Last week journalist Sophie McNeill published a heartrending story about Gazan babies and toddlers with cancer at the Australian Broadcasting Corp. This is a topic that is bound to stir up deep emotions on the part of readers. By omitting important information about the context within which these children are receiving treatment, however, McNeill manages to vilify Israel while writing about its humanitarian efforts.

McNeill focuses her story on four children that have traveled to Israel or the West Bank for cancer treatment accompanied either by grandparents or older family friends, and on the fact that their parents were not permitted to accompany them. She omits, however, that terrorists have, in the past, attempted to exploit entry permits granted for medical reasons. In December of 2014, for example, Israeli forces discovered and stopped a woman who planned to obtain an entry permit from the West Bank for medical reasons, and then disguise herself as being pregnant in order to detonate a suicide bomb.

McNeill does not inform her readers about Hamas actions that may contribute to the lack of available or appropriate medical care within Gaza. She fails to discuss that during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, Hamas and other terrorist groups used hospitals to launch attacks into Israel, and omits that in some cases medical facilities were damaged by misfired rockets from within Gaza. Moreover, while billions of dollars in international aid flow into Gaza, the IDF reported in July that “Hamas spends hundreds of thousands of dollars each month on tunnel infrastructure.”

These omissions are compounded by two factual errors in the story. First, McNeill claims that Israel’s blockade on Gaza is almost ten years old. The blockade was actually imposed in 2009, two years after Hamas took control of the strip, and it was found to be legal in a U.N. Report. McNeill also writes that “to exit Gaza, you need permission from the Israeli authorities.” Egypt, however, controls the Rafah crossing at one of Gaza’s borders.

Maybe more can be done for Gaza’s sick children… mostly by Hamas that rules the territory and ill-treats its residents.

–KB

The World Council of Churches, a Christian ecumenical institution with a long history of beating up on Israel while giving jihadists and killers like Syrian President Bashar al Assad a pass, has invited an antisemitic conspiracy theorist to lecture at an upcoming celebration of interfaith dialogue at an event held near the WCC’s headquarters in Switzerland.

The event will take place at the WCC’s Bossey Institute, located outside of Geneva. The speaker is His Excellency Professor Dr. Ahmad al-Tayyeb, Grand Imam and Shayk of al-Azhar University.

His lecture, titled “The Responsibility of Religious Leaders for Achieving World Peace,” will take place at 4 p.m. on Saturday October 1, 2016.

Tayyeb’s talk is part of the Bossey Institute’s celebration of 70 years of interfaith dialogue at the institution which describes itself as the “international center for encounter, dialogue and formation of the World Council of Churches (WCC).”

For a man asked to speak about the role religious leaders can play in promoting “peace” Tayyeb has said some pretty hateful things.
(more…)

In his report today on recent Palestinian violence, The Los Angeles Times’ Joshua Mitnick obscures the fact that all of the Palestinians killed in the last few days, along with the majority of those killed in the last year, were attackers (“Israeli military says teenager killed after trying to stab soldier“).

He writes:

Since Friday, Israeli security forces have reported at least nine knifing and car ramming attacks on targets in the West Bank and Jerusalem. Some six Palestinians and a Jordanian citizen have been killed in the violence, and several Israelis have been injured, including a 38-year-old border policewoman stabbed Monday morning outside Jerusalem’s Old City.

In this passage, Mitnick fails to make clear who were the perpetrators (Palestinians) of the knifing and ramming attacks and who were the targets (Israelis),

Further muddling the basic question of who were the attackers and who were the targets, the Times correspondent does not note that all six Palestinians killed, along with the Jordanian, were the perpetrators of the aforementioned knifing and ramming attacks. In at least a couple of the incidents (involving the Jordanian and an attack Saturday in Hebron) there is video evidence substantiating the Israeli information that the Palestinian fatalities were assailants. The Jordanian was responsible for the attack Monday in which the 38-year-old border policewoman was gravely injured, and her colleague was moderately injured. But Mitnick does not say so. Readers are left to their own to draw the conclusion that the six Palestinians and Jordanian carried out the stabbings and car rammings — or not.

Mitnick’s grossly misleading phrase “six Palestinians and a Jordanian citizen have been killed in the violence” is nearly as skewed as this egregiously distorted Los Angeles Times headline last year which editors corrected following CAMERA’s complaint:

Indeed, aside from two specific incidents — an attack Tuesday morning along with the murder of 13-year-old Hallel Ariel last June — nowhere does Mitnick specify that it is Palestinians who are responsible for the ramming and stabbing attacks of the last year.

Thus, he refers to “the string of stabbings, car attacks, and shootings that started during the same [holiday] period last year,” without specifying that Palestinians were the perpetrators. Again, readers may, or may not, deduce this information.

Mitnick again casts Palestinian perpetrators as victims, writing:

The wave of daily violence that started a year ago left more than 200 Palestinians and several dozen Israelis dead, though in the spring and summer the incidents subsided substantially.

In a gross omission, he ignores the fact that most of the more than 200 Palestinians killed were attackers, according to Israel. It is standard practice for media outlets across the board to include this information, and The Los Angeles has done so numerous times in the past.

CAMERA has raised these concerns with Times editors. Stay tuned for an update.

On Sunday, Mahmoud Abbas insisted that the latest wave of Palestinian terror attacks against Israelis is a natural consequence of despair. “Don’t trust those who say there are efforts to push them or incite them,” he said of Palestinian attackers. “Rather, they have lost hope.”

This argument, which shifts responsibility for Palestinian violence away from the attackers and toward the victims, is favored by some journalists and activists (even when the facts show something else).

But only days before Abbas’s comments, a U.S. State Department notice announcing sanctions on a Hamas terror leader attested to the alarming reality of Palestinian incitement. The notice focused on Fathi Ahmad Mohammad Hammad, who is responsible for, among other terrorist activity, inciting the next generation of Palestinians to hate and kill.

According to the State Department, Hammad “established Al-Aqsa TV, which is a primary Hamas media outlet with programs designed to recruit children to become Hamas armed fighters and suicide bombers upon reaching adulthood.”

No wonder Hamas officials have dismissed the idea that Palestinian attackers are driven by despair. They work hard to inspire anti-Jewish terror attacks and, unlike their Fatah counterparts (who also incite attacks and also focus on indoctrinating Palestinian youth), are not shy about publicly admitting it.

CAMERA has previously faulted the news media for ignoring or downplaying Palestinian incitement. After John Kerry pointedly said incitement was to blame for the murder of Jews praying at a synagogue, for example, New York Times journalists initially reported on the Secretary of State’s newsworthy comments, but then scrubbed all reference to them from their article. And a recent article by AFP pitted “analysts,” who according to the wire service don’t name incitement as relevant to Palestinian violence, against “Israel,” which claims it is — this despite the fact that plenty of analysts agree that incitement fuels violence.

Update, 4 p.m. EST: Forward, Voice of America Correct Headlines on Palestinian Attacks

The spate of terror attacks in Israel over the weekend was accompanied by additional examples of the usual bad headlines depicting the assailants as victims. Here is an example from Voice of America:

Similarly, the The Forward headline for the accompanying Reuters article was:

Strikingly, the original Reuters headline was perfectly straightforward, clearly noting that Israel identified the three killed Palestinians as attackers: “Israeli forces say killed three assailants in Jerusalem, West Bank.”

This is not the first time that The Forward changed a perfectly clear Reuters headline about a Palestinian attack to obfuscate the facts.

Based only on the Voice of America and Forward headlines readers would not understand that the Palestinians killed were reportedly assailants, killed while carrying out attacks. In the case of the incident described in the Voice of America article, the moment of the attack was captured by security cameras, leaving no doubt as to the circumstances:

The Voice of America article, like the Reuters article which appears at The Forward, as well as Reuters’ original headline, correctly identifies the Palestinians as suspected assailants.

CAMERA has contacted editors at both media outlets to request corrections. Stay tuned for an update.

In the weekend WSJ, four letters were published pointing out the hypocrisy and counter-productive nature of the BDS movement that seeks to destroy Israel. All four were written by outstanding CAMERA Letter Writers. To sign up for our letter writing team, please click here.

The Outrage of BDS Is Suspiciously Selective
The BDS movement diverts attention from human-rights abuses inflicted by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas against the Palestinian people.

Allison Brown and Patrick Connors claim that the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is part of a long, honorable continuum (Letters, Sept. 12). I beg to differ. There is nothing honorable about the BDS movement’s goal of preventing dialogue between Palestinians and Israelis who try to forge paths of mutual understanding and respect. Nor is there anything honorable about BDS’s attempts to shutter businesses in Judea and Samaria that provide good-paying jobs to Palestinians. BDS’s support of entrenched Palestinian rulers leave Palestinians with little hope of escaping the oppression of their corrupt leadership. Furthermore, the BDS movement diverts attention from human-rights abuses inflicted by the Palestinian Authority and Hamas against the Palestinian people.

Hatred for the “other” deflects responsibility away from autocratic regimes’ neglect and abuse of their people. Israel is the “other” for the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, as America is the “other” for North Korea. Supporters of BDS buttress the despots who deny their people basic rights such as freedom of the press, inclusion for the LGBTQ community and other minorities, justice for women and children and freedom to worship—or not to.

Lynn C. Koss
Fayetteville, N.Y.

The target of these New York campaigners, like the rest of the BDS advocates, is the existence of Israel itself. Omar Barghouti, a leading founder of the BDS movement, stated it with full clarity: “definitely, most definitely we oppose a Jewish state in any part of Palestine.” That means all of Palestine—no Israel.

Meanwhile, Palestinians have a higher standard of living in Israel than in any Arab country. And they have full democratic rights.

Barry Salwen
Wilmington, N.C.

Regarding those victims of Israel: The Palestinian Authority September elections suddenly have been scrubbed. Fatah fears Hamas’s West Bank gains. Hamas is horrified at a surging Fatah in Gaza. An increasingly despotic Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas continues in the 12th year of a four-year term.

Richard D. Wilkins
Syracuse, N.Y.

Cooperating with BDS can be illegal per the federal statutes outlawing cooperation with the Arab League boycott of Israel, namely the 1977 amendments to the Export Administration Act and the Ribicoff Amendment to the 1976 Tax Reform Act.

Daniel H. Trigoboff
Williamsville, N.Y.

Last week, two significant anti-Israel programs were blocked within 24 hours of being publicized.

The first was a pro- Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) event scheduled to take place on Friday, September 16th on Capitol Hill, with support from an anonymous congress member. The presentation was to feature speakers who are active in the notorious BDS campaign against Israel, which is considered by many to be an anti-Semitic movement.

The event was announced Monday and drew bi-partisan outrage from citizens and other congressional members. Initially, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, who had sponsored the event, refused to reveal herself publicly. But on Tuesday, after House Minority leader Nancy Pelosi got word of it, Lee withdrew her sponsorship and the presentation was canceled.

The event would have been the first forum in favor of boycotting Israel on Capitol Hill. The event was to be moderated and sponsored by the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, a known anti-Israel organization that garnered controversy after hosting democratic congressman Hank Johnson who compared Israeli settlers to “termites.” The organization has been described by the Anti-Defamation League as “a coalition of anti-Israel groups that promotes divestment from Israeli companies, organizes anti-Israel events, and lobbies the U.S.”

The second anti-Israel undertaking was a one-credit student-run course titled “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis,” which was to be offered at the University of California, Berkeley. On Tuesday, 43 Jewish and civil rights groups wrote a concerned letter to Chancellor Nicholas Dirks claiming that the course was in violation of the UC Board of Regents policy on course content and amounted to political indoctrination.

That same day, Chancellor Dirks suspended the course on the grounds that it “did not receive a sufficient degree of scrutiny to ensure that the syllabus met Berkeley’s academic standards.”

The swift response on the part of Congress and the university to take action against displays of bigotry is commendable and will hopefully serve as an example for the future.

UPDATE: Unfortunately, the LA Times is reporting that the UC Berkeley course has been reinstated. Carla Hesse, executive dean of the College of Letters and Sciences and dean of the social sciences division rescinded the suspension saying her concerns have been addressed.

–Karys Rhea, International Letter-Writing Associate

A photograph in USA Today’s Aug. 17, 2016 “World In Brief” section showed two Palestinian children peering through a broken glass window but was accompanied by misleading text.

The image, credited to AFP photographer Hazem Bader, appeared under the headline “Through the eyes of children.” A description underneath the photo read:

“Palestinian children peer through a window at Israeli soldiers conducted searches Tuesday in the al-Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron. Twenty-five Palestinians were wounded in clashes with Israeli soldiers, Red Crescent medics said.”

Yet, the caption does not tell readers what Israeli soldiers were searching for. As The Times of Israel reported, Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) were conducting an overnight operation to “uncover weaponry” in the al-Fawwar refugee camp (“Palestinian teen said killed in clashes with IDF troops in West Bank,” Aug. 16, 2016).

While conducting their mission, IDF soldiers were assaulted by “dozens of Palestinians [who] hurled IEDs (improvised explosive devices), blocks and rocks” at them. In response, the IDF used riot dispersal measures and “fired .22 caliber bullets toward the main instigators,” according to an Israeli military spokesperson.

Confirming their suspicions, “two improvised handguns” were found at the camp along with “other weapons and ammunition.” Perhaps this is unsurprising. According to The Times of Israel:

“The army closed off the Fawar camp for 26 days last month after a gunman belonging to a Hamas terror cell fired on a car carrying an Israeli family on a nearby West Bank road, causing the vehicle to crash.”

As a result of that attack, in which Rabbi Miki Mark was murdered and his wife and two children injured, the IDF has been “clamping down on Palestinian workshops manufacturing arms in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria],” The Times of Israel noted.

However, none of this crucial context was provided to USA Today readers.

That it was omitted is perhaps not surprising when one considers the photographer.

As CAMERA has noted, photos taken by Bader have been propagandistic in nature. For example, one 2012 image, carried by the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and MSNBC, among others, purported to show “an injured Palestinian construction worker” as he screamed “in pain after an Israeli army driver drove a trailer hooked to a tractor over his legs.”

Yet, as CAMERA’s Israel Director, Tamar Sternthal, pointed out in a Feb. 7, 2012 Canadian Jewish News Op-Ed:

“…After checking Palestinian, international and Israeli sources, it appears that the ‘injured worker,’ Mahmoud Abu Qbeita, was, in fact, not actually injured. Moreover, there is no evidence that he was even run over. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights and the United Nations, both of which provide comprehensive reports about West Bank casualties, made no mention of the alleged injury (“AFP Shows Lack of Transparency”).”

Bader’s own personal website, as a CAMERA snapshot pointed out, featured a picture of the photographer smiling alongside Yasser Arafat, the now-deceased head of the Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) (“Canadian Jews News: AFP Flunks on Transparency,” Feb. 9, 2012).

The Washington Post’s “Hogan plans trade mission to see Israeli start-ups” (Sept. 8, 2016) provided readers with a look at how Maryland is seeking to learn from the Jewish state’s culture of business innovation.

The article, by Post reporter Josh Hicks, noted that Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan “plans to embark on a seven-day trade mission to Israel this month with several members of his cabinet and leaders from the state’s business, academic and Jewish communities.”

According to The Post, the trip—slated to depart on September 19—will “focus on Israel’s robust culture and strong presence in the high-tech fields of cybersecurity, technology and the sciences.”

The governor and those accompanying him will visit Tel Aviv, Beersheba and Jerusalem.

The Washington Post was not the only paper to detail Hogan’s trip. The Baltimore Sun (“Hogan plans to lead Israel trade mission this month,” Sept. 8 2016) also covered the story.

Close ties between Maryland and Israel have long existed. More than 20 Israeli companies have offices in Maryland, both papers reported. Additionally, as Hicks pointed out, “every governor of the state has visited the country for trade missions for at least the past 25 years.”

As CAMERA has noted (see, for example “Israel Aids California’s Water Conservation,” May 8, 2016), Israeli innovations have helped other U.S. states. Israel’s medical, technological and scientific developments have enabled the Jewish state to punch above its weight. For example, as a May 15, 2016 Washington Post story documented (“Cyber-city rises from the desert”), Israel has pioneered cooperation between academia, the government and private companies in the realm of cybersecurity.

Major U.S. news media coverage of Israel is often fixated on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and related issues. In their articles, The Post and The Sun illustrated that Israel’s story is every bit as much about cooperation and innovation.

The United States and Europe are confronted with a terrorist threat which is greater than “at any point since the Sept. 11 attacks 15 years ago,” according to a Sept. 9, 2016 Washington Times report by Carlo Munoz (“Terrorist threat at its most serious since 9/11 attacks”).

Munoz cited a Sept. 7, 2016 review of global threats by the United States National Counterterrorism Center chief Nick Rasmussen. Rasmussen warned that both the United States and Europe faced a “bigger, wider and deeper” risk from terrorist groups. The rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, presents a menace which is “considerably less predictable” than those posed by al-Qaeda, the group responsible for, among other acts, the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon, the World Trade Center in New York City and the downing of Flight 93 in Pennsylvania.

The more decentralized nature of ISIS—which also seeks to inspire attacks via social media—has enabled the group to carry out attacks “much more quickly and with much less warning” than other terror groups, Rasmussen noted.

Additionally, both ISIS’s structure and a wider variety of recruits has made it harder for U.S. intelligence officials to monitor the group and target the group. Quoting Rasmussen, The Times highlighted:

“The lack of such linkages, especially by lone wolf attackers who were inspired by Islamic State’s impressive online propaganda operation has opened up ‘a size and scale of the [U.S.] population’ susceptible to radicalization.”

The Times article cited Michael Leiter, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, who noted the differences between how al-Qaeda selects targets vs. how ISIS does. Leiter pointed out that massive attacks like September 11th, take “immense amounts of planning, communication, financing and coordination.” Accordingly, they come with a high risk of failure. By contrast, ISIS has pursued more “basic tactics, such as last year’s mass shooting as an office party in San Bernardino, California or the July attack in Nice, France, where an Islamic State operative used a truck to run down revelers at the seaside resort town.”

Yet, some terror analysts believe that al-Qaeda is far from down and out.

A recent report for the Hudson Institute by Daveed Gartenstein Ross, a senior fellow at the Washington D.C.-based think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, and Nathaniel Barr, a research manager with Valens Global, argued that al-Qaeda is both underestimated by many analysts and a greater long-term threat than ISIS (“How al-Qaeda Survived the Islamic State Challenge,” Aug. 30, 2016). Gartenstein-Ross and Barr said that, “al Qaeda has turned IS’s emergence into a strategic opportunity, pivoting off of IS’s brutality and doubling down on a more low-profile and sustainable approach to growth. Al-Qaeda has quietly, and yet relatively rapidly, gained ground in conflict zones across the Middle East and North Africa, including Syria and Yemen, where the group has seized territory and embedded itself within local communities.”

As Rasmussen noted in his July 14, 2016 testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives Homeland Security Committee, “…it is fair to say that we face more threats originating in more places and involving more individuals than we have at any time in past 15 years.”