ICYMI Netanyahu asking BBC reporter if she lives on the same planet
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has urged Palestinian leader
Mahmoud Abbas to hold talks to calm the recent surge of violence. Asked
by the BBC's Lyse Doucet whether he was prepared to return to the
negotiating table, he angrily questioned whether she was "living on the
same planet".
Jewish Home party leader and Economy Minister Naftali Bennett went at it with a BBC reporter on Tuesday after the Har Nof synagogue terror attack. Bennett showed a picture on the air that the BBC would rather not cause you to have nightmares.
In the next war, perhaps Hamas should reconsider its ban on Israeli reporters
Yonit Levi and Udi Segal look at the difference between what the world saw on television during Operation Protective Edge and what Israelis saw. They seem to believe that if Hamas would only allow Israeli reporters into Gaza, we too would sympathize more with the civilians Hamas uses as human shields than with our own people seeking shelter from Hamas' rockets. And they worry that after what Israelis saw this summer, most of us will not be foolish enough to support another 'withdrawal.'
During the 50 days of the war in Gaza,
Israelis, and the rest of the world were watching two completely
different wars. In Israel, the country was under attack and it was all
happening on live television: The camera leaped between different cities
being targeted—showing the rocket’s trajectory from the Gazan border,
the subsequent sirens, and civilians taking shelter in Israel and,
often, the rocket’s interception by the Iron Dome anti-missile system
several minutes later—moments of deep anxiety, followed by relief, over
and over, throughout the day. Israeli networks co-operating with the
IDF’s Home Front Command aired banners clearly stating which region was
under attack, and in some areas where the sirens weren’t loud enough,
this turned out to be life-saving information.
It might be difficult for an outsider to understand, but when your
child is spending their summer vacation running to find shelter—with
merely a 15-second warning in the south, 90 seconds in Tel Aviv—one has
limited emotional capacity to see what is happening to the children on
the other side. When you add to that the fact Hamas controlled all data
and information coming from Gaza—and banned Israeli reporters—you see
the juxtaposition emerging. The world showed the war in Gaza, and its
effect on Gazans, while on Israeli television Gaza was a sidebar.
Thus, while the world castigated Israel for using excessive force, on
Israeli television the prime minister was upbraided for not doing
enough—lengthy studio discussions brought forth the opinions of former
generals and, astonishingly, sitting cabinet ministers, saying more
could and should be done. Indeed, television was the only place the
phrase “we should reconquer Gaza” was stated over and over again, while
in reality no one in the Israeli government even came close to
contemplating such a move (although when asked about it in interviews,
even left-wing ministers made sure to stress that “all options” were on
the table).
Ten days into the war, when Hamas rejected a cease-fire offer and
sent terrorists through a tunnel into Israel, the IDF’s ground operation
began. Here, too, it is important to note the disparity: The
international media sees Israeli soldiers as legitimate military
targets, while to Israelis they are quite literally “our boys”—who are
sent off at the age of 18 into mandatory military service. In this war
Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon’s close friend lost his son, the grandson
of a prominent left-wing politician was severely injured, and every
anchor or reporter knew someone who was fighting in Gaza. In Israel
there is often only one degree of separation.
Not only were Israelis watching a different war on television, but
the pictures they saw were embedded in a different narrative that, in a
nutshell, was this: We left the Gaza Strip, dismantled all settlements,
completely retreated to the 1967 lines, and the outcome was that Hamas
took over Gaza and we got rockets, which at any moment might strike our
homes. The world, in contrast, heard the story of Israel bombing
innocent civilians in an Israeli-made prison—and saw pictures of the
devastation inflicted by our military might.
I don't buy this. First, Israel is probably the most wired country in the world. While 40% of the country may have had the television going all the time as Levi and Segal claim (a figure I find hard to believe), I would bet that far more were using the web and social media and saw everything being aired by CNN, al-Beeb and all the other international media that is seen as so biased against us as to lack all credibility. And we weren't moved by it at all.
Israelis were promised that there would be no rockets from Gaza once we 'disengaged' in 2005. Those who warned otherwise were subjected to ridicule. Personally, I was called a 'Kahanist' on a certain 'conservative' web site (from which all conservatives have since been banned) for opposing the 'disengagement.' But we see that we were right. And most Israelis are not going to be fooled twice, no matter what our media tells us.
So yes, we will oppose withdrawing the IDF - and probably oppose withdrawing revenants from Judea and Samaria. But not because we were saturated with war coverage this past summer. We will oppose it because unlike Israel's Leftist media we have awoken and smelled the coffee.
Bennett to BBC: 'How many Israelis need to die for us to gain your sympathy'?
The last Israeli I recall being as good at putting the foreign media in their place was Binyamin Netanyahu. Another great interview (from Wednesday) by Economics Minister Naftali Bennett, this time with the BBC.
Pigs fly: Shimon Peres (SHIMON PERES!) tells the Beeb he has 'problems' explaining support for Gaza expulsion
Shimon Peres has told the BBC that he has 'problems' explaining why he supported the Gaza expulsion (although the media STILL insists on calling it a 'pullout') nine years later.
While later taking a more supportive tack, in 2006, Peres publicly
upbraided residents of Sderot, who live about three kilometers from Gaza
- as “crybabies,” for complaining about 14 years of incessant
Palestinian terrorist rocket attacks on their town.
“I don’t understand what the hysteria is about. Kiryat Shmona was
shelled for years,” Peres said, referring to Israel’s northernmost town,
on the Lebanon border, Ynet News reported at the time.
“This hysteria over the Qassams must end,” he told journalists at the
Knesset, according to the report. “We’re just adding to the hysteria.
What happened? Kiryat Shmona was shelled for years. What, there weren’t
missiles?”
Yes, Kiryat Shmona was (and still occasionally is) shelled. But not with the consistency or the length of time that Sderot is shelled. I never heard that Kiryat Shmona residents had only 15 seconds to make it into shelters.
One day, God Willing, those who brought the Gaza debacle on us will pay a political price. One quarter of the Jews expelled from Gaza still don't have a place to live nine years later. And whatever money they received to 'compensate' them for losing their homes and businesses is long since gone. Most of them are broke. And a lot of the money went in the early years when they were forced to live in hotels - and to pay for them. .
The entity that was set up to 'resettle' them spent a huge amount of its budget on public relations to garner support for the expulsion. Government corruption at its worst. Simply disgraceful.
The Beeb - THE BEEB - is calling for caution in dealing with Gaza casualty figures.
[I]f the Israeli attacks have been "indiscriminate", as the UN Human
Rights Council says, it is hard to work out why they have killed so many
more civilian men than women.
Matthias Behnk, from OHCHR, told BBC News that the organisation
would not want to speculate about why there had been so many adult male
casualties, adding that because they were having to deal with a lot of
casualties in a short time, they had "focused primarily on recording the
casualties".
"As such, we have not at this stage conducted a detailed
analysis of trends of civilian casualties, for example in relation to
the reasons why different groups are affected and the types of
incidents, but hope to carry this out at some point in the coming
future," he said.
"However, even in the compiling of these preliminary figures,
we cross-verify between different sources, not only media and several
different human rights organisations, but also use other sources,
including, for example, names of alleged fighters released by the Israel
Defense Forces (IDF) and notices by armed groups in Gaza claiming
someone as a member."
...
The list of names and ages of the dead published by al-Jazeera also found men aged between 20 and 29 to be significantly overrepresented.
The IDF say they have killed at least 253 Hamas operatives,
147 Islamic Jihad operatives, 65 "operatives of various organisations"
and 603 "operatives whose affiliation is unknown", although they also
stress that this is not a final number.
Spokesman Capt Eytan Buchman told BBC News that "the UN
numbers being reported are, by and by large, based on the Gaza health
ministry, a Hamas-run organisation".
He said that part of the reason for the discrepancy between
the figures was "when militants are brought to hospitals, they are
brought in civilian clothing, obscuring terrorist affiliations".
"Hamas also has given local residents directives to obscure militant identities," he said.
"It's important to bear in mind that in Operation Cast Lead
[the last Israeli ground offensive in December 2008-January 2009], Hamas
and Gaza-based organisations claimed that only 50 combatants were
killed, admitting years later the number was between 600-700, a figure
nearly identical to the figure claimed by the IDF."
In conclusion, we do not yet know for sure how many of the
dead in Gaza are civilians and how many were fighters. This is in no
sense the fault of the UN employees collecting the figures - their
statistics are accompanied by caveats and described as preliminary and
subject to to revision.
But it does mean that some of the conclusions being drawn from them may be premature.
Maybe we'll even get a fair hearing this time? What could go wrong?
For those who don't recognize it, the picture is Dresden February 1, 1945.
Here's a great piece from author Naomi Ragen, who lives here in Jerusalem.
All this criticism comes mainly from the European press: The
Guardian, the BBC, papers in Italy, Norway, France, and don’t forget
America: The New York Times, CNN. And I’m thinking: Gee, the British
should understand. After all, they lived through the blitz, Nazis
raining bombs indiscriminately down on them, the way Hamas is raining
bombs down on us. And when the brave pilots of the RAF aimed their bombs
at Dresden and killed 300,000 men, women and children, they didn’t
throw down leaflets telling people to politely evacuate; didn’t send
their soldiers to knock on doors to see if they’d followed the leaflets
instructions ( as CNN complained Israel failed to do at an UNRWA school,
which was probably hit by a Hamas bomb anyway.)
And I think of the rest of Europe, who rounded up our grandparents
and great-grandparents, and relatives —men, women and children—and sent
them off to be gassed, no questions asked. And I think: They are now the
moral arbiters of the free world? They are telling the descendants of
the people they murdered how to behave when other anti-Semites want to
kill them?
As for Americans, represented by the New York Times, that bastion of
high-minded hypocrisy and mediocre journalism parading as the “newspaper
of record,” one has only to read the article by Professor Auerbach in
the New York Observer (“Two Weeks of Shallow, Facile Moral Equivalency From the New York Times“)
to see how Jodi Rudoren and other Times apparatchiks have learned to
close their minds and love Hamas. After all, there are CHILDREN DYING.
It doesn’t matter that the Palestinians have educated an entire
generation to be little Nazi-wannabes, who worship death and hate Jews,
murdering their souls, and are now callously putting their bodies in
harm’s way to use for touching photo ops. We shouldn’t be shocked by
this omission by the Times. After all, The New York Times was one of the
last news outlets to bring to the attention of the reading public the
Nazi atrocities in Europe. Read the Times during the nightmare years,
and see if you can’t find a pattern here.
And so, as an Israeli, brought up with Jewish values, and an
American, taught to love freedom, justice, democracy and fair play, I
have to tell all of you – Europeans, Americans, and last of all Muslim
terrorist sympathizers and barbarians, that what you are saying no
longer moves anyone of good moral judgment and intelligence. The current
crisis in Gaza is so morally clear-cut, so absolutely a case of
self-defense, that I must say to you, as someone finally said to Senator
McCarthy: “Sir, have you no shame?”
I prefer that you – writers of these lies and libels - hate me and my
country, if it means that you can save your tears for other peoples’
dead. We aren’t greedy for sympathy. After all, we got so much after the
Holocaust, we prefer other people to have their share now. These days,
we prefer to live, rather than have people cry over us and the
injustices done to us.
Bennett to BBC: 'The 'human rights' groups will criticize us even if we hand out chocolates'
Here's the reason why Naftali Bennett's Jewish Home party is gaining in the polls faster than the Likud. Here's a great interview that Bennett did with the BBC today.
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Tuesday, March 12.
Mendacious Max Beyond Iron Dome
Max Fisher, the blogger for the Washington Post who publicized the
picture of Jihad Mishrawi has now responded to a new United Nations
report that concluded that the rocket that killed Mishrawi's son was
likely fired by Hamas. Originally he was reticent to follow up with the
new information available.
But it turns out that, according to a new United Nations
draft report from the office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights,
the explosive that killed Omar Mishrawi may have actually been fired by
the Gaza-based militant group Hamas, which has a reputation for missing.
Though the initial report was less than clear on the matter (more on
this below), the Associated Press now reports that a representative from
the UN says the explosion “appeared to be attributable to a Palestinian
rocket.” If true, this would be a significant shift in our
understanding of Mishrawi’s death, which became a symbol of that month’s
conflict.
I returned from vacation this morning with more than a few reader notes
alerting me to the UN report and asking me to append my earlier post. I
held off because the draft report was a bit sketchy, as draft reports
can sometimes be. It does not name Mishrawi or his family, stating only,
“On 14 November, a woman, her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old
adult in Al-Zaitoun were killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian
rocket that fell short of Israel.” That’s the right time and location,
but the wrong family relationship: Omar’s aunt, not his mother, was
killed in the strike. While it was reasonable to wonder if this might
still refer to the strike that killed Mishrawi, this single sentence was
far from conclusive. The citation, which reads only “Case monitored by
OHCHR,” didn’t offer many clues.
What's wrong with this?
1) The word "suggests" in the title.
2) Hamas is called a "militant" group, not a terrorist group.
3) Fisher here is concerned with minutiae. The relationship of the woman
is one of those things that gets misreported. Initially there were
doubts that the damage to Mishrawi's house was consistent with an
Israeli missile, but that didn't lead Fisher (or anyone) to raise the
doubts then.
And of course, instead of writing "the evidence strongly suggests that
it wasn't an Israeli missile," Fisher cites the BBC's Jon Donnison:
A BBC story expresses some doubt about the UN report. The
BBC’s Jon Donnison writes, “The Israeli military made no comment at the
time of the incident but never denied carrying out the strike.
Privately, military officials briefed journalists that they had been
targeting a militant who was in the building.” Donnison adds, “The
Israeli military had reported no rockets being fired out of Gaza so soon
after the start of the conflict.”
Donnison is from the BBC, not exactly known for its objectivity
concerning Israel. Furthermore the person involved is an employee of BBC
so questions of objectivity come up. (After the death, the BBC editor
for the Middle East said, "We are all one team...")
Fisher accepts Donnison's claim about the IDF not reporting any rockets
so early in the conflict is dubious. Check the timestamps on the
following tweets.
The IDF has embarked on Operation Pillar of Defense.
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012
Initial reports indicate that the Iron Dome has intercepted a number of rockets above a major Israeli city. #Gaza#PillarOfDefense
— IDF (@IDFSpokesperson) November 14, 2012
Within three hours the IDF had already reported a number of rockets had
been fired into Israel.
Why is this important? Fisher was initially skeptical of the UN report
because it misidentified one of the dead. Then when Jon Donnison made an
easily verified (or disproved) claim, Fisher accepted it uncritically.
This is a microcosm of the problem of Middle East reporting: claims that
blame Israel are accepted by purportedly objective journalists without
any checking, but claims that exonerate Israel are treated with the
utmost skepticism if they aren't ignored altogether.
Consider what was reported at the time, by Fisher.
An Israeli round hit Misharawi’s four-room home in Gaza
Wednesday, killing his son, according to BBC Middle East bureau chief
Paul Danahar, who arrived in Gaza earlier Thursday. Misharawi’s
sister-in-law was also killed, and his brother wounded. Misharawi told
Danahar that, when the round landed, there was no fighting in his
residential neighborhood.
“We’re all one team in Gaza,” Danahar told me, saying that Misharawi is a
BBC video and photo editor. After spending a “few hours” with his
grieving colleague, he wrote on Twitter, ”Questioned asked here is: if
Israel can kill a man riding on a moving motorbike (as they did last
month) how did Jihad’s son get killed.”
There was no fighting in the neighborhood. Israel, unlike Hamas, doesn't
target civilians. Israel, of course, makes mistakes. However the fact
that there was no fighting, means that there was no reason for Israel to
target that neighborhood. Instead the absence of fighting was used by
Fisher's interlocutors as a reason to suggest that Israel had targeted
innocents. (If they could pick out a specific terrorist, how could they
miss so badly and kill an innocent?)
Fisher was taking the BBC and Mishrawi family's attitudes and using
those attitudes to frame the story. Now he steps back and tells us:
The question of which “side” bears responsibility for
Mishrawi’s death is of course important, if at the moment not fully
known, in its own right. It’s also, in some ways, part of a larger
battler over symbolism and narrative in the Israel-Palestine conflict.
As I wrote at the time, the much-circulated photo of Mishrawi was
championed by critics of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinian
territories, held up as a microcosm of what they argued was an unjust
conflict that disproportionately affected Palestinians. A small but
troubling minorities of those critics suggested the Israeli military
does not care about, or even willfully targeted, Palestinian children.
Meanwhile, some observers sympathetic to the Israeli strikes pointed
out, with what may have been prescience, that Hamas rockets often miss
and might have landed on Mishrawi’s house. They argued, as they are
again arguing today, that the media attention on the photo underscores
their suspicion that the world does not give Israel a fair shake.
Blame was an important part of his original narrative. While attributing
part of the argument to "critics of Israel's policies toward the
Palestinian territories," it appears that Fisher himself agrees with
said "critics." (He validates the general "critics" by noting "small but
troubling minorities" of that group. Of course, he quoted Paul Danahar
one of that smaller group, uncritically.)
In 2012, prior to Pillar of Defense, rockets were fired into Israel every month.
Most months it was more than ten rockets and in three of them it was
more than 100 rockets. In November (including Pillar of Defense) over
1000 rockets were fired into Israel.
When assigning blame, this was not part of Fisher's calculus. Hundreds
of thousands of Israeli civilians were under threat of attack. Many
thousands were regularly attacked and Israel refrained from any major
response.
Fisher poses as an objective observer; one above taking sides. Clearly,
the tragedies of the Middle East, to Fisher, are caused by both sides.
So one side is a liberal Western style democracy; the other is a
terrorist organization running an increasingly oppressive religious
society.
One side deliberately targets civilians; the other does its best to avoid them.
One side declares its genocidal aims; the other has made significant,
concrete concession to advance the cause of peace. (That's right Hamas
came to power after Israel disengaged from Gaza.)
One side seeks to kill the other; the other side, despite threats, attempts to keep up humanitarian aid to its enemies.
The problem with Fisher's dispassionate even-handedness is that it is
applied to a manifestly uneven situation. Rather than helping people
understand the Middle East, Fisher's efforts effectively perpetuate the
grievances that fuel the conflict.
His efforts to play down the UN report stand in contrast to the way he
hyped the story. Let me ask the question I asked yesterday again:
If it had been known for certain at the time of Omar
Mishrawi’s death that he had been killed by a Hamas rocket, would it
have been front page news?
Reading Max Fisher's belated equivocations, I can only conclude that it
was the apparent culpability of Israel that made the picture newsworthy.
Well, of course. Now that his story on the killing of Baby Omar last November has been proven totally false, the Washington Post's Max Fisher says it doesn't matter who killed Baby Omar.
Omar Mishrawi’s death and his photo, like so many incidents before it, are treated as a microcosm of the much larger conflict that
took his life. But, as I wrote in November when reports suggested that
an Israeli strike had killed Mishrawi, does knowing which military’s
errant round happened to have landed on this civilian home really
determine the larger narrative of one of the world’s thorniest and most
complicated conflicts? Does assigning blame for Mishrawi’s tragic death,
awful as it may be, offer us any real insight into who holds the blame
for 60 years of fighting? And is partitioning blame really going to
serve either side particularly well?
It’s difficult to see how knowing whose rocket or missile killed
Mishrawi would resolve the larger questions for which that debate is a
proxy: responsibility for continuing the long-term conflict, for
sparking the latest round of fighting in November, and for the Israeli
and Palestinian civilians who suffer as a result. But these are
notoriously thorny debates. As with so many protracted geopolitical
conflicts, neither side comes out looking as angelic or demonic as its
partisans might wish. In many ways, something as isolated as a single
photo of a wounded or killed child offers a purer, cleaner, lower-risk
way to talk about issues too messy to engage with directly. They’re a
great way to win arguments, but not necessarily to end them.
Well, yes, it does matter. Because one side - Israel - does all it can to avoid civilian casualties, while the other - Hamas - seeks to place civilians, including children, in the line of fire in the hope of creating precisely the kind of news story that Mishrawi's death created. Fisher's and other mainstream media reporters' refusal to acknowledge that reality ensures that Israel will continue to have to fight a biased media in addition to murderous terrorists.
In an earlier post, I reported that the United Nations had concluded that the child of a BBC reporter in Gaza, who was killed during Operation Pillar of Defense, had been killed by a stray Hamas rocket, and not by Israel. Back in November, when this happened, the media (particularly the BBC and the Washington Post) rushed to blame Israel for it.
Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The
Algemeiner he wasn’t surprised that the media got the story wrong, but
felt that this incident in particular was especially egregious. “We
have all become inured to the serial bashing of Israel, but this
incident borders on blood libel,” he said.
...
The ADL released this statement to The Algemeiner criticizing the
knee-jerk journalism practiced by the media covering the story:
“Israel has been a convenient target for certain international human
rights groups who reflexively cast blame on Israel whenever there is
military action involving the Palestinians. We have seen it over and
over again in the so-called Jenin ‘massacre’ in 2002, the Second
Lebanon war in 2006, Operation Cast Lead in 2008 and Operation Pillar
of Defense in 2012. These groups rely primarily on reports from the
Palestinians and they are unwilling to withhold judgment until all of
the facts are known. Unfortunately, even some mainstream media outlets
publish stories based on these biased reports.”
Calling for editors to be held accountable for inaccuracies, the ADL added, When
the facts become fully known at a considerably later time and the
story is no longer ‘news’, editors still have a responsibility to
acknowledge the inaccuracies in the initial reports and they should be
called on to do so.”
“This image was not only picked up in real time by the
international media but has been used online as well,” the Wiesenthal
Center’s Rabbi Cooper also said. “That the media and pictorial editors
of major media would not run the photo with the true facts degrades
whatever credibility the BBC lays claim to when it comes to Middle East
and serves to instigate more hatred of Israel and Jews in the UK and
beyond.”
B’nai B’rith International echoed the sentiments of the ADL and Rabbi
Cooper, telling The Algemeiner: “This is, yet again, more evidence
that too much media reporting is inherently biased against Israel.
There is a pre-disposition to believe the worst about Israel which
colors reports and results in the spreading of false information.”
The statement continued: “It’s especially unfortunate since most
people will never read a correction, even in the limited cases where
news outlets actually admit to errors and bother to correct their
inaccurate reporting. Falsehoods are carried on page 1. Corrections are
buried inside the paper.”
For his part, the BBC’s Jon Donnison, who covers the West Bank and
Gaza and attributed blame to Israel at the time of the incident, offered his version of a mea culpa,
writing in an article on the BBC’s website that “‘The son of a BBC
journalist and two relatives killed in last November’s war in Gaza may
have been hit by a misfired Palestinian rocket,’ a UN agency says.’”
Donnison attempted to defend himself, writing that at the time “The
family, and human rights groups, said that the house was hit in an
Israeli attack” and that “The Israeli military made no comment at the
time of the incident but never denied carrying out the strike.”
Donnison also reported that the boy’s father dismissed the UN report
as “rubbish,” saying that Palestinian Arab terror groups would have
apologized if they were responsible.
That's funny: When was the last time the 'Palestinian' Arab terror groups apologized for killing the wrong person? For that matter, when was the last time the media apologized to Israel for a slander like this one. Remember this picture?
And here it is again - in black and white but with the caption:
More details about the picture for those who have forgotten here.
UN 'human rights council'(!) admits Hamas killed BBC reporter's baby son
The United Nations 'human rights council' has admitted that a 'Palestinian' child who died in a rocket explosion during Operation Pillar of Defense died as a result of Hamas fire (Hat Tip: Memeorandum).
In what has become typical of international media, The Washington Post and a BBC bureau
chief last November accused and convicted the Israel Defense Forces in a
heartrending, angry piece without verifying their information after a
fellow editor in Gaza lost his baby son in rocket fire that struck his
home.
The front page photo of an Arab stringer
for a world-class news network, clutching his dead baby son in his arms,
tears running down his cheeks, became a powerful icon of the tragedy of
the conflict.
It was used by Hamas as propaganda to blacken Israel’s name in the
media and politically in the international arena as it fought to defend
its southern population against Gaza’s missile fire.
But apparently very few questioned the source of the rocket fire – certainly not the grieving father, Jihad Misharawi, who at his son’s funeral blamed “the Jews” – nor did BBC Middle East bureau chief Paul Danahar, who came to Gaza to support his colleague, or The Washington Post, which printed the story, written by Max Fisher and "foreign staff", with photos, published on the front page.
...
“We’re all one team in Gaza,” Danahar told me,” Fisher wrote, “saying that Misharawi is a BBC
video and photo editor. After spending a ‘few hours’ with his grieving
colleague, he wrote on Twitter, ‘Question asked here is: If Israel can
kill a man riding on a moving motorbike (as they did last month), how
did Jihad’s son get killed.”
Answer: Jihad’s son was killed by Hamas, according to independent
investigators from the United Nations. He was murdered by the
journalist’s own neighbors, the very men who purport to be his biggest
protectors, who live in the surrounding buildings in the city where he
lives.
According to the advanced version of its report released by the U.N.
Human Rights Council released late last week, “On 14 November, a woman,
her 11-month-old infant, and an 18-year-old adult in Al-Zaitoun were
killed by what appeared to be a Palestinian rocket that fell short of
Israel.”
A footnote to the section says the case was personally investigated
by the U.N. OHCHR, and that investigators believe the attack emanated
from Hamas.
This story was actually reported last Thursday night by Elder of Ziyon, who has been all over it since the start. Read the whole thing.
Christmas has become an occasion to bash Israel because Christians are fleeing Bethlehem. Leaving aside the fact that Israel is the only country in the Middle East in which the Christian population has grown over the last 50 years, it's simply not Israel's fault that Christians are leaving Bethlehem or any other city (Ramallah used to have a large Christian population) in Judea and Samaria.
In a particularly vicious piece of this genre in al-Guardian, Harriet Sherwood tries to create the impression that Christians are leaving Bethlehem because Jews are setting up 'settlements' on abandoned plots of land across the city line in Jerusalem, thereby 'choking' Bethlehem.
Amid plastic bags snagged on gorse bushes, rusting hulks of cars in a
breakers yard and a few shabby trailers, traces of a biblical landscape
are still to be found on a hillside between the ancient cities of
Jerusalem and Bethlehem. A couple of donkeys are tethered to a gnarled
olive tree; nearby, sheep and goats bleat as they huddle against the
chill December air.
But this terrain will soon be covered in
concrete after the authorisation last week of the construction of more
than 2,600 homes in Givat Hamatos, the first new Israeli settlement to
be built since 1997.
It lies between two existing settlements:
Gilo, home to 40,000 people, sits atop one hill; to its east, on another
hill, stands Har Homa, whose population is around 20,000, with further
expansion in the pipeline. Both are largely built on Bethlehem land.
Givat
Hamatos will form a strategic link between these twin towns, further
impeding access between Bethlehem and the intended capital of Palestine,
East Jerusalem, just six miles away. Israel
considers these and other settlements across the Green Line to be
legitimate suburbs of Jerusalem, which it claims as the unified,
indivisible capital of the Jewish state. Prime minister Binyamin
Netanyahu and official bodies have announced a spate of expansion plans
in recent weeks.
In the birthplace of Jesus, the impact of Israeli
settlements and their growth has been devastating. In a Christmas
message, the Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Bethlehem was
enduring a "choking reality".
He added: "For the first time in 2,000 years of Christianity
in our homeland, the Holy Cities of Bethlehem and Jerusalem have been
completely separated by Israeli settlements, racist walls and
checkpoints."
By the way, when Christianity started in this area, it started in Israel during the existence of the Jewish Temple which is denied by Abu Bluff.
But it's also important to point out that much of the land in question has actually been owned by Jews since long before 1948. Take Gilo, for instance.
The majority of Gilo, however, is built on
land legally purchased by Jews prior to 1948. In the 1948 war, Jewish
lands in Gilo were captured and confiscated by the Jordanian government.
From 1948-67, Jewish landowners did not relinquish ownership to their
land in Gilo, and when Israel recaptured the land in the Six-Day War,
Gilo was built - not because of war victories, but because of
longstanding legal land purchases.
Gilo lies within Jerusalem's
municipal boundaries and is geographically contiguous to surrounding
Jewish neighborhoods that pre-dated the 1967 reunification of the city.
You could never figure that out from reading Harriet Sherwood, could you?
Then there's the inevitable discussion of 'the wall.'
The wall already snakes around most of Bethlehem, its 8m-high
concrete slabs casting a deep shadow, both literally and metaphorically.
At the Christmas Tree restaurant, where there are almost no takers for
the "Quick Lunches" on offer, business has slowed to a standstill since
the wall blocked what was once the main Jerusalem-Bethlehem road. Scores
of shops along the closed-off artery have shut down altogether.
A
few hundred metres along from the empty restaurant, a long steel-caged
corridor leading through multiple turnstiles to a checkpoint is the main
exit from the city for Palestinians wishing to go to Jerusalem. The
Israel Defence Forces issues thousands of extra permits to Christian
Palestinians to allow them to visit holy sites in Jerusalem over
Christmas, but the lack of routine access has had a dire impact on
businesses and employment rates.
The 'wall' (which is really nothing more than a fancy fence in much of
the country) is there because it has reduced terror attacks outside it
by a huge percentage over the last four years despite the fact that it
is not yet complete. The reason
it's a wall and not a fence in the Bethlehem area is because
'Palestinian' terrorists used Bethlehem's suburbs to shoot at the Jews
of the Jerusalem suburb of Gilo during the early part of this decade,
and that in Gilo they also have a wall where the 'Palestinian' gunfire
most often hit. It's much easier to shoot through a fence than it is to
shoot over a wall, although shooting over a wall is also not impossible.
Just go visit Gaza.
But the most vicious libel here is the implicit one that Israel is somehow responsible for the declining Christian population. That's an out-and-out lie.
Since
assuming control in 1995, Arafat has Islamized Bethlehem by changing
the municipal boundaries of Bethlehem and its twin towns Beit Jallah and
Beit Sahour. Together, they used to constitute the Christian enclave in
Judea and Samaria. Arafat transformed the demography there by
incorporating into the town three neighboring refugee camps, Dehaisheh,
El-Ayda and El-Azeh. Thus 30,000 Muslims were added to the 65,000
residents in Bethlehem's municipal boundaries. He intensified the
Islamization of Bethlehem by adding to its population a few thousand
Bedouins of the Ta'amrah tribe, located east of Bethlehem, encouraging
Muslim immigration from Hebron to Bethlehem, and inducing Christian
emigration/flight away from Bethlehem. The Christian population has been
reduced from a 60% majority in 1990 to a 20% minority (23,000) in 2001.
As
a result, more Beit Jallah Christians reside in Belize (Central
America) than are left in Beit Jallah itself! A similar process has also
afflicted the Christians of Ramallah, now down to 20,000.
Aware
of what was likely to happen under Arafat, Christian leaders had sought
to prevent the transfer of Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority.
Between the 1993 signing of the Oslo Accords and the 1995 transfer of
Bethlehem to the PA, Palestinian Christians lobbied Israel against the
transfer. The late Christian mayor, Elias Freij, warned that it would
result in Bethlehem becoming a town with churches but no Christians. He
urged Israel to include Bethlehem in the boundaries of Greater
Jerusalem, which had been the Jordanian practice until 1967. On July 17,
2000, upon realizing that then Prime Minister Barak recklessly proposed
to repartition Jerusalem, the leaders of the Greek-Orthodox, Latin, and
Armenian Churches sent a letter to Clinton, Barak, and Arafat,
demanding to be consulted before such action was undertaken. Barak's
proposal triggered a flood of requests for Israeli I.D. cards by East
Jerusalem Arabs, who dreaded PA rule with its oppressive track record.
Setting
out to "religiously cleanse" Bethlehem, in 1995 Arafat, defying
tradition, slapped Christians in the face by appointing a Muslim from
Hebron, Muhammed Rashad A-Jabari, as its governor. Arafat fired the
Bethlehem city council (nine Christians and two Muslims) replacing them
with a council equally balanced between Christians and Muslims. The
entire top level of bureaucratic, security and political officials have
been cleansed of Christians. The area is run by the local Muslim Fatah
leader and his thugs, along with Tanzim gunmen, mostly Ta'amrah
Bedouins. The PA has seized control of the Church of the Nativity, and
has tightened the pressure on the Greek-Orthodox, Armenian, Latin,, and
Franciscan Order in East Jerusalem. The Abraham's Oak Russian Holy
Trinity Monastery in Hebron was seized by the PA on July 5, 1997, which
then violently evicted its monks and nuns.
In addition, Arafat
and the PA embarked on a campaign of physical and psychological
intimidation of Christians. During anti-Israel PA rallies the chant is
heard: "After we do away with the Saturday People, we shall take care of
the Sunday People." Mosques have mushroomed adjacent to--and usually
taller than--churches, implementing the tradition of Saladin, who
constructed two taller mosques, Al Khanqa and Abdul Malek, contiguous to
the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. The curriculum at church schools has
been altered, adding Islamic--and reducing Christian--studies. Loudly
magnified Muslim sermons have been aired during Christian services,
including the April 2000 address by the Pope in Bethlehem, which had to
be recessed until the purposely-loud Muslim sermon was concluded.
Abusing Church tradition, the PA has transformed a Greek Orthodox
monastery, located next to the Church of Nativity, into Arafat's
official residence in Bethlehem.
...
There has been
congressional testimony on Arafat's oppression of Christians. According
to former Senator Connie Mack (R-FL), "[The Palestinian Christian] was
arrested and detained [by the PA] on charges of selling land to Jews. He
denied the charge, since he owned no land. He was beaten and hung from
the ceiling by his hands for many hours. After two weeks, he was
transferred to a larger prison where he was held for eight months
without trial... These Christians conveyed to me a message of fear and
desperation." (Senate speech, March 3, 2000,
www.senate.gov/~mack/issue/statement.htm).
The PA has imported to
Gaza, Judea and Samaria in general, and most especially to Bethlehem,
its oppressive legacy of Lebanonization. The Christians of Bethlehem,
Beit Jallah, Beit Sahour and Ramallah are now undergoing the experiences
of Lebanese Christians from 1970 to 1982. They are perceived by the
PA--as were Lebanon's Christians--as a potential Fifth Column. Accused
of wearing "permissive" Western clothing, Bethlehem Christian women have
been intimidated by PA personnel. Rape of Christian women has occurred
frequently (especially in Beit Sahour) as was the case in Lebanon.
Islamic hostility, disregard for civil liberties and economic jealousy
have been harnessed by Arafat and his 20,000 terrorists imported from
Iraq, Yemen, Sudan, Tunisia, Jordan, and Lebanon in their campaign
against the Christian infidel. Christians who dare oppose PLO oppression
are accused of "collaboration" with Israel and face execution.
I think those numbers speak for themselves.
But then, we've come to expect out and out lies from al-Beeb, haven't we?
LATMA tribal update: The BBC lies and Israel defends itself
A BBC reporter demonstrates courageous journalism at its best with a
little imagination, Jamil and Awad present new demands to Israel and how
we plan to protect ourselves in the future against Hamas rockets.
As the crisis at the BBC escalates, the New York Times’ own
journalists attacked the integrity of Mark Thompson and openly
questioned whether he was the right man to lead the world’s newspaper of
record.
The pointed criticism of Thompson, who faces questions over whether
he played a role in shutting down a BBC investigation detailing child
sex abuse allegations against star BBC presenter Jimmy Savile, grew
after new Director General George Entwistle resigned just weeks into the
job over a bungled broadcast into separate child abuse claims that
falsely implied a former Margaret Thatcher-era politician was a
pedophile.
“I’m very saddened by recent events at the BBC,” Mark Thompson told
reporters as he arrived at the New York Times Monday. “I believe the BBC
is the world’s greatest broadcaster and I have got no doubt that it
will once again regain the public’s trust both in the U.K. and around
the world.”
Savile is accused of abusing hundreds of girls in his lifetime,
including some on BBC premises. Police now say he was likely one of the
worst pedophiles in British history. The accusations were first aired by
ITV but it was later revealed that the BBC shelved a report by its own
flagship news program Newsnight into the Savile scandal.
Thompson’s role in shutting down the program has been openly questioned by his new staff at the Times.
“How likely is it that (Thompson) knew nothing?” outspoken New York Times public editor Margaret Sullivan wrote in October.
“His integrity and decision-making are bound to affect The Times
and its journalism — profoundly. It’s worth considering now whether he
is the right person for the job, given this turn of events.”
Sullivan said the paper must aggressively investigate Thompson’s role in the affair.
Maybe the Times could investigate its own biases against Israel. The Beeb actually had enough integrity to hire an outsider to do that (although they have since suppressed the report). After all, the pot shouldn't be calling the kettle black....
It's all over in the British Supreme Court. The Balen Report, which allegedly shows just how biased the government-funded BBC is against Israel, will not be released.
The BBC had argued it was exempt from releasing the report because it was "for the purposes of journalism, literature or art."
Four out of five of the Supreme Court judges ruled that the report was beyond the scope of the Freedom of Information Act, even if information was held only "partly for the purposes of journalism."
Lord Wilson ruled that if information was held "predominantly" for the purposes of journalism, it was outside the scope of the act, and he judged that to be the case with the Balen R eport.
They dismissed the argument of appellant barrister Tim Eicke QC, that the withholding of information would violate the European Convention on Human Rights Article 10, the right to receive and impart information.
The BBC said in a statement: "We welcome the Supreme Court's judgment, which upholds the rulings of other courts in this case, and will ensure that the BBC is afforded the space to conduct its journalistic activities freely.
"Independent journalism requires honest and open internal debate free from external pressures. This ruling enables us to continue to do that."
The Information Tribunal ruled in Mr Sugar's favour in 2005, ordering the BBC to release the report. But the decision was overturned by the High Court, and upheld by the Court of Appeal.
So much for 'freedom of information' in the UK. I wonder what would happened if someone stole the report. Is there a newspaper in Britain that would publish it?
I've seen some gloating from pro-'Palestinian' groups around the web over the fact that the BBC took the Israel Philharmonic off the air during their 'protest' on Thursday night, but the pro-'Palestinians' might be wise to lower their profile. Those who were present at the concert said that the entire audience turned pro-Israel as a result. Wouldn't it be something if the entire BBC audience did the same?
The protesters' despicable antics could yet prove counterproductive. There were six interruptions - but seven standing ovations (hat tip: Richard Millett).
Indeed, Britain's Culture Minister, Ed Vaizey, who attended the concert, tweeted: "Demonstrators seem to have turned entire audience pro Israel".
The PSC cultural terrorists included all the usual suspects who picket Ahava in Monmouth Street every fortnight. Deborah Fink was there in disguise, presumably because she thought she is so infamous that security would spot her - she had her hair swept back and dyed grey. Bruce Levy - who has been banned by the police from Monmouth Street where Ahava is located, for his loutish behaviour - also attempted to disguise himself, by growing a beard. (Finkler Jew Levy famously said that Gilad Shalit should be dug up and then reburied). The PSC Jew haters tried to stop me doing an interview with the BBC outside the Hall after the concert, by yelling and screaming. If you can't win an argument try censorship - that's the way these Stalinists operate.
The applause at the end of the Bruch Violin Concerto - before the interval - was tumultuous and soloist Gil Shaham even played an encore. I was told that the applause at the end of the concert was every bit as enthusiastic.
Whata shame that the audience's enthusiasm for the IPO could not include the waving of Israeli flags - which had been banned by the Hall, along with all leaflets and other flags. (I waved a flag at the cultural bigots of the PSC but was asked to leave).
And I thought it was all the Muslims in London who were demonstrating for the 'Palestinians.' Silly me. I should have known better.
There's a video from the BBC in Portuguese in which Hoffman appears here.
Israel Radio reports that the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra had to stop its concert twice on Thursday evening due to disruptions by 'Palestinian'-supporting scum (the word used by a friend in London in an email to describe them). The BBC took the concert off the air. Police removed the disrupting persons from the concert hall.
A BBC spokeswoman confirmed the live broadcast had been taken off air on Radio 3 "as a result of sustained audience disruption".
The BBC Proms team earlier posted on Twitter, the microblogging site: ''We're sorry that the concert was taken off air following hall disturbance.
"Glad both pieces were heard by the audience in the RAH.''
Some audience members tweeted that the protesters were shouted at to stop.
...
A BBC spokeswoman said: "We regret that as a result of sustained audience disruption within the concert hall which affected the ability to hear the music, tonight’s Israel Philharmonic Orchestra Prom was taken off air.
"The invitation to the Orchestra was a purely musical one, offering the opportunity to hear this fine Orchestra in conductor Zubin Metha’s 75th year, so we are disappointed that BBC Radio 3 audiences were not able to enjoy the full performance. BBC Radio 3 broadcast recordings of the same music, however the performance continued in the hall.
"We will broadcast part of the concert next Wednesday 7 September at 2.30pm."
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
