But in the end the allegations didn’t exactly pan out. Even the head of the academy where the allegations were made, excoriated the press for making too much out of them.

Still that didn’t stop McClatchy’s execrable Dion Nissenbaum from trying to keep the allegations alive. He dismissed the IDF’s investigation of the charges that found no wrongdoing and didn’t bother to report that the charges were found to be hearsay.

So it should come as no surprise when similar unsubstantiated charges from anonymous soliders surfaced this week, Nissenbaum trumpeted them on his blog.

But wait, something different happened this time. The group responsible for the charges this time was trying to get an exclusive from Ha’aretz. But Ha’aretz, burnt in March, was shy this time. Amir Mizroch of the Jerusalem Post writes:

Several days before all this, Breaking The Silence gave out their report to a wide array of foreign media, and not to the IDF to probe into itself, with the caveat that they observe the embargo until after Ha’aretz published the report first. All of which shows their original intent was to get as much uncritical worldwide publicity for their report. Legitimate, sure. Fair? Not so sure.

(It turns out that Breaking the Silence is being bankrolled by the EU and the British and Dutch embassies. Given that the EU is part of the “Quartet” doesn’t that mean that the Quartet’s objectivity is suspect?)

Breaking the Silence wanted uncritical attention and Nissenbaum, so swept up in his contempt for Israel, played his role faithfully. He treated the allegations as convictions because they fit his own prejudices. Truth really wasn’t important. (Actually truth is important to Nissenbaum, if it has to do with a movie. He’s not just biased, he’s also frivolous.)

On the other hand a number of Israeli soldiers have been willing to speak out publicly, and not anonymously, to testify that they saw professional and moral behavior from their fellow soldiers. I wouldn’t expect Nissenbaum to report that. Nor will he report that Human Rights Watch has been found to be ethically compromised.

For Nissenbaum, Israel employs force arbitrarily and disproportionately, Anything that confirms his view is news; anything that doesn’t is ignored. Really he should be drawing a second paycheck from the PA as he is doing its work.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad

Ashraf, a friend who was one of the many talented reporters to be laid off as a result of the economic implosion of the newspaper industry, has written a journalistic exploration of the challenges facing reporters covering the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Calling it a “sobering glimpse” of Jerusalem journalism, Ashraf focuses on his frustrating attempts to report on an incident last year at the Israel-Jordan border where Palestinian journalist Mohammed Omer said he was assaulted by Israeli security.Ashraf

“In the end,” Ashraf writes, “the truth of what happened to Mohammed Omer was sacrificed on the altar of the false deity known as ‘balance.’”

As Ashraf notes, it was impossible to divine “the truth” of the incident because there were competing versions and few independent views.

You see, last year Mohammed Omer was detained by Israeli security forces as he entered from Jordan. Omer claimed that he was mistreated by security personnel. An Israeli review of the incident found no wrongdoing.

Calling Omer a journalist is a stretch. He writes for the viciously anti-Israel Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. In other words there’s no calumny against Israel that’s too outrageous for him to write about. If there’s a reason there hasn’t been a further investigation, it hasn’t been in worship of “balance,” it’s been in large part because the person making the charges has no credibility.

IMRA, covered the results of the investigation, I won’t quote them all, but I found this particularly damning.

As to the Complainant’s allegation that he was compelled to stand on his feet for twelve hours, we point out that according to our records, the Complainant arrived at the Allenby Crossing at approximately 11:00, and the entire incident ended at approximately 14:00. Thus, this claim is also baseless.

Elder of Ziyon has a lot more about Omer and the incident.

As far as Nissenbaum and “balance” is concerned, just remember that his idea of balance is producing a flattering portrayal of an “unrepentant child killer.” We knew that Nissenbaum had a soft place in his hearts for terrorists, now we know that simple liars have his sympathy too.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

“Our policy is simple,” US Middle East envoy George Mitchell was quoted as saying. “The Israelis lied to us all these years. And now it’s over.”

The problem is that Mitchell didn’t use those words. Or at least as a later article by Caspit makes clear, he didn’t use those exact words and he didn’t say anything similar in the meeting Caspit reported on. However, Mitchell apparently did say something similar in a telegram.

It is interesting that Nissenbaum is so exercised by Caspit’s taking liberties here. For one thing the administration has pretty clearly lied about American commitments with Israel. And apparently Ambassador Kurtzer has changed his story to suit the administration. This doesn’t make Caspit’s deception (or “fake but true” reporting) correct, but Nissenbaum’s outrage at Israeli journalism seems rather selective.

Strangely, too he seems none too outraged by articles appearing last week claiming that Gilad Shalit was about to be released. (”imminent” one headline read.) Nissenbaum writes:

Reports like these pop up in the Israeli media about once every three or four months.

Israeli journalists rely on anonymous sources who reportedly suggest that a “breakthrough” has been made and that only a few details need to be hammered out.

But the “imminent” story I wrote about last week was a lot more than a report about the possible release of Shalit. (Clearly, I should have been a lot more skeptical of the report.) It was seemingly advocating the strengthening of Hamas, the isolating of Salam Fayyad and cast PM Netanyahu as the heavy. (In other words, all the stars had aligned and all that was required was for Netanyahu to be a little less stubborn and agree to Hamas’s terms.)

And It was based on a single “reliable” European source. Will this source be referred to as “reliable” in the future?

Nissenbaum claims that such reports appear frequently in the Israeli media. This sort of reporting seems a lot worse than Caspit’s breach. Of course it is typical of reporters all around. They’ll find a source who will provide them with a story they wish were true. Then they’ll quote the source and write how the possibility could come about. Well the story is “true,” because the news is that the source said it, not that the content of what he said was true. Caspit, at least, accurately conveyed the feelings of the Obama administration.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

The Gaza Strip has had its fair share of bad days over the years, from the spark for the first Palestinian uprising to the razing of Rafah to the Hamas takeover.

So to say that Saturday was the deadliest day in decades for Palestinians is saying something.

Israel is in the midst of carrying out its own version of “shock and awe” by dropping more than 100 tons of bombs on Gaza that have killed more than 250 people, injured hundreds more and set off a volatile new phase of the conflict with Hamas.

Some perspective please. What’s going on in the Congo?

A Ugandan rebel group known for its horrific cruelties has massacred 189 people and kidnapped at least 20 children over three days in northeastern Congo, U.N. officials reported Monday.

The cultlike Lord’s Resistance Army carried out the attacks on three villages between Thursday and Saturday, according to Ivo Brandau, a spokesman for the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa.

The group killed 40 people in the small town of Faradje on Thursday, and over the next two days, it attacked the villages of Doruma, where rebels massacred 89 people, and neighboring Gurba, where 60 were killed, Brandau said, citing reports that the United Nations received from local authorities.

(h/t Meryl)

In Iraq:

At least 670 Kurdish militants have been killed by Turkish forces in counter-terrorism operations this year, the country’s General Staff said on Thursday.

The largest numbers of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) separatists were killed in February and May – 250 and 179, respectively – mostly in the course of Turkish army air raids in northern Iraq, where PKK camps are based.

(h/t Meryl again)

So yes a lot of people have been killed by Israel, but as Ralph Peter points out,

Israel’s attack aircraft appear to have accomplished that part of the mission. As I write, some 300 terrorist dead have been reported in Gaza, while the propaganda-savvy information office of Hamas has strug- gled to prove that 20 civilians died.

Given the fact that Hamas adheres to the terrorist practice of locating command sites, arsenals and training facilities in heavily populated areas, the results suggest that the IDF – supported by first-rate intelligence work – may have executed the most accurate wave of airstrikes in history, with a 15-to-1 terrorist-to-civilian kill ratio.

So despite the cynical tactic that Hamas has adopted of placing its infrastructure in civilian neighborhoods, Israel has minimized civilian deaths as much as possible. The only people who are outraged are Hamas and their various mouthpieces like Nissenbaum.

Given Nissenbaum’s role as a spokesman for Hamas then, his later complaint about Israel doesn’t much move me.

But, as the BBC’s Jo Floto noted last month after Israel first barred journalists from entering Gaza, Israel has joined a notorious and small list of countries preventing reporters from doing their job.

Israel, which prides itself on being the healthiest democracy in the Middle East, joins North Korea, Zimbabwe and Burma in denying media access to a major story.

It’s a cheap shot. First of all, even he acknowledges that he has stringers in Gaza. But again, given Nissenbaum’s history of flacking for terrorists, his “freedom of the press” argument carries no weight with me. If he were serious about reporting I might take his complaints about the closure seriously. But since he abuses his position by defending terrorists who kill Jews rather than reporting, he’s in no position to question the motives of the Israeli government or compare it to the worst tyrannies in the world.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

(In fairness he did observe that Hamas chased out an Israeli reporter.)

See Meryl’s more extensive indictment of media hypocrisy.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

This week, after filing a letter of protest, the Foreign Press Association (of which Mc Clatchy Newspapers is a par t) took the matter to Israel’s Supreme Court and asked the judges t o overturn the ban.

“This blackout of the Gaza Strip is hurting Israel’s image in the eyes of the world and undermines its standing as the only democracy in the Middle East,” the FPA argues in the petition. “The defendants policies, in addition to being illegal and insufferable, hurt Israel and endanger its political nature. To put it plainly, one bad decision is worse than ten potential stories that may not be supportive.”

I understand that there are reasons for Israel to open Gaza to reporters, but this false concern for Israel’s image from a press association strikes me as utter hypocrisy. Nissenbaum’s protests are particularly irksome. If I were convinced of his good faith as a reporter, maybe I’d feel differently, but Nissenbaum himself enjoyed an afternoon in the company of an unrepentant killer – and even apologized for that killer and insists – despite an investigation and readily available evidence to the contrary – that the Israeli army deliberately targeted a reporter.

Or consider Time’s Tim McGirk on the recent unraveling of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

Rocket fire from Gaza had largely stopped during a five-month cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that was brokered by Egypt, but that unraveled on Nov. 4, when Israel raided Gaza to destroy a tunnel it accused Hamas of digging to conduct cross-border raids. Since then, dozens of rockets have been fired at Israel, and the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) have responded with land and air attacks and by halting supplies that were to enter Gaza. Israel has hoped to tighten the screws on Hamas by blocking all but a trickle of aid from reaching Gaza’s 1.5 million stricken inhabitants, leading to what U.N. officials describe as a humanitarian crisis. For the past two weeks, the Israeli military has barred foreign journalists from entering the Palestinian territory to report on the siege.

Now I can tell that in August, Israel suffered at least 11 Qassam strikes and 3 mortar attacks. I don’t believe that I’d call 14 attacks in one month to fit “largely stopped.” Israel’s forbearance is quite a story, one that McGirk is unwilling to consider. And, of course, the description of Gaza in crisis is hardly new.

Nissenbaum and McGirk, of course, aren’t the only reporters in Israel. And it’s possible that their record is worse than most, but Nissenbaum’s complaint is more than a little phony when the job he’s doing is less reporter than propagandist.

And as far as the crisis in concerned it’s interesting to note this:

Over the past few months of relative quiet rockets have been fired from Gaza into Israel as a sporadic reminder of the threat and possible test of the truce. Our Gaza colleagues offered a different take: that those rogue firings were less about the resistance than the burgeoning underground economy. When a rocket is fired, Israel closes the cargo crossing which pushes up demand for smuggled supplies and therefore smuggling profits. Gaza has been known to work in curious ways.

“[B]urgeouning is not exactly how I’d describe an area in a state of “crisis.” And the story raises the question of how strict the Israeli closure is if Janis Mackey Frayer got into Gaza to do this report. Did she go through Egypt?

Even going through Yahoo! News, I see a few items reported from Gaza, so it’s not like there’s a total absence of reporters in Gaza right now.

Like I wrote above, perhaps there is a case to be made for Israel allowing reporters in. But the lack of more reporters traveling to Gaza is hardly a crisis. And the FPA’s and Nissenbaum’s sanctimony is less than convincing. Maybe if more reporters tried actual reporting instead of propagandizing, Israel would be more sensitive to their mission to inform public’s right to know.

UPDATE: Backspin and Elder of Ziyon follow up. The latter writes about the foreign media based in Gaza:

They censor themselves more than the Gaza reporters who live there! After all, who reported on the stories I listed above? Certainly not the foreign media!

I’d add that you should also check out this post from the Elder. Yesterday he blogged about Hamas having secret jails in Gaza, Hamas/Fatah clashes at a Gaza university and Israel’s decision to send more goods into Gaza despite more missiles being shot into Israel. Then re-read Nissenbaum’s complaint. Nissenbaum (and I suspect most of the rest of the foreign media) wouldn’t report on these incidents. They only want to be in Gaza in order to write about Israeli mistakes, not about what goes on every day. That’s why their concern for Israel’s image is so hypocritical.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

How’s that?

The Israeli government stopped helping Al Jazeera after the station aired a birthday celebration for Samir Kuntar, the Lebanese killer freed last month in a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah.

Danny Seaman, the head of Israel’s government press office, called the celebration “unfathomable” and said he would stop helping the station by providing press cards and work visas for its reporters.

Nissenbaum admits that Al Jazeera “apologized” for the celebration, but he doesn’t seem quite clear what Al Jazeera is. At the end of his post Nissenbaum quotes Danny Seaman with the definitive reason for Israel’s refusal to continue enabling Al Jazeera.

“This is a fundamental question as to where Al Jazeera stands,” Seaman told Reuters. “Does it stand with the extremists or is it a professional organization?”

Time and again it has demonstrated that it’s a propaganda organization. Did it escape Nissenbaum’s notice that David Marash quit as Al Jazeera’s anchor a few mohts ago? Or perhaps the classy way it’s going about recruiting conservative commentators?

Nissenbaum shouldn’t be standing up for Al Jazeera, or is it that he shares its worldview and is scared that the Israel government may stop abetting him from spreading propaganda. I don’t know what was filthier, Al Jazeera’s birthday party for Samir Kuntar, or Nissenbaum’s celebration of Kuntar’s release. Al Jazeera, of course, is a propaganda organization, Nissenbaum is supposedly a journalist. Though his treatment of Kuntar and his sympathy for Al Jazeera, makes me wonder.

Crossposted on Soccer Dad.