Jihadists are on the march in Egypt, attacking Coptic Christian churches and homes with impunity. Last week, a mob of Muslims attacked a group of Christian homes in Minya where many of Egypt’s Christians are located. The attack was caught on video (displayed above) and has gone viral in Egypt.

In an effort to force the Sisi regime in Egypt to stop the violence, Coptic Solidarity, an American-based human rights organization, is calling for a protest to take place in front of the White House on Tuesday, August 2, 2016. A Search on Nexis indicates that this plea for help, issued on July 22, 2016 has largely been ignored by the mainstream media in the U.S., as have the attacks on Christians in Egypt.
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The Gatestone Institute has published a report about Arab-speaking translators mistranslating the testimony of sexual abuse victims in Germany and in some instances going so far as to threaten the victims who try to tell their stories to authorities. The article, written by Stefan Frank, indicates is that there is a “fraternal solidarity between interpreters and criminal defendants” in Germany.

The article is summarizes the story from a book titled Sex in Court written by a German author, Alexander Stevens, who works as a lawyer in Munich. He was approached by a young Syrian girl who had been forced by her family to marry a man who was 34 years older than she was.

After seeking help at a woman’s shelter, the staff at the shelter brought her to Stevens who, after interviewing her, concluded that she was the victim of terrible abuse and humiliation.

He visited her the next day to bring her to the police, but by this point, the young Syrian girl did not want to speak to him. Later he was given a note by a staffer at the women’s shelter in which the girl reported that she had gone to the police station, but that the interpreter intimidated her into not telling her story.

The interpreter told the girl, Sali, that she should not dishonor her husband and family by going to the police.

Subsequently to sending the note, the girl committed suicide.

The Gatestone article also documents how non-Muslim refugees who try to report abuse perpetrated by fellow refugees who are Muslim are oftentimes intimidated by Muslim interpreters who side with the accused. One source quoted in the article states that complaints are often retracted because the interpreters threaten to torpedo the victims’ asylum applications.

The Gatestone article might spark a memory on the part of loyal Snapshot readers. In 2011, Snapshots highlighted a video that documented the mistranslation of a speaker at an event that took place at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Here’s the summary:
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Rev. Dr. Yohanna Katanacho speaks at the 2012 Christ at the Checkpoint Conference in 2012. (Dexter Van Zile)

Note: This article has been updated. Scroll to the bottom to see the update. July 18, 2018

Rev. Dr. Yohanna Katanacho does not have a lot of nice things to say about Israel, where he lives as a citizen. Katanacho, who serves as a full professor of biblical sudies and academic dean at Nazareth Evangelical College in Israel, regularly denounces Israel to audiences of Christians from North America and Europe.

For example, he recently told an audience of Christians who had trekked to the West Bank for a “peacemaking” conference organized by his employer, Bethlehem Bible College, that “Jewishness in Israel has become an obsession for Israeli Jews and a nightmare for Palestinians because of its extremist views and determination to create a world filled with masters and slaves.”

It’s a dishonest way to describe Israel, the one country in the Middle East where the indigenous Christian population has increased and where Jews, Muslims and Christians work together to live in peace in ways that are unthinkable in many other countries in the region. (For a brief summary of some of the things Katanacho has said about Israel and its Jewish citizens please see this article on the Times of Israel website written by CAMERA researcher Dexter Van Zile.)

When speaking to a group of Christians at the first Christ at the Checkpoint Conference in Bethlehem in 2010, Katanacho lamented the fact that Israeli law prohibits Israeli citizens from entering into the areas in the West Bank controlled by the Palestinian Authority. He stated this fact to prove that the Israeli government has enacted policies that prevent Palestinians from “connecting with our families and relatives in the Occupied Palestinian territories. Even standing here today, I’m breaking the law. It’s illegal for me to go inside Bethlehem.”

Katanacho’s declaration that he was breaking Israeli law by speaking at Christ at the Checkpoint in Bethlehem sounds very dramatic.

But is Katanacho telling the whole story?
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EAPPI activists in the West Bank. (Dexter Van Zile)

A subsidiary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), an umbrella organization that is comprised of more than 300 Protestant and Orthodox churches throughout the world, stands accused of violating Israeli law.

The organization is called the Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel, (EAPPI) which was founded by the WCC in 2001. EAPPI trains and sends “peace” activists into the West Bank to draw attention to the misdeeds of Israeli soldiers and settlers under the banner of “accompanying” Palestinians as they go about their daily lives.

EAPPI activists who come mostly from Europe and North America, spend several months in the West Bank and when they return home, they provide first-hand testimony to promote anti-Israel activism. EAPPI activists are regular supporters of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement in mainline churches, for example.

Activists from the so-called peacemaking organization rarely, if ever, draw attention to the misdeeds of Palestinians, indicating that the EAPPI is really more interested in demonizing Israel than they are at promoting peace. (For a detailed analysis of the EAPPI and its parent organization, the World Council of Churches, please read this 2011 report prepared by CAMERA researcher Dexter Van Zile and published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs about the WCC’s anti-Zionist history. The upshot of this report is that “During times of conflict, WCC governing bodies, staffers, and activists have, to varying degrees, promoted a patently hostile attitude toward Israel and a permissive and appeasing attitude toward its enemies.”)
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This is a screenshot of a plane shown in the 2010 movie Little Town of Bethlehem directed by Jim Hanon and produced by Mart Green, who currently serves as chief strategy officer for Hobby Lobby. The film, which is about the Arab-Israeli conflict, showed footage of this plane as if it were an Israeli fighter. The name on the fuselage, which can be seen clearly, is that of an Australian pilot. In sum, the film passed off footage of an Australian fighter as if it were an Israeli plane. The use of footage in this manner is a clear violation of the norms of documentary making.

CAMERA is waiting for a response to a letter sent to Mart Green, producer of the 2010 movie Little Town of Bethlehem.

On June 1, 2016, CAMERA sent a letter to Mart Green who currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer for Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc.

Copies of the letter were also sent to Mart Green’s father David Green, CEO of Hobby Lobby and Mart Green’s brother, Steve Green, who serves as President of the company, which has 700 stores throughout the United States.

Another copy of the letter was sent to Jim Hanon, the movie’s director.

In the letter, CAMERA asks Mart Green to embark on a campaign to unwind the damage done to Israel’s reputation (and to the reputation of American Jews who support the Jewish state) by the misinformation broadcast in the movie.

“The movie’s propagandistic treatment of the Arab-Israeli conflict incited hostility and unwarranted contempt toward Israel and its Jewish supporters in the minds of thousands of viewers,” the letter stated.

CAMERA asked Mart Green to publish and distribute a fact sheet that would be sent to officials at the 400 venues where the movie was shown. CAMERA also asked that Mart Green issue a press release drawing attention to his efforts to correct the record.

Accompanying the letter was a 20-page analysis of the factual misstatements and misinformation broadcast in the movie. Some, but not all of CAMERA’s complaints about the movie can be seen in this article published in November 2015.

One problem described in the letter (but not the article) is how the movie misleads its viewers by passing off footage of an Australian jet as an Israeli fighter plane.

At various points throughout the film, LTOB shows footage of a jet fighter doing aerial maneuvers while Yonatan Shapira, who is featured at length in the film, speaks about serving in Israel’s air force. Viewers are led to believe that the plane in being shown is an Israeli fighter jet.

It is not.

A close examination of the footage in question reveals that the plane in question has the name of an Australian fighter pilot whose name and rank and story can be readily found on the Internet. (A screenshot of the stenciling on the fuselage, with the pilot’s name can be clearly seen in the image at the top of this entry).

This information can only be obtained by looking at the film on a frame-by-frame basis, as CAMERA has done. Viewers who see the film in a public setting simply will not be able to do this.

This is only one of the many problems in the list sent to Mart Green.

In the letter, CAMERA also asked Mart Green if the Green family was involved in the production of another anti-Israel film, With God on Our Side produced by Porter Speakman, Jr. Despite repeated requests for information about the funders of this film, Speakman has not revealed their identities. “Individuals and organizations who felt it was an important topic to address donated toward this project,” Speakman wrote in an email to CAMERA in July 2012.

Earlier today, CAMERA contacted LTOB’s director Jim Hanon and asked if he would be issuing a public statement in response to the letter. (No.)
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Last week, the Associated Press reported that Ploughshares has given a total of $700,000 to National Public Radio to support its coverage of Iran and the diplomatic effort to convince the mullahs who lead that country to refrain from building a nuclear bomb.

The story is important because Ben Rhodes, a national security advisor who works at the White House, described Ploughshares — a non-profit that promotes nuclear disarmament — as part of a pro-negotiations “echo chamber” that he helped create and use to manipulate public opinion. He created the echo chamber to promote support for the diplomatic agreement that relaxed sanctions on Iran in exchange for promises that it would dismantle parts of its nuclear program, in hopes of making it less likely that the country would be able to build an atomic bomb and menace its neighbors in the Middle East.

He also stated that his ability to create this echo chamber was a consequence of the youth and ignorance of American journalists. “They literally know nothing,” he told Samuels.

Rhodes said all this in a May 5, 2016 article by David Samuels that appeared in The New York Times Sunday Magazine. The main thrust of the article was that Rhodes had successfully manipulated the press and incorporated it into the NSC echo chamber, a point that the AP article about Ploughshares money going to NPR seemed to confirm.

Prior to the AP article, Samuels’ reporting in The New York Times Sunday Magazine was subjected to tremendous pushback, but The New York Times stood by the article, saying it was extensively fact-checked.

In a subsequent article published on May 13, 2016, Samuels reported that during his interviews with Rhodes, the young speechwriter “readily admitted to me that the work he does is a potentially dangerous distortion of democracy but he also felt it had become a necessary evil caused by the fracturing of 20th century mass audience and the decline of the American press. He expressed a deep personal hopelessness about the possibility of open, rational public debate in a brutally partisan environment.”

It’s an odd argument to make — that American journalists and thought leaders need to be manipulated because media audiences are not as unified as they once were and that journalists are no longer the intellectual giants that walked the earth during the 20th century. Rhodes is stating in effect that American civil society is in decline and as a result, he must behave in a dangerous way that accelerates its decline.

NPR Denies Impact on Coverage

NPR denies that the money it got from Ploughshares had any impact on its coverage of the Iran Deal. This denial is getting some pushback from at least one U.S. Rep. opposed to the Iran Deal who states that he was dropped from a scheduled interview about the deal, a point NPR initially denied, but later confirmed.
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Earlier this month, Ben Rhodes a speechwriter at the National Security Council, admitted to creating an “echo chamber” to promote a controversial agreement with Iran over its nuclear program.

In the story published by the New York Times Sunday Magazine and written by David Samuels, Rhodes speaks about how he was apparently able to generate sympathetic media coverage (and internet buzz) over the deal with Iran, a country that many Americans regard with suspicion.

Rhodes stated that one reason why he was able to manipulate the discourse over the Iran deal was the incompetence and naiveté of American journalists. “The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns,” Rhodes said. “They literally know nothing.”

Rhodes’ shocking admission and expression of contempt for American journalists prompted a lot of condemnations. Most of it was directed at Rhodes for the methods he used to promote the Iran deal, but there was another strain of criticism as well. This strain of criticism was directed at Rhodes for rubbing the con in the face of the people he fooled.

Maybe Rhodes should have waited a few decades before telling his story. If he had waited, his story would have elicited applause and laughter.

That’s how it worked out for legendary war correspondent and author Phil Caputo. In 2009, Caputo, a Pulitzer Prize winner, appeared on Moth Radio hour and told the audience that he had misled his readers while working as an international correspondent in Lebanon in the 1970s. Rather than being booed off the stage, Caputo was rewarded with laughter and applause.
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The Harvard Law Record explains why it protected the identity of Husam El-Qoulaq, who hurled an anti-Semitic insult at Tzipi Livni, former Foreign Minister of Israel and current member of the Knesset. Livni appeared as a guest at the school earlier this month when El-Qoulaq insulted her.(Screenshot.)

Journalists are supposed to find out what happened and tell their readers what they have learned. Historically, there have been five questions that reporters are expected to answer, or at least try to answer, when writing about public events. The questions are:

1. Who?
2. What?
3. When?
4. Where?
5. Why?

Apparently, the student journalists at The Harvard Law Record did not get the memo.

When Husam El-Qoulaq, a student at Harvard Law School insulted Tzipi Livni, former Israeli Foreign Minister and current member of the Israeli Knesset, at a public event on Thursday April 14, 2016, (he called her “smelly”), the newspaper initially concealed the El-Qoulaq’s identity.

When, on April 18, 2016, Jewish students who attended the event condemned the statement as antisemitic in a letter to The Record, they did El-Qoulaq the undeserved and unwarranted courtesy of withholding his name from their complaint.

This is their right, but The Record to assist in the effort to protect Husam El-Qoulaq’s identity is simply disgraceful and runs counter to the demands of journalism. It’s a betrayal of the publication’s loyalty to the reader.

It’s a decision that makes a mockery of The Harvard Law Record’s credibility as a journalistic enterprise. Rather than do their job and inform their readers who said what to whom, the staffers at the newspaper withheld this information from their readers. And when students identified El-Qoulaq in the comments section of the article, they deleted these comments. (Eventually, Noah Pollak confirmed El-Qoulaq’s identity and posted it on Twitter.)
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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.
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