There is an unfortunate tendency by some who possess a pulpit — whether media or otherwise — to embellish valid (or invalid) points by flippantly tossing out the epithet “Nazis”.

For example, MSNBC’s Velshi & Ruhle program recently featured journalist Elise Labott demonizing far-right wing parties in Israel as “neo-Nazis” in her discussion of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s alliance with them. She said:

A lot of these right wing parties which Netanyahu has been cozying up to …[are] the extremist parties that have some kind of neo-Nazi tendencies, white Supremacist tendencies, if you will…

What she was criticizing was Netanyahu’s widely-condemned alliance with the right-wing Jewish Home and National Union parties that formed a voting bloc with the controversial Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party.

While the first two are simply nationalist parties on the right, Otzma Yehudit has its roots in the late Rabbi Meir Kahane’s Kach party, established in 1971 and eventually banned because of its racist platform. Otzma Yehudit’s radical platform includes establishing a theocracy in Israel, taking over the Temple Mount and encouraging the emigration of the “enemies of Israel” from the country, which they take to mean most Arabs, or at least those who oppose a Jewish state.

Whatever one may think about the party’s platform –illiberal, undemocratic, or racist — it is a gross overstatement to compare it to Nazism, a movement that considered Jews, Gypsies and others inherently inferior–sub-humans to be starved, tortured and brutally mass-murdered. To call Jewish Home, National Union, or even Otzma Yehudit akin to Nazis is to abuse the memories of the milliions who were slaughtered by Hitler’s followers.

Teresa Shook, founder of the Women’s March, has asked Linda Sarsour and other haters to step down as co-chairs of the movement.

In her Facebook posting, Ms. Shook laments that Sarsour and others — Bob Bland, Tamika Mallory, and Carmen Perez — “have steered the Movement away from its true course…” and recognizes that “in opposition to our Unity Principles, they have allowed anti-Semitism, anti- LBGTQIA sentiment and hateful, racist rhetoric to become a part of the platform by their refusal to separate themselves from groups that espouse these racist, hateful beliefs”.

In an earlier CAMERA exposé, we pointed out the self-serving allegiances and disgraceful hypocrisy of Linda Sarsour (of Women’s March fame). We demonstrated how she poses as a universal activist who embraces all marginalized people while excluding those minorities whose views do not totally align with hers; she poses as a black and Muslim feminist,while trying to silence other black and Muslim feminists who expose oppression against women; she poses as an opponent of anti-Semitism and a proponent of racial justice who fights for Palestinian national self-determination, while denying Jews the same right; she demands free speech for herself and for her BDS campaign, while shutting down the free speech of anyone who disagrees with her.

In her latest example of hypocritical anti-Semitism, she attacks as Israel-firsters those progressive American Jews who exercise their democratic and free speech rights by criticizing BDS-supporter and politician Ilhan Omar. Sarsour turns truth on its head by accusing them of “put[ting] allegiance to Israel over democracy and free speech” merely because they disagree with positions expressed by Omar.

Of course, when Palestinian-American Rashida Tlaib danced with a Palestinian flag, rather than an American flag at her victory party following her election to Congress, Sarsour made no such accusations of her compatriot being a “Palestinian-firster” or placing other allegiances over her American allegiance.

This is History. Watch every second of this.

Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian and Muslim American congresswomen, proclaims victory.

Share widely, and be inspired. #ElectionNight pic.twitter.com/oP7qWJyHJK

— Khaled Beydoun (@KhaledBeydoun) November 7, 2018

In short, there is no better personification of hypocrisy than “Linda Sarsour”!

Palestinians set Israeli fields ablaze with fire kites

Much of the media has been either ignoring or minimizing the incendiary kites launched by Palestinians into Israeli territory.

The New York Times, for example, describes them as “flimsy-framed sails with tails meant to carry crude incendiary devices” — part of a “David vs. Goliath” “protest” against Israel….

Newsweek describes them as a non-lethal response by Palestinian protesters to those Palestinians who have been “shot dead by Israel Defense Forces” during “demonstrations”…

But an article by Gatestone Institute’s Bassam Tawil tells it like it is:

*There are two important factors that the international community needs to notice regarding the fire kites that the Palestinians are sending to Israel from the Gaza Strip. First: those who are launching the kites are making it clear that their ultimate goal is to kill as many Jews as possible and bring about the obliteration of Israel. Second: the Palestinians see all Jews living in Israel as “settlers.

*The Palestinians are now also telling us that the terror kites they are sending to Israel accord with what the Quran orders Muslims to do in the fight against the “infidels.” They apparently see the flaming kites as part of the jihad (holy war) against the enemies of Allah and Islam.

*The jihad of the Palestinians against Israel is the same jihad that ISIS, the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic jihadi groups have also been waging on the “infidels” and “enemies of Islam” in the US, EU and other non-Muslim countries. We are witnessing a well-organized campaign of terror orchestrated by terrorists and activists belonging to Hamas and other Palestinian groups in the Gaza Strip.

Today’s NYT editorial is predictable, touting the same message the Times touts day after day in its news pages, Op-Eds and editorials: Israelis are bad and Palestinians are their innocent victims. The editorial, “Israel’s Violent Response to Nonviolent Protests” includes all the familiar tropes employed by the Times to demonize Israel. It is all rather formulaic by now.

1) Present Israeli version of events as allegation but adopt Palestinian claims as truth:

– Israel has said some Gazans have tried to toss crude explosives, shoot weapons and breach the barrier….

– The government claims that the protests are a cover for a more violent Hamas agenda…

vs.

– But, in general, the protests have been peaceful…

– but in the face of unarmed civilians it could do so with nonlethal tactics…

– There has been no apparent reason for Israel to use live ammunition.

In fact, on the same day the editorial came out, supposedly peaceful, non-violent Palestinians detonated an explosive device near an Israeli bulldozer in the buffer zone near the security barrier.

2) Dismiss Israeli claims, even when your reasoning lacks any logic:

– The Israeli military has said its forces did not intentionally shoot journalists. But that assertion was undercut by Avigdor Lieberman, the Israeli defense minister, who said on Tuesday that Mr. Murtaja was a Hamas captain who had used a drone to collect intelligence on Israeli forces. That volatile charge is at odds with independent news reporting and, if it is false, could put other journalists at grave risk.

How exactly does Lieberman’s claim that Murtaja is, in fact, a Hamas captain trying to collect intelligence “undercut” the assertion that Israel did not deliberately target journalists???? It doesn’t. On the contrary, if Murtaja was indeed a Hamas operative collecting intelligence, then it would support Israel’s claim that soldiers were not targeting journalists.

3) At the same time, accept the claims of overtly partisan organizations, identifying them as neutral human rights groups, and quote or cite them to bolster your own partisan claims:

– Human Rights Watch said it reviewed videos of the protests… showing that victims posed no threat to Israeli troops.

– Meanwhile, B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights group, urged Israeli soldiers to disobey open-fire orders because using live ammunition against unarmed people is unlawful.

Both Human Rights Watch and B’tselem routinely bend the facts in their obsessive attempts to delegitimize the Jewish state.

4) Emphasize the difference in the numbers of casualties to imply that Israel is using disproportionate force against Palestinians:

– three wars between Israel and Hamas that have killed thousands of Palestinians and about 100 Israelis…

– Since the protests began, Israeli forces have killed at least 29 Palestinians and wounded more than 1,000…There have been no known Israeli casualties.

The Israeli Defense Force’s mission is to defend the Israeli people, keeping them out of harm’s way and keeping harm away from them. The mission of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, by contrast, is to eradicate the Jewish state, sacrificing their people to become suicide bombers, human shields and otherwise urging their people to put their lives at risk by carrying out attacks on Israelis and the Israeli Defense Forces or breaching the security barrier to flood into Israel.

5) Always present Palestinians as blameless victims without any responsibility or agency. For example:

– .protests that over the past two weeks have drawn tens of thousands of Palestinians to Gaza’s border with Israel, demanding to return to lands their families lost in the 1948 war that accompanied Israel’s founding.

Whose fault was the 1948 war, launched by Arab armies with the intent of eradicating the nascent Jewish state?

Whose fault is it that the Palestinians have rejected every offer of statehood because they insisted they would not accept a Jewish state in the region?

Whose fault is it when someone is hurt or killed while in the process of attacking or trying to kill someone else?

UPDATED: In response to CAMERA’s request, Reuters corrected an error about Israel’s capital.

Original blog post: Reuters has fallen into the same trap as some other irresponsible media outlets that refer to Tel Aviv as Israel’s capital and/or seat of government. It demonstrates at best an ignorance of the geography of the countries being covered and at worst a political bias that twists facts to dismiss Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem. In a story about Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed’s acknowledgement of a Jewish right to self-determination in Israel, Reuters refers to the rapprochement between Riyadh and “Tel Aviv” to denote the seats of government of Saudi Arabia and Israel. Below is a screenshot:

CAMERA has previously prompted numerous corrections of this journalistic error in other publications and has contacted Reuters to correct.

Reuters editors have responded that they regret the error and have corrected it. The correction now refers to “the two countries” rather than “Riyadh and Tel Aviv.” Below is a screenshot of the corrected copy:

Jeopardy! — the popular television quiz show that began in the 1960’s — is premised upon contestants formulating a question to a clue presented by the host in the form of a statement/answer. The clues are chosen from a variety of categories (within history, geography, literature, science) that tests contestants’ general knowledge.

The term “Palestine” to ostensibly describe a modern-day entity has recently been the subject of Jeopardy! clues. For example, the September 13th show included the following clue and answer:

Clue: A land divided by Jordan, Egypt & Israel, or the seat of Anderson County, Texas.
Answer: “What is Palestine?”

The implication seems to be that “Palestine” is also the current name of a modern country in the Middle East (referring to disputed territories).

In the November 18, 2016 show, there was a similar clue:

Clue: It’s a small New Hampshire town as well as an ancient name for Palestine.
Answer: What is Canaan?

The implication again seems to be that Palestine is the modern-day name of the country. But references to a current “Palestine” in the West Bank and Gaza are incorrect. Those areas should accurately be referred to as “Palestinian” or “disputed” territories, depending on which areas are being discussed, or as the West Bank and Gaza. If Jeopardy! clues are trying to suggest that Palestine is a modern-day state, the program should take a cue from the numerous media outlets that have corrected this error. For example:

Correction (National Geographic,12/15/16): A previous version of this article incorrectly referred to a barrier between Israel and Palestine. The barrier is between Israel and the West Bank.

Correction (Washington Post, 9/25/14): The Sept. 23 obituary for religious scholar Gerald A. Larue inaccurately reported that he participated in archaeological digs in Egypt, Palestine and other parts of the Middle East. He took part in digs in Egypt, Israel and the West Bank, not Palestine.

Correction (Wall Street Journal, 7/11/08): Salam Fayyad is the prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. An item in Thursday’s World Watch column incorrectly gave his name as Falam Fayyad and indicated he was prime minister of Palestine.

Correction (LA Times, 5/5/2007) An article in Friday’s California section included a subhead saying former President Carter urged students to travel to Palestine. The area referred to is the Palestinian territories.

Correction (LA Times, 12/23/2005) An article in the Dec. 11 Calendar section about an international art exhibition included Palestine in a list of nations from which artists had contributed works. It should have said the Palestinian territories.

The popular online dictionary, dictionary.com, has become a valuable online resource since its inception more than 20 years ago — which makes it all the more regrettable that the single example of “contemporary usage” for the word “venerate” is taken from a 4-year-old, politically biased opinion piece. The offending sentence is:

How else to explain what just happened: An Israeli government decided to venerate land over justice, and over life itself.

Without the context that this is simply one person’s negative and controversial anti-Israeli government viewpoint, readers see only a defamatory statement that may be construed as a statement of fact, representing common contemporary usage. It is hardly the sort of neutral example one might expect from an academic resource like a dictionary, and leaves one to wonder whether this was just an unfortunate oversight or whether the editor responsible for the choice harbors some anti-Israel bias him or herself.

CAMERA has contacted the dictionary to suggest that the offensive example be replaced with a more neutral one.

Readers can fill out a form here about the problematic content at Dictionary.com.

It took no time at all for the mainstream media to transform the tragic events in Charlottesville, VA — or rather the reaction to them — into a cudgel with which to beat Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Does Netanyahu support white supremacists and neo-Nazis? Of course not.

Did he condemn them? Yes, below is his tweet from the Prime Minister’s office.

So what has spawned all these articles critical of Netanyahu? Obviously, it does not take much to trigger articles condemning Netanyahu, but let’s take a look at the specific criticism.

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