We’ve said it often, but it’s worth repeating: Anyone interested in reasonably unbiased information about Israel (at least) should avoid the broadcasts of CNN’s Chief International Correspondent and Anchor, Christiane Amanpour.

In characterizing responses to the Coronavirus epidemic, Amanpour asserted on March 31: “Many leaders are using this crisis to grab special powers and violate civil rights… And Israel and even the U.K. grab emergency powers without an end in sight.”

The first third of the broadcast consisted of a conversation with William Burns, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, “about pandemic and politics.”

Amanpour asserted that there is

a power grab by Prime Minister Netanyahu. He’s managed to consolidate his power even though he didn’t win the election. And Benny Gantz, his opposition, has essentially given up his choice to form a government and decided to go into an emergency government of national unity. And Netanyahu has closed down courts and everything, which presumably, you know, inoculates him from the corruption trial that he was about to face.

But this charge contains typical Amanpour disinformation. As CAMERA’s Tamar Sternthal pointed out in responding to the same disinformation by others: “But Netanyahu did not shut down the courts. Nor did he delay his own trial. Nor have the courts been shuttered, though their activities have been curtailed… it was Justice Minister Amir Ohana, a Netanyahu ally, who ordered the courts to restrict their activity.”

And Amanpour asks Burns, “What does this all mean for that part of the world?”

Burns replies obligingly:

Well, I think in Israel, I mean, the pandemic has provided, in a sense, of a new political lease on life for Prime Minister Netanyahu. He can fight the criminal indictments that have been brought against him from the prime ministry assuming this government is formed, he can begin to rehabilitate his political image. It’s not for nothing that, you know, a lot of Israeli political commentators call Netanyahu the magician… But, you know, at this moment, it seems as if, you know, what’s being strengthened is an attitude in an Israeli government that doesn’t see the urgency in trying to revive a two-state solution.

Amanpour responds here by ending the conversation, “Bill Burns, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you very much, indeed.”

Indeed – Amanpour unsurprisingly fits Israel’s response to the pandemic into her anti-Israel narrative.

Giovanni Gasparro, a popular artist in Italy, has posted images of a painting of a Jewish ritual murder on his Facebook page. The title of the painting, which appears to have been produced by Gasparro during the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, is “The Martyrdom of Saint Simon of Trent, For Jewish Ritual Murder.” Images of this painting can be found on Gasparro’s Facebook page. The painting is apparently in a private collection. Gasparro has been commissioned by Catholic officials in Italy to adorn their basilicas and churches with his work.

The painting (which CAMERA will not show) depicts numerous hook-nosed Jews of varying ages looking on in glee as one of their fellows prepares to plunge a dagger into the baby’s chest. Another hook-nosed Jew holds a silver chalice in place, ready to catch the blood from the ritual murder. It is a truly horrific painting clearly intended to reawaken age-old hostilities toward the Jewish people.

CAMERA has contacted the artist himself via email asking why he would post such a horrific image during a time of plague. CAMERA has also contacted the Papal Nuncio in Washington, D.C. asking that he alert the proper officials in the Vatican about this outrage.

A couple of days ago, we highlighted how David Halbfinger, the New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem, cast Israel’s prime minister as a scold for, well, trying to protect vulnerable populations from a pandemic.

If that’s how Halbfinger responds to helpful messages from the Israeli government, we noted, it should come as no surprise that, on the same day, the journalist also suggested Israel denies its Arab population democracy, simply because many Jewish lawmakers are skeptical of partnering with the Joint List. The Joint List is a mostly Arab political alliance that includes a communist party, an Islamist party, and lawmakers who reject the continued existence of the Jewish state and have praised terrorists.

Today, Halbfinger followed up with a piece noting that the Joint List itself refuses to join the Israel government. The contrast between his framing of Jewish lawmakers who don’t want Joint List to be part of the government and Arab lawmakers who don’t want to be part of the government is telling.

In exhibit one, from the New York Times‘s March 12 story, Halbfinger frames Jewish Knesset members who don’t think the Arab List party should be part of the government as racists who see Arabs as “enemies.” The political gulf is proof of bad behavior by Israeli Jews.

In exhibit two, from today’s story, the shoe is on the other foot. We have Joint List Knesset members who don’t want to join Jewish lawmakers in a government. The distaste goes both ways. But this time, Halbfinger doesn’t wave the point around as proof that the mostly Arab MKs see Jews as “the enemy.” Readers aren’t told that the lawmakers reject the legitimacy of Jewish votes. Instead, the story is again framed in terms of what readers will see as bad behavior by Israeli Jews:

The Masjid Ar-Rahmah mosque teaching – that Allah transformed Jews into apes and pigs for disobeying him – delivered by Imam (prayer leader) Mohamad Joban – was posted online by mosque personnel. This December 2019 indoctrination at the Seattle, Washington area mosque was mainly in English.

This inflammatory anti-Semitic rhetoric is an Islamist trope used to attack Jews and the Jewish state. Note that the “apes and pigs” teaching has long been a staple of Palestinian anti-Israel propaganda. Here is an example from Palestine Today (Palestinian news agency) via Palestinian Media Watch (PMW):

Headline: “The will of Martyr Omar Al-Abd who carried out the stabbing operation next to Ramallah”

“You [Israeli Jews], the sons of apes and pigs, if you do not open the gates of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, I am certain that after me will come a man who will strike [you] with an iron hand, I warn you! I know that I’m going there and I’ll never come back here; rather I’ll come back to Paradise, in the embrace of Allah’s mercies. How good and pleasant is death and Martyrdom (Shahada) …”

The Joban video clip was posted to the Free Speech Video Platform site (3speak). P L A Y:

Excerpts from the nearly hour-long presentation

[…]

The question now Is whether they [the Jews who turned into apes] continued to have generations [of apes] after their death. The scholars have two opinions. He [one] said that after a while, all of them died. Because Allah made them monkeys as a punishment, they died already. But some say: “No, they have generations…”

[…]

Allah just wanted to tell us what Allah told you a long time ago that people turned into monkeys and that this is true. It is religion, look at them, some of them stayed apes and pigs …

Media covering Joban’s teaching

The only Washington media entity, that could be found, reporting the event is little-known MyNorthwest which nevertheless extracted an apology from the mosque but the apology appears nowhere else (yet).

The question is why didn’t leading local or state media outlets report about such anti-Semitic incitement in the form of a publicized sermon by a local mosque? Why didn’t these outlets — such as the Seattle Times, Spokane Spokesman-Review, The Herald, News Tribune or Seattle TV stations KING (NBC), KIRO (CBS), KOMO (ABC), KCPQ (Fox), KCTS (PBS) — consider this matter to be newsworthy?

It’s disturbing that during the current period of greatly increased violence victimizing Jews, local and state media outlets failed to inform the public of this instance of incitement to such violence.

Over two years after improving inaccurate language falsely citing Israel’s security “barrier surrounding the biblical city” of Bethlehem, the Associated Press once again misrepresents.

AP’s Joseph Krauss and Mohammad Daraghmeh wrote yesterday (“Palestinians in Bethlehem look beyond religious tourism“):

Bethlehem itself is almost completely surrounded by the barrier and a string of Jewish settlements

The Peace Now map shown below clearly shows where the barrier exists (solid red line) or is planned (dotted red line) on the northern and western sides of Bethlehem. On the south east, there are the settlements (solid pinks blocks) of Tekoa, Nokdim and Sde Bar. To the north and west of this block of settlements there are significant stretches with no barrier and no settlements. (The block with red lines, dubbed Givat Eitam, due south of Bethlehem, is slated for Israeli construction, according to Peace Now’s map.)

In December 2016, AP’s Isma’il Kushkush accurately referred to “the concrete barrier that surrounds part of Bethlehem.”

Given that neither the barrier nor settlements abut significant portions to the east and south of the city, AP’s description of Bethlehem as “almost completely surrounded by the barrier and a string of Jewish settlements” is unfounded.

Dec. 11 Update: “Times of Israel Corrects AP Error on ‘Surrounded’ Bethlehem”

“Variety is the most authoritative and trusted source of entertainment business news,” boasts its web site but readers should not have any expectations about the accuracy of its geopolitical coverage. A May 2019 movie review which just came to our attention erroneously placed the northern Israeli city of Nazareth in “Palestine.”

Asserting that movie director Elia Suleiman, “the eternal observer, trusts his audience to know the facts,” Variety’s Jay Weissberg gets the facts wrong, erroneously reporting: “‘Heaven’ begins in Palestine — Nazareth, to be precise . . . ” (“Film Review: ‘It Must Be Heaven,’” May 24, 2019).

Nazareth is a city in northern Israel, within the undisputed pre-1967 boundaries of the country. It is not in “Palestine,” the West Bank or the occupied territories, as this United Nations map makes clear.

Hat tip: Tomer Ilan

As we noted yesterday, the New York Times chose to remove the word “terror” from its article about fighting between Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Israel. While early versions of the story informed readers that Islamic Jihad is recognized internationally as a terrorist group, that information was scrubbed from the article shortly after 9am in New York.

Today’s follow-up story on the fighting, too, neglects to tell readers of Islamic Jihad’s terror designation. In fact, it’s been over six months since the paper informed readers that the group is listed as a terror organization.

CAMERA’s article yesterday pointed out that the Times repeatedly used the T-word after the U.S. operation that lead to the death of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi. But we don’t have to look even that far back. Today and yesterday, on the very days the newspaper avoided noting — made edits to avoid noting — Islamic Jihad’s terror designation, it did see fit to inform readers that, e.g.,

• “Turkey regards the Syrian Kurdish militia [SDF] as a terrorist organization”;
• and that “Turkey also considers the Islamic State a terrorist organization”;
• and that the Chinese government claims Hong Kong protesters are engaged in “brazen terrorism”;
• and that ISIS is a “terror group.”

So why weren’t readers informed that Islamic Jihad is considered a terrorist group by the US, EU, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand and others? Is it somehow less important to share fundamental context about an organization that targets Jewish-Israeli civilians?

A Reuters article today egregiously misrepresents administrative detention, erroneously asserting that it is mainly applied to “Palestinians suspected of anti-Israeli activities,” when in fact the Israeli practice applies in cases of suspected security offenses. The Nov 4. article (“Jordan says two citizens held in Israel to return ‘before the end of the week’“) errs:

Israel mainly uses “administrative detention”, or imprisonment without trial, against Palestinians suspected of anti-Israeli activities. (Emphasis added.)

The identical error also appears in this earlier Oct. 29 article.

Israel does not mainly use administrative detention against Palestinians suspected of “anti-Israeli activities” generally. Rather, the measure may only be applied in cases of suspicion regarding security-related offenses.

Thus, B’Tselem, an NGO highly critical of Israeli government policies and activity in the West Bank, explains:

In the West Bank (not including East Jerusalem), administrative detention is carried out under the Order regarding Security Provisions. The order empowers the military commander of the West Bank, or another commander to whom the power has been delegated, to place individuals in administrative detention for up to six months at a time, if the commander has “reasonable grounds to believe that reasons of regional security or public security require that a certain person be held in detention”.

The Associated Press, another leading wire service, accurately described administrative detention yesterday, stating that the two Jordanian citizens to be released later this week

are being held in administrative detention, an Israeli policy that allows for open-ended detentions without filing charges against people suspected of security offenses.

CAMERA has contacted Reuters to request a clarification. Stay tuned for an update.

In an article last week on the occasion of IDF’s Brig. Gen. Eran Niv wrapping up his post as commander of the Judea and Samaria Division, Haaretz‘s English edition whitewashes the July 2017 killing of two Druze police officers shot dead by three Israeli Arab assailants just outside the Temple Mount.

Haaretz‘s English edition, both in print (page 4, Sept. 29) and online refer to the “deaths of two Border Police officers” in the summer of 2017:

The perceived violation of religious symbols is a particularly potent accelerant for violence, Niv says, recalling the violence that erupted after Israel installed metal detectors at the Temple Mount in the summer of 2017, following the deaths of two Border Police officers, as well as the brief outburst that followed visits by Jews to the Temple Mount in August on Tisha B’Av, which coincided with the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha. (Emphases added.)

Why does the English edition fail to note that the border police officers were killed by Israeli Arab assailants leaving the Temple Mount? Indeed, violence didn’t erupt only after the officers’ “deaths” — their deaths themselves, ie murders, were violent.

The Hebrew version of the same article more precisely reported that the officers were killed (CAMERA’s translation):

Niv identifies several negative accelerants which could contribute to an escalation: blood, the harming of religious symbols and nationalist friction between Palestinians and settlers. The religious element is particularly sensitive. The storm over the installation of metal detectors, after the killing of two border policemen at the Temple Mount in the summer of 2017, was a good example. In August [2019], we experienced a brief escalation following Palestinian rage, when Jews went up on the mount on Tisha B’Av — which coincidentally overlapped with Eid al-Adha.

See here for more instances of “Haaretz, Lost in Translation,” in which the English edition downplays, whitewashes or omits instances of Arab violence or other wrongdoing which were reported in the parallel Hebrew article.

The impressive turnout on the part of Arab citizens of Israel in last week’s elections — making the Joint List of Arab parties the country’s third largest party and placing it in position to lead the opposition — garnered significant media coverage. Some media outlets, unfortunately, provided confusing coverage by insisting on referring to Israel’s Arab voting population as “Palestinians,” despite the fact that they are Israeli citizens, they do not reside in Palestinian controlled areas, and the overwhelming majority of them do not identify as Palestinian.

Particularly in the context of Arab citizens exercising their right to vote in Israeli elections, the “Palestinian” label is unjustified and misleading.

In The New York Times, for example, bureau chief David Halbfinger confounded:

Mr. [Ayman] Odeh’s ads practically beg Palestinian citizens to vote on Tuesday, saying that one million citizens, if they all voted, would translate into 28 seats in the Knesset. . . .

Indeed, such misleading nomenclature for Arab citizens of Israel confuses them with Palestinians — Arabs who live in Palestinian-controlled territories and who do not hold Israeli citizenship. For example, in the same article, Halbfinger refers to “Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians living under the occupation” and also to an Instagram photo of an “iconic Tel Aviv skyscraper with its facade displaying the Palestinian national flag.” How are all but the already well-informed readers meant to unpack this terminology, and distinguish between the voting “Palestinians” versus Arabs in the West Bank or Gaza who are not Israeli citizens?

Indeed, NPR’s Daniel Estrin seems to recognize the problem with referring to Israel’s Arabs as “Palestinian” even as he does so. He refers to “Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel” but then feels compelled to clarify:

And another thing to note here is that the party representing Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel – I’m not talking about the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza, they don’t have voting rights in Israel – but the Arab party is poised to be the third-largest party in the Parliament.

Besides confusing uniformed news consumers, referring to Israel’s Arabs as “Palestinians” does not reflect how the vast majority self-identify. A poll released this week by the Guttman Center for Public Opinion and Policy Research at the Israel Democracy Institute found that 13 percent of Israeli Arabs identify primarily as Palestinians. As Haaretz reported:

Nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of Arab citizens said they were proud to be Israelis – the highest rate since 2003. Asked how they self-identify, 38 percent said as Arab, 36 percent said by religion (Muslim, Christian or Druze), 13 percent said as Palestinian and 9.5 percent said as Israeli.