Media Bias « Yourish.com

10/26/2009

The non-moderate Hamas: All of Jerusalem is Arab and Muslim

Filed under: Hamas, Israel — Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 10:00 am

Jimmy Carter, the EU, and various American State Department officials (as well as presidential aides for the last two administrations) all insist that Hamas will moderate. That Hamas will work with Israel to reach some form of agreement. That the radical talk is just that, talk.

Really?

Following a day of clashes between security forces and Arab rioters in Jerusalem, Damascus-based Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal on Sunday evening stated that the fate of the capital would be determined by force, not negotiations.

“The fate of Jerusalem will be determined only by confrontation and not by the negotiating tables,” Mashaal said in a speech, according to Channel 10.

“The Israelis want to divide al-Aqsa Mosque, and this is not all. They want to hold their religious ceremonies in the mosque … in preparation for demolishing it and building their temple there,” he reportedly said.

In case you were thinking that perhaps he just meant “traditionally Arab” east Jerusalem (which is not; the Jewish Quarter is in “traditionally Arab” east Jerusalem, well, he didn’t. Emphasis mine.

“Jerusalem is all of Jerusalem, not only [the east Jerusalem neighborhood of] Abu-Dis. The Arabs and Muslims are [the city's] residents, and the Zionists have no claim over it,” he said.

And of course, he didn’t call it Jerusalem. He called it “al-Quds.”

And here’s your hypocritical laugh-line of the year:

“Jordan, out of its historical responsibilities in being the custodian of the holy places in Jerusalem, is extremely worried about what is taking place and warns against going ahead with this provocative behavior on the part of Israeli troops,” he reportedly added.

This is a picture of the Jordanian protection of Jewish holy sites in Jerusalem from 1948 to 1967:

And this is the synagogue after Israel captured east Jerusalem and restored the desecrated Jewish holy sites:

Methinks the Jordanian omitted the word “Muslim” before “holy places” in that line. Because Jordan may have been the custodian of the holy places for nineteen years, but it certainly wasn’t a good guardian of Jewish sites. And it wasn’t good for Christians, either.

But hey, let’s not let an opportunity to bash Israel go by unheeded. It’s almost as good as the AP calling the rioters “protesters” in every news story they write about the Temple Mount riots. Check out that incredibly provocative picture at the link. What are they protesting, exactly?

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10/19/2009

Richard Goldstone: Liar, liar, pants on fire

Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Israeli Double Standard Time — Tags: Goldstone Report, Israel, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 12:00 pm

Richard Goldstone is bringing his lies to the pages of the Jerusalem Post. The man has no shame.

Five weeks after the release of the Report of the Fact Finding Mission on Gaza, there has been no attempt by any of its critics to come to grips with its substance. It has been fulsomely approved by those whose interests it is thought to serve and rejected by those of the opposite view. Those who attack it do so too often by making personal attacks on its authors’ motives and those who approve it rely on its authors’ reputations.

There have been many, many attacks on its substance, but the well-respected jurist appears not to have noticed them. And in fact, it is the Goldstone supporters that are using the author’s motives as a means of defense: Since Richard Goldstone is Jewish and a supporter of Israel, the meme goes, the report cannot be biased. But of course, that isn’t true. Neither is Goldstone’s description of the report’s mandate:

Israel could have seized the opportunity provided by the even-handed mandate of our mission and used it as a precedent for a new direction by the United Nations in the Middle East.

This is the mandate issued on January 12:

14. Decides to dispatch an urgent independent international fact-finding mission, to be appointed by the President, to investigate all violations of international human rights law and International Humanitarian Law by the occupying Power, Israel, against the Palestinian people throughout the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly in the occupied Gaza Strip, due to the current aggression, and calls upon Israel not to obstruct the process of investigation and to fully cooperate with the mission;

If you read the entire mandate, there is not a single reference to Hamas. Goldstone may have been told that they would make the mandate “even-handed,” but in practice, it was not, and the report is not. To say that it is is a blatant lie. The UN Human Rights Council did not pass a resolution to send both Hamas and Israeli “war crimes” to the ICC—only Israeli “crimes” are referenced. Goldstone criticized that resolution, but so what? The barn door’s been open for months, and there are no horses left.

Even the press release following Goldstone’s appointment does not specifiy any violations by Hamas.

Today’s appointment comes following the adoption of a resolution by the Human Rights Council at the conclusion of its Special Session on 9 and 12 January convened to address “the grave violations of human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, particularly due to the recent Israeli military attacks against the occupied Gaza Strip.”

The fact that Goldstone thought he had a mandate to investigate both sides makes his one-sided report even more reprehensible. And really, when you read this:

notwithstanding the decision of the government of Israel, we took whatever steps were open to us to obtain information from victims and experts in southern Israel about the effects on their lives of sustained rocket and mortar attacks over a period of years.

And then read this:

Some of the Israeli witnesses who testified before the committee were injured by rocket fire before Operation Cast Lead, but their testimonies were left out of the report.

Dr. Mirela Siderer, a resident of Ashkelon, was severely injured by a Grad missile and is about to undergo her eighth operation.

“I didn’t have high hopes, so I wasn’t very disappointed, but I still feel awful after reading the report,” she said. “They didn’t refer to incidents that occurred before Operation Cast Lead, including my injury.”

You have to wonder: Who does Goldstone think he’s fooling? Does he think Israelis are that stupid? To come into the pages of the Jerusalem Post and think that Israelis won’t know these stories? Or that Goldstone fell asleep when Noam Bedin was testifying?

“When I stood up and started to testify before the judges, Justice Goldstone fell asleep in front of me. It was an embarrassing moment but I continued talking, realizing that I should not have high hopes,” he added.

Really. 93.5% of Israeli Jews think that the Goldstone report is biased. Who does he think he’s kidding?

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09/04/2009

Analyzing the AP anti-Israel bias

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Israel, palestinian politics — Tags: Arab League, Israel, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 1:30 pm

The subtleties of the AP anti-Israel bias are always in evidence, no matter who the writer, no matter what the subject. Witness:

The gist of the article is a debate between Israeli president and former Prime Minister Shimon Peres, and the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. But before we get to all that, we have to have the set-up. First, tar Netanyahu as the one preventing peace because—wait for it—he refuses to stop building settlements.

The difficulty has been compounded by the fact that in March a right-leaning government replaced the previous more moderate one in Israel.

Several months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to accept the principle of a Palestinian state – a position his predecessors had already adopted but his Likud party has not – but said it would have to have limits on its rights to have a military or control its airspace.

Next, give Moussa a chance to respond to the above, but don’t have Peres respond to it. Have Peres talk about a completely different topic.

Then, slam Peres and compliment Moussa, almost in the same breath (but while allowing Moussa to accuse the Israelis of duplicity):

Peres – pushing the boundaries on a role that is meant to be ceremonial and somewhat above the political and diplomatic fray – argued that even the borders initially delineated for the Palestinian state could be considered provisional and ultimately expanded.

“You want us to believe that?” thundered the urbane Moussa. “Another one of the tricks!”

Another way of telling which way the article is biased: There are ten paragraphs that contain quotes or paraphrases by Moussa. There are only six containing Peres’ quotes or paraphrases—and the article is titled “Peres: Palestinian state first, full peace later.”

I think, though, the thing that really got me is describing Moussa as “urbane” right after implying that Peres isn’t acting in his government’s best interest. In point of fact, nobody in Israel is complaining that Peres is overstepping his bounds, or if they have, I haven’t seen it. But don’t let the facts get in the way of a good anti-Israel slap.

The Associated Press: the anti-Israel Energizer bunny. They just never stop.

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09/02/2009

Documenting Reuters anti-Israel bias

Filed under: Media Bias — Tags: Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

It’s a dirty job, but somebody’s got to do it. A new blog is keeping an eye on the Reuters anti-Israel bias. Boy, are they never gonna run out of material for posts. For example:

“We believe our post is accurate”
That was the definitively equivocal reply of Reuters’ AxisMundi Jerusalem editor and Bureau Chief for Israel and the Palestinian territories, Alastair MacDonald, to a reader who had pointed out that Reuters’ correspondent Erika Solomon did not have her facts straight when she claimed that Uri Davis was Jewish:

Yeah. It’s an uphill climb.

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08/19/2009

What if they published a blood libel and nobody rioted?

Filed under: Anti-Semitism, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Religion — Tags: Anti-Semitism, Israel, Media Bias, Palestinians — Meryl Yourish @ 11:30 am

Compare and contrast:

A Swedish newspaper publishes a blood libel, accusing Israelis of taking (and selling) organs from Palestinians. Israelis are outraged. They file paperwork.

Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon filed a formal grievance with the Swedish government Wednesday following a Stockholm newspaper’s report accusing Israel of trading in the stolen organs of Palestinians.

They ask the Swedish government to condemn the hateful lies.

“I demand the Swedish government condemn this groundless article,” said Ayalon.

They threaten to summon the Swedish ambassador.

The Foreign Ministry is reportedly considering summoning the Swedish ambassador and reproving him for his government policies, “Which allow such a hateful publication to go without censure.”

Ouch. Plus, there’s a very angry comment in my previous post (although I seriously doubt any prosecution could occur, as I’m unclear as to what Israeli laws were broken by the publication of this article).

Now, let’s think of another instance where a Nordic nation published something in a newspaper that stirred up controversy. Like, the publishing of a dozen Mohammed cartoons.

Danish Muslim organizations, who objected to the depictions, responded by holding public protests attempting to raise awareness of Jyllands-Posten’s publication. Further examples of the cartoons were soon reprinted in newspapers in more than fifty other countries, further deepening the controversy.

This led to protests across the Muslim world, some of which escalated into violence with police firing on the crowds (resulting in more than 100 deaths, altogether),[1] including setting fire to the Danish Embassies in Syria, Lebanon and Iran, storming European buildings, and desecrating the Danish, Dutch, Norwegian and German flags in Gaza City. While a number of Muslim leaders called for protesters to remain peaceful, other Muslim leaders across the globe, including Mahmoud al-Zahar of Hamas, issued death threats.[2][3] Various groups, primarily in the Western world, responded by endorsing the Danish policies, including “Buy Danish” campaigns and other displays of support. Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen described the controversy as Denmark’s worst international crisis since World War II.[4]

Funny how the most horrific things get published about Jews, in so many different publications, in so many different nations, so often, and yet, Jews don’t set fire to cars or riot or murder people in protest. And of course, there are the usual suspects who will also say that Jews are “overreacting” when they get upset about lies like this one.

It’s telling that the author was interviewed on Israeli radio, and even said that he had no clue whether the allegations were true. But that didn’t stop him from publishing them.

Interviewed on Israel Radio on Wednesday, Bostrom said he was worried by the allegations he reported but could not vouch for their accuracy.

“It concerns me, to the extent that I want it to be investigated, that’s true. But whether it’s true or not – I have no idea, I have no clue,” he told the station.

That’s how it works these days. Prove you didn’t kidnap Palestinians and steal their organs, Israel. Bostrom is shocked, shocked I say, at being called an anti-Semite. He’s not anti-Semitic. Just ask him.

I mentioned Der Stürmer in my last post. Here’s an image that Bostrom would probably approve (after stating that he’d want it to be investigated whether or not Jews drain Christian children’s blood and drink it):

Photo of anti-Semitic Nazi rag with blood libel image

Photo of anti-Semitic Nazi propaganda rag Der Stürmer blood libel

Then and now. There’s not much difference. This is why people like Bibi Netanyahu warn that it’s 1939 all over again. The constant demonization and dehumanization of Israelis is sounding a drum that we’ve heard before. The difference, of course, is that this time, we Jews are armed and able to protect ourselves.

Oh, and we’ll write really nasty posts about you when you lie about us. Fear us.

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07/22/2009

The evolution of an anti-Israel AP headline

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Israel, palestinian politics — Tags: Israel, Media Bias, Palestinians — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

See the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel spin in action.

First:

Israel cuts Palestinian tragedy from textbooks
The Israeli government will remove references to what the Palestinians call the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation from textbooks for Arab schoolchildren, the country’s education minister said Wednesday.

The reference to “al-naqba” or catastrophe, what the Palestinian’s call their defeat and exile in the war over Israel’s 1948 creation, was controversially inserted by a dovish education minister for the first time in 2007.

The phrase remains contentious six decades after Israel was founded.

“No other country in the world, in its official curriculum, would treat the fact of its founding as a catastrophe,” Education Minister Gideon Saar told Israel’s parliament on Wednesday.

“What will you do to a teacher who addresses the class and begins to explain what happened to the family of a child who asks?” Ahmad Tibi, an Arab Israeli lawmaker, asked Saar in parliament.

Second: Notice that a quote pops up in the next edition, about “naqba denial”—yet another example of the Palestinians attempting to expropriate terms meaningful to Jews. To compare the removal of a negatively descriptive word (”catastrophe”) regarding the founding of Israel to the denial of the Holocaust is spurious and insulting—but not, apparently, to the AP, which puts it in the lead.

Israel cuts Palestinian tragedy from textbooks
The Israeli government will remove references to what Palestinians call the “catastrophe” of Israel’s creation from textbooks for Arab schoolchildren, the education minister said Wednesday.

The reference to “al-naqba,” the Arabic word catastrophe as Palestinians call their defeat and exile in the war over Israel’s 1948 creation, was controversially inserted by a dovish education minister for the first time in 2007.

The phrase remains contentious six decades after Israel was founded.

“No other country in the world, in its official curriculum, would treat the fact of its founding as a catastrophe,” Education Minister Gideon Saar told Israel’s parliament on Wednesday.

Israeli Arab lawmaker Hana Sweid accused the government of “naqba denial.”

Third:

Israel cuts 1948 ‘catastrophe’ from Arabic texts

The lead is the same. The headline is now using the Palestinian narrative that 1948 was the naqba in the headline, though using the words “what Palestinians call” in the lead to justify their objectivity. The “naqba denial” quote is still there, of course. Your latest version of yellow journalism, courtesy of the Associated Press—which is actually among the least anti-Israel of the mainstream media (cf: Reuters, AFP).

Update: The latest AP version adds an extra anti-Netanyahu graf to the lead, and drops the “naqba” quote to paragraph six as a result. The third paragraph has been given extra, added, anti-Israel value, as well. (The bold is the addition to the paragraph.) Witness:

The phrase remains contentious six decades later, a symptom of the continuing divisions in Israel. Many Israeli Arabs identify politically with their Palestinian counterparts in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result, some Israeli Jews accuse Israeli Arabs of disloyalty to the country.

Israel’s current government, headed by Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-line Likud Party, includes members who favor cracking down on Israeli Arabs by ordering loyalty oaths or even moving them out of Israel.

It just doesn’t get any better than this, eh? Truly, the evolution of the anti-Israel AP narrative is an astonishing thing to behold.

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07/07/2009

Compare and contrast: Purdum on Palin; Purdum on Obama

Filed under: Media Bias, Podcasts, Politics, The One — Tags: Barack Obama, Media Bias, Sarah Palin — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

I’m going to do something very different today. Following is the script from my most recent segment on Shire Network News.

There are the titles and pullquotes to two of Todd Purdum’s Vanity Fair profiles.

Raising Obama
Is he tough enough? That’s the question being asked of Barack Obama. To those who have known the candidate since boyhood, it’s not just those “dreams from my father” that make Obama a contender, but also his mother’s daring, his grandmother’s grit, and his own relentless drive.

It Came from Wasilla
Despite her disastrous performance in the 2008 election, Sarah Palin is still the sexiest brand in Republican politics, with a lucrative book contract for her story. But what Alaska’s charismatic governor wants the public to know about herself doesn’t always jibe with reality. As John McCain’s top campaign officials talk more candidly than ever before about the meltdown of his vice-presidential pick, the author tracks the signs—political and personal—that Palin was big trouble, and checks the forecast for her future.

And here are quotes from the articles. First, Obama:

The Barack Obama who wrote so poignantly of adolescent alienation and the search for racial identity is the same Barack Obama who learned, the hard way, how to deal with the likes of Emil Jones Jr., a man whose cell-phone ring tone is the theme from The Godfather. Obama’s good looks and soft-spoken willingness to ponder aloud some of the inanities of modern politics have masked the hard inner core and unyielding ambition that have long burned beneath the surface shimmer. He is not, and never has been, soft. He’s not laid-back. He’s not an accidental man. His friends and family may be surprised by the rapidity of his rise, but they’re not surprised by the fact of it.

Now, Sarah Palin

Palin is unlike any other national figure in modern American life—neither Anna Nicole Smith nor Margaret Chase Smith but a phenomenon all her own. The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended clan—the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game—give her family a singular status in the rogues’ gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection. Palin’s life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.

That’s some difference. Obama wasn’t compared with Michael Jackson or Al Sharpton. But Purdum felt it relevant to bring up the memory of the first woman elected to both the House and Senate side by side with a publicity whore and Playboy Playmate. Subtle. It’s the writer’s way of getting the reader to compare Palin to Anna Nicole without actually making the comparison. And it also denigrates the memory of Margaret Chase Smith, another female Republican politician.

Purdum says that Obama has a hard inner core and unyielding ambition, but those are good qualities in a man. Palin? The same qualities, but with a very different spin.

It is the story of a political novice with an intuitive feel for the temper of her times, a woman who saw her opportunities and coolly seized them. In every job, she surrounded herself with an insular coterie of trusted friends, took disagreements personally, discarded people who were no longer useful, and swiftly dealt vengeance on enemies, real or perceived.

Does that description sound like anyone who was recently president of the United States? In fact, it sounds like the current office holder, as well as the last two presidents. But when it’s a woman who shows these qualities, well. You know the drill. Man—relentless drive. Woman—narcissistic personality disorder. Republican woman? Superbitch.

The double standard about Sarah Palin is overwhelming, especially when you consider that she really hasn’t done anything much different from any other politician. She’s not a hundred percent truthful? Whoa, shocker! A politician who lies! She’s egotistical? She’s driven? She’s tough on her enemies and rewards her friends? Holy crap, alert the media! We’ve never seen any politicians like that before!

The Palin attack machine will continue for a long time to come, especially if the reason that Sarah quit this week is to ramp up for a run for President. But for now, I’m going to take her at her word. I’d quit, too, if I had to undergo the kind of vicious attacks that she’s been dealing with even now, eight months after she lost her bid for the vice-presidency and went back to Alaska to govern. Can you name another politician that’s been attacked as often, as viciously, and as widely as Sarah Palin?

Neither can I.

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07/05/2009

Uzi Mahnaimi lying about Israel again

Filed under: Iran, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias — Tags: Iran, Israel, Media Bias, Uzi Mahnaimi — Meryl Yourish @ 10:23 am

If it’s a Sunday Times of London piece that declares Israel is about to attack Iran, and the byline contains Uzi Mahnaimi, it must be a bunch of garbage. Filled yet again with anonymous sources—because of course, our old pal Uzi can’t possibly be bothered to find someone who will go on record to back up his incredible claims—we have, once again, a story that is absolutely false. And yet, the Times continues to publish this man. Witness the bullshit:

The head of Mossad, Israel’s overseas intelligence service, has assured Benjamin Netanyahu, its prime minister, that Saudi Arabia would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets flying over the kingdom during any future raid on Iran’s nuclear sites.

Amazing! What a story! And to whom can we credit this fantastic story?

“The Saudis have tacitly agreed to the Israeli air force flying through their airspace on a mission which is supposed to be in the common interests of both Israel and Saudi Arabia,” a diplomatic source said last week.

Although the countries have no formal diplomatic relations, an Israeli defence source confirmed that Mossad maintained “working relations” with the Saudis.

John Bolton, the former US ambassador to the United Nations who recently visited the Gulf, said it was “entirely logical” for the Israelis to use Saudi airspace.

Uh-huh. Notice that he did not actually quote anyone but his anonymous source as saying this is true. Rumors, lies, bullshit—call it what you will, but here’s what the Prime Minister of Israel had to say about it:

The Prime Minister’s office issued a statement in response Sunday morning, saying that “the Sunday Times report is fundamentally false and completely baseless.”

There you go. It’s about as reliable as the lies he published years ago about the “genetic weapon” that Israel was supposedly developing that would kill Arabs and leave Jews alive (both a lie and an impossible weapon to build) that is still being used as a modern blood libel against Israel, and also, he had several articles published about “imminent” attacks that, well, never happened.

My suggestion: If Uzi Mahnaimi tells you it’s sunny out, bring an umbrella. Shame on the Times of London, again, for publishing this serial liar.

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05/30/2009

A partiality test

Filed under: Hamas, Israeli Double Standard Time, Media Bias — Tags: Hamas, Media Bias, Road Map — Meryl Yourish @ 9:38 am

See if you can figure out where, and whom, these quotes come from:

Palestinians watched with hope this week as President Barack Obama called for an Israeli settlement freeze and spoke about the need to move quickly toward statehood alongside President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House.

But despite the clear signal of a shift, there is caution in the West Bank and Gaza as Palestinians judge whether the administration has the mettle to make good on promises which have become all too familiar.

“Obama has new speech, but not yet a strategy,” says Mohammed Khirresh, a Palestinian economist and political analyst, speaking on the sidelines of a Ramallah policy conference sponsored by the Palestinian Center for Media and Research. “The criterion for Obama’s new strategy is whether I can see it on the ground and touch it. Otherwise, it’s empty words.”

Despite his charm and message of change, Obama must still overcome a deficit from decades of failed US policy on mediating an Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Palestinians are weary of a peace process that has been long on talk and short on dividends, and that has eroded the credibility of the president’s diplomatic pulpit. There are also questions whether one president has the political ability to buck decades of US partiality toward Israel.

What do you think? Al Jazeera? The Arab News? Al-Ahram? Reuters?

Nope. The Christian Science Monitor. And the author: Joshua Mitnick. And there’s even more Palestinian propaganda to come:

Still, conditions are less than ideal, because Israel’s right-wing government won’t endorse a two-state solution and because of the ongoing rift with Hamas, a long-time critic of negotiations with Israel.

Because Mr. Abbas is a proponent of diplomacy instead of violence, his political fortune is in large degree tied to Obama’s ability to push Israel to ease restrictions on movement in the West Bank, allow goods into the Gaza Strip, and restart a credible negotiations process.

But wait. There’s even more propaganda: The taming of Hamas.

Even Hamas is sounding politely upbeat. An aide to Hamas’s Gaza leader, Ismail Haniyeh, said that the Islamic militants seek to foster good relations with the West, including the US, which lists the group as a terrorist organization.

“We have no other choice,” said the aide, Ahmed Yousef, addressing the Ramallah gathering by video link. “We hope that the new administration will take a more balanced approach in solving the conflict.”

Funny, that’s not what Hamas’ spokesman is telling the rest of the media:

Meanwhile, Islamic Hamas movement, bitter rival of Abbas, said the meeting between Abbas and Obama was disappointing and did not bring any new thing.

Hamas spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said his movement saw Abbas’s commitment to the Road Map as “an uprooting of the resistance and a liquidation of Hamas” as the plan calls on the PNA to dismantle the armed Palestinian groups.

“All the Palestinian factions rejected the Road Map except Abbas,” Barhoum said, adding that Obama’s statements were “insufficient wishes that are no longer useful under the Zionist increasing military escalation.”

Hamas wants Abbas to halt peace negotiations with Israel, and to adopt armed resistance against Israel to pressurize the Jewish state into giving the Palestinians their legitimate rights back.

It makes you wonder how blind these so-called Mideast experts truly are, that they can’t even keep up with other news organizations’ reporting of the same topic. But of course, it isn’t blindness. It’s deliberate obfuscation because the above quote doesn’t fit Mitnick’s—and the Christian Science Monitor’s—narrative. That narrative, of course, is that it’s not Palestinian terrorism, anti-Israel (and anti-Jewish) incitement, and the refusal to compromise that is responsible for the lack of peace. No. It’s Israel in general, and settlements in particular.

You really have to wonder what the CSM’s problem is. As for Josh Mitnick, well—I’m guessing he’s one of Snoopy’s AssaJews.

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01/22/2009

New UN and Reuters standard for evidence: Feelings

Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome, Media Bias, United Nations — Tags: Israel, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 3:31 pm

If you can find a shred of hard evidence in this supposed news report, I will print out this post and eat it.

There is evidence that Israel committed war crimes during its 22-day campaign in the Gaza Strip and there should be an independent inquiry, UN investigator Richard Falk said on Thursday. The mental anguish of the civilians who suffered the assault is so great that the entire population of Gaza could be seen as casualties, said Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

I do believe we’ve found the Andrew Sullivan of the UN. Let’s talk hyperbole, shall we?

Falk, speaking by phone from his home in California, said compelling evidence that Israel’s actions in Gaza violated international humanitarian law required an independent investigation into whether they amounted to war crimes.

And what is that evidence?

“I believe that there is the prima facie case for reaching that conclusion,” he told a Geneva news conference.

Excuse me. What is that evidence, please?

Falk said Israel had made no effort to allow civilians to escape the fighting.

Once again, what is that evidence?

“In my view the UN charter, and international law, does not give Israel the legal foundation for claiming self-defense,” he said.

One last time. Can we see the evidence, please?

Falk said the entire Gaza population, which had been trapped in a war zone with no possibility to leave as refugees, may have been mentally scarred for life. If so, the definition of casualty could be extended to the entire civilian population.

I see. In other words, there is no evidence of war crimes, and Reuters is passing along a load of crap as news. But wait. What would a Richard Falk statement be without a reference to Godwin’s Law?

“To lock people into a war zone is something that evokes the worst kind of international memories of the Warsaw Ghetto, and sieges that occur unintentionally during a period of wartime,” Falk, who is Jewish, said, referring to the starvation and murder of Warsaw’s Jews by Nazi Germany in World War Two.

(Falk is not a Jew. He’s an Ex-Jew. There’s a difference. But you guys can have him. We don’t want him. Please. Take him.) To sum up: There is no physical evidence of war crimes. There is only the accusation of such by Richard Falk, who has already stated his complete revulsion for the Jewish State and compared Israel to the Nazis on several occasions. Once again, the demonization and delegitimization of Israel is carried out by the United Nations, its tools, and the ever-ready uncritical world media. If only Reuters would apply the same critical standards to stories about Israel as they do to, say, stories about George W. Bush. If only.

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01/20/2009

AP: Passing along Palestinian white phosphorus lies

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Israel Derangement Syndrome — Tags: Gaza, Israel, Media Bias, White Phosphorus — Meryl Yourish @ 9:30 am

The AP is helping the world to charge Israel with war crimes. They’re accusing Israel of dropping white phosphorus shells on Gaza without finding any physical evidence whatsoever—but they have plenty of Palestinian experts telling them it happened. Hey, even the Palestinian children are able to tell you when a shell is made of white phosphorus and when it’s just another shell. And the headline? Sheer propaganda.

Gaza family returns home after phosphorus blast
All were victims of a single white phosphorus shell dropped on their home, survivors and doctors said.

“It’s been two weeks and it’s still burning,” said Mahmoud Abu Halima, 20, picking up a bit of phosphorus shrapnel in the hallway. He rubbed the brownish fragment against the floor and it gave off an eery green glow followed by acrid smoke that sent everyone coughing.

White phosphorus is an incendiary agent used to illuminate targets at night or create a smoke screen for day attacks. When a person comes into contact with it, it can cause horrific injuries. It ignites upon striking the skin and burns straight through or until it is cut off from oxygen.

Interesting. The Palestinian picked up a fragment that supposedly ignites upon striking the skin, and yet it did not ignite when he picked it up. It did, however, ignite against the floor as he rubbed it. Why it didn’t burst into flame on contact with his hands, the writer didn’t say. But later in the article, white phosphorus was doing exactly what it’s supposed to do:

In the town of Beit Lahiya, boys exposed a lump of white phosphorus previously covered by sand. It burst into flames as they kicked it playfully down the road.

Really, make up your mind, AP. Is it white phosphorous, or isn’t it?

Yes:

The United Nations says white phosphorus was fired at two U.N. schools packed with refugees during the fighting.

No:

Israel says it only used the explosive as flares or smoke screens to protect tanks during heavy combat, and does its best to avoid civilian injuries. The international Red Cross said last week that it had no evidence to suggest the incendiary agent was being used improperly or illegally.

Yes:

But a human rights group condemned its use in places filled with civilians such as Gaza.

There is absolutely no scientific evidence that these are white phosphorous burns. There is only anecdotal evidence from people who have no proof whatsoever, and that includes the Palestinian doctors. Look at this doctor’s quote, which is placed in the article in such a way as to make you think it is about the burn victim’s wounds, but reads like a reporter asking the doctor to describe white phosphorous burns.

His mother, Salima, 44, lay badly wounded in a ward of Shifa Hospital in central Gaza City. “I was burned by the smoke, it came like a fountain,” she said, describing how the chemical burst in all directions after hitting her living room.

Doctors at Shifa Hospital said Salima’s wounds at first appeared superficial when she was brought in.

“But it eats at the flesh, it digs deeper and gets to the bone,” said doctor Nafiz Abu Shahbah. “The whole body becomes toxic,” said the doctor, who heads the hospital’s burn unit.

That sounds like white phosphorus all right. And the AP adds the doctor’s qualifications to make you think that he really, really knows what he’s talking about. Except he still hasn’t conducted any tests to find out whether or not the burns were caused by white phosphorus.

Abu Shahbah, a doctor trained in Egypt, Scotland and Virginia who’s headed the Shifa ward for the past 15 years, said he believes the wounds of the Abu Halimas and hundreds of similar cases treated here were inflicted by white phosphorus shells.

Belief is not proof. There are tests that can be done that will prove whether or not the woman is suffering from white phosphorus burns. Those same tests could be made on the burning chunks that give off that “eerie glow.” Or maybe they could just look things up on Wikipedia.

Burning WP produces a hot, dense white smoke. Most forms of smoke are not hazardous in the kinds of concentrations produced by a battlefield smoke shell. Exposure to heavy smoke concentrations of any kind for an extended period (particularly if near the source of emission) does have the potential to cause illness or even death.

WP smoke irritates the eyes and nose in moderate concentrations. With intense exposures, a very explosive cough may occur. However, no recorded casualties from the effects of WP smoke alone have occurred in combat operations and to date there are no confirmed deaths resulting from exposure to phosphorus smoke.

Interesting. Once again, it takes almost no effort to actually research a subject and disprove the claims of the Palestinians that are passed along uncritically passes on the accusations of Palestinians as if they were scientific fact.

As for that “eerie green glow”? I’m calling bullshit on it.

Phosphorus exists in several allotropic forms including white (or yellow), red, and black (or violet). White phosphorus has two modifications. Ordinary phosphorus is a waxy white solid. When pure, it is colourless and transparent. It is insoluble in water, but soluble in carbon disulphide. It catches fire spontaneously in air, burning to P4O10, often misnamed as phosphorus pentoxide. When exposed to sunlight, or when heated in its own vapour to 250°C, it is converted to the red variety. This form does not ignite spontaneously and it is a little less dangerous than white phosphorus.

There is, however, one piece of solid evidence that a white phosphorus rocket was fired during the Gaza war. By Hamas, at Israel.

Palestinian militants fired a phosphorus rocket at Israel for the first time yesterday, one of 17 fired into Israel as fighting entered its 19th day. The phosphorus rocket exploded in an open field in the western Negev. No injuries or damage were reported.

The world media assault on Israel continues. Watch this story take wings and fly, in spite of its blatant lack of facts.

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01/16/2009

Hamas refuses truce, media refuses to notice

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Gaza, Hamas, Israel — Tags: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Media Bias, War — Meryl Yourish @ 9:00 am

It’s amazing how the AP can supply the Jerusalem Post with the information that Hamas will not accept the cease fire in a small item, but cannot put that same information in its main story that goes out over thousands of newswires.

Hamas’s top political chief says his movement will not accept Israel’s demands for a cease-fire and insists the siege on Gaza must be lifted before Hamas will halt rocket attacks.

Khaled Mashaal has asked a gathering of Arab leaders in the Qatari capital on Friday to back Hamas in its demands, to announce a boycott of Israel and cut off any ties with the Jewish state.

Mashaal says Hamas is sticking by its demands that a border openings into the Gaza Strip must be opened immediately before it will stop rocket attacks.

He says Hamas “will not accept Israel’s conditions” for a cease-fire. Israel has demanded a total halt to Hamas rockets and guarantees Hamas cannot rearm.

The AP can, however, include in its main story the call by the UN Secretary General for a unilateral Israeli cease fire. In fact, it titles that story “UN chief urges unilateral Israeli cease-fire.” Just in case you missed the fact that the world is calling on Israel to cease its fire, but not Hamas. And the AP also make sure that it drops the Israeli reasons for refusal down below the third paragraph, knowing full well that most local papers include only the first three to five paragraphs of an AP wire story in their “World News” sections. Take a look at the first three grafs.

The U.N. chief urged Israel Friday to declare a unilateral cease-fire in Gaza, but Israel rebuffed the idea as its diplomats headed for Egypt and the United States in what appeared to be a final push toward a truce.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon floated the idea during a visit to the West Bank on his Mideast mission to try to stop Israel’s three-week-old offensive against Hamas militants who have been firing rockets from Gaza for years.

“I strongly urge Israeli leadership and government to declare a cease-fire unilaterally,” Ban said from Ramallah, the seat of the West Bank government of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, a fierce rival of Hamas. “It’s time to think about a unilateral cease-fire from the Israeli government.”

Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev dismissed the idea.

“I don’t believe that there’s a logical expectation in the international community that Israel unilaterally cease fire while Hamas would continue to target cities, trying to kill our people,” he said.

Interestingly, the AP does not quote Ban on calling on Hamas to cease its fire unilaterally. Nor is there any report of Ban going to Syria to talk to Khaled Mashaal about stopping the rocketing of the Israeli civilian population. Not that I expect him to. The world has never really tried to stop the enemies of the Jews from destroying the Jews, and it never will. That would be why the State of Israel was established.

But the good news is: Hamas’ irredentism is going to allow the IDF to do its job properly this time around. The rockets hit more Israeli civilians today. And they show no signs of stopping. The job isn’t finished.

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01/13/2009

Hamas to CSM: We won’t stop firing rockets, even with a truce

Filed under: Gaza, Hamas, Media Bias, Terrorism — Tags: Gaza, Hamas, Media Bias, War — Meryl Yourish @ 5:00 pm

Hamas is stating flatly that they will never stop attacking Israel.

Abu Marzook: Hamas has held the same position since Israel’s aggression began. We have three conditions for any peace initiative coming from any state. First of all, the aggression of the Israelis should stop. All of the [border crossings] should be opened, including the gate of Rafah between the Gaza Strip and Egypt. Finally, Israel has to withdraw from the Gaza strip. We are not saying we will stop firing rockets from the Gaza strip to Israel. We are only talking about stopping the aggression from the Israelis against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

When others talk about a cease-fire, they are saying all military operations should stop. But we are sending a message [by firing rockets, which is:] “We will not surrender. We have to fight the Israelis and we will win this battle.” We know we are going to lose a lot of people from our side, but we are going to win inshallah [God willing].

If that name sounds familiar to you, it’s because the Los Angeles Times let Marzook use their op-ed page to present his lies that Hamas is an organization that Israel simply refuses to treat with. Seven days ago, Marzook wrote this:

The truce failed because Israel will not open Gaza’s borders, because Israel would rather be a jailer than a neighbor, and because its intransigent leadership forestalls Palestinian destiny and will not make peace with history.

Yesterday, he said this:

We are not saying we will stop firing rockets from the Gaza strip to Israel. We are only talking about stopping the aggression from the Israelis against the civilian population in the Gaza Strip.

Funny how the world manages to turn its eyes away from those facts.

“We are all Hamas.” That incredibly stupid slogan needs to be changed. The next time you hear it chanted, substitute “We are all stupid for supporting a terrorist, rejectionist organization” and you’ll be closer to the truth.

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01/07/2009

The media’s high dudgeon over Gaza ban

Filed under: Gaza, Israel — Tags: Media Bias — Soccerdad @ 9:00 am

In his post about the world’s lust for Jewish moral failure, Jeffrey Goldberg writes:

One story the media isn’t telling, because it’s impossible to get this story in these circumstances (especially because Israel stupidly won’t allow foreign reporters into Gaza) is how much resentment the Hamas policy of using Palestinians as human shields causes among Gaza civilians.

While I agree and have blogged that Hamas may actually be losing support among their constituents despite what the media say – see this recent story too – I don’t think that it’s stupid for Israel to restrict foreign reporters into Gaza. Why would Goldberg expect them to tell the story he saw? They haven’t in the past.

Since at least 2005, for example, Hamas has been smuggling increasingly sophisticated materiel into Gaza and yet there have been precious few reports about how this threat grew. I didn’t learn that Hamas had built a network of underground bunkers from a newspaper, but from a think tank. The media were filled with many stories about the deprivation suffered in Gaza – even many that were untrue – and most blamed Israel. Little or nothing was reported to suggest that perhaps the people of Gaza were suffering because Hamas chose to devote its resources to increasing its terror threat, rather than the standard of living of its citizens.

Of course press restrictions bother Samir Kuntar’s BFF, Dion Nissenbaum. Of course why anyone should listen to a fellow who writes press releases for an unrepentant child killer is beyond me. Still there are media folks who are bothered.

Ethan Bronner of the New York Times is one. (via memeorandum)

Like all wars, this one is partly about public relations. But unlike any war in Israel’s history, in this one the government is seeking to entirely control the message and narrative for reasons both of politics and military strategy.

“This is the result of what happened in the 2006 Lebanon war against Hezbollah,” said Nachman Shai, a former army spokesman who is writing a doctoral dissertation on Israel’s public diplomacy. “Then, the media were everywhere. Their cameras and tapes picked up discussions between commanders. People talked on live television. It helped the enemy and confused and destabilized the home front. Today, Israel is trying to control the information much more closely.”

In his devastating critique of the role the media played in undermining Israel in its war against Hezbollah in 2006, Marvin Kalb wrote (.pdf):

Add one other crucial ingredient to this journalistic wartime stew of charge and countercharge—and that was the Internet. This was a live war, in which the information battlefield played a central role. Here the Israelis suffered from the openness of their democratic society. They succumbed to the public pressures of live 24/7 coverage. They couldn’t keep a secret. Hezbollah, on the other hand, controlled its message with an iron grip. It had one spokesman and no leaks. Hezbollah did not have to respond to criticism from bloggers, and it could always count on unashamedly sympathetic Arab reporters to blast Israel for its “disproportionate” military attack against Lebanon.

The subtitle of Kalb’s report is “The Media As A Weapon in Asymmetrical Conflict” an implicit acknowledgment that the media during the war served to help Hezbollah. So Israel has learned from bitter experience that controlling the media is necessary for its military success. And I don’t recall reporters complaining 2 and a half years ago that Hezbollah controlled the information they were getting. They were all too happy to act as amplifiers for Hezbollah.

Back to Bronner.

Foreign reporters deny that their work in Gaza has been subject to Hamas censorship or control. Unable to send foreign reporters into Gaza, the international news media have relied on Palestinian journalists based there for coverage.

Have you heard of Alan Johnston? Or of Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig?

And it isn’t just a few isolated incidents.

But it seems that many Israelis accept Mr. Seaman’s assessment and shed no tears over the restrictions, despite repeated protests by the Foreign Press Association of Israel, including on Tuesday.

Given the media’s record, this reaction is hardly surprising.

This attitude has been helped by supportive Israeli news media whose articles have been filled with “feelings of self-righteousness and a sense of catharsis following what was felt to be undue restraint in the face of attacks by the enemy,” according to a study of the first days of media coverage of the war by a liberal but nonpartisan group called Keshev, the Center for the Protection of Democracy in Israel.

But those self-righteous feelings were not universal. Surely you could read Gideon Levy or Amira Hess in Ha’aretz. And of course this begs the question if there’s a parallel group in Gaza that critiques the official media there. But still given the threat, I fail to understand what is wrong with feelings of self-righteousness. Is openness necessarily equated with being self-critical?

On Tuesday, the press association released a statement saying, “The unprecedented denial of access to Gaza for the world’s media amounts to a severe violation of press freedom and puts the state of Israel in the company of a handful of regimes around the world which regularly keep journalists from doing their jobs.”

Oh please. Again where were all these journalists when Hamas was building its threat. Yaacov Lozowick notes that the media are ill-prepared to understand what they are reporting anyway.

And yet, although for the past ten days I’ve been focusing intensely and extensively on this operation, it’s only in the past two or three days that I feel I’m beginning to understand what is going on; even now there are large gaps in the picture, and lots of fog of war. The possibility that reporters with deadlines to meet – even Israeli ones, all the others even more so – could march into the battle zone and have anything useful to tell us, is, frankly, remote. The best they’d be able to do is point at ruble, recent or not, and breathlessly tell about the tremendous havoc the IDF is wreaking; then they’d troop off to the Shifa hospital in Gaza ind interview the civilian casualties (alas, there are many of them) without ever recognizing which of the uniformed personnel are hiding Hamas leaders, nor where the steps down to the bunker are.

In other words the press association would benefit from a little humility.

Back to Bronner.

Israelis and their supporters think that such quick descriptions fail to explain the vital context of what has been happening — years of terrorist rocket fire on civilians have gone largely unanswered, and a message had to be sent to Israel’s enemies that this would go on no longer, they say. The issue of proportionality, they add, is a false construct because comparing death tolls offers no help in measuring justice and legitimacy.

There are other ways to construe the context of this conflict, of course. But no matter what, Israel’s diplomats know that if journalists are given a choice between covering death and covering context, death wins. So in a war that they consider necessary but poorly understood, they have decided to keep the news media far away from the death.

That’s really the argument in a nutshell. Unfortunately Bronner’s not done.

John Ging, an Irishman who directs operations in Gaza for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, entered Gaza on Monday as journalists were kept out. He told Palestinian reporters in Gaza that the policy was a problem.

“For the truth to get out, journalists have to get in,” he said.

John Ging, of course, being an official of the UN doesn’t even have a passing familiarity with the truth. Here he’s talking about yesterday’s Israeli strike against mortar firing terrorist near a UN school.

Further on in the story we find out what Ging left out:

Israeli military officials said soldiers operating in the area around the Jabalya refugee camp in northern Gaza came under mortar fire and responded by targeting the source: the U.N.-run al-Fakhora School. Ging, the U.N. official in Gaza, said that all U.N. facilities are clearly marked with flags and that the Israeli military has been given precise Global Positioning System coordinates.

“When you’re fired at, you have to fight back,” said reserve Brig. Gen. Ilan Tal, a military spokesman.

Tal said two known Hamas gunmen were killed in the Israeli strike just outside the school, in addition to members of a mortar squad.

U.N. officials said they did not know whether fighters had been in the school, and wanted the matter investigated.

I’m sure they didn’t know. This isn’t the first time it happened.

(The Washington Post leaves out a key bit of the story that the NYT included – h/t Barry Rubin

A young witness from Jabaliya, Ibrahim Amen, 16, said that he had seen one of the militants, whom he identified as Abu Khaled Abu Asker, in the area of the school right before the attack.

Ibrahim said he saw the militant after he answered calls for volunteers to pile sand around the camp “to help protect the resistance fighters.” Ibrahim went to pile sand near the school with his brother, Iyad, 20, who was then injured by the Israeli mortar fire.

Still I expect that most of the time most reporters would ignore the detail that the NYT included.)

For the most part I expect that the media would make itself useful to UN officials and Hamas officials and question everything that Israel did. So I see no great loss with the lack of media coverage. Nor, given what they’ve failed to report do they have any moral right to question Israel’s position.

Treppenwitz puts it very well:

You have demonstrated that you have no contextual or historical background for covering this conflict. You have also made it clear you have no desire to acquire either. You will inevitably send in ‘journalists’ who don’t know the geography, language, culture or history of either side in this conflict, forcing them to rely on unreliable (and biased) local sources and ‘fixers’ to supply the meat of their stories. There are already Palestinian journalists inside Gaza. Your stories are going to end up echoing their propaganda, so why not just take their feed?

UPDATE: More from Noah Pollak:

Journalists who abjure reporting the vital details of this story should be called what they are — activists masquerading as reporters.

UPDATE II: Yaacov Lozowick:

The non-antisemitic media however, say, the New York Times, will also never really tell the story, because it contradicts one of the meta-explanations with which most people in this generation understand reality: the cycle of violence myth. According to this canard, hatred begets hatred, violence begets violence, and the only conceivable way to put an end to them is to desist one-sidedly and be nice, so as to start the opposite cycle of brotherly love or some such bunk. Using reverse engineering, this means that if the Palestinians hate the Israelis that badly, it must be the result of things the Israelis did in previous stages of the cycle: Blockades, retreating from Gaza without coordination with Hamas, putting down two intifadas, settlements, coming to Palestine in the first place, snubbing Mohammad, killing Jesus, eating that apple…. whatever. And since the Israelis have such an awful record of being nasty to the Palestinians, even if the Palestinians also played the cycle-of-violence game (remember, it’s the NYT, not the Guardian), the Palestinians can’t snap out of it; moreover, putting more pressure on them, using more violence against them, can only have one result. It will reinforce the hatred and add fuel to the cycle.

This is what the non-antisemitic media really believes, as does most of their public. Finding evidence that the Israeli violence is giving the Palestinian populace pause, that it could shake them out of their fantasies and put them on the road to rationality so as to figure out a better way of life – this can’t be said, because it can’t be true, because it would destroy an entire Weltanschauung in which most people have invested.

That’s what too many of them are and that’s why the ban is correct.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.

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AP confirms Hamas terrorists fired from UN school

Filed under: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Gaza, Media Bias, War — Meryl Yourish @ 7:00 am

The AP buried the information after the fifth paragraph, where it would not get picked up by tomorrow’s World News sections in your local newspaper, but they have independent confirmation that Hamas terrorists were firing from the UN school that got hit by Israeli tank fire yesterday.

Israel’s military said its shelling at the school – the deadliest single episode since Israeli ground forces invaded Gaza on Saturday after a week of air bombardment – was a response to mortar fire from within the school and said Hamas militants were using civilians as cover.

Two residents of the area who spoke with The Associated Press by telephone said they saw a small group of militants firing mortar rounds from a street near the school, where 350 people had gathered to get away from the shelling. They spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.

And then, buried waaay down in the article, is this information. The AP obviously felt this wasn’t important, what with it actually being information that proves Israel didn’t fire at civilians indiscriminately.

An Israeli military statement said it received intelligence that the dead at the girls school included Hamas operatives, among them members of a rocket-launching squad. It identified two of them as Imad Abu Askar and Hassan Abu Askar.

Two residents who spoke to an AP reporter by phone said the two brothers were known to be low-level Hamas militants. They said a group of militants – one of them said four – were firing mortar shells from near the school.

An Israeli shell targeted the men, but missed and they fled, the witnesses said. Then another three shells landed nearby, exploding among civilians, they said, refusing to allow their names to be published because they feared for their safety.

But of course they bury this information. Because it proves that Hamas is committing war crimes—and that just doesn’t fit the anti-Israel narrative.

Of course, you won’t find this on CNN. That is, you have no independent confirmation. Just a story that manages to make you think that the IDF is lying when it says they were targeting terrorists.

And the anti-Israel narrative continues.

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01/06/2009

Barbarism in the Congo, ignored

Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Gaza, Media Bias, War — Meryl Yourish @ 12:00 pm

Why are unintentional Palestinian civilian deaths so much more important than actual massacres that took place in Africa?

Attackers wielding machetes hacked to death dozens of people at a church in remote eastern Congo, witnesses said Monday, and the Ugandan army accused the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels of the massacre.

A European aid worker said more than 100 people are reported to have been killed in the attack the day after Christmas and that the Congolese military put the number dead at 120 to 150.

Why the obsession with the Palestinian death toll, and the utter disregard for the death toll of the deliberate massacre of Africans in the Congo?

Three African nations are deploying troops to remote eastern Congo after reports that Ugandan rebels killed more than 400 people in a series of massacres since Christmas, officials said Wednesday.

A Catholic charity, Caritas, cited reports by its staff in the region that the Ugandan rebel Lord’s Resistance Army has killed hundreds of people since Dec. 25. The rebels and the Ugandan government have accused each other of being behind recent attacks in the remote area of Congo, where the rebels have bases.

Why ignore the brutality in the Congo and concentrate only on the deaths of children in Gaza?

The rebel group has waged one of Africa’s longest and most brutal wars for the last two decades. In the past, aid and rights groups have accused the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels of cutting off the lips of civilians and forcing thousands of children to serve as soldiers or sex slaves. The conflict has spilled out of northern Uganda and into Sudan and Congo.

Why is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict weighted so much more than the many conflicts in Africa that has caused the deaths of millions civilians?

Jack’s friend has the answer.

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01/04/2009

In search of objective reporting

Filed under: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Gaza, Media Bias, War — Meryl Yourish @ 11:00 am

CNN does not disappoint.

The headline: Israeli forces push deeper into Gaza; death toll rises

In the summary: NEW: At least 24 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza Sunday, sources say

The context: None.

The AP: Accepting Palestinian casualty figures blindly while pretending that they’re actually using objective sources and confirmations.

Israeli ground troops and tanks cut swaths through the Gaza Strip early Sunday, cutting the coastal territory into two and surrounding its biggest city as the new phase of a devastating offensive against Hamas militants gained momentum.

The military used overwhelming firepower from tanks, artillery and aircraft to protect the advancing soldiers, and Gaza officials said at least 31 civilians were killed in the onslaught. The military said troops killed several dozen militants, but Gaza officials could confirm only four dead — in part because rescue teams could not reach the battle zones.

Reuters: Oh, please. They’re not even pretending to be objective anymore.

Israeli troops and tanks split the Gaza Strip and ringed its main city on Sunday in an offensive against Hamas militants but civilians trapped in the Palestinian enclave suffered more bloodshed.

Bloomberg News: Finally, a somewhat objective piece.

MSNBC: The headline and subhead say it all.

Israeli forces bisect Gaza, surround biggest city
500 Palestinians killed in just over a week; Hamas rockets slay 4 Israelis

The rest of the story is AP. But the subhead is all MSNBC.

Fox News: What’s that I see? Objectivity? Can.t be. The lead:

Israeli ground troops and tanks cut swaths through the Gaza Strip early Sunday, dividing the coastal territory into three parts in an effort to prevent Hamas militants from accessing weapons.

Israeli defense officials told FOX News that an estimated 30 Hamas militants had been killed in the incursion so far, though precise numbers are difficult to pin down.

Israel’s army also announced that a soldier was killed in the fighting on Sunday — the first Israeli fatality in the ground offensive launched late Saturday

Yes, it can be. Objectivity.

Fox wins.

Update to my readers who are getting here from the CNN article: I’m trying to present the side that you never see—particularly by watching CNN. Try looking around and reading some of the other posts. There are plenty of contrasts to the stories you’ve been getting. And they’re all true. I post nothing that I can’t back up with facts.

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Fight CNN propaganda

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 9:13 am

CNN is asking for first-hand reports. To my Israeli readers: Click here and write about your experience with rocket and terror attacks.

Share photos. Do what you can to fight the anti-Israel propaganda.

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01/03/2009

The CNN take

Filed under: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Gaza, Media Bias, War — Meryl Yourish @ 5:24 pm

After watching Christiane Amanpour on and off for the past few hours, as well as the people she’s interviewed (fellow CNN reporters too), the CNN position is clear: Israel is bombing a densely-populated civilian area, and no matter what else happens, or why that occurred, that is the most important issue. She goes on and on about how many Palestinian casualties there are and then says “and only X Israeli casualties in X time”.

The CNN bias is clear and obvious: The poor, poor, pitiful Pals are being terrorized and brutalized by the Israeli war machine.

I think I’ll pass on any more CNN-viewing today.

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12/29/2008

From the comments: The world’s hypocrisy

Filed under: Media Bias, Terrorism — Tags: Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 10:00 am

This deserves to be elevated from the comments so everyone can see it. Thanks, Charles.

Just did a quick Google and came up with this recent article (from a Russian paper):

Over 670 Kurdish rebels killed in Turkey this year

ANKARA, December 11 (RIA Novosti) – 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.

The Turkish military said over 300 acts of violence had been prevented by army units as part of counterterrorism operations in the southeast of the country, and about 500 kilograms of explosives, 55 antipersonnel mines, and an assortment of weapons and ammunition were seized.

The PKK, considered a terrorist organization by the EU, the U.S. and many other countries, has been fighting for an autonomous ethnic Kurd state in southeast Turkey for nearly 25 years. The conflict has claimed over 40,000 lives

Numbers that make the Israel-Palestinian conflict pale by comparison. Yet I bet most otherwise avid news watchers are actually unaware of the scope of that conflict.

Guess the BBC was busy reporting on Wimbledon.

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12/27/2008

The mainstream media: Hamas press flacks

Filed under: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Media Bias, War — Meryl Yourish @ 3:31 pm

You won’t find this quote by Ehud Olmert outside the Israeli media, at least, not at the time of this post. I can’t find it.

“Israel has done all it could to preserve the ceasefire with Hamas, but our desire for quiet was met with terror,” Olmert said. Olmert added that Israel “is not itching for a fight, but will not back down from one either.”

You’ll find plenty of quotes from Hamas and Palestinians. You’ll find quotes from world leaders condemning the attack. But you won’t find the above. Because after all, why give Israel’s side of the story when you can get lots of pictures of screaming Palestinians, even though most of the hits today were on terrorists?

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Lessons learned: Israel’s PR blitz

Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Fauxtrography, Gaza, Israel, Media Bias, War — Meryl Yourish @ 12:21 pm

Israel did learn its lesson from the Lebanon war, and especially in regard to the Hezbullah propaganda machine.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni on Saturday instructed the Foreign Ministry to take emergency measures to adapt Israel’s international public relations to the ongoing escalation in the Gaza Strip.

Livni instructed senior ministry officials to open an aggressive and diplomatic international public relations campaign, in order to gain greater international support for Israel Defense Forces operations in the Gaza Strip.

Livni instructed ministry officials currently on vacation in Israel to return immediately to their posts abroad, and to immediately mount public relations campaigns in their station countries, focusing on local media and public officials.

But wait, there’s more!

Livni will hold a series of talks with foreign officials in the coming days, in which she will attempt to explain the rationale for the expanded IDF operations in the Gaza Strip.

The Foreign Ministry is also looking to recruit speakers of foreign languages, in particular Arabic, Italian, Spanish, and German, in order to expand Israel’s public relations campaign with the representatives of foreign media outlets currently in Israel.

An international media broadcast outlet will be opened in Sderot on Sunday, and the Foreign Ministry will organize a series of tours of Sderot and the Gaza envelope communities for foreign media and diplomatic figures.

That’s pretty interesting, because if the world media comes to Sderot and Hamas doesn’t know the schedule, it’s likely they’ll get to experience the rockets first-hand. Which may be exactly the point of holding tours of Sderot.

We shall see if this PR effort works. So far, the world seems oblivious to the reasons why Israel bombed every single police station in Gaza. Especially this moron.

That threshold was lowered considerably by yesterday’s operation when, for the first time, Israel targeted groups of Hamas soldiers and policemen not involved in active operations.

Membership alone of the security structures of Hamas was yesterday turned by Israel into grounds for attack. To put on a Hamas police baseball cap is to make oneself a target.

This means that any Hamas traffic cop on a street corner in Gaza – or manning a makeshift ‘border’ checkpoint – can expect to be attacked.

No matter if they are not directly involved in attacks on Israel, they can regard themselves as at risk.

Right. Because Hamas policemen are just innocent bystanders. It’s not like they’re, gee, I dunno, members of a terrorist group or something. And it’s not like Palestinian policemen have never been involved in terror attacks. Oh. Wait.

Meantime, here’s a video that I think is rife with fauxtography. You folks take a look at it and see what you think. I think that except possibly for the last guy with the hole in his pants, they’re all faking it. Check 00:40, 1:09, 1:26 (seems to be the same guy as at 00:40) and 1:35. Or just watch the whole thing. Palestinian propaganda? I’m thinking yes.

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12/24/2008

News media can’t slam Israel for Bethlehem this year—oh. Wait.

Filed under: Gaza, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Bethlehem, Gaza, Israel, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 6:17 pm

Instead of the “Israel is killing Christmas” stories this year, the news services are serving up a plate of “Bethlehem is going like gangbusters, BUT—Gaza really sucks, d00dz.”

Witness:

Christmas in Bethlehem festive, Gaza violent
Christians celebrated Bethlehem’s merriest Christmas in eight years Wednesday, with hotels booked solid, Manger Square bustling with families and Israeli and Palestinian forces cooperating to make things run smoothly.

The festivities in the West Bank town contrasted sharply with Hamas-run Gaza. While revelers in Bethlehem launched pink fireworks from a rooftop, militants fired more than 80 rockets and mortar shells at Israeli towns and villages, sending people scrambling for bomb shelters.

The latest attacks, and an Israeli air strike on rocket-firers that killed one person and wounded two, appeared to have buried an unwieldy six-month cease-fire that expired last week.

But 45 miles away, outside the Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, good-natured crowds of pilgrims and townspeople gathered ahead of the midnight Catholic mass that is the holiday’s highlight.

Witness:

While Gaza teeters on the brink of a major crisis following the end of a six-month truce between Israel and Hamas Islamists in control of the strip, a decline in violence in the West Bank has tempted back tourists who no longer fear gun battles in the streets.

Israel attributes this partly to the barrier it is building in and around the occupied West Bank. For Bethlehem, the barrier takes the form of a daunting concrete wall 4 meters (13 feet) high with watchtowers.

Tourism collapsed here when a Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation began in 2000. But this Christmas, the Palestinian tourism minister says, hotel occupancy is rising.

And in a stellar example of a writer denying the evidence of his own facts, Reuters adds this paragraph to the above story:

Palestinians say the Israeli barrier is a major obstacle to peace that cripples trade and turns off foreign tourists.

Witness:

Crowds gathered around nightfall outside Bethlehem’s Church of the Nativity, the traditional birthplace of Jesus, ahead of the midnight Catholic mass that is the holiday’s highlight. A dozen pilgrims from India, Canada, Britain, the U.S. and other countries sung impromptu renditions of Christmas carols.

“Jesus was the prince of peace, and he can bring that peace to you. We pray for you,” David Bogenrief, a 57-year-old trumpet player from Sioux City, Iowa, told a gaggle of local children who gathered to listen.

Not long afterward, Israeli aircraft over southern Gaza targeted militants firing rockets, killing one and wounding two others.

The AP also offers Hamas propaganda about how the rockets aren’t really all that dangerous.

The situation is dramatically different in Gaza, controlled by the Islamic militant group Hamas which seized the territory by force in June last year. An Israeli blockade prevents Gazans from leaving the territory and causes shortages of fuel and basic supplies.

The missiles fired from Gaza are inaccurate and Israelis are well drilled in taking cover, so no one was injured Wednesday, though dozens were treated for shock.

Right. I love the way the AP offers up more explanation of why the rockets aren’t dangerous, and yet drops the following information (which was in one of their editions earlier today). The lack of casualties is due to luck and the hand of God.

The lives of three children – aged four, five and eight – were saved Wednesday, as a Grad missile fired from northern Gaza hit their home, moments after they managed to run into the fortified room of the house.

Arie Lazar, the children’s father, told Ynet that “this was definitely a miracle. Were suffered a direct hit to the house. We were in the living room when the Color Red alert sounded and the kids ran right in the fortified room.

So while aren’t getting “Israel is killing Christmas” stories the way we did last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that (really, go check my archives around Dec. 23-25th each year. You’ll see), we are still getting the usual anti-Israel media drek.

Merry Christmas from the mainstream media, hey?

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Rocket barrages from Hamas: The Blame Israel Media steps up

Filed under: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Gaza, Hamas, Israel, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 9:30 am

Someone in the AP decided that even that news service can’t keep ignoring dozens of missiles fired at Israeli civilians.

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip bombarded southern Israel with dozens of mortars and rockets on Wednesday, sowing panic and despair there and burdening diplomatic efforts to revive a truce that expired over the weekend.

No Israelis were injured in the barrages. The attacks took a steeper toll in Gaza as explosives apparently misfired, wounding three civilians and killing two militants. One of the injured civilians works for a conflict resolution center.

But of course, they have to blame Israel for bringing it on herself.

Hamas, the Islamic militant group that rules Gaza, said the bombardment came in retaliation for the deaths of three of its fighters in a clash with Israeli troops late Tuesday. Israel said the militants were planting explosives in northern Gaza along the border fence.

Because after all, why not equate the death of terrorists with the bombing of civilians twelve miles away—who were killed while trying to plant explosives to keep the IDF from coming in andstopping terrorists from firing rockets).

Interesting how the lead changed in half an hour. Take a look at the previous edition of this story:

Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip bombarded southern Israel with mortars and rockets early Wednesday, burdening diplomatic efforts to revive a truce that expired over the weekend.

Separately, a civilian was badly wounded in an explosion at a house in Gaza City. Two other civilians were lightly wounded when a rocket failed to clear the border and landed on a house in the northern town of Beit Lahiya, Gaza health officials said.

Meanwhile, two militants were killed when an explosive they were preparing went off prematurely.

Note how in the first report, the rockets that wounded civilians were given more prominence, and a separate paragraph, in the lead. Also notice that the AP dropped the description of the death of two terrorists during a “work accident,” and made it look like it was part of the misfired rockets. And of course, in the update, the blaming of Israel was moved up to the first three paragraphs, just to make sure nobody reading the three paragraphs that get published in their local World News section of the newspaper don’t misunderstand whose fault this rocket barrage really is.

CNN equates Hamas firing missiles at civilians with Israel “threatening” to respond to such firings. And CNN acts as Hamas’ press agency, passing along their propaganda uncritically in the lead.

Palestinian militants fired more than 30 rockets and mortars from Gaza into Israel on Wednesday days after Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert threatened to respond to the ongoing attacks.

Izzedine Al Qassam, the military wing of Hamas, announced in a statement on its Web site it had fired four rockets in revenge for what it called the “assassination” of five of its members by the Israeli military.

CNN is also forgetting that “jihad” means “inner struggle,” and that Islam is the religion of peace. Funny how CNN won’t use the word terrorist, but they will publish this:

Sources with the military wing of Hamas said the group fired a number of mortars into Israel from an area east of Khan Younes in southern Gaza. The sources also said two members of the military wing were killed Wednesday morning during a “work” related accident, while on a Jihad mission.

What, not even quotes?

The BBC is the winner of the Most Biased Award, of course.

Gaza rocket fire follows shooting
Palestinian militants in Gaza have fired mortars and rockets into southern Israel, without causing any injuries.

The Islamist militant group, Hamas, said the attack was in retaliation for three of their men being killed by Israeli forces on Tuesday.

More than 50 rockets have been fired from the Gaza Strip since Hamas ended a six-month ceasefire last week.

Actually, the toll is far higher than that. Not counting today, there have been 47 kassams and 37 mortars fired at Israel since December 19th—the end of the truce. Sure, it’s “more than 50,” but so is a million. Nice counting there, BBC. The BBC also knows whom to blame for the ending of the “truce”:

Hamas blamed Israel for the end of the ceasefire on Friday, saying it had not respected its terms, including the lifting of the blockade under which little more than humanitarian aid has been allowed in.

Most media reports will then add a paragraph in which the entity accused responds, something like “Israel says Hamas had continuously fired rockets into Gaza in violation of the truce,” but the BBC does not do that. I wonder why that is?

Meantime, Xinhua, the Chinese news service that is no friend to Israel, at least reports what the other news services won’t: That Hamas is firing Grad rockets into Israel.

Gaza ruler Hamas fired longer-range rockets into Israel on Wednesday amid continuous makeshift rockets attacks, escalating violence around the besieged Gaza Strip.

Hamas confirmed that its militants have fired Grads (military-grade rockets) from northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday morning in response to the killing of five of its militants.

The two Soviet-made Grads landed near a factory and a parking lot in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon respectively, causing damage to several cars, according to Israeli sources.

There’s no mention of the longer-range rockets—which Hamas smuggled in during the “truce”—in most of the other wire reports. The New York Times noticed, however.

Most of the rockets fired out of Gaza are locally made, short range projectiles that fall close to the border. Several of those fired on Wednesday were imported Katyusha-type rockets with a longer range. Ashkelon, which lies about 10 miles north of Gaza, has been hit occasionally. Attacks on Netivot, which lies about six miles east of the Gaza border, have been rare.

News flash: Reuters just took the Most-Biased crown away from the BBC with this headline and lead:

Flare-up dims truce hopes along Israel-Gaza border
Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip fired rockets into Israel on Wednesday to avenge the killing of three gunmen by Israeli troops, dampening hopes of a renewed truce.

Right. What’s most important here is that the “flare-up” (rockets trying to murder Israeli civilians) is messing with a new truce—which of course, will be used to get even more, better rockets to fire at civilians. Note the description of the harmless little projectiles currently tearing giant holes in Israeli houses and wounding Palestinian civilians unlucky enough to be under a misfired rocket:

An Israeli army spokesman said one of the rockets — most of which fall in open ground — struck a house in Ashkelon, north of the Gaza Strip. Another hit a house in a farming community east of Gaza. No injuries were reported.

And of course, it’s all Israel’s fault.

The latest round of violence erupted on Tuesday when Israeli soldiers killed three gunmen of the Islamist Hamas group which controls Gaza. Militants responded by showering southern Israel with rockets and mortar shells.

Meantime, the Israeli Cabinet is meeting. Something will be done. Grad rockets in Ashkelon are supposed to be a “red line” (I so hate that phrase) that cannot be crossed.

Watch for the world condemnation of Israel’s response, immediately upon seeing what the response is, and no matter what the response. Guaranteed.

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12/22/2008

The problem with the world viewpoint on Israel

Filed under: Hamas, Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Hamas, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 1:00 pm

Here is the problem with the world’s viewpoint on Israel in a nutshell. What part of this definition don’t the media organizations understand?

a military order to cease firing
a suspension of active hostilities

Apparently, all of it.

Hamas says open to new truce in Gaza
Palestinian armed groups in Gaza observed a 24-hour halt to rocket fire against Israel at the request of Egyptian mediators, a senior official of the ruling Islamist Hamas group said on Monday.

Ayman Taha told Reuters: “Hamas and other factions agreed in order to give a chance to the Egyptian mediation and to show that the problem was always on the Israeli side.”

That’s the lead. Here’s the seventh paragraph:

Israel and Egypt were skeptical about the Hamas declaration of a hold-fire, though it seemed to be observed, with only two rockets and a mortar reported to have been fired on Monday from Gaza, and a rocket and four mortars shot on Sunday night.

It wasn’t observed. It was violated. There was no hold-fire if three rockets and five mortars were fired from Gaza into Israel during the “halt”. It’s not a halt. It’s a slowdown. WTF is wrong with the effing people? Are they so blind and stupid that they simply refuse to allow Israel to have a single shred of just cause to go into Gaza to stop the rocketeers?

What part of cease-fire do these morons not understand?

Please read the entire two paragraphs as if they were in all caps, because that’s how I wrote them in my head. With many exclamation points.

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12/17/2008

Your morning AP media bias

Filed under: AP Media Bias, Gaza — Tags: Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 8:30 am

Get a load of this headline:

Army says Gaza militants fire 9 rockets at Israel

It’s not like the rockets were actually fired… no, the army just says so.

Israel’s army says Gaza militants have fired nine rockets at Israel.

Wednesday’s rocket fire came just two days before militants say a truce along the Gaza border is to expire. The rockets were fired by three small militant groups and caused no injuries, the army said.

Does anyone ever remember a headline by the AP that says “Hamas says Israel killed two militants”?

This is one of the subtle ways of discrediting Israel. The rockets weren’t just fired. The Israeli army (which always speaks in the collective, as opposed to “Palestinian spokesman/medic said”) says the rockets were fired. And we all know how Israel lies, right?

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12/15/2008

Euphemism of the year: Suicide bombings are “Violent, politically motivated attacks”

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Israel, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 12:30 pm

The Toronto Star wins the 2008 Euphemism of the Year Award for this sentence about the Israeli separation fence:

But defenders of the barrier say it has dramatically reduced the incidence of violent, politically motivated attacks launched against Israel by West Bank Palestinians.

There are so many euphemisms in this story, I may have to give out multiple awards. For instance:

“Violent, politically motivated attacks” = suicide bombings.

“West Bank Palestinians” = terrorists. (Also not true, many suicide attacks launched from the West Bank were by attackers from the Gaza Strip.)

“Attacks launched against Israel” = the second half of suicide bombers. I guess the Star wants us to be sure that we know the difference between Palestinian suicide bombers who attack Israel, and those who attack the Palestinians. Of course, the fact that there are no Palestinian suicide bombers attacking Palestinians (yet) doesn’t factor into this ridiculous example of politically correct speech on steroids.

And the editors are not quite finished using them, either:

But both sides agree that life here is a lot more peaceful now than it was just a few years ago.

According to Israeli figures, political violence has plummeted.

And then they break down the “political violence” into narrower categories:

In this region, which includes the Palestinian towns of Qalqilya, Tul Karem and Salfit, incidents involving firearms dropped from 166 in the second half of 2007 to 52 in the first half of 2008.

Those involving explosive devices fell from 112 to 56 during the same period.

For those of you who are not fluent in PC, they’re talking about shooting attacks and molotov cocktails, respectively, as well as the occasional bomber that is stopped at a checkpoint by a sharp-eyed Israel soldier.

But the PC Police missed a spot:

Resentments continue to fester on both sides of the fence, and stones and even homemade firebombs continue to be thrown on occasion, but life around here is undoubtedly calmer than it has been in years – and that is no small achievement.

Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear! I think Canadian readers are going to have an attack of the vapours after reading that last paragraph. I think we should write a strong-worded letter to the editor (filled with euphemisms, of course) about the use of inflammatory language regarding Palestinians.

Wow. Can it get much worse than this? I mean, really. No wonder Ezra Levant had so much trouble with the Canadian PC Police. It’s endemic.

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12/04/2008

An open letter to the world media

Filed under: Israel, Media Bias — Tags: Israel, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 9:30 am

Dear World Media,

I know you’ve been very busy with much more important things, like Jews fighting Jews in Hebron (you really love when that happens), or Gaza banks closing due to Israel’s refusal to hand money over to Hamas (funny that you keep missing the part where Hamas smuggles millions of dollars in cash through the tunnels), or writing about Israel’s refusal to allow foreign journalists into Gaza (while ignoring utterly the restrictions the Palestinians have always had in place on journalists, which included kneecapping those who wrote critical pieces about Palestinian leaders), but I thought I would point something out to you that you appear not to notice, except when it kills someone: Hamas has been sending mortars and rockets out of Gaza on a daily basis, deliberately aiming for schoolchildren. That’s right. Every day now, just like before the so-called truce, rockets are falling on southern Israel.

And yet, the world media is more concerned with getting your reporters into Gaza than in reporting the daily rocketing of Israeli towns and cities. You only seem to notice it when Israel kills the rocketeers (and Hamas lies about who was killed), or when an Israeli is killed by a rocket or mortar shell, and even then, you manage to point out that the rockets “rarely” kill anyone. I’m sure that’s a great comfort to the victim’s family.

You constantly repeat the Hamas line that the rockets only “strain” the truce, yet Israeli response to the rockets “violate” the truce. Or you confuse cause and effect, taking the Hamas line that the reason they are firing rockets into Israel is because the IDF went into Gaza to destroy a tunnel, killing the terrorists who attempted to kill them. The rockets, you say, are “in response” to the Israel “raid” into Gaza. And yet, rockets have been raining down regularly during the entire time the so-called “truce” has been in effect, but you brilliant, talented, experienced international reporters can’t seem to add that fact into your reports. Even in an article about Hamas preventing Gazans from performing the Hajj, you pass along that false narrative. You shamelessly conflate the killing of terrorists with the deliberate targeting of civilians:

For the past several weeks, both have violated its terms, with Hamas lobbing rockets into southern Israel, terrorizing and injuring dozens, and Israeli forces carrying out raids into Gaza, killing and wounding militants.

The exchanges began when Israel discovered a tunnel being dug from Gaza to Israel that it believed was to be used for seizing another Israeli soldier — Hamas has already been holding a soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, for more than two years. Israel destroyed the tunnel, killing six Hamas militants in the operation, leading Hamas to accuse it of breaking the truce. It retaliated with dozens of rockets and mortars.

The tunnel was a violation of the truce, New York Times reporter. How is it you start the truce violation with Israel’s action to destroy the tunnel, completely ignoring the terrorists’ actions that caused the IDF equal and opposite reaction? (Yes, that was a rhetorical question. By now, we are familiar with the world media’s blindnesses in the Israel-Palestinian war.)

Only Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, is reporting regularly on the daily rocket attacks, and is actually blaming Hamas, something that Reuters and AP generally don’t do. You blame instead “rogue groups” that Hamas “can’t control.” Interesting that the media organ of one of the world’s most unfree press can still tell the truth about Hamas, while the freest media in the world can’t figure out who is actually responsible for breaking the “truce.”

In closing, world media, I would like to say that I don’t really expect you to change. I don’t even expect you to be ashamed of yourselves for the blatant promotion of a terrorist group that is trying to turn Gaza into another Somalia (and gee, look what Sharia rule got us in that failed state) while ignoring all of Hamas’ crimes against its own people. But I do expect you to understand that I will never, ever give you a pass for your shabby, biased, pseudo-reporting on Israel and the Palestinians.

And in closing: [censored]

Sincerely,

Meryl Yourish

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12/03/2008

Rockets and mortars fall on Israel, but no news media can hear them

Filed under: Gaza, Media Bias, Terrorism — Tags: Gaza, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 10:30 am

Three kassam rockets and ten mortars were fired at Israel so far today. But there is nothing on AP or Reuters about the truce violation. Because, as my readers know, the truce isn’t violated by the Palestinians. It is only violated when Israel defends herself.

Three Qassam rockets fired from northern Gaza at around noon Wednesday landed in open areas within the Sha’ar Hanegev Regional Council limits. Earlier another rocket and 10 mortars were fired toward Israeli communities surrounding the Hamas-controlled territory. There were no reports of injuries in either barrage.

Islamic Jihad’s al-Quds Brigades claimed responsibility for the rocket fire, saying it was “a response to Israeli violations of the ceasefire agreement.”

The past 24 hours have seen at least 15 mortars and a number of Qassams fired toward the Negev region.

Here’s the information that the entire world ignores: Terrorists deliberately target Israeli children.

According to local security officers, the terrorists usually launch attacks at the beginning and end of schooldays. They added that the Palestinians have increased their use of mortars since the IDF has been relatively successful in thwarting the rocket fire emanating from the Strip.

War crimes of the Palesitinians, ignored, as usual, by the world. But yesterday, when Israel hit two “teenagers” firing rockets at Israel, the media rushed the story out.

Wait until the IDF goes after the terrorists. The headlines will be screaming about Israel killing Palestinians again. Meantime, Israeli schoolchildren once again have to cower in fear on their way to and from school, worried that the rockets will fall on them.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine walking to school and wondering if a rocket will land nearby and kill you?

No child should have to deal with that. And no world media should be ignoring it—simply because the children are Israelis.

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11/26/2008

Iran’s Hezbollah ties, Reuters lies

Filed under: Iran, Media Bias — Tags: Iran, Media Bias — Meryl Yourish @ 11:30 am

It’s not just the subject of this article. The blatant Reuters whitewashing of Iranian Jew-hatred is getting so obvious, I may not be able to read Reuters for much longer.

Iran, a main backer of Lebanon’s Shi’ite group Hezbollah, urged the Lebanese people Tuesday to unite to confront Israel, the Islamic Republic’s arch foe.

Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei made the comments to Lebanese President Michel Suleiman during a visit to Iran that included touring an exhibition by the Defense Ministry, Iranian media reported.

“Iran believes the capability of all Lebanese groups should be at the service of (Lebanon’s) power and unity to confront the danger of the Zionist regime,” Khamenei told Suleiman, the official IRNA news agency reported.

Iranian officials often call Israel the Zionist regime.

Iranian officials always call Israel “the Zionist regime.” And for some reason, Reuters does not put “Zionist regime” in quotation marks, yet this is the network that will put “terrorist” in quote marks if someone is describing Islamic terrorists. Or members of Palestinian “militant” factions.

But Reuters isn’t quite done with the whitewashing.

Tehran has often praised Hezbollah, which has formidable guerrilla army, for fighting Israel in a 34-day war in 2006. Israel has accused Iran of supplying weapons to Hezbollah but Iran insists it only provides moral and political support.

“Lebanon as a friendly and brotherly country in the region will always enjoy Iran’s spiritual support,” Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani told Suleiman, Iran’s ISNA news agency reported.

Hezbollah fighters are trained in Iran. Iran supplies arms and weapons to Hezbollah. Iran has sent billions of dollars in aid to the terrorist army of Lebanon in its fight against Israel. But Reuters still uses the old “Iran denies this” routine. Even Wikipedia acknowledges the truth of the matter.

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