disproportionate Force in Gaza.” The article was riddled with factual misrepresentations and inaccuracies that seek to validate Sanders’ comments.

Proposing to detail “What really happened in Gaza,” Haaretz leans on sources that are less than credible:

According to the Association of International Development Agencies (AIDA), a coordination body of over 80 international NGOs, Protective Edge “caused the most acute humanitarian crisis in Gaza in at least the past 50 years.” In 2015, the Associated Press looked into 247 Israeli airstrikes that hit residential compounds during the war, and found that over 60 percent of those killed during the attacks were children, women and older men, all of them most likely civilians. The airstrikes devastated Gaza to such a degree that in September a UN report warned that by 2020 Gaza could become “uninhabitable.”

A number of hospitals were indeed bombed during the war, as Sanders points out. Israel claims they served as Hamas strongholds, and were used as launch sites for rocket attacks. Schools were also hit, as were refugee camps. (Gaza itself, crumbling under the weight of a suffocating eight-year blockade and three devastating wars and 50 years of occupation, is arguably the world’s largest refugee camp.)

AIDA states its mission is to “better address the rights of the Palestinian people,” but harbors the broader goal of demonizing and delegitimizing Israel in the international arena, as the NGO Monitor reveals. Many of the organizations on AIDA’s member list are active BDS supporters and known for having a distorted perspective on Israel. One member, Islamic Relief Worldwide, was declared to be illegal by Israel’s Defense Minister due to its financial support of the terrorist organization Hamas. Other well-known anti-Israel organizations that are part of AIDA include CARE International, Oxfam, and the Carter Center. As CAMERA has reported, here, here, and here, these NGOs and their leadership do not take a balanced, truthful approach when it comes to Israel. Yet, Haaretz cites as evidence the statement made by AIDA.

As for the 2015 AP report quoted, The Observer revealed that the AP relied on Hamas officials for information on figures and details of circumstances, arguing points that keep entirely to the Hamas script. The Observer’s headline and subhead say it all:

How the AP Botched Its Investigation of Civilian Deaths in the Israel-Hamas War

Posed photographs. Intentional miscategorizations. Buried corrections. One-sided sourcing. Cherry-picked quotes. And a just-plain-wrong conclusion about “most” Gaza casualties being civilians.

Haaretz refers to the Hamas-admitted facts that the terrorist group launches attacks from hospitals and schools as mere Israeli “claims,” before stating that Gaza has been suffering under “50 years of occupation,” even though Israel withdrew entirely from Gaza in 2005.

Haaretz professes to be making statements of fact, but the newspaper’s description of Israel’s military action in 2014 fails to hold up to journalistic guidelines of doing due diligence in checking sources. Relying on shoddy information, Haaretz comes to the mistaken conclusion that while Israel has a right to defend itself, “Bernie Sanders Got It Right” that Israel had a “policy” of disproportionate response in 2014.

Why is the political rhetoric of Bernie Sanders, and Haaretz’s endorsement of it important? Because use of “disproportionate force” is a war crime. And in the case of Operation Protective Edge, it clearly does not apply.

As laid out in a comprehensive Tablet article “Everything You Need to Know about International Law and the Gaza War” (well worth reading in its entirety):

When a country goes to war, it is allowed to use as much force as is necessary to stop the threat that caused it to go to war to begin with, and does not have to limit itself to the same means or level of intensity used by the enemy. While necessity determines the situations allowing a state to use some form of armed force, proportionality determines the breadth of that permissible force. The intensity of a state’s response is governed by the magnitude of the threat posed to it by the enemy that attacked it, and not of the individual attacks it suffered.

So, the measuring stick of proportionality can’t be the tit-for-tat analysis of death tolls popularly presented in the media. Israel is not obligated to employ only the lightest means at its disposal against Hamas, whose military might pales in comparison. Israel is also not obligated to ensure that the death count on both sides is close to equal. That would be absurd.

–Rachel Frommer, CAMERA Intern

In a short hit piece in The Huffington Post (“Israel’s ‘Absurd’ Map Of Jerusalem’s Old City“), Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab spells out in great detail how a Jerusalem tourist map omits some notable Muslim and Christian sites. To Daoud this smacks of a wider trend where “Israel’s apologists” are “working overtime to try and minimize Christian and Islamic cultural connections to the city of Jerusalem.” To add insult to injury, he correctly notes that:

The United Nations Education and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO)and the Vatican have yet to publicly denounce this effort to monopolise the city’s multi-religious history.

Shockingly though, Daoud fails to note a separate decision regarding Jerusalem passed by UNESCO’s Executive Board just last week. The Times of Israel notes:

The resolution refers to Israel as the “occupying power” at every mention and uses the Arabic al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif without ever calling it the Temple Mount, as it is known to Jews. The text does refer to the Western Wall Plaza but places it in quotation marks, after using the Arabic Al-Buraq Plaza.

Going one step further, the UNESCO decision also accused Israel of “planting Jewish fake graves in other spaces of the Muslim cemeteries.”

In other words, the Palestinians are using their membership in UNESCO, to advance the very thing of which they accuse Israel of doing using a tourist map. This is a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Washington Post articles “France, not Brussels, was terrorists’ initial target, Belgian prosecutor says” (April 11, 2016) and “U.S. drone strike in Somalia targets senior member of militant group; Al-Shabab figure was said to be behind attacks” (April 2) covered episodes in what sometimes is still called the “global war on terrorism.” The former dispatch used the words “terrorist” or “terrorists” once in the headline and four times in the text in The Post’s own words, twice in direct quotes. It did not mention “militant” or “militants.”

But the latter defaulted to “militant” once in the headline and twice in the text in the newspaper’s own voice. This article did not mention terrorist or terrorists.

Reporting from Paris, Post correspondent James McAuley opened with “the terrorists who carried out the March 22 attacks on the Brussels airport and metro initially planned an attack on France instead, the Belgian federal prosecutor announced Sunday. A cell of terrorists affiliated with the Islamic State largely conceived and executed November’s attacks on Paris from the Belgian capital, where many of them were
reared.”

Reporter Dan Lamothe’s first paragraph read “the U.S. military carried out a drone strike in Somalia on Thursday against a senior member of the al-Shabab militant [emphases added] group who has overseen attacks resulting in the deaths of at least three U.S. citizens, Pentagon officials said Friday.”

McAuley filed for The Post’s foreign desk, Lamothe apparently for the national desk, but inconsistent “terrorist”/“militant” usage within as well as between departments is not uncommon.

Does it matter? As CAMERA has noted many times, words are journalists’ principle stock in trade. For journalists’ products to be credible, words must be accurately, precisely used.

According to U.S. law, people who threaten or use force against non-combatants to influence larger audiences, including governments, on behalf of ideological, religious, economic or other agendas are terrorists. In American history, militant traditionally has described aggressive activists on behalf of a cause: anti-slavery, anti-alcohol, pro-women’s suffrage, labor unions, and environmentalism. They rarely kill anyone, and virtually never civilians.

In his 1946 essay, “Politics and the English Language,” George Orwell warned that political—as opposed to journalistic—language “is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

When it comes to terrorist-versus-militant, The Washington Post—and many if not most other news outlets—would improve credibility by allowing the pure wind of “militant” to die away.

On April 13, 2016, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan closed the Amman headquarters of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Arab News, an English language daily published in Saudi Arabia, reported that Jordanian security services sealed the entrance to the Brotherhood’s main office after thoroughly searching and evacuating the building (“Jordan closes Brotherhood HQ,” April 14).

Abdelkader al-Khatib, the group’s lawyer, claimed that the Jordanian government’s actions were, “clearly a political decision in line with what is happening in the region.” Khatib also said that the effort, “has the sole purpose of influencing the upcoming elections and results.”

Arab News pointed out that, “authorities view the Brotherhood as an illegal organization because its license was not renewed in accordance with a political parties law adopted in 2014.”

As CAMERA has noted (“Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood in Its Own, Original Words,” July 11, 2013), the Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in 1928 to repel Western influence and restore the Sunni Muslim caliphate that ended shortly after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. The group’s credo is “Allah is our objective, The Prophet is our leader. The Koran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.”

Unlike other Salafist jihadi groups, the Brotherhood does not eschew electoral politics. Rather, it seeks to win elections with the goal of implementing sharia (Islamic) law and taking steps towards an “Islamic society” after its ascendance. In contrast to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda or the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which have origins from the Brotherhood, the movement’s strategy is one of patience; it professes non-violence and “burrows” into political systems, claiming moderation. However, its objectives—including Islamic supremacism—are the same as its terrorist brethren, who it frequently spawns.

The Muslim Brotherhood has been increasingly expansive in the last decade.

In 2006, Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist group and a Muslim Brotherhood derivative, won elections in the Gaza Strip. Hamas has since refused to hold new elections and has instituted draconian measures against women, homosexuals and non-Muslim minorities in accordance with its interpretation of Islam.

More recently, in June 2012, a Brotherhood-connected political party came to power under President Mohammed Morsi in Egypt. Shortly after Morsi’s election, in keeping with Brotherhood doctrine and stated objectives, moves were made to Islamize society.

As The Daily Beast, an online newspaper, noted in August 2013 one month after Morsi was ousted by Egypt’s military under General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi:

“The Muslim Brotherhood is showing the world its true colors. The groups that ‘renounced violence’ in an effort to gain political power is engaged in a full-scale campaign of terror against Egypt’s Christian minority. Brotherhood leaders have incited their followers to attack Christian homes, shops, schools and churches throughout the country. Samuel Tadros, an Egyptian scholar with the Hudson Institute, told me [Kristen Powers, political analyst and commentator] these attacks are the worst violence against Coptic Christians since the 14th century (“The Muslim Brotherhood’s War Against Coptic Christians,” Aug. 22, 2013).”

The Brotherhood has long posed a threat to the Kingdom of Jordan, where it operates under the Islamic Action Front (IAF). In the wake of Hamas’ 2006 victory in Palestinian elections, analyst David Schenker of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a D.C.-based think tank, wrote, “…despite the kingdom’s surprisingly good economic performance, Islamists may yet increase their political influence in the kingdom (“Jordanian Islamists and Municipal Elections: Confirmation of a Problematic Trend,” July 30, 2007).” The IAF later boycotted elections in 2010 and 2013. Yet, concerns over the Brotherhood’s capabilities in a monarchy ruled by the last of the Hashemite dynasty that once ruled large portions of the Middle East, remain unabated.

Officials from the Hamas-controlled Waqf (Islamic trust) Ministry in the Gaza Strip are “brainwashing” Palestinian children, according to an Arab Israeli journalist, Khaled Abu Toameh.

Writing for the Gatestone Institute (“Hamas’s New Way of Poisoning the Minds of Palestinian Children,” April 8, 2016), Toameh noted that the Waqf is using exorcism to indoctrinate children in Gaza schools.

Islamic preachers called The Ship of Missionary Salvation are entering schools to ensure that “through the exorcism rite” children are being “repentant and faithful to Islam.” The Ship of Missionary Salvation is overseen by the Waqf Ministry’s General Administration for Preaching and Guidance.

Toameh’s article links to a video showing children kneeling and crying at the Al-Nil School in Gaza City while Hamas preachers hold microphones and shout “Allahu Akbar [God is Great)]” Toameh noted that the “Gaza City school video captures on camera the Palestinian leaders’ brainwashing and abuse of their own children.” The reporter described the children as “hysterical.”

The video has caused consternation among some Palestinian Arabs, including members of rival groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Fatah, the movement that dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Toameh reported that Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) member Hanan Ashrawi “expressed revulsion over the video, noting that the preachers’ sermons were full of intimidation and horror.” PFLP, a Marxist-oriented terrorist group that has traditionally been more secular than Hamas or Fatah, referred to the exorcism rite as an “inhumane practice.”

Such outrage by fellow terrorist groups seems selective.

As CAMERA has noted (“Leaders Encourage Palestinian Children to Murder Jews, Use Sing-Alongs,” Nov. 24, 2015), Palestinian officials—including those in Fatah and the umbrella organization of the PLO—have used perverse methods to indoctrinate children before. Among other examples, Tawfiq Tirawi, a member of Fatah’s Central Committee and the former head of the Palestinian General Intelligence Service, recounted teaching his 2-year old son a sing-along song with lyrics such as, “Daddy, buy me a machine gun and a rifle, so that I will defeat Israel and the Zionists” and “escort the Martyr to his wedding” (referring to the Islamic belief that those killed while waging holy war marry 72 virgins in Paradise).

Both Fatah and Hamas routinely glorify children killed committing terrorist attacks. On Jan. 7, 2016 Palestinian Arab children celebrated Fatah’s 51st anniversary in a “huge ceremony” at which they dressed as suicide bombers (“Palestinian Children Wear Suicide Belts to Celebrate Fatah’s Anniversary,” CAMERA, Jan. 12, 2016).

As Toameh noted in his report, “this is how new generations of Palestinians are raised on the glorification of suicide bombers and jihadists.”

Noting the long lasting damage incurred by Palestinian indoctrination in anti-Jewish hatred, Toameh concluded that the use of exorcism rites in the Gaza Strip, “captures the march of Palestinian society towards endorsing the tactics and ideology of radical Islam and groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda. Now the peace process in the Middle East awaits an exorcism of its own.”

A New York Post editorial clearly laid out the truth about Israel’s detractors last week stating, “The real bottom line of the entire Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement: It’s not remotely about rights — it’s all about bashing Israel.”

As an example, Post editors cite opposition to Israel’s participation in this month’s PEN World Voices Festival to be held in New York City. The organization, according to its website “works to advance literature, to defend free expression, and to foster international literary fellowship.”

However, as the New York Post revealed, some of PEN’s authors and literati believe that Israel ought to be barred from that international community. In an editorial headlined, “The most perverse push yet from Israel boycotters,” the Post remarked on how “truly bizarre is their gripe” that PEN is permitting the Israeli Embassy to support the Festival. Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize winning author/poet and frequent Israel-basher, is quoted in the authors’ official complaint as saying that, by allowing Israel to participate, PEN is failing “Palestinian writers, academics, and students who are suffering under a repressive Israeli regime that denies their right to freedom of expression.”

Ironically another advocate-author, Junot Diaz, not only gets inflamed at Israel’s presence at PEN, but also signed a protest last year when PEN International gave its Freedom of Expression Courage Award to Charlie Hebdo after the horrific terrorist slaughter at the magazine’s Paris office. The Post accurately sums it up with “That tells you all you need to know about his commitment to free speech.”

As the Post editorial correctly notes, “In fact, the only place in the Middle East where Palestinians enjoy the right of free expression is… Israel. No one has anything like free-speech rights in the Palestinian territories — not under the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank, nor under Hamas in Gaza.”

—Rachel Frommer, CAMERA Intern

A study published in October 2015 by researchers at Brandeis University sought to evaluate knowledge of Israel among Jewish college students. The study, titled the Israel Literacy Measurement Project: 2015, reveals the students’ limited knowledge. The survey contained 92 questions including the Middle East Conflict, Geography, History, Government, Religion and Society, Economy and Culture.

642 students were tested in April-June 2014. Most of the survey respondents were first or second year students at 20 selected universities. The average score on the test was 46% correct. Only 8% got more than 3/4 correct.

Student scores from the different schools showed a wide range, from 27% to 59% correct. However, the students from schools considered more selective only did a little better than students from schools considered less selective (49% versus 43%).

Surprisingly, those students who previously had some form of Jewish education only did slightly better (47% versus 42%) than students who stated that they had no prior Jewish education. This result reinforces concern that the Jewish education many children receive is lacking in substance.

Students who claim to regularly read about Israel (52% vs. 45%) and those who have visited Israel (52% vs. 43%) did better than those who answered no to these questions, but the difference was not great.

Interestingly, students who believed Israel should not compromise on the status of Jerusalem and did not trust the Palestinians’ sincerity in making peace scored higher on the test than those who felt Israel should compromise on Jerusalem and believed the Palestinians were sincere.

There are always questions about the appropriate level of difficulty whenever such broadbased knowledge tests are given. But the results of this test suggest that general knowledge about Israel among American Jewish students needs improvement.

In late October 2015, Lapido Media published an article about a master’s degree program in peace studies at Bethlehem Bible College that had some problems that were addressed in an article written by CAMERA researcher Dexter Van Zile and published at the Times of Israel blog. In particular, the article accused Israel of “shunning” the peace studies program offered by the school, which has a long history of agitating against Israel.

One bit of evidence that the article offered to prove that Israel had “shunned” the program was that a foreign student who went by the pseudonym “William” had not been given a visa to study at the school by the Israeli government, which controls entry and exit into the West Bank, where the school is located.

A close examination of the article, however, revealed that the student had not applied for a student visa. The article was, simply put, a hit job. Just in case there is any doubt, take a look at the URL (universal resource locator, or web address) for the article, which was likely based on the first title of the text as it was loaded into the site administrator for Lapido Media. It reads “israel-blindsides-first-peace-studies-programme-arab”.

“Blindsides”? Really? What exactly did Israel do to “blindside” the peace studies program? The article states that Israel did not return a phone call and did not issue a visa that was not even applied for. How is that “blindsiding” the program? If anyone did any blindsiding, it was Lapido Media, its correspondent Jayson Kasper and his pseudonymous source, “William.”

Nevertheless, in response to a second challenge (described below) Lapido Media laudably changed the headline and published a note at the bottom of the article. A screenshot of the new headline can be seen at the top of this entry and the note to the article can be seen here:

It is gratifying to see that Lapido Media has changed the headline. There is no real evidence that Israel has “shunned” the program. If Israel has done anything, it has largely ignored the peace studies program, which has gotten off to a shaky or “tentative” start as Lapido Media reports in the headline. (The program has yet to be accredited, for example.)

It is also good to see that Lapido Media is open to doing further coverage of the story, but there are a number of questions that need to be addressed.

The note at the bottom of the article states that changes to the article were made in response “to a complaint that we misrepresented the availability of student visas by the Israeli authority.” The problem is not that the article may have misrepresented the availability of student visas, but that students from overseas are able to attend classes in the West Bank without student visas. That’s what “William” has been able to do for at least two semesters.
(more…)