Earlier today, Snapshots drew attention to a section on the website of Bethlehem University, a Catholic-run school located in the West Bank that denied the legitimacy of Israel by describing Israeli cities as “Palestinian Occupied Territory.”

Fortunately, the offending passage has been removed by officials at the school.

CAMERA lauds the school for doing the right thing with such alacrity.

In the course of researching an apparent misstatement of fact from former Bethlehem Mayor Vera Baboun (see blog entry here), Snapshots came across an interesting webpage on the website of Bethlehem University, a Catholic-run school located in the West Bank. On the school’s website, there is an FAQ page for foreign students that refers to Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Acre and Tiberius — all Israeli cities — as “Palestinian Occupied Territories.”

A screen shot of the section in question is at the top of this entry. The relevant section reads as follows: “You may enter Palestinian Occupied Territories (Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Acco, Tiberia etc.)”

This is outrageous. A Vatican-founded and Catholic-run institution of higher learning is affirming the irredentist agenda of Hamas, declaring cities in Israel as Palestinian territory. Why is this school affirming a political agenda that has cost so many Palestinian and Israeli lives?

The Huffington Post is a creature of the internet age. Named after its co-creator, media entrepreneur Arianna Huffington (shown above), it promotes itself as a balanced and credible source of news. The Huffpost boasts one of the largest worldwide audiences on the internet.

In an interview with the USC-Annenberg Online Journalism Review on May 3, 2005, Huffington stated “the news is not right-wing news or left-wing news, it’s the news. And that will be the sensibility, that will basically permeate our news coverage.” In an interview with Conde Nast Portfolio on Nov. 14, 2007, Huffington reiterated this point stating that the news site’s “editorial stance” is “to debunk the right-left way of thinking, which has become completely obsolete.”

Huffington’s lofty proclamations do not reflect reality. The Huffington Post is firmly situated on the left. Much of its political content could be described as far-left. Its editorials offer far more space to leftist political opinion than to right of center opinion and its news coverage skews in the same direction.

For many years, The Huffington Post’s talkbacks have been riddled with virulent anti-Zionism. Articles involving Israel or Jews routinely invite a barrage of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish invective.

While the Huffpost does on occasion run Op-Eds that are sympathetic to Israel, these are far outweighed by the torrent of anti-Israel material. Most discouragingly, in both the editorials and news coverage, there is not an apparent process for correcting factual errors or promoting balance.

Well, someone finally decided to methodically expose the problem.

Jon Sutz, a documentary film-maker at Save the West, has produced a chilling documentary providing strong evidence of what he contends is an intentional misrepresentation and distortion of events in Israel. The documentary restricts itself to scrutinizing the Huffpost’s coverage of the recent wave of Palestinian knifing attacks on Israelis.

The film is divided into approximately 10 minutes segments. Each segment describes the murder of a particular Israeli and examines how the Huffpost covered it. Through painstaking documentation of omissions, rewordings, distorted emphasis and even shocking banality, Sutz presents a powerful repudiation of the Huffington Post’s coverage.

By the end of the documentary, Arianna Huffington’s proclamations about the Post’s commitment to objectivity and providing quality news coverage lie in tatters.

Mayor of Bethlehem Vera Baboun appears to have a difficult time adhering to the facts when she speaks about life in the West Bank. (Note, April 25, 2016: This article previously referred to Baboun as former Mayor of Bethlehem, but she is still the incumbent. Snapshots regrets the error.)

Speaking at the 2014 Christ at the Checkpoint Conference, Baboun, (pictured above), said the city where she served as mayor was “surrounded with a wall,” when in fact, the security barrier does not surround the city. It passes by the southern and eastern sections of the city, but it does not “surround” it. As mayor of Bethlehem when she made this statement, so she knew full well where the barrier is situated.

She knew the truth, but she told her audience something else.

Well, it looks like she has done it again, this time in Ireland.

Baboun, who lectures at the Vatican-founded Bethlehem University in the West Bank, recently appeared in Ireland and gave a talk at an event organized by the Irish chapter of Friends of Bethlehem University.

Her talk was covered in the Feb. 15, 2016 issue of the Irish Times. The article, reads in part, as follows:

“The situation is really difficult,” she said. Israeli visa restrictions mean international students cannot attend the university, cutting off one likely stream of revenue. Only three-month tourist visas were available to such students.

The complaint is that Israeli policy makes it impossible for international students to attend Bethlehem University.

This is not true.

How do we know?

The school where Baboun lectures has webpages devoted to serving the needs of international students.
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