Oct. 31 Update: Tablet Corrects: Report of Israeli Soccer Fan Wielding Knife Unfounded

The Tablet has failed to clarify an article which claimed that an Israeli soccer fan stormed the field with a knife at a game in Jerusalem earlier this month when the Israeli national team lost to its Spanish rivals (“Spain ends Israel’s World Cup Dreams“). The subheadline stated: “And, seeking revenge, Israel fan charges the field with a knife.” In addition, the article’s final sentence stated that a fan who charged the field “was carrying a knife.”

Yet, according to AFP in Times of Israel (“Israeli police dismiss report of knife incident at Spanish match“):

Israeli police dismissed on Tuesday local media reports that a pitch invader who ran towards Spanish attacker Isco at a World Cup qualifier in Jerusalem was carrying a knife. . . .

Other Israeli media reported the allegation, but police and football officials denied it.

Police spokeswoman Luba Samri told AFP no knife was found inside the stadium.

A spokesman for the Israeli Football Association confirmed a fan ran toward Isco but said “no knife has been found.”

Though The Tablet initially indicated that it would issue a correction, as of this writing, editors have yet to do so.

Meanwhile, Ynet, which appears to be the first media outlet to report the unconfirmed knife incident as fact, has amended a headline which stated as fact that a fan who charged the field was carrying a knife. The initial headline stated: “World Cup qualifiers: Israeli fan arrested with knife near Spanish national team player.”

Following communication from CAMERA, Ynet editors slightly modified the headline, qualifying the claim that the fan carried a knife as a “report.”

The article itself nevertheless still casts the unfounded knife claim as fact and ignores the police and soccer official statements that there was no knife.

A top Palestinian Authority (PA) official has acknowledged that the authority supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. BDS unfairly maligns the Jewish state and denies its existence any legitimacy. The PA’s support for BDS violates the Oslo accords which created the authority and from which it is funded.

In secret recordings obtained by The Washington Free Beacon, Mahmoud al-Aloul stated: “We have relations with BDS, our people work there and we have delegates there. We cooperate with BDS on all levels, and not only with the BDS, but every group whose aim is to boycott Israel, we are with. Every group working to lay siege on Israel and isolate it from the world, we are with.”

Mahmoud al-Aloul is the deputy to PA President and Fatah movement head, Mahmoud Abbas. As CAMERA has highlighted, he is both an unrepentant terrorist and a likely successor to Abbas (see, for example “Backgrounder: Tanzim,” Sept. 5, 2017).

Al-Aloul was recorded making these comments in March 2017—one month after he was appointed to his current position. Free Beacon reporter Rachel Frommer noted that in another audio recording, from August 2017, al-Aloul was asked by an Arabic-language news outlet if he supported BDS. The PA official responded, “Yes, of course.” When asked how they do so, he said that the PA shows its support “in every way…We actively participate in the events they organize.”

In a Sept. 9, 1993 letter to then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Fatah head, Abbas’s predecessor Yasser Arafat wrote that the PLO “recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security.” Further, “the PLO affirms that those articles of the Palestinian Covenant which deny Israel’s right to exist, and the provisions of the Covenant which are inconsistent with the commitments of this letter are now inoperative and no longer valid.”

That letter served as the preamble for the Oslo accords, which created the PA and allowed Palestinian leaders to return from Tunisia and have limited self-rule in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The PA receives U.S. and E.U. support, financial and otherwise, as a result of Oslo.

By supporting—and working with—BDS, the PA is assisting efforts to delegitimize Israel and which, as CAMERA has noted, call for the end of the Jewish state.

Rachel Frommer’s Washington Free Beacon report can be found here.

Top leaders from Hamas, the U.S.-designated terror group that rules the Gaza Strip, visited the Islamic Republic of Iran, in late October 2017. Hamas is currently engaged in reconciliation talks with its rival Fatah, which dominates the U.S. and E.U.-supported Palestinian Authority (PA).

Many major U.S. media outlets ignored Hamas’s Iran trip—which was blasted by U.S. peace envoy Jason Greenblatt, who stated:

“Hamas, which has only brought ruin and misery to Palestinians, now begs Iran for help and again vows to destroy Israel.”

Indeed, in its report on the visit of Hamas officials, such as Saleh al-Arouri, The Times of Israel noted that the terror group’s decision to go to Iran violated Israel’s conditions for recognizing a Hamas-PA unity government (“Hamas leader’s visit to Iran defies Israel’s condition for Palestinian unity,” Oct. 23, 2017).

Israel has also requested that Hamas disarm and recognize the Jewish state. Hamas, however, has categorically rejected Israel’s preconditions. Al-Arouri openly admitted as much, exhorting to Iranian media that “Our presence in Iran is the practical denial of the third precondition—cutting ties with Iran.”

As CAMERA has highlighted, some analysts and policymakers have claimed that Hamas is becoming more “moderate.” Others have asserted that reconciliation talks between the Gaza-based terror group and Fatah—both of which have called for Israel’s destruction—somehow make peace with the Jewish state more likely (see, for example “Palestinian Official: Unity Deal Will Make Peace More Likely,” Oct. 19, 2017, Al-Jazeera).

The Washington Post, for example, ran a story that, if implicitly, indicated Hamas-Fatah reconciliation could make peace more likely and that the U.S. and Israel were wrong not to embrace it (“Trump envoy balks at Palestinian reconciliation, insisting Hamas must disarm”). That October 19 report—published a mere two days before al-Alouri’s Tehran visit—quoted several PA and Hamas officials, as well as an Israeli professor named Moshe Maoz, who asserted: “They [the U.S. and Israel] should look at the positive side of this arrangement. In a sense, it carries some promise, as it could be a good chance for Israel to negotiate with the entire Palestinian people.”

For its part, Tehran has been a long-time backer of Hamas. However, Iran’s support for Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad caused fissures in the relationship since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in 2011. But now, “out of cash and isolated, Hamas is in search of backing from a major regional power, and is returning to Iran’s orbit,” according to terror analyst Yaakov Lappin (“Hamas Rejoins Iran’s Terrorist Axis,” Investigative Project on Terrorism, Oct. 26, 2017).

Lappin stated that the renewed relationship could result in Hamas benefitting from Iranian proxy Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon, which is “now seeing the arrival of Hamas members who have set up a new command center.” The next possible step could be setting up “terror cells in the West Bank [Judea and Samaria].”

Cash will once again flow from the Islamic Republic to Hamas, as will weapons and the technical know-how required to use them. Indeed, according to analyst Grant Rumley of the Washington D.C.-based think tank, Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, Hamas now says that “they’ve doubled the range of their rockets since the 2014 war—[which] can now reach over 160km.”

Needless to say, this heightens the chance for another Israel-Hamas war. Unfortunately, this hasn’t translated into increased media coverage.

A Lexis-Nexis search, however, shows that major U.S. news outlets, such as The Washington Post, USA Today and The Baltimore Sun, among others, failed to report Iranian-Hamas reconciliation. Should another conflict erupt, many readers will be ill prepared. The Post’s failure to cover the story is particularly striking, as the paper ran a profile of al-Arouri on July 10, 2014— noting his role in sparking the last war (“The enigmatic Hamas leader allegedly behind the Israeli kidnappings that ignited the war”).

The confined spaces of the Old City of Jerusalem present real problems for Israeli officials during celebrations of the Easter Triduum. In particular, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and its narrow courtyard present a nightmare for officials responsible for crowd control in the Old City. Sadly, Yusef Daher, executive secretary of the Jerusalem Inter-Church Center, currently located at the Monastery of St. Anne in the Old City, uses Israel’s response to these difficulties as a pretext to accuse Israeli officials of oppressing the Christian community in Jerusalem. (Photos: Dexter Van Zile)

Yusef Daher really ought to be ashamed of himself.

For at least a decade, he has used his status as executive secretary of the Jerusalem Interchurch Center — currently located in St. Anne’s Monastery near the Lion’s Gate of the Old City — to de-legitimize the Jewish state.

It’s bad enough that Daher, a Christian, has posted images on social media that valorize Palestinian violence against Israeli civilians, but to make matters worse, he has used his status as a “Christian peacemaker” to portray legitimate Israeli security measures as a violation of religious freedom in Jerusalem. The problem is that if Israeli officials did not impose some sort of crowd control on Christian celebrations in Jerusalem, people might get killed in stampedes. It’s happened in the past.

Here are the details.

Daher periodically condemns Israeli security officials for keeping a tight rein on the crowds of Christians that gather to participate in Good Friday and Easter services in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in the Old City of Jerusalem. Sadly enough, irresponsible Christian leaders in Jerusalem have cooperated with Daher’s efforts to demonize Israel.

In an article published by the Catholic News Service in April 2014, Daher complained that pilgrims intent on watching Good Friday and Easter services at the Sepulcher are kept away from the Church and are forced to watch the events on a large TV screen near Jaffa Gate. Pilgrims, Daher said, “are kept behind iron barricades as if they are in prison.”

The same article quotes church leaders in Jerusalem as they accuse Israel of “tampering with the traditional celebrations and local heritage.”

Daher said that Israel disrupts pilgrims on Good Friday service and that this “often disturbs people who are in prayer and creates tension.” He also declared that Israeli police have acted violently against worshippers and that there have been arrests.

The article also states that “Daher noted that pilgrims are prevented from standing in the church’s courtyard even though a three-meter-wide corridor would be enough for people to pass through in an emergency.”
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On Oct. 17, 2017, it was announced that Qatar would be appointed to the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC). In a largely underreported move, Hamas, the U.S.-designated terrorist group that rules the Gaza Strip, seemed pleased with the announcement.

Hamas’s official Twitter account said that “Qatar is a member in U.N. Human Rights Council after getting 155 votes.” It might seem odd that a terror group would take the time to celebrate a country’s appointment to a UN body ostensibly concerned with human rights.

But Qatar champions Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel, the genocide of Jews, and which hides behind human shields while launching missiles at the Jewish state.

Jonathan Schanzer, a former terror analyst for the U.S. Treasury Department, highlighted Hamas’s celebratory tweet. Schanzer, who is now the Vice President at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington D.C.-based think tank, has noted Qatar’s support for terrorism before.

In an April 20, 2017 New York Post Op-Ed (“Time for the U.S. to stop Qatar’s support for terror”), Schanzer detailed how Hamas “enjoys safe haven in Qatar and also raises plenty of cash.” Noting that top Hamas official Khaled Meshal has “long operated out of Doha,” the former Treasury official also pointed out that:

“Hamas military official Saleh Arouri — suspected of masterminding the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens, sparking the 2014 war between Hamas and Israel — is now reportedly in Qatar after being booted from Turkey.”

Qatar’s support for terrorism has extended to hosting members of the Taliban and a seeming unwillingness to go after terror financiers. In 2016, the U.S. Treasury Department’s top terrorism-finance, Adam Szubin, said that Doha had demonstrated “a lack of political will…to effectively enforce their combating terrorist financing laws.”

Qatar’s support for Iran—which the U.S. State Department has listed as the top state sponsor of terrorism—has caused a publicized fissure with its fellow Gulf Arab countries who view the Islamic Republic as exporting instability (see, for example “As Persian Gulf Crisis Persists, Alarm in Washington Deepens,” Sept. 17, 2017, The Washington Post). Despite this aspect, many major U.S. news outlets failed to detail Hamas’s open celebration of Qatar’s U.N. appointment. A Lexis-Nexis search of USA Today, The Washington Post, The Washington Times, and others, showed no mention of the tweet despite Qatar, the U.N., and Hamas being frequently covered topics.

Osama bin Laden knew which journalists to feed information to when the terror chieftain wanted information disseminated in a manner useful to his aims. The al-Qaeda founder, like his terrorist counterparts in Hamas, Hezbollah and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), used the media to his advantage, a new book highlights.

In their 2017 book The Exile: The Stunning Inside Story of Osama Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda in Flight, British journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy interviewed top counterterrorism officials from a variety of governments, as well as Bin Laden associates and members of the terror group.

Among other things, Scott-Clark and Levy note that, from his hideout in Abbottabad, Pakistan, Bin Laden plotted in October 2010 on how best to highlight the upcoming anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks perpetrated by al-Qaeda. The author’s state:

“The tenth anniversary of 9/11 was coming and ‘attention should be paid to start preparing for [it] now,’ Osama railed. Al Qaeda needed to ‘benefit from this event’ and present ‘our cause to the world, especially to the European people.’ Atiyah [abd al-Rahman, a top AQ operative] should reach out to the right people. He [Bin Laden] suggested Ahmad Zaidan at Al Jazeera, Robert Fisk of the Independent, and the prominent Arab newspaper editor Abdel Bari Atwan, based in London [emphasis added].”

Bin Laden clarified that “jihadi media” is a “main piece of the war” and it shouldn’t be “abandoned.”

The journalists named by Bin Laden as preferable disseminators of his propaganda have another thing in common: They all target Israel.

As UK Media Watch, a CAMERA affiliate, has detailed, Fisk’s work evidences a history of offering anti-Israel broadsides and distortions. Among other things, he has said that Hamas is more moral than Israel and conspiratorially accused the Jewish state of dragging “the West into [the] Syrian war.” In one June 22, 2014 report, Fisk worried about the terror threat to the U.K. from Israeli soldiers.

Similarly, Al-Jazeera, the de-facto state news outlet for Qatar, a chief financier of Hamas and other terror groups, also has a history of making anti-Israel, and frequently antisemitic, broadcasts. And, as Levy and Scott-Clark note, one of Al-Qaeda’s earliest media chiefs was Abu Walid al-Masri—a former Al-Jazeera journalist. Al-Masri even served as Al-Jazeera’s Afghanistan bureau chief from 1998-2001—after he had trained in the same jihadist camps in the 1980s as future Al-Qaeda fighters. Al-Masri’s son-in-law, Saif al-Adel, served as Al-Qaeda’s military chief for a number of years, according to Levy and Scott-Clark.

In a widely underreported move, the Egyptian Army began demolishing the homes of civilians in the city of Rafah on Oct. 4, 2017. The move, an Al-Monitor report noted, was “part of the third stage of building a border buffer zone with the Gaza Strip (“Egypt’s army destroys Sinai homes to expand Gaza buffer,” Oct. 11, 2017).”

The buffer line, the dispatch stated, is part of an attempt to destroy tunnels used by terrorist groups, such as Hamas, to smuggle operatives and materials between Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula. The process has been ongoing since October 2014. In its third phase, as with the preceding two, an area of 500 meters was added.

Al-Monitor claimed to have received a copy of the press statement of the governor of northern Sinai, Abdel Fattah Harhoor. Among other things, it said that the third phase of the buffer zones development was essential to “protecting Egypt’s national security and countering terrorism,” Al-Monitor said.

Those residents who have been displaced as a result of its construction are “facing difficulties in finding alternative housing,” the paper reported. The publication added:

“Hundreds have resorted to building huts from the remains of houses and palm trees in desert areas in the surroundings of Sheikh Zuweid, Rafah and el-Arish. But their presence in these areas puts their lives at risk because there has been constant military combing and launching of random missiles between the army and the Egyptian branch of the Islamic State, Wilayat Sinai, since 2013.”

During the first phase of the buffer zone’s construction, displaced residents were offered compensation by the Egyptian government. At present, it’s unknown if compensation of any form will be offered to those forcibly relocated during the ongoing third phase.

Egypt’s decision to construct the buffer zone has been widely ignored by many major Western news outlets. A Lexis-Nexis search of major U.S. news outlets, such as The Washington Post, USA Today and The Baltimore Sun, among others, shows no mention of the recent phase and its accompanying displacement of Egyptian residents due to security concerns.

By contrast, as CAMERA has highlighted, Israeli security measures, such as the security barrier, are both well covered and frequently misreported (see here for examples and CAMERA-prompted corrections).

Fatah is the movement that dominates the Palestinian Authority (PA), the entity responsible for governing the West Bank (Judea and Samaria). Controlled by PA President Mahmoud Abbas, the movement is frequently labeled “moderate” by many news outlets. But even a cursory look at Fatah’s Facebook page should dispel that myth.

According to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW), a non-profit organization that translates media in the West Bank, eastern Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, Fatah recently authored a social media post that spelled out its objectives.

PMW noted that, in an Oct. 3, 2017 post on its official Facebook page, Fatah proclaimed:

“From the blood of the Martyrs (Shahids) we will create the State of Palestine.”

Having enunciated its methods for state building, Fatah’s Nablus branch offered more details in an Oc. 4, 2017, Facebook post, which stated:

“The Palestinian blood is not oil or water, but rather the salt of the earth and the gunpowder of the revolution.”

Images of Palestinian “leaders,” such as Fathi Shaqaqi, the founder of U.S. designated terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), Ahmad Yassin, the deceased founder of Hamas, and others, accompanied the Facebook post.

As CAMERA has highlighted, Fatah’s Facebook page frequently disseminates antisemitic material and exhortations to anti-Jewish violence. In March 2017, Facebook took the page down. However, it was back up within three days and Facebook had not removed “any of the terror promoting material that is regularly posted on the page,” PMW noted.

Enraged at having its page briefly removed, Fatah accused Facebook of having a “blind bias in favor of the occupation.”

Facebook never explained its reasons for removing—or for reinstating—Fatah’s page. Less than a year later, Fatah continues to violate the social network’s stated guidelines against threatening language. And it continues to make its motives and desires clear.

Oct. 17 Update: Haaretz Prints Correction on BDS Activists That Weren’t

In his Oct. 13 column (“Exorcising an imaginary BDS demon”), Haaretz‘s David Rosenberg argues that the anti-Israel BDS (boycott, divest, sanctions) movement is an “imaginary demon.” As the subheadline puts it: “Israel isn’t under any threat from boycott movement, but fighting a phony BDS war is too tempting for many to pass up. Even, [sic] the U.S. Congress has been enlisted in the fight.”

In addition to the U.S. Congress, it seems that a Haaretz photo editor has also been taken in by the phony BDS demon, imagining BDS activists where there are none. Thus, the photo caption accompanying the article in the print edition (page 14) stated: “Israel supporters separated by a police barrier from BDS activists at a New York parade.”

But the “BDS activists” are actually anti-BDS activists, as made clear in the original Associated Press caption.

Haaretz‘s digital edition got it right, correctly identifying the demonstrators as anti-BDS activists.

CAMERA has contacted Haaretz to request a correction. Stay tuned for an update.

Hat tip: LDS

Earlier this month, the online news site Al-Monitor wrote about two Palestinian human rights organizations’ reporting on complaints of torture in Gaza prisons. (“Gaza activists decry rise in torture within prisons,” October 1, 2017.) Al-Monitor wrote:

Human rights organizations operating in the Gaza Strip have monitored many cases of torture in Gaza prisons in 2016-17, which were described as “recurring.”

After he was severely tortured, detainee Khalil Abu Harb, from Gaza City, committed suicide on Sept. 19. The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) demanded in a Sept. 20 statement that the attorney general and decision-makers in the Gaza Strip stop what the PCHR described as a state of decay in detention centers. The PCHR demanded that they put an end to torture in prisons and abide by Palestinian law.

The Independent Commission for Human Rights (ICHR) issued its monthly report for July on Sept. 20. The ICHR noted that during July, it received 38 complaints of torture and ill-treatment in the Palestinian territories, 26 of which were in Gaza, and they included 22 complaints against the police and four against the Internal Security Service.

In its annual report for 2016, the ICHR revealed that it documented hundreds of complaints submitted by victims of torture in detention centers and prisons in the Gaza Strip that year.

PCHR’s legal researcher Mohammed Abu Hashim told Al-Monitor that there is a lack of comprehensive and accurate statistics on cases of torture in prisons and detention centers, because the victims of torture are reluctant to confront the authorities. They do not trust in their ability to protect them or provide some form of compensation either by the judiciary or human rights centers.

With the help of Google Translate, CAMERA reviewed the IHCR report for July as well as the PCHR September 20 statement that Al-Monitor cited, which support the article.

The IHCR was founded in 1993 by Yasser Arafat. The PHCR has been noted for its bias against Israel and its reliance on lawfare against Israel. Yet, it has taken the step of criticizing the Hamas government of Gaza.

No mainstream American news media, however, has prominently featured this story. Palestinian suffering is only newsworthy, it seems, when Israel can be blamed.