Israel Matzav

Monday, September 29, 2014

Hurray for liberal logic!

More here.

Hat Tip for image here.

Labels: Amira Hass, Germany, Haaretz, Israel's Hebrew Palestinian daily, Palestinian anti-Semitism, Ramallah

Sunday, September 28, 2014

BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA! UPDATED

Haaretz reporter Amira Hass was barred from a conference at Bir Zeit University because - wait for it - she's an Israeli Joooo. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! (Hat Tip: Gershon D).

Hass attempted to attend the "Alternatives to Neo-Liberal Development in the Occupied Palestinian Territories – Critical Perspectives" conference at the university, which is located near Ramallah where she lives.

But she was ejected from the hall by the organizers, Hass claimed, after students at the admission desk noted she worked for the Israeli publication and alerted security authorities to intervene.

...

Her colleagues and professors told her that she was being ejected on the one hand "for her own protection" and also to give the students "a safe space" free of Jews.

Meanwhile, the University has officially denied that there was a problem.

"The administration has no objection to the presence of the journalist [Amira] Hass," it insisted, in an official statement. "The University distinguishes between friends of the Palestinian people and its enemies ... and works with every person and institution who opposes the occupation."

But Hass - who is well-known in Arab and leftist circles for her aggressive anti-Zionism, and provoked outrage last year for justifying rock-throwing attacks against Jews - angrily noted that she was "not told" about the policy and that "Palestinian citizens of Israel [i.e. Israeli Arabs - ed.] who teach at Israeli universities are not subject to the same policy."

Gee, maybe Hass ought to rethink who is democratic and who is not....

UPDATED 6:09 PM

PS The event was funded by the German government.

Labels: Amira Hass, Haaretz, Israel's Hebrew Palestinian daily, Palestinian anti-Semitism, Ramallah

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Haaretz: A case study in the collapse of modern journalism

The Tower has a devastating feature on Haaretz, Israel's Hebrew 'Palestinian' daily. It's calling it, 'a case study in the collapse of modern journalism.'

In a Sunday interview with journalist Kalman Libskind of the radio station Galei Yisrael, Haaretz publisher Amos Schocken set out to defend Hass’s article. Growing flustered, however, Schocken ended up saying that moving to a settlement was a form of deliberately endangering the welfare of one’s children, something that in another context would trigger the intervention of social services. As for Hass’s sympathy for rock-throwers, Schocken refused to distance himself. “Sometimes,” he concluded, “you have to fight violence with violence.”

The method Amos Schocken chose to defend Hass’s article, and his defense of editor-in-chief Aluf Benn’s decision to publish the piece in full, sheds some light on the recent changes at the once-venerable Israeli daily. In a series of interviews conducted with current and former Haaretz employees, some of whom held high-level positions at the paper and most of whom still hold it close to their hearts, a consensus emerged to the effect that the paper is undergoing a process of major change that has led to a dramatic reduction in staff, a precipitous decline in journalistic standards, and a willful radicalization of its politics in pursuit of Internet traffic.
As Israel’s longstanding newspaper of record, these developments have raised important questions about the future of print journalism, especially in a country where a free and dynamic press has always been at the center of Israel’s democratic discourse.

...

according to the employees interviewed for this article, all of whom refused to be identified out of fear of the impact on their careers in Israel’s small and insular media environment, the Amira Hass affair was a red flag not only for the Israeli public, but also for many on the Haaretz staff. As one former editor at the news desk put it:

Amira Hass’s article must be seen as the result of a conscious decision to radicalize the paper, to make it something shallow, sensationalist, and shocking, and to give it the image of a paper—really, a website—that is courageous and groundbreaking. At the end of the day, there is only one goal: To generate traffic. It doesn’t matter if the piece is good or bad, what matters is that it leads to website traffic.
Like most of the people we spoke with, the editor does not identify with the political Right in Israel. Yet he felt a need to add the following: “Amira Hass’s article fits Aluf Benn and Amos Schocken like a glove. She wrote shocking things. Any editor with a minimum of discretion would have said that it wasn’t suitable for publication. But here? The more provocative you are—to the Left, of course—the better the editorial staff thinks it is.”

...

An even more pointed criticism of the editors’ objectivity came from another staffer familiar with the news desk. “There is almost no one who is not on the radical Left, or more precisely, who hasn’t accommodated themselves to it and suddenly become a Leftist. Except for Amos Harel and Haim Levinson, there are almost no journalists I would allow myself to call trustworthy. The rest are sycophants who suddenly joined the extreme Left. Israel Harel is the token Rightist in the opinion section, but if you look at the section in its entirety, it’s obviously getting systematically worse.” The same staff member also took issue with Benn’s decision to dedicate time to giving public lectures and writing opinion pieces for the paper.

...

Though the newspaper has always taken a progressive political line, even its ideological detractors once recognized the benefit that a newspaper rooted in quality journalism and rigorous about its standards provided Israeli society. As Hanoch Marmari, who served as the paper’s editor-in-chief for close to 50 years after being appointed by Amos Schocken’s father, Gershom, put it: “Today Haaretz is not in the playing field. Rather, it is morphed from a player to a spectator in the bleachers. When you are a distant observer you do not necessarily see the complicated dynamics of the game—and you definitely exert less influence.”

Sounds just like the New York Times, doesn't it? Read the whole thing.

Labels: Aluf Benn, Amira Hass, Haaretz, Israel's Hebrew Palestinian daily, Israeli media bias, liberal media bias

Friday, April 05, 2013

Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler

Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday. April 5.

1) Casting the first stone - and all the subsequent ones too

What's the difference between assault with a deadly weapon - a shooting - and assault with rocks that hit cars at potentially lethal speeds? Why should teenagers think of rock-throwing as something fun to do - and not as a crime?
Excerpt from Beltway Rocks: Police Responses The Washington Post [Washington, D.C] 05 June 1990: A24.
Earlier this week, the Washington Post and New York Times reported on allegations that Israel allowed a Palestinian prisoner die. Never mind that the prisoner in question had a terminal disease or that the Palestinian Authority politicians making the charges had no basis for their claims, both papers treated the charges uncritically.

But if trumped up charges are news, apparently real attacks are not.

The Muqata reports that Magen David Adom ambulances in Judea and Samaria are regularly being attacked by stone throwing Arabs. One of the attacks occurred near Neve Tzuf. There's a sad irony to that.

It isn't just ambulances that have been targeted. Passenger cars have been too.
A few weeks ago a young girl was critically injured by rocks thrown at the car she was riding in. (Ironically, the paramedic who saved her was Palestinian.)

Unfortunately not everyone survives a rock attack. Recently two Palestinians were convicted of killing a father and his young son in a rock attack in 2011.

The inattention of much of the media to this violence is disturbing. But it isn't as disturbing as an article recently published in the extreme left wing Israeli paper, Ha'aretz, which, actually, encouraged stone throwing.

2) On Benghazi and Syria

At the end of Flash! Threat from Rebel Syria Becomes Clear and What Really Happened in the Benghazi Murders, Barry Rubin notes that MANPADS that had been in possession of Gaddafi had fallen into the hands of Libyan rebels and were being sold to Islamist Syrian rebels.

This weapons system might be the most technologically impressive arms ever to fall into the hands of terrorists. Once Libya’s regime fell (another U.S. foreign policy production), these weapons were grabbed by the Libyan rebels and sold to the Saudis and Qataris, who supplied them, respectively, to the Syrian Salafists and the Muslim Brotherhood.
According to reliable sources, Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens was in Benghazi trying to get those MANPADS back and was negotiating with radical militias toward that goal. Stevens was doing something good—trying to take weapons out of the hands of terrorists—and not running weapons to terrorists.
Yet that doesn’t mitigate the mess unleashed by the administration’s policy. At any rate, Stevens and these efforts failed. The money was too good for the Libyan insurgents to pass up, not to mention helping fellow Islamists and anti-Americans. And now thousands of advanced, easily launched anti-aircraft systems are in the hands of anti-Jordanian, anti-Iraqi, anti-Israeli, and possibly anti-Turkish terrorists.
The failure to secure Gaddafi's weapons could turn out to be a major foreign policy disaster for the administration.

3) Post-mortem of the Israeli election

At the GLORIA Center, Jonathan Spyer presents a comprehensive report on The Nineteenth Israeli Elections. He concludes his analysis with:

There is one party in recent Israeli political history that ran on a similar (in fact, almost identical) orientation to that of Lapid. This was the Shinui party, when it was led by none other than Lapid’s father, the late Yosef “Tommy” Lapid. The elder Lapid, also a journalist, won 15 seats as head of Shinui in the 2003 elections.[20] Shinui’s platform was in all essentials identical to that of Yesh Atid–supporting a secular, centrist outlook and with a particular focus on reducing benefits to ultra-orthodox communities. The elder Lapid had a more confrontational style than his son, but the content was much the same. The elder Lapid’s party all but disappeared in the 2006 elections, following the foundation of the centrist Kadima (which itself all but disappeared in the 2013 elections, losing many votes–to the party of the younger Lapid). So Lapid’s orientation and his success are not without precedent.
Still, it is undoubtedly the case that internal social and economic issues have acquired greater centrality in Israeli elections and political discussion in recent years. In this regard, Shelly Yachimovich’s leadership of the Labor Party in the 2013 elections provided an additional example of this. The growing consensus in Israel on matters of national security appears to be clearing space for divisions to emerge on internal issues. This was notable in Yachimovich’s first speech to the Knesset following the swearing in of the new government, in which she focused on what she saw as the nature of the new government as representing the privileged sections of society. Whatever one thinks of the merits of this description, it is noteworthy that this element formed the basis of the Labor leader’s critique. Indeed, following the nineteenth Knesset elections, one might even discern a certain ideological or at least sectoral coherence to both the government and the opposition blocs, which was previously absent.
The governing coalition consists of the entire center, right and national religious bloc (with the exception of the rump Kadima party, with 2 seats, which has not entered). The opposition consists of the left, the Arab parties, and the ultra-orthodox. Since a broad consensus on national security issues stretching from the center right to the center left pertains, fractiousness in the next Knesset is likely to focus on domestic issues. This is not to say, of course, that issues of profound importance in the national security sphere do not still exist. Iran, Syria, the rise of Sunni Islamism to power, the future of the West Bank and Gaza all present enormous challenges. However, the new Israeli government is likely to experience less vociferous internal opposition to its positions on these issues, than on domestic matters.
4) Israel's natural gas

Earlier this week it was reported that Israel had started pumping natural gas from the Tamar field off the shore of Haifa. What does it mean? David Wurmser's The Geopolitics of Israel’s Offshore Gas Reserves discusses many of the implications of the find but ends on a cautionary note:

While self-sufficiency in energy – and by extension in water resources and in economic vitality – which Israel’s discoveries allow will represent a substantial improvement in its strategic strength, eventual export of its hydrocarbon resources will involve far more weighty and complex considerations. Yet, even at this early date, several key themes emerge.
Attempts to employ these resources for the sake of advancing peace between Israel and its Muslim neighbors will be the greatest temptation at the policy level. Yet the historical record suggests that increasing co-dependency between Israel and its neighbors and using development efforts to anchor rapprochement among populations are quixotic cul-de-sacs. Such efforts in the past only increased Islamic resentment against Israel and played into their ideologues’ anti-Semitic imagery of Jewish control of their economies. Furthermore, they have left Israel more strategically vulnerable. While some in Israel hope that anchoring Israel’s export system to Turkey and becoming an answer to Turkey’s energy gap will help reverse the strategic foundering of the bilateral relationship, Israel’s experience with Egypt and the Palestinians suggests that such hopes, while well-intended, will meet with great disappointment.
The introduction of any additional party to Israel’s export system will add – likely geometrically – to the strategic complexity and difficulty of realizing and maintaining that structure. While at first glance Cyprus and Jordan may appear to be elegant solutions to the difficulties and dangers of emplacing major facilities in Israel, the emerging instability of these two countries, as well as their indigenous military weakness and darkening strategic positions, will be far more threatening than the situation in Israel in the coming decades. They are both far more vulnerable and far less capable of managing the shifting strategic realities of the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean than Israel. In short, Israel’s export structure should be as direct, bilateral, and independent as possible. The temptation to encumber it with regional hopes and diplomatic missions should be resisted, no matter how promising they appear.

Labels: Amira Hass, Benghazigate, Middle East Media Sampler, Palestinian terrorism, Soccer Dad, stone throwers, Syrian uprising, Tamar natural gas well, terror victims

Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Yesha Council complains to police about Haaretz

The Yesha (revenants') Council has sent a letter to the police, accusing Haaretz's Amira Hass of inciting violence against the revenants by writing a column that claims that the 'Palestinians' have a 'right' to throw stones at the revenants.

In a column published Wednesday, Ha'aretz writer Amira Hass, who lives in the PA city of Ramallah, wrote, “Throwing stones is the right and the duty of anyone living under foreign rule.” Later in the column she termed rock-throwing “a metaphor for resistance.” Hass is the official Ha'aretz correspondent for what the newspaper labels the "occupied territories".

Hass, who also lived in Gaza for three years in contravention of Israeli law, wrote that arrests of rock throwers "is part of the role of the foreign occupation, no less than gunfire, torture during investigations, land theft... and discrimination in distribution of water."

Several recent rock attacks by Arabs targeting Israelis living in Judea and Samaria have caused serious injury. In the most serious case, a terrorist wounded a mother and three of her children, including a 3-year-old who was critically injured. All were rushed to the hospital, including the toddler who has since undergone numerous surgeries.

Hass’ column constitutes praise for violent rock attacks and gives such attacks legitimacy, Ro'eh and Shachner said in their complaint, adding that it ignores the dangers posed by such attacks.

I do not understand why successive Israeli governments have allowed this woman to live in and report from the 'Palestinian' side. This is not the first time she and Israel's Hebrew 'Palestinian' daily have incited violence against Jews, nor is it likely to the last. Ironically, very few Israelis read Haaretz - it is one of the least read newspapers in the country. It's the international media that give Haaretz its power.

Labels: Amira Hass, anti-Israeli Israelis, Haaretz, incitement, Israel's Hebrew Palestinian daily, Jewish anti-Semitism, Judea and Samaria, revenants, stone throwers

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Haaretz's Lois Lane reports from the Dignite al-Karama

Haaretz's own ~~Lois Lane~~ Amira Hass reports from the deck of the French yacht Dignite al-Karama.

When the Karame was some 50 miles away from Gaza, the Israel Navy began trailing the yacht and contacted the passengers on board, demanding they state their final destination and disclose if they are carrying any weapons.

A member of the Greek delegation to Gaza answered the questions and promised that they are not carrying any kind of weapons. He said their destination is the Gaza port.

An Israel Defense Forces official confirmed that the Israel Navy contacted the yacht, and warned it that it is nearing a blockaded area. Defense establishment sources stressed that they would not allow any kind of vessels to dock in the Gaza Strip, so any ship trying to break the blockade would be intercepted.

Greta Berlin of the Free Gaza Movement said the Dignite-Al Karame had previously declared Alexandria, Egypt, as its destination so it could slip out of Greece, and then changed its route to Gaza, saying it was a legal move.

And what do you know - Ms. Hass is lying again. I played the video of the IDF making contact with the French yacht. Here it is again. You will note that the IDF does NOT ask about weapons. They ask about cargo.

Let's go to the videotape.

And no, that's not Amira Hass at the top of this post. It's Lois Lane. She actually looks a lot like my friend Racheli G (actually now Rachel B). Here's what Amira Hass looks like.