Readers often don’t get past a headline — or, at best, the first few lines of a news story. That’s why journalism 101 calls for providing the essentials about an event — who, what, where, when, why — at the very beginning of an article. An April 2 BBC Web site posting flunked the test in a story about an Israeli strike on Gaza.

The Israeli air force attacked weapons and training facilities in the Gaza strip, in retaliation for the recent firing of Qassam rockets into Israel, as well as the killing of two IDF soldiers in Khan Younis last Friday.

However, readers of the BBC website will have a hard time fully understanding Israel’s motives and actions.

Unlike similar stories in the New York Times and CNN, the BBC article waits until the ninth paragraph, to inform its readers that this is a retaliatory strike due to Hamas rocket fire.

Before getting to the fact of rockets fired on Israel, the BBC explains the Palestinian position and even harkens back to operation Cast Lead (including a death toll figure), and includes an extended quote by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya calling “on the international community to intervene in the latest cycle of violence between Gaza and Israel in order to avoid a possible escalation.”

Posted by NB

The Swedish daily Aftonbladet reported this week that IDF soldiers abduct Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to steal their organs, reports Ha’aretz.

The double spread article, written by Donald Boström and featured in the paper’s cultural section, centers around Palestinian claims that young men from the Territories have been seized by Israel, only to have their bodies returned with missing organs.

The article also attempts to link this phenomenon to the recently exposed crime syndicate in New Jersey, during which several American Rabbis were arrested on charges of conspiring to broker sale of human kidneys.

The article has already received criticism from within Sweden – the daily Sydsvenskan ran an opinion piece blasting Aftonbladet for anti-Semitism and for promoting a Jewish blood libel.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor had this to say about the article:

this piece is a shocking example by a popular newspaper of appalling hysteria. Demonization of Israel has become a holy target for the editors, which justifies the most depraved means in their eyes. We expect any Swedish citizen who cares about democracy, to fully reject the libelous propaganda and encouragement of hate crimes included in this disgraceful article.

Posted by NB

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Original Entry:

The New York Times reported matter-of-factly the story of a Palestinian motorist who tried to run down Israeli policemen standing guard near the demolition of the house of a terrorist. Correspondent Isabel Kirshner quoted Israeli spokesman Micky Rosenfeld saying the Palestinian motorist “attempted to run over” three officers.

But the headline-writer seemingly had his/her own ideas about who was responsible for the violence and removed any hint the Palestinian had attacked and the Israelis had acted in self-defense, declaring:

“Israeli Police Kill Palestinian Motorist in East Jerusalem”

The AP did better, writing: “Israeli police shoot would-be attacker”

So did the Jerusalem Post: “Arab killed ramming car into J’lem cops”

And even Ha’aretz: “Police kill Palestinian assailant at demolition of terrorist’s home”.

Considering the Guardian’s track record of reporting on Israel, it is of no surprise to read the publication’s latest attempt at journalism.

A May 29, 2008 quiz (and yes, you are reading the word “quiz” correctly) prepared by Anil Dawar, highlights the corruption scandal surrounding Israel’s Prime Minister. The Guardian is apparently keen to ensure that its readers are not deprived of any of the minutiae, so it has generously provided–in the ‘Latest Multimedia’ section of its website—a quiz for its readers to answer about Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s corruption investigation.

The first question of five begins, believe it or not, as follows:

According to US entrepreneur and rabbi, Morris Talansky, what luxury items was Ehud Olmert obsessed with?

• Fashionable trainers (British term for sneakers or running shoes)


• Expensive cigars


• Branded sunglasses


• Handmade suits

Another question grills readers on the exact dollar amount spent by Olmert on a hotel stay:

How much did Olmert’s three-day stay at the Ritz Carlton in Washington cost Talansky?

• $4,700


• $5,700


• $3,700


• $6,700

The other questions are similar. But, oh dear, Mr. Dawar forgot to include any questions about Mr.Olmert’s favorite toothpaste.

Regarding Mr.Talansky’s status as a rabbi, Mr. Dawar neglects to clarify that Mr. Talansky is not a practicing rabbi. He is a businessman who briefly led a congregation in Portland, Oregon and has not practiced as a rabbi since the 1950’s.

Umm, I wonder what Mr. Dawar had in mind when he came up with this quiz. Maybe he was very, very bored?

When gunmen start throwing one another off of rooftops, most people would recoil in horror and offer some word of criticism for those responsible. Most people would have no problem stating explicitly that it is wrong to murder men in front of their wives and children. Most people would also say, without much prodding, that cutting the legs off of the corpses of your political opponents in the street is a bad thing. Not only does such behavior make people think poorly of you, it is wrong. It is disgraceful.
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We’re not Jews.

Those are some of the last words uttered by a Palestinian man before he was dragged out of a home in the Gaza Strip and shot to death during the recent fighting between Hamas and Fatah. The man, the un-named brother of Jamal Abu Jediyan, a Fatah commander, spoke these words to a radio station while Hamas gunmen stood outside, awaiting his capture and ultimate murder.

An article in the Telegraph reported that minutes after the man made his plea over the airwaves of the radio station, both he and his brother “were dragged into the streets and riddled with bullets.”
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Jimmy Carter’s Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid has a number of factual errors and distortions that in a normal world would disqualify it as a work of non-fiction. (Apparently, the firewall between fact and fiction is a bit porous at Simon and Schuster.)

Nevertheless, Carter’s book does have one redeeming value — it demonstrates the former president’s commitment to recycling. Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid is filled with a number of passages should be somewhat familiar to readers of The Blood of Abraham, also authored by Carter and published by the University of Arkansas Press in 1985.
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Anyone who doubts that the leaders of the Presbyterian Church (USA) are still using their church’s institutional credibility to broadcast a distorted narrative about the Arab-Israeli conflict to its members and to the general public should watch the first minute or so of the propagandistic video church leader and staffers have recommended to Sunday school teachers and youth group leaders as part of a “peacemaking” curriculum.
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Just two days after the Associated Press reported that aid to the Palestinians “more than doubled in 2006,” the venerable news agency published another article about Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh stating that “Hamas’ refusal to meet international conditions for acceptance means a continuation of the foreign aid boycott that has driven Gaza deeper into poverty.”

On Feb. 21, the Associated Press reported that despite the boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, foreign aid to the Palestinians doubled from $348.5 million in 2005, to $721.7 million in 2006. The article explains the money was “funneled to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.”

The Feb. 23 article, however, provides no such explanation. It merely repeats the convenient, but inaccurate conventional wisdom about lack of foreign aid to the Palestinians. This conventional wisdom has been discredited by the AP’s own reporting, but somebody needs to send Karin Laub, the author of the piece on Haniyeh, a memo.

Reporters looking for a better explanation for the deepening poverty in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank should look elsewhere.

The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) may have reversed its policy of singling Israel out for divestment at its meeting in 2006, but the denomination’s leaders and staffers have not abandoned their obsession with Israel’s defense policies.

A nine-page document titled “Palestinian Christians in the Middle East – Study Resources for Children and Youth” embodies the same distorted moral narrative PC(USA) leaders and staffers were broadcasting before the church’s 2004 General Assembly passed a resolution calling on the church to initiate a process of “phased, selective divestment” from Israel.
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