On August 18, 2011, a series of coordinated attacks were carried out near Eilat by four groups of Islamic terrorists that included Palestinians and Egyptians. Six civilians were murdered, as well as a soldier and police officer who had come to assist the victims and 31 were wounded. Three days later, after returning home from a vacation abroad, Jerusalem Post columnist Larry Derfner wrote a column on his blog justifying Palestinian terrorism. He began:

I think a lot of people who realize that the occupation is wrong also realize that the Palestinians have the right to resist it; to use violence against Israelis, even to kill Israelis, especially when Israel is showing zero willingness to end the occupation, which has been the case since the Netanyahu government took over (among other times in the past).

And later:

… the Palestinians, like every nation living under hostile rule, have the right to fight back, that their terrorism, especially in the face of a rejectionist Israeli government, is justified…

…Whoever the Palestinians were who killed the eight Israelis near Eilat last week, however vile their ideology was, they were justified to attack. They had the same right to fight for their freedom as any other unfree nation in history ever had. And just like every harsh, unjust government in history bears the blame for the deaths of its own people at the hands of rebels, so Israel, which rules the Palestinians harshly and unjustly, is to blame for those eight Israeli deaths…

Even though Derfner acknowledged at the time that his own justification of terrorism could be used by other terrorists as encouragement — “The possibility that Israel’s enemies could use my or anybody else’s justification of terror for their campaign is a daunting one; I wouldn’t like to see this column quoted on a pro-Hamas website, and I realize it could happen” — it did not stop him. Apparently overcome by his own moral rightness, he felt he just had to show those Israelis that it was really them who were “compelling [Palestinians] to engage in terrorism”, and “that the blood of Israeli victims is ultimately on [Israeli] hands.” Derfner’s readers and his employers at the Jerusalem Post were not quite as taken by the righteousness of his terror justification, and he was fired from his post at the newspaper.

Fast forward five and a half years. The New York Times has now welcomed Larry Derfner on their Op-Ed page to spout the same twisted views that blame Israel, rather than Islamic terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, for spawning violence. Again, masquerading as the righteous, maverick truthteller, Derfner writes:

What hardly any Israelis will consider, though, and virtually no influential voices in the West will publicly suggest, is that Israel — not Hezbollah in Lebanon, nor Hamas in Gaza, nor the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria — is provoking the next war. Counterintuitive though it may be to Israeli and most Western minds, Israel, not its militant Islamist or brutal Syrian enemies, is the aggressor in these border wars…if Israel keeps rubbing their noses in their weakness — as Mr. Netanyahu is now doing — national honor at some point will compel them to hit back with force. The “inevitable” next war will begin.

Where else but on the pages of the New York Times would such illogical and twisted views find such a welcoming home?

A CBS article about the opening of subversive grafittist Banksy’s new hotel in Bethlehem demonstrates how a journalist can slant a controversial topic. Entitled “Banksy’s ‘hotel with the worst view’ opens in Bethlehem,” the article by Jerusalem-based reporter Robert Berger describes Israel’s security barrier, in his own words, as “Israel’s separation wall.”

This is neither the objective nor the accurate way of describing the controversial barrier, of which 90% is not a wall, but a fence. This is the term used by Palestinians and their supporters to refer to the barrier. And the reporter adopts it as his own.

Berger later refers to “security barrier” – in quotation marks – as a term used by Israelis to describe what the reporter himself terms “the wall. ” So why does he not similarly attribute the term “Israel’s separation wall” to Palestinians?

The reporter in his own words

With a play on words on the luxury Waldorf Astoria chain, this place is called the Walled Off Hotel, because it was built almost immediately next to Israel’s separation wall in the Palestinian-ruled city where Jesus Christ was born. [emphasis added]

The reporter attributing a claim

The Israeli government built the wall, or “security barrier” as the Israelis call it, more than a decade ago after a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings, with the aim of preventing terrorists from entering Israel. For the Palestinians, it’s a bleak symbol of Israeli occupation and what many consider apartheid. [emphasis added]

And while he reports Israel’s “aim” in building the barrier, Berger does not bother to mention its success in drastically reducing the number of terrorist attacks and Israelis killed. The number of terrorist attacks decreased by over 90%, and the numbers of Israelis wounded and murdered declined by 85% and 70% respectively, since the barrier was erected. Indeed, an Islamic Jihad leader acknowledged in an Arabic TV interview that the barrier created an obstacle to carrying out the terrorist group’s attacks.

In the same vein, the reporter cynically portrays Israel’s concern for the safety of its citizens by not allowing them to enter Palestinian-run areas as mere allegation:

Israel has banned its citizens from visiting Bethlehem and other Palestinian-controlled areas, purportedly due to fears for their safety. [emphasis added]

What he avoids mentioning is that the Israeli army policy preventing its citizens and tour guides from entering territories under the Palestinian Authority began in late 2000, in the wake of the kidnappings, murders and mutilation of the hapless Israelis who had wandered into Palestinian-controlled neighborhoods (Area A).

Perhaps the most horrifying example was the case of two IDF reservists who inadvertently entered Ramallah on October 13, 2000 and were brutally lynched by a frenzied mob. The bloody incident was caught on film by an Italian journalist. Israelis who witnessed this on television were shocked by the sheer barbarity of the attack and the realization of the danger inherent in entering these neighborhoods. While the Israeli Ministry of Defense gradually began to allow Arab Israelis to visit Area A cities after the second intifada ended, the Palestinian Authority continues to incite against Israeli Jews, and nearly 15 years after the Ramallah lynching, a PA parliament member honored the perpetrators’ families with plaques of honor. Israeli Jews are therefore still barred from entering this area.

The Palestinians are trying to change history by outlawing the term “Temple Mount.”

First they simply denied that there had ever been any Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount.

Then they sent out media advisories to journalists telling them that the term “Temple Mount” was illegitimate.

They brought resolutions to UNESCO that verbally erased the term “Temple Mount” and described it only in Muslim terms.

And now they’ve cracked down on an archaeologist who used the term during a tour he guided for university students on the Temple Mount. As the Jerusalem Post reports:

Jerusalem Prize winner and Temple Mount Sifting Project cofounder Dr. Gabriel Barkay said he was guiding an interfaith group of 22 undergraduates from UCLA when he was interrupted by an Arab guard for making the seemingly innocuous reference.

“I was lecturing about the history of the Temple Mount to the students, some of whom were Muslim and Christian, and one of the Wakf guards tried to listen to my explanations, and when he heard the words ‘Temple Mount,’ he got upset,” Barkay said.

The guard then consulted with nearby police officers stationed on the compound, who told Barkay to cease using the term for the duration of the visit.

What next? Will they burn all books that mention the Temple Mount? Destroy all historical accounts?

Read more about the battle over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount here.

Deutsche Welle is Germany’s international news service providing news in multiple languages online, on satellite TV and radio. Judging, however, from their report on the latest terrorist attack in Jerusalem, they cannot be trusted to report accurately in an unbiased fashion. Consider this headline and lede:

Was this indeed a case of a trigger-happy, brutal police force assassinating a “suspect” without giving him the benefit of a trial? This is the likeliest conclusion to be drawn from Deutsche Welle’s distorted report.

But, in fact, the terrorist — 39-year-old Mousabah Abu Sabih of the eastern Jerusalem Silwan neighborhood, who had been previously indicted for incitement to terrorism and who was reportedly supposed to begin a 4-month incarceration today for assaulting a policeman– went on a shooting spree and was in the midst of a murderous rampage when he was shot dead by border police. He had just critically wounded a Yasam special patrol officer, who later died of his wounds in hospital, as well as wounding a second officer. This came after he had critically shot a 60-year-old woman who later died of her wounds– and wounded many others as he shot at people from the window of his car. He was not a “suspect” in an incident that was in dispute, but an active shooter who was in the midst of trying to kill as many people as he could.

The terrorist was reportedly a member of Hamas, whose spokesman, Fawzi Barhoum, praised the attack and called it a confirmation of the intifada, urging an escalation in attacks. Islamic Jihad praised the attack, as well, while Fatah honored the terrorist as a “martyr”.

But, of course, Deutsche Welle, reported none of this, spinning the story– drawn from Reuters, AFP, and AP — in an entirely different direction,and in the process revealing itself as more of a propaganda site than a legitmate news agency.

One topic that is rarely covered in the mainstream media are attempts by genuine Palestinian peace-seekers to find a solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Unlike PA leader Mahmoud Abbas, who is usually the one the media touts as a peaceful, moderate Palestinian leader, these Palestinians do not believe in nurturing a culture of grievance and victimology, do not believe in boycotting Israel, and do not believe that incitement against Israel and Jews is the answer.

Arab journalist Khaled Abu Toameh highlights Sheikh Abdullah Tamimi, one such Palestinian peace-seeker, in an article for the Gatestone Institute. He points out that:

Tamimi and his colleagues do not believe in boycotts and divestment. They are convinced that real peace can be achieved through dialogue between Palestinians and all Israelis — not just those who are affiliated with the left-wing. The Israeli left-wing, they contend, does not have a monopoly over peace-making.

For Tamimi, real peace begins between the people and through economic cooperation and improving the living conditions of the Palestinians. This, he explains, is more important than the talk about the establishment of a Palestinian state, which he believes, under the current circumstances, is not a realistic option.

Unfortunately, Tamimi — “who hails from an influential clan in Hebron”– has been disowned by his clan. Still, according to Abu Toameh:

Tamimi’s is not a lone voice in the desert. He represents an increasing number of Palestinians who have lost confidence in their leaders’ ability to improve their living conditions and achieve peace and stability in the region. These Palestinians support the idea of “economic peace” between the two peoples — a notion that goes against the ideas of the advocates of “anti-normalization” and others in the West obviously acting against the true interests of the Palestinians by promoting boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel.

Read about the honest and courageous cleric here.

Following Peter Baker’s debut as the New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief, CAMERA noted that his first article was disappointing to readers looking for informative and balanced pieces from the region.

His article in today’s print edition of the Times is about Soviet documents that indicate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was once a KGB agent in Damascus, known as “Krotov,” meaning ‘the mole”. Informative and interesting, but Baker injects a note of unjournalistic snarkiness directed at Israel as he introduces the story:

The possibility [of Abbas’ role as a KGB agent], trumpeted by the Israeli media on Wednesday night and just as quickly dismissed by Palestinian officials, emerged from a document in a British archive listing Soviet agents from 1983.[emphasis added]

When does reporting a story become “trumpeting”? And what does this word choice imply, if anything, about Baker’s attitude toward his subject matter?

For years, the Palestinians, including Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority and Fatah party, have incited the Palestinian public to violence and murder by spreading libels against Israel. These libels range from old chestnuts like Israeli Jews planning to destroy Muslim holy sites, echoing the 1920’s libels by Grand Mufti Haj Amin al Husseini that resulted in the gruesome massacres of Jews in Hebron and Safed, to such absurdities as Israel supplying Palestinian youth with drugs or aphrodisiac chewing gum to corrupt them.

And the libels have become increasingly absurd. Palestinian Media Watch describes the latest anti-Israel accusations by Fatah and PLO officials and they are astonishing in their stupidity. For example, in the official PA daily newspaper, Fatah Central Committee member Abbas Zaki accused Israeli dentists of injecting Palestinian terrorist Na’im Al-Shawamreh with muscular dystrophy when he was incarcerated in an Israeli prison.

Of course, anyone with a smattering of medical knowledge knows that muscular dystrophy arises from mutations in the genes that code for the protein necessary to build and repair muscles. In other words, it is an inherited disorder, not an acquired one, even though some forms of the disease manifest themselves only in adulthood. Shawamreh, whose disease manifested itself during his incarceration, died three years after his release from prison. But Zaki and his colleagues who resort to such obviously dumb libels care little about facts when it comes to defaming Israel.

Even dumber is the theory expressed on PA State TV by PLO Executive Committee member Dr. Ahmed Majdalani that Israel is distributing guns to Palestinians so that they can fight amongst themselves.

Dumbest, however, are the dupes who believe these absurdities.

Reuters has corrected the skewed headline we wrote about yesterday. See below.

Aug. 24, 2:30 PM: How does a Reuters headline describe a situation where a Palestinian stone-thrower pursued by the Israeli soldiers exits his car to stab one of the soldiers in the neck before being shot by the wounded soldier?

This sort of reporting that reverses the perpetrator and victim to whitewash Palestinian terrorism is what gives many news agencies their reputation for unprofessional, biased reporting.

CAMERA has contacted Reuters regarding the skewed headline.

UPDATE, Aug. 25

Reuters thanked CAMERA for its communication regarding the headline, apologized and corrected. Below is the corrected headline:

June 24, 2016

Today’s New York Times features a forthright and informative article by Diaa Hadid about Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ blood libel to the EU. She writes:

Echoing anti-Semitic claims that led to the mass killings of European Jews in medieval times, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority accused rabbis in Israel of calling on their government to poison the water used by Palestinians.

He made the unsubstantiated allegation during a speech to the European Parliament on Thursday.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said in a statement later that Mr. Abbas had spread a “blood libel” in the speech.

Abbas was repeating the medieval blood libel that was revived last week by Palestinian Authority officials who invented a fictional rabbi named “Rabbi Shlomo Mma” and a fictional rabbinical council called the “Council of Rabbis in the West Bank Settlements” calling for the poisoning Palestinian water sources. Palestinian Media Watch describes how the PA turned an unsubstantiated claim against settlers by a radical activist into the full-blown blood libel, which was subsequently repeated by the PA president to the European Union.

The Jerusalem Post earlier published an article debunking the Palestinian Authority invention, quoting research from CAMERA. According to the Post, there is no evidence of any “Shlomo Mlma or Mlmad or the Coucnil of Rabbis in West Bank settlements.” Rather:

There is a Council of Rabbis in Judea and Samaria, led by Yishai Babad. There is a Rabbi Zalman Melamed of Beit El. Mlmad is similar to Melamed, and Zalman is Yiddish for Shlomo.

Rabbi Zalman Melamed told Gidon Shaviv, a senior research analyst for press watchdog CAMERA, “I did not say that and do not believe any rabbi would say something like that.” Melamed also called the report a blood libel. [emphasis added]

Updated, June 26: Abbas Retracts the Libel

The New York Times reports:

Mr. Abbas’s retraction was sent to reporters early Saturday morning, issued by the P.L.O., of which Mr. Abbas is the chairman. It said that Mr. Abbas “rejected all claims that accuse him and the Palestinian people of offending the Jewish religion.” It added that he “also condemned all accusations of anti-Semitism.”

“After it has become evident that the alleged statements by a rabbi on poisoning Palestinian wells, which were reported by various media outlets, are baseless, President Mahmoud Abbas has affirmed that he didn’t intend to do harm to Judaism or to offend Jewish people around the world,” the statement continued.

Canadian journalist Tony Burman, former head of Al Jazeera English, is a frequent contributor to the Toronto Star. With columns that often include scathing commentary about Israel and its supporters, his anti-Israel bias is hardly a secret.

(See, for example, “Should U.S. diplomats meet with Hamas leaders when conducting ‘shuttle diplomacy’ in the Middle East?“; “What has prompted Canada’s move against Iran?”; “Time for Canada, Israel to stop living in fantasy world“; “Israel’s Netanyahu drops his mask and reveals ugliness“; Netanyahu, his pants on fire, brings torch to Washington“)

So it was no surprise that his recent column about the centennial of the Sykes-Picot agreement included an anti-Israel slur. Burman, however, went further than just opinion, including an obvious error when he referred to “Israel’s continuing brutal occupation of Palestinian lands.”

It is neither factual nor historical to refer to “Palestinian lands” because their status is disputed. While the Palestinians seek to establish an independent state on these territories, the lands never belonged to the Palestinians — either before or after the Sykes-Picot agreement. As to the future disposition of the territories, it is to be determined in final negotiations between the two sides.

By labeling the territories “Palestinian” as if this were a straightforward fact rather than the columnist’s own partisan opinion of what he would like to see happen, Burman is guilty of misleading readers with dishonest journalism masquerading as history.

CAMERA contacted the Toronto Star about the error, noting that the Washington Post had earlier corrected a similar error referring to “Israel’s continuing occupation of Palestinian land.” But the Toronto Star, was having none of it. Editors attested to Burman’s “considerable experience in matters pertaining to the Middle East” and insisted that as a columnist, he has “wide latitude to express his own views and perspective on controversial matters.”

Perhaps so, but such latitude cannot extend to misleading readers with false information. As the late politician Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously put it, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.”