800,000 Missing Jews: Guardian ‘Refugee’ History Includes Glaring Omission
It’s one thing to re-write history, but quite another to pretend as if a major historical event – involving a well-documented case of ethnic cleansing – never occurred. (CiF Watch)

BBC’s Brook Misleads on Israeli Film
Israelis, it seems, will not be allowed to have their own intimate moments of recollection without the BBC demanding that they be more objective about it than any other nation remembering its history. (BBC Watch)

The Importance of CAMERA to the Sustainability of Israel
As I stood in front of hundreds of rockets fired at Israel with Noam Bedein of the Sderot Media Center, the work that CAMERA and every pro-Israel activist does began to come into focus. (In Focus)

CNN Muddles Through Peace Talks
As diplomats, negotiators and media gear up for the next round of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, CNN International demonstrates that it needs to brush up with a crash course on Mideast history. (Snapshots)

Did the International Media Ignore the EU Sanction?
Was Moshe Arens right in claiming that the New York Times and Washington Post ignored the new European Union rules? (Presspectiva)

Censorship in Gaza
Hamas closes the Al Arabiya TV in Gaza for daring to criticize the terrorist organization. (ReVista)

Eleanor Clift Whitewashes Anti-Jewish Comments
Clift tells misleads her readers when claiming Helen Thomas Drew Fire for Criticizing “Settlers.” (CAMERA)

USA Today’s idea of editorial balance is unbalanced, at least when Israel is the subject.

The newspaper’s editorial “Israel election leaves a glimmer of hope” (Jan. 24, 2013) asserted that an Israeli act of self-defense was the provocation for Palestinian terrorism. That is inverted, journalistically and morally. USA Today also argued that the political right in Israel right and construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank is the biggest obstacle to peace.

But the primary obstacles are not in Israel: A 2011 poll indicated that nearly two-thirds of Israeli respondents thought a two-state solution acceptable, but two-thirds also told pollsters they did not think that a two-state solution will be reached, primarily because of Palestinian rejection. Palestinian Authority insistence on seeking a “unilateral statehood declaration” from the United Nations instead of resuming the direct negotiations with Israel it committed to in the Oslo accords bolsters Israeli doubts.

USA Today did offer an informed response, but only online. Instead of balancing the editorial in print, it let Alan Baker, a former legal advisor to the Israeli Foreign Ministry and Israeli ambassador to Canada rebut the paper’s assertion that settlements are illegal. Baker’s virtual appearance was necessary, but not sufficient. Now director of the Institute for Contemporary Affairs at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, he offered a bit of historical context largely absent from the editorial. There was no justification for not publishing it alongside the editorial.

Contrast Baker’s “virtualization” with the counter-point treatment given to the newspaper’s editorial headlined “Latest warfare in Gaza reflects Hamas’ miscalculation” (Nov. 20, 2012). It could be said to have stated a “moderately” anti-Israel opinion. But instead of publishing a pro-Israel “counter-point,” the ostensibly balancing opinion came from the implacably anti-Israel polemicist Richard Falk.

In his commentary, “U.S. cheerleads Israel’s assault,” Falk—a 9/11 skeptic who asserted that an independent (non-U.S.) investigation was still needed and whose removal as U.N. special rapporteur on Israeli-Palestinian affairs has been recommended by the Obama administration—merely restated the editorial’s view in stronger terms.

Why did USA Today think Falk had any credibility on the subject? He has endorsed terrorist violence in the pursuit of political ends, supported suicide bombings as a method of Palestinian “resistance” and opposed Western humanitarian intervention in Libya. A professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University—truth often is stranger than fiction in academia—Falk argued that no matter how distasteful the Gaddafi dictatorship was, it was the lawful government of Libya. He neglected to mention that Gaddafi came to, and stayed in power through violence, had no popular mandate and in the past promoted and conducted international terrorist acts.

In his USA Today “counter-point,” Falk does not acknowledge the refusal by Palestinian leadership to recognize Israel’s right to exist, sustained Palestinian violence targeting Israeli civilians and widespread hatred of Israelis that suggests genocidal intentions.

Meanwhile, USA Today’s editorial presents Hamas’ November conflict with Israel as a “miscalculation” rather than a reckless disregard for the safety and prosperity of Palestinian Arabs, let alone Israeli non-combatants. If it is the newspaper’s intent to offer opposing viewpoints, the balance to its editorial blaming Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s government for the impasse in Israeli-Palestinian negotiation should have been a commentary from someone who might argue, correctly, that the Gaza Strip’s greatest impediment to peace is its Hamas leadership and that the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank is perhaps most notable for spurning “two-state” peace offers in 2000, 2001, and 2008.

USA Today’s editorial page performance is oddly out of synch with the newspaper’s generally well-balanced coverage of Middle East news in general, Arab-Israeli affairs in particular. Perhaps the former department doesn’t read what the latter reports? –A. W.

The Washington Post’s Colbert I. King reminds readers of the threat the Iranian government poses to Israel, including the possibility of nuclear destruction, and the shame in turning a blind eye to those who would repeat the horrors that haunt the 20th century. According to King, “the leaders of today’s Iran” echo the Third Reich, yet there is a “global ho-hum response to the most virulent form of state-sponsored anti-Semitism since Nazi Germany” (“Echoes of the Third Reich,” August 4).

The commentary describes Iran as “the greatest threat to Jews to emerge in the past 70 years” and cautions that its aggressiveness is not limited to Israel. Today’s international focus on the Islamic Republic’s potential acquisition of nuclear weaponry is, according to King, “too narrow a view” of Iran’s fanaticism and globally sponsored antisemitism. Iran’s fingerprints can be “found in attacks on Jews in Bulgaria, India, Thailand, and Georgia” and “contending that Iran’s threat is mainly to Israel is to ignore reality…”

On the importance of recall, King writes, “I do, as a non-Jew, recognize vicious anti-Semitism when I see it. The Iranian government is as anti-Semitic as the Third Reich.”

The columnist quotes Iranian leadership, which echoes Adolf Hitler’s call for destruction of the Jews. In a recent address in Tehran to ambassadors of Islamic countries, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated, “Any freedom lover and justice-seeker in the world must do its best for the annihilation of the Zionist regime in order to pave the path for the establishment of justice and freedom in the world.” Similarly, in what King calls setting “the standard of hatred” for Jews, Iranian Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi alleged—at a U.N.-sponsored conference on the illegal drug trade—that the Talmud teaches to “destroy everyone who opposes the Jews.”

Stressing that the Iranian threat is not only an issue of Jewish or Israeli concern, King issued a moral challenge: “We did not stop the greatest atrocity of the 20th century. What of the next?” Without exaggeration but with rare and necessary directness, King asked, “if we are to honor the pledge of ‘never again,’ will we be up to preventing the potential genocide of the 21st century?” — Erin Dwyer, CAMERA Washington research intern

Since we posted our article on the venomous M.S. blog of March 6, 2012, The Economist has seen fit to change the title from “Israel, Iran and America: Auschwitz complex” to “Israel, Iran and America: Masters of their fate?”

The editor’s note reads:

The original headline of this blog post was inappropriate and has been changed at the instruction of the editor in chief. No offence was intended and we apologise unreservedly.

The content of the blog flouted all journalistic norms, completely misrepresented the facts and was laden with hostility toward Israel, Judaism and Jews. One hopes the editor-in-chief will see the need to rectify that as well.

In his Washington Post Op-Ed, “Getting Egypt right” (February 3) George Soros got it wrong.

Soros scapegoated Israel for the anti-government upheaval then gathering force in Egypt. He alleged that the Jewish state was “the main stumbling block” to reform in its neighbor, the largest Arab country.

Yet when Soros wrote, mass protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and elsewhere around the country focused on President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year rule, political repression, economic stagnation, corruption, unemployment, rising food prices and other domestic issues. Numerous news reports made clear Egyptian demonstrators were inspired by earlier protests over many of the same causes in Tunisia that had led to the ouster of long-time ruler Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali. Egyptian demonstrations evinced relatively little overt anti-American or anti-Israeli sentiment.

Soros, who made his billions in international currency speculation, was an odd choice by The Post to opine on democracy-building in the Middle East, let alone Israel’s role. He once said that his sense of connection to Judaism “did not express itself in a sense of tribal loyalty that would have led [me] to support Israel.”

In his commentary, Soros caricatured the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the registered pro-Israel lobby, as “monolithic” when, in fact, AIPAC members and board members range from liberal Democrat to conservative Republican. Soros did not mention his own role, until recently covert, as one of the two main funders of J Street, a sort of anti-AIPAC. J Street has, among other things, urged the United States to support anti-Israel moves at the United Nations. Nor did Soros reflect on his criticism of the Bush administration for “actively supporting the Israeli government in its refusal to recognize a Palestinian unity government that includes Hamas.”

Soros said his foundations stand ready to support the transition in Egypt. That will bear scrutiny: Among recipients of his largess is Sojourners, a left-wing Christian group that frequently denounces legitimate acts of Israeli self-defense.

Someone less interested in using — no matter how improbably — the latest news as a club to beat Israel and its supporters with, and more interested in democracy promotion in the Middle East, might have seen that there is a country in the region Egypt could use as a model for democracy, with free, fair multi-party elections, a free press, independent judiciary, minority and women’s rights and so on. Its name is Israel. What The Post saw in Soros is hard to tell. — Joseph Brewer, Washington research intern.

Washington Post Deputy Editorial Page Editor Jackson Diehl notes a new poll of east Jerusalem Arabs indicating that “more of those people actually would prefer to be citizens of Israel than of a Palestinian state.”

In an online commentary (“Why Palestinians want to be Israeli citizens,” January 12), Diehl observes that a Pechter Middle East/Council on Foreign Relations survey conducted in November “may be something of an embarrassment to Palestinian political leaders …. The awkward fact is that the 270,000 Arabs who live in East Jerusalem may not be very enthusiastic about joining Palestine.” Among respondents, “only 30 percent said they would prefer to be citizens of Palestinian in a two-state solution, while 35 percent said they would choose Israeli citizenship. (The rest said they didn’t know or refused to answer.)”

The poll suggested that Arab residents of eastern Jerusalem “don’t much love Israel — they say they suffer from discrimination. But they seem to like what it has to offer.” This includes jobs, schools, health care and welfare benefits, says Diehl. The reality of a Jewish state in which Arabs live better than they do in most Arab countries, regardless of condemnations of Israel as “racist” and “apartheid,” outweighs nationalist attraction to a “Palestine” likely ruled by Fatah or Hamas.

This is not the first time Arabs indicated they might choose Israel over “Palestine.” A 2008 study by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, “Jerusalem: The Dangers of Division,”

noted in its final two paragraphs:

“Eastern Jerusalem Arabs have a sense of national affinity with the PA [Palestinian Authority] and their brethren in the West Bank. Yet many will find it difficult to surrender their freedom of movement and expression, employment options, and the wide range of material benefits to which they are currently entitled by virtue of their resident status. They have expressed those feelings in many rounds of unofficial talks …. [A] survey showed the majority of eastern Jerusalem residents do not wish to leave Israeli rule.

“Zohir Hamdan, mukhtar (elected head) of Tzur Bachar village in eastern Jerusalem, requested a referendum among Arab residents as far back as 2000 on the subject of transfer from Israeli to Palestinian sovereignty [so they would have the chance to reject the possibility]. A public opinion survey conducted by the Palestinian delegation to the Geneva Initiative in 2003 found that 48 percent of Palestinians expressed a desire for Jerusalem to be an entirely open city, while 41 percent said they would make do with partial Palestinian sovereignty, and 35 percent were opposed to any form of division.”

It was right that The Post’s Web site took note of the poll. It would have been more pertinent if the newspaper’s foreign desk had covered it in print as a news story.

A news article, an editorial and an opinion column in The Washington Post’s March 16 edition got the U.S.-Israeli confrontation over housing construction in eastern Jerusalem mostly right.

“U.S. pushes Netanyahu to accept 3 demands,” by diplomatic correspondent Glenn Kessler, disclosed that the Obama administration is pressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to “reverse last week’s approval of 1,600 housing units in a disputed area of Jerusalem, make a substantial gesture [perhaps a prisoner release] toward the Palestinians, and publicly declare that all of the ‘core issues” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including the status of Jerusalem, be included in upcoming talks ….” The Post quotes an anonymous senior U.S. official as saying Israeli failure to concede would put the U.S.-Israel relationship in doubt.

“The quarrel with Israel; Will the administration’s attacks on the government of Binyamin Netanyahu advance the peace process?” editorializes that “President Obama’s Middle East diplomacy failed in his first year in part because he chose to engage in an unnecessary and unwinnable public confrontation with Israel over Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem …. So it has been startling — and a little puzzling — to see Mr. Obama deliberately plunge into another public brawl with the Jewish state.” It notes that “the president is perceived by many Israelis as making unprecedented demands on their government while overlooking the intransigence of Palestinian and Arab leaders,” elevating Arab claims and undermining diplomatic prospects.

“A square for a murderer,” by Post syndicated columnist Richard Cohen, contains numerous flaws. One is an unwarranted assumption about “the legitimacy of Palestinian aspiration.” Having repeatedly rejected offers of a West Bank and Gaza Strip state in exchange for peace, maybe such a state is not the “Palestinian aspiration.” A second is misunderstanding of “the calamity that befell Palestinians in 1948.” Arab leadership, including that of the Palestinian Arabs, imposed their 1948 calamity by choosing war over acceptance of the U.N. partition plan and losing. But Cohen hits the bull’s-eye on a central point: Palestinian leaders who insist on naming a public square for Dalal Mughrabi, leader of the 1979 Coast Road Massacre in which 38 Israelis, including many women and children, were butchered by Palestine Liberation Organization terrorists, as the current leaders just did, might not be disposed to negotiating genuine peace.

One year after The Washington Post criticized Random House for doing what it did — refuse to publish a work that might incite some Muslims to violence — the newspaper’s done the same to another publisher. The new target of Post editorial writers is Yale University Press.

The editorial “Self-Muzzled at Yale; A university publisher allows the possibility of Muslim reaction to alter an academic work” (August 23) properly admonishes Yale University Press for “self-censorship.” According to Post editorial writers, the press has decided to strip all artistic images from Jytte Klausen’s Cartoons that Shook the World. The book is said to be a scholarly inquiry into “the 12 cartoons of the prophet Muhammad whose 2006 appearance in a Danish paper ignited a worldwide controversy” including riots in which scores died. The offending cartoons and other illustrations of historic note will be deleted due to fear of more mayhem by enraged Muslims. (The Post’s use of “the prophet Muhammad,” rather than “Muhammad” or “Islam’s prophet Muhammad,” rings oddly, almost as if a religious acceptance or endorsement.)

“In effect, Yale University Press is allowing violent extremists to set the terms of free speech. As an academic press that embraces the university’s motto of ‘Lux et Veritas’ [“light and truth”], it should be ashamed,” The Post opines.
(more…)

Observer (UK) columnist Nick Cohen wrote a surprising essay,”Hatred Is Turning Me Into a Jew,” published in London’s Jewish newspaper, in support of Israel’s military strikes against Hamas. “Surprising,” because Cohen has long been a harsh critic of Israel. What turned him around? His disgust with the escalating anti-Semitism and the fascist behavior that comes along with it, the double standards applied to Israel and Jews, and the realization that Jews are the canary in the coalmine.

Here are some excerpts:

British Jews are living through a very dangerous period.
They are the only ethnic minority whose slaughter official society will
excuse. If a mass murderer bombed a mosque or black Pentecostal church, no
respectable person would say that the “root cause” of the crime was an
understandable repulsion at the deeds of al-Qaeda or a legitimate opposition
to mass immigration. Rightly, they would blame the criminal for the crime.

If a synagogue is attacked, I guarantee that within minutes the airwaves
will be filled with insinuating voices insisting that the “root cause” of
the crime was a rational anger at the behaviour of Israel or the Jewish
diaspora…

As the struggle between theocracy and liberalism intensifies, I can see some
being pushed into taking the same journey I have taken and finding their
views towards Judaism and Israel softening as they realise that antisemitism
helps drive the fascistic ideologies of the 21st century just as it drove
the Nazism of the 20th.

I will tell them that the opponents of totalitarianism must never be
frightened. If their enemies say they are Jews, they should shrug and say:
“All right, I am.”

For the whole column, click here or read below.
(more…)

Reminiscent of the Al Dura episode, CNN has aired a film supposedly depicting the death and burial of a Palestinian child, which raises similar questions about staging. One of the stars of this film is none other than Mads Gilbert, the doctor whose Norwegian foreign ministry-funded junket to Gaza is more a Hamas propaganda campaign than a humanitarian effort. (See Norwegian Doctors in Gaza: Objective Observers or Partisan Propagandists?)

The premise is that a freelance cameraman named Ashraf Mashrawi has filmed the death and burial of his 12-year-old brother, Mahmoud, who was allegedly killed after being hit by an Israeli rocket. CNN Michael Holmes explains that Ashraf has filmed his personal tragedy because he is “determined to show the world the human cost of this conflict.” Holmes reports:

At a Gaza hospital, doctors try to revive a victim of the violence, their efforts in vain. Twelve-year-old Mahmoud is dead.

The scene shows Mads shaking his head, pointing to a monitor, then placing electrodes on the boy while another doctor performs CPR on the victim. (And the electrodes do not seem to be connected to anything else.)

But while the doctor is vigorously bouncing up and down himself, he seems to be scarcely touching the boy’s chest. Moreover, the victim is not being ventilated at all. Could it be that Dr. Mads Gilbert, a professor of emergency medicine, has forgotten the basics of CPR?

While the film has been pulled from CNN’s Web site, it is still posted on various other sites, including You Tube, Snackfeed and Little Green Footballs.
(Hat tip: Little Green Footballs)

Britain’s Channel 4, also airs the curious fillm by Ashraf Mashrawi. Ashraf who apparently works for the station is identified on the film. He alleges on film that his brother was deliberately targeted by Israelis and this is repeated by the reporter. He is shown crying when he gets the news about his brother’s death, cradling his brother, pointing out damage on the roof of his home, and burying his brother.

Watch it below:

Since Ashraf was said to to be the one who was filming the entire scenariio, the obvious question is — who was filming Ashraf? And who really produced and directed the film ?

It is possible that the young boy was killed –and this would certainly be a tragedy– but the misrepresentation of the film by both CNN and Channel 4 raises questions. Why was this introduced as a film by Ashraf when Ashraf was clearly being filmed by someone else? Isn’t it a little too convenient for a cameraman to be on hand to film the entire tragedy? Who edited the film–Ashraf in his grief? Why was the scene in the hospital presented as an attempt to revive the boy when what was shown was clearly not CPR (but rather badly simulated compressions, no ventilation and no defibrillation or any other method of resucitation)? If these are indeed re-enactments of actual events, there should be full disclosure. Otherwise, questions will continue to be asked.